50% of my genetics, 90% of my woes
Saw my mum the other week: first time in three n somethin’ years. Can’t say it went well. She was horrid and I was mean and when we said goodbye she gave me a hug and whispered, you’re a twat in my ear – I think she meant it affectionately – and afterwards I felt bad and sort of resolved to never bother with her again. It’s a long story. It’s a story I don’t really know where to start.
Ah, my poor old mum! I feel for her, I really do: knocked up at sixteen, second baby at nineteen, divorced and single mum and living in a frankly weird and scary village where she knew no-one at twenty-three: sure, it’s no wonder she never won no parent of the year awards and I got no grudges there – I’ve learned my lessons, I’m over all the wanting and wishing it had been different – but now what we’re talking about is two adults, a whole new relationship, and it’s a relationship I’m not sure I need to be in unless it gives me something, unless it’s mutually beneficial. But this relationship gives me nothing except bad, ain’t nothing of the good – and if she was a friend, a lover I’d have been well out of it a long time ago. That’s what it’s all about. Here: what happened is this:
[Boy, I’m finding it really hard to focus on this tale! Images from a thousand years past; words from that last meeting butting in, explanations of why, what lead up to everything, urges to defend myself against this heinous crime of tossing aside one’s own mother – the one that birthed you! the one who split her guts to bring you into this world! no charge! – and…]
She goes to me, I really hope that if you have a child it turns out like your brother. I say, wow, what a hateful thing to say. I look for some sort of recognition – but all I see is bullish stubbornness, a look that says, what I just said is right. That’s the way she’s always been: sorry don’t exist in her vocabulary. We’d been talking about Steven; she’d tried to somehow blame his current mental state on my bullying when I was younger. I said, you know what? I been thinking about that: I been thinking it’s perfectly normal for siblings to fight – what’s weird is for one of those siblings not to fight back. Nicola, the friend that I’m with – occupational therapist; backup; smart and good and well-adjusted, well-brought up and kind – goes, yeah, my sister and I used to have the most terrible fights – she once took a metal pipe to my head – but we’d always make up and soon be back to playing, you just have to get those things out. See, I say, it’s just normal, part of the cycle – you fall out, you fight, you make up and so it goes – but if you don’t fight you get stuck and – hey! You know what else? All these years I’ve been beating myself up about this – thanks for your help on that one ma – and it might just turn out I’m innocent. Or maybe not – but aren’t kids always innocent anyway?
Swine, my ma says – you were such a swine back then. There’s a luck of pride in her eyes when she says this. Competition. A competition she has to win. I never hear the word swine except every single time I meet my mother. She loves to remind me of that – just as my dad always reminds that I did bad things when I was younger, stole stuff, threw paint on a car once in a messy fit of drunken mischief – that he has video evidence of when I was stupid and drunk and that one day he’ll dig it out and…
With him, I don’t care: there’s no expectation. And, in any case, he’s not malicious, he doesn’t hold onto those things and use them as ammunition in some lame contest that shouldn’t even exist. He surprises me: so much of the time he’s just this violent and racist drunkard who smokes too much, who stinks – who’s fucked loads of women and hoarded his cash and now lives alone in a grubby little flat all fat and unhealthy watching a constant stream of war films, thinking about making money that he won’t ever spend, a bottle of Jack on the table, fag after fag after fag but –
When he read my book – and there’s me thinking well I guess I’ll just never speak to the bloke again – all he could say was: I’m bloody proud of you son. And: ee, you’ve done some stuff haven’t you? I can’t believe the stuff you’ve done. And: it wasn’t all like that, you know – meaning his relationship with my mum (I’d written about him not paying maintenance, not being there, just buying guitars) – and that’s pretty much all he says. There’s some heart there in the old bloke somewhere. No anger, really: never has been, I suppose. Not even when I treated him abysmally. But my ma…
My ma slings me out of the house when I’m seventeen. I blank her for a while and then when I’m twentyfour I come back from Mexico
You’ll always have a place, she tells me – meaning the house in Wakefield – and when I’m twentyfive I go back and live there (she’s remarried and living with the hubby; brother’s back from university; I’m paying rent) and all’s grand and groovy. But then one day she comes around – oh yeah, I remember: it’s a few days after 9/11, and not long after I’ve written a letter sort of expressing everything I feel (perhaps mistake) – and I know the look on her face. Bristling. Looking for a fight. She starts needling me about something or other, I’m not biting. She picks a Marmite jar up from the mantelpiece – it’s got some soil in it, I’ve been using it as an incense holder – and she lays into me, talks about the place being a mess – it’s not – what do I think I’m doing putting a Marmite jar on the mantelpiece, calls me disgusting. I still don’t bite. Then she goes on about some old shirt I’ve found – some old checked painting shirt – and says, what’s this? What have you done to the sleeve? You’ve no respect for anything. How did you tear this sleeve? On and on – blah blah blah. No biting there. More namecalling. Then she gets onto something or other and soon enough she’s screaming and saying I’ve got to get out, I’m disgusting and I’ve no respect and I’m out on my ear tomorrow (we’ve been here before). Fine, I say, and I sit back and I think, fine. But, no, that’s not good enough for her. So it’s more screaming and more namecalling – it ain’t gonna end till she gets a reaction – and it starts getting proper personal. Blood is boiling. I’m hurting. I tell her she’s hurting me and I want her to stop. She keeps right on. She tells me, you know what? Actually I want you out now: right this minute. Get your stuff and go. She lays into me good. I say, you’re hurting me and I want you to stop. If you want me to leave I will. Give me an hour. She starts picking stuff up and making to take it out to the street. She calls me disgusting and I say, one more time and I’m gonna take those porcelain cats of yours and smash them on the floor. She calls it. I smash. And now if I ever mention this day all she remembers is that: that I smashed her cats. That I was violent. That I was out of control.
So I was out on my ear. And we didn’t talk for several years after that, until some years later when I’m at uni and I get an email from her saying that her mum’s died and she wants me to come to the funeral (I’d written to her loads in the meantime and tried to smooth things over, to no avail) and so I go to the funeral and she’s nice and acts as though nothing’s ever happened. Fair enough. Me, of course, I’d love some explanation, some apology – something heartfelt, something decent and true – but pretty soon I see it’s not forthcoming and I guess I just get on with it. She’s changed, I suppose: she even invites me and my girlfriend for Christmas and when we go she puts us in the spare room and cooks for us – first time I remember cooking for me since I was maybe nine years old – and she’s a model of good behaviour. She smiles at me and says to my girlfriend, he really was a swine when he was younger – but that’s all the usual thing I guess, just normal. All’s good and all’s good for certainly a year or two. All’s good until the next time I’m back there living at her house with my brother.
Girlfriend and I have broken up. I go up there and rent the room once more. Everything’s groovy. I go over and visit her. We talk and it’s all fine. I buy a convertible and I take her out for a spin. I move out and I haven’t been thrown out and I guess it’s all good. And then –
One day I go back over to pick a few things up that I’d left there – and there’s a note to me from her that says, get your stuff out of here before I throw it in a skip. And, leave your keys with Steven unless you want me to get legal about it. I fuckin’ explode when I read this. Bitch! I scream. Motherfucking bitch! The house is a three-bedroomed house my brother lives in alone and I’ve got two boxes in the corner of a room that’s been a junk room for well over ten years and will never have anything done with it. Bitch bitch BITCH! My brother lives there the life of Reilly, never had a job, and I can’t even have a box in a room. And – for fuck’s sake – why can’t you just ask me if you want me to move it? Why these crazy fuckin’ threats so totally and motherfuckin’ utterly out of the blue? You’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’re crazy! Bitch I said, again and again, fuming and bubbling and wandering around the room while my brother looks on and I get my stuff together and give him his goddamned keys (to put forever unused in some bowl, some drawer) and I think – well, this is what I think:
I think: I don’t want this person in my life. I get nothing good from them and I get plenty of bad. It hurts. It’s not nice. I haven’t done anything wrong and I haven’t done anything to deserve this. What’s the point? Even if it was ninety percent bad at least there’d be ten percent good – but there’s not even that. No more, I think, no more: I literally literally literally can’t take it anymore. It hurts like hell. I’m sore and raw. I go out of there depressed. And I don’t talk to her again for over three years.
Except once, I think: her husband agreed to bring my stuff over to my new place in Leeds (I had no car) and she came and I said hi but that was probably about it. About what happened, she had this to say: have you calmed down then? Smug. And enjoying it. It’s okay to do whatever you want in her world – but if someone reacts to it in an ugly and offensive way, it’s all them. I got upset and shouted bitch and everything was justified. That was the last time I’d seen her.
Occasional emails. I hear your book’s come out; do I need to talk to my lawyers about suing? (nothing more) I got drunk and wrote to your biodad, can you write to him and tell him I was drunk? It’s your birthday, I’m going to put some money in your account. That’s pretty much it after a year or so of radio silence and then one day it’s something about if you come up to Yorkshire it’d be nice to see you and I think, hell, I’m going up to Yorkshire, why not give the old bird another chance? I tell her I’ll be in this restaurant at this time – I want it on my terms this time – and she says she’ll come.
Stupid me though! I’m on the offensive. I can’t just be gentle and nice and encouraging and kind: it’s war when it’s the two of us and I guess I’ve just got tired of losing. Although now when I think of it I can’t really dig up any examples of what I said that was bad: more an attitude, I guess. More that I had my friend there with me and I ad the support and it gave me some balls. She says, so who’s this girl then and I giggle and get nonchalant and hint that we might be married but refuse to confirm either way, just joking around. It unsettles her, I guess: she don’t know where she stands. I dig that. And then – ah, I don’t know what we talked about; I just remember:
The way her chin quivered tons with what looked like some seriously mental repressed anger. The way she tried to get Nicola to agree that I was some major war criminal pig. That demented insult about my unborn future offspring. Dredging up the past. Trying to win some war. Me talking abut how Nicola was an occupational therapist and making some loaded lighthearted comment about how she was an expert in body language and her saying, she’ll have a field day with you. Everything I type makes me sound stupid: feeds this voice in my head that says it’s you it’s you it’s you: you’re the evil one. I felt bad about it at the time – I shouldn’t have stooped to that level – and I’m feeling bad about it now. But I’ve justified it by telling myself that it was good to find out her true colours – I’m thinking more later when she texted me to call me a dickhead, to point out every little thing from the past, to blot out anything she might have done to me by saying it was me – and. Shit! All I can hear is that voice: me. Evil me. Me what done wrong. My poor old mum. Innocent. Never hurt a fly. And me that naughty twisted bad Rory who’s given her so much grief – who gives everyone grief. Is this the well? Is this the source? Is this why underneath everything I mostly feel paranoid, unloved, unlovable, bad? Ah hooee and balls: it probably is. And there was me starting out some two and some thousand words ago all proud and detached thinking that the demon-voice had been exorcised. But it hasn’t. Will I ever…?
She went on the attack later. She sent me some pretty horrid emails and texts. I for one was pretty much done with reacting and back even more firmly in thinking I just don’t need this relationship – and even more so thinking about maybe someday soon producing offspring of my own: for why would I want this hateful woman around me? (Please just take it from me: I’m a good judge of character – and Nicola's professional opinion has back me up here – and she really is proper hateful, got some serious repression problems going on, goes home everyday and hits the G ‘n’ T and television to blank it all out.) I told her I thought the next step in any conversation would have to be done with a mediator or counsellor in the room. I really don’t feel I can talk sense to the woman, or have her listen to anything I say. Like, if I mention anything about the time’s she’s thrown me out of the house, all she remembers is me breaking the cats, or stomping around and saying bitch. So that’s where I’m at. I told her that, and I told her I was basically done with her unless she wanted to do something to fix it, and that that’s what fixing it would take. Even that she turned around on me and said it was all me me me and suggested that what really needed to happen was big massive family therapy involving my dad and my biodad and my brother and that I needed to work through it all myself. More massive deflection: the talent of the lady is really quite incredible (and even now I hear that voice, and the imaginary voices of some women/mothers I know, supporting her, blaming me; I’ll scream if they do).
Victim? I don’t know. I’m trying to make a stand. Someone’s been very determined to convince me that I’m a flawed and evil creature. I don’t seem to be though. I seem to be pretty much all right. This relationship pains me – but what is there to do? I can’t change this person: I’m pretty clear that that’s her nature. Even my dad thinks she’s doolally: I think pretty much everyone does. But that don’t help the voice.
Are we all like that? At the other side of this there’s something truly incredible. And what of those that have been even more screwed up than me? Hell, what of those that are truly abused? But I’m an onion-peeler and this is as far as I’ve got. I think I’ve been looking at this layer for some time. It’s always motherfucking in me. Maybe I am bad: but I don’t seem to be. Good people like me. Lots of people like me. Good people. I can sit alone and quiet and be happy. I don’t need G ‘n’ T and televisions to blot it out. I can be calm. My chin’s not a quivering mess. I don’t call people twats and dickheads and try and constantly remind them of what they’ve done wrong. I’m all ready to forgive my mum everything if she’d just see it and make some sort of an apology. In fact, everything before the last eviction was pretty much forgiven. But the last one was too much. There’s only so many times you can keep going back and try to make things better: only so many times you can try to trust again, to open your heart again. I did a lot. The last one was too much. It’s all I can expect from her, and I can’t blame it because it’s what she has, what she is – I’m not gonna expect more of a scorpion than a sting and some pain – but it’s a fool who puts his hand in the nest over and over and over again. And that’s what I’ve done. And that’s what I don’t want to do anymore. And that’s the solution and resolution that I’ve come to: even this relationship doesn’t need to go on if it’s one hundred percent bona fide bad.
But – what to do about that voice? How to heal that and exorcise it? How to feel lovable in a world when your earliest representation and contact with that world not only didn’t love you but kind of hated you actually? That’s the real question. And nothing to do with her: it’s everything to do with me.
And one last thing: despite it all: despite all the frustration and the troubles and the heartaches and the stresses – I’ll tell you what: it’s one hell of a blast trying to dig all this out. Who doesn’t love a good psychological experiment? And what better place to carry one out than in the laboratory of your own being? I mean, it really is quite fascinating isn’t it? And so delicious, that feeling of peeling back the layers, of discovering new things, of shaking loose from all those old hang-ups and burdens. Only thing is: it’s been a real long time, and I do hope that one day there’s an end in sight. The heart of the onion: that’s the goal. I can make it, I’m sure. I really really hope I can make it. I will keep on going. I’m a good lad really…
No comments:
Post a Comment