January 30, 2005

• Before I get to this post, I’d just like to share with you all that I am healthy, healthy, healthy. The doctor says that if you’ve been on the pill for ages, then its common to miss a period here and there. Sounds good to me! No preggers and no period! Thanks for all of you who were nice enough to worry. Xanga people are so nice! Anyhow, here’s my lil post for the day. Enjoy!

  Please Bear With Me

  I have a nasty habit of hiding my feelings. My mom knows this habit well, and refers to my it when she reflects on the “separate life” that took place while I spent weekends with my dad as a kid. Out of loyalty and a genuine empathy for my dad (his faults lie in making the clichéd mistake of continuing a family legacy of inept fatherhood), I won’t go as far as to say that child protective services should have been called on him for neglect, but he escapes that condemnation by just a hair.

  My dad, an incessant workaholic entrepreneurial real estate man (read: slum-lord), would leave me alone during my bi-weekly visits with my young, heavy metal blasting step mom. She stared out as a sweet, fun babysitter type-figure in my life. She would read aloud to me for happy afternoon hours from the Borrowers books, and from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We would color in Sesame Street coloring books with a giant, fresh box of Crayolas. Then, suddenly and without reason, she became an emotionally unavailable shadow that sought solitude in her attic bedroom. She barely spoke to me. She never looked at me. I ceased to exist to her. I now speculate that she turned cold on me after realizing that she forwent college to marry an older man with an addiction to work and alcohol, and to become a mother to a five-year-old daughter at age 18. While a part of me sympathizes with how nightmarish her life must have seemed to her, a larger part of me aches for how rejected I felt.

  My step mom and dad kept a zoo in their tiny city house, including a menagerie of stinky birds, an enormous iguana, and three very aggressive dogs—a Doberman pincer, a Boxer, and a Pit Bull. The Doberman Pinter was kept for breeding and was left to rag all over the filthy tiles of the kitchen. A small gate kept the Boxer from raping the Doberman, confining him to the tiny dining room. A Pit Bull guarded the basement. It was a constant barrage of angry, frustrated, and sexually charged barking. My bedroom was down the hall from the dining room. The gate kept the Boxer dog, unfamiliar with my presence and designed to protect its owners, from mauling me. I was petrified to leave my room. If I needed to eat, I would have to get between a bleeding Doberman pincer and a horny male Boxer, step over the menstruation stained tiles, to reach the fridge that contained sour milk and no food. The bathroom wasn’t equipped with a toothbrush, towel, or washcloth for me. My step mom stayed in the attic, playing her guitar. My dad worked until late in the night. I cried, starved, and spent the weekend un-bathed and filthy.

  Some weekends when I was supposedly visiting my dad, I was dumped off with my Uncle Mel, a nurse who had turned his nicotine drenched house into a halfway home for mentally ill individuals. On a sign in his front yard, a cheerful rainbow bore the arched phrase, “Mel’s Happy Landing Center.” Uncle Mel is an intensely nervous, chain-smoking hypochondriac with an aura of shame clinging to him, due to the fact that he grew up in Alabama during the 1950’s and was a gay man of the lisping, swishing variety. His skin is a frightening texture, due to a lifelong struggle with cystic acne. The patients of the Happy Landing Center would sit next to me on Uncle Mel’ s plastic covered couch watching news programs on the tiny television. They would drool and poop and fart and play with their genitals. I would stare straight ahead, trying to escape into the television, and trying to filter out the cigarette smoke by breathing through the pulled-up collar of my shirt. Uncle Mel’s HIV positive, brain cancer inflicted boyfriend, Freddy would wear only boxer shorts and spread his legs wide open while reclining in the lazy boy. His doughy testicles would slip out the bottom of his boxers and I would feel nauseous. Uncle Mel would request in his southern twang that Freddy, “Watch his pants.” Freddy would slowly respond, “I know.” His lolling ball-sack continued to sag from his under-shorts into the outside world.

  This icky and sad truth is much different from the stories I would tell my mom. Her gentle face would look upon me, searching me for reasons why her daughter was returned to her every other Sunday of the month exhausted, famished, and filthy. Instead of telling her what was happening, I would weave fantasies of how my dad, step mom, and I would start our weekend at the park. We would play together, and go for walks around the neighborhood, telling each other about the week. We would then go to our favorite Mexican restaurant and I would eat Spanish rice every time. We would rent movies and go to sleep late. In my imaginings, Saturdays were spent flying kites, having picnics, and riding bikes. I must have been destined for a career in story telling, because my mom came to believe my lies so much that she later confessed to feeling afraid I would want to live with my dad, since every day seemed to be a party there.

  I am still unable to answer the question why I hid my feelings then, and why I continue to do so now. But I am committed to trying to find out. This blog is an important part of that. But I’m still green when it comes to allowing myself and others acces to my emotional life. It is natural for me to become vocal and passionate when it comes to defending the rights, liberties, and emotions of others, but when I have to defend myself, I choose to hide instead.

  In addition to my Xanga, I thought I would extend my attempt at making my feelings vocal to other forums. Last weekend, I published a satirical, humorous political essay on Xanga and on a website dedicated to political discourse. This is embarrassing, but in pursuit of honesty, I’ve got to say it—my feelings were hurt when I was lambasted on the political site.

  Now in a rational state, I can see that the people who posted on the political site were nothing short of ignorant. They didn’t argue or discuss any of the points in my essay. Rather, they criticized my intelligence. I was told that I should sue my college for granting me a degree because I was “obviously cheated.” I know that someone who disagrees by basically saying, “you’re stupid!” is on the level of a playground bully (not to mention the fact that their ability to detect satire and humor is nonexistent), but the first time I read these nasty comments, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I had grown accustomed to the wonderful, intelligent web-discourse of my fellow Xanga authors (one reader in particular posted wonderful opposition to some of my points, informing me of a few things, as well as informing me of arguments people might use that I need to do a better job of refuting in my essay. *Thanks Laura*). Reverting to my terrible habit of hiding, I promptly deleted my political essay from Xanga, and spent the day with a black cloud over my throbbing head.

  After having some time to cool off, I went on the political website and ranted back. Now, reclaiming my rights to express my feelings, and ready for any further comments, I am re-posting my satirical little essay, A Ménage et Trois of Freedom….Or, A Freedom Sandwich, if You Will. Please find this essay in the post prior to this current one. My apologies to those Xanga authors who did take the time to comment—your insights were marvelous, and nothing like the crude and silly postings left for me on the political site, and they did not deserve to be deleted in my temporary inability to feel secure in my opinions and feelings. Thanks for bearing with me, for being so cool, and as always, for your readership.

  • 4:57 pm
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