Weak sisters...?

“You can’t do this to me! I love you!” Ellen’s voice carried through the apartment to my bedroom down the hall. Chip was breaking up with her. She had been foolish to think it would last. He had just divorced, and I had needed a roommate. He had picked her up on the Wellesley College campus by sitting on a bench looking forlorn in his dark trenchcoat, his black hair hanging in his face bad-boy style, his mouth humorous, expressive. Ten years older than Ellen, probably, and in need of some solace, I’m sure. He hadn’t talked to me much about his divorce from his French wife. They had a child, a girl, two years old. It must have been difficult for him to pull himself away from his daughter.

Ellen was plump, juicy, and innocent. Her greetings to me at the apartment were always cursory; she was there to have sex with Chip. I felt no sympathy now as she cried out in the throes of realizing that was all he’d wanted, although perhaps I should have. The whole thing had lasted three weeks, and they’d been very noisy. I supposed he was a good lover, but I didn’t need to be kept awake every other night. My “medicinal” apricot brandy and milk helped, but I didn’t like being reminded that I myself had been similarly innocent, vulnerable, and infected with romantic expectations.

Perhaps things are different in the 21^st century, and women don’t automatically feel they are in “a relationship” that has facets other than sexual (when those facets aren’t actually manifested). “I know he loves me. I can see it in his eyes,” says one stereotypical young woman in love.  “He hasn’t said anything about it, but I have this feeling we will be together; I have this feeling I will have children with him someday,” thinks another. Perhaps these (hypothetical and historical) young women know that if they'd said anything explicit about these notions to the lover, they’d be confronting him with the prospect of lying to continue pleasant sexual activities. So the women keep silent, hoping, expecting. "If I feel so strongly about what’s happening, he must, too!" And the delusion continues until it's shattered.

It’s happened to me. True, it was long ago, but I get reminders every now and then, sometimes from female students I deal with at my job, sometimes from women friends who should know better. I also get reminders that it’s not as easy for some males as it was for Chip, whose slender good looks and naturally sardonic delivery of self-deprecating jokery touched by sadness from big, brown, half-closed eyes made him self-aware bait. Yes, there are young men, too, who have problems merely getting started. Their heartbreak is non-specific. Loss seeps into their lives from an imagined lonely future. But that’s not what I’m talking about right now.

I cried Ellen's way too once, to someone over the phone with whom I’d lived. I imagined that we were still together (despite our separation while he recovered from a minor motorcycle accident). When he told me he was now with someone else, I felt helpless, abandoned. “But what am I gonna doooooo?” I wailed, even though I had a roof over my head, competent roommates, a job, and some comforting pets. The person with sexual “responsibility” for me was relinquishing that responsibility. I was lost. I had suddenly lost my sexuality and my romantic role. Why did that mean more to me than anything else at that time?

My subsequent involvement with a man had an even more painful demise, since I again delegated sexual responsibility to the guy, eventually ascribing some very bad behavior on my part to his influence. When he left, I had to take a unrosy look at myself.

Maybe it was the way girls were raised in the 1950s and 1960s that made us vulnerable to putting all our “eggs” in one basket, I don’t know. I wish I’d known that I was fine as I was, whether or not I was in a “relationship.” I wish I had been taught that sexual feelings were OK, and didn’t need to “belong” to one man, necessarily, at least in youth and young adulthood. I couldn’t even feel that I had any sexuality at all when I was alone, and we now know that’s not right!

Do girls these days have it easier? Of course heartbreak still exists, for women and men. But I don’t know if there’s that feeling of the bottom dropping out of life itself when a lover leaves; that cry to which I eventually became unsympathetic and cold, even toward myself and my long-ago weaknesses: “You can’t do this to me! I love you! What am I gonna dooooo?”
Shape up, woman! Shouldn’t a loving relationship be a want rather than a need? The whipped cream on the top of an already delicious life? Why were we—are we—so friggin’ WEAK?

I have not much to say. My inner life has been damped down, compared to, well, when I was in my twenties, when that was all there was. OKAY, I’ve accepted the importance of the outside world, including society and particular other people. Fine. My last remembered dream consisted of my trying to arrange some kind of “tour” for a bus driver; people had signed up but not everyone was boarding the bus. I don’t even think I was making any money from this deal, only trying to get a task completed. Sounds familiar. Will visiting a “hippie” friend in Tennessee cure this? I doubt it. But it’s a start. Some much-touted psychic will do “reiki” upon me (although I’ve not felt the need for this). I will meet alternative-type folks. But how can I respect them? Do they have any involvement in the dominant economical processes? How is “New Age” and “Catholic” different? Don’t both posit another (unseen) world that can be dealt with and investigated and profited from? The thing is, I used to be a “hippie.” It was only a refuge, though. And I met its challeneges. I got an “A” in Urban Hippie Life 101. I should have continued my course of study, but for some reason I desired to make a living the usual way. My bad.

The end times...

A friend of mine pretended to be horrified when I mentioned that I didn’t have the time or the money to visit my dying aunt. My youngest brother is taking care of this aunt at her home, which is 600 miles away from where I live, and 300 miles away from where he actually lives. He can do this because he’s not employed full-time right now. In fact, his “job” is now taking care of this dying person. He is learning a lot; he is learning things I don’t want to learn. I am mature enough to hear him talk about it, though. In years past, I might have avoided such topics. Death makes me uncomfortable.
Death was one of the reasons I became depressed when I was a teenager. When I discovered that it actually happened to people, I was confounded. A counselor I’d had at summer camp had been killed by a motorist as she walked on the tree-lined road near my school. I remember obsessing about her death: “But she had plans! She had hopes and dreams! It doesn’t make sense!” Which segued into: “So, what’s the point? Why bother?”
There were other reasons (discrimination against women, for one) that I was assuring myself it was not worth bothering to have “dreams and plans,” but right now I’m talking about death. The best people are doing it. People who have aged enough to know better. Why are they leaving us? Do they not care? As my brother says (sometimes with tears) “a whole generation will be lost.” He has loved this generation—his parents, his aunts. He feels they were harder workers, had more integrity, more courage. He’s probably right. My aunt (who is 91) worked in a home for the retarded and mentally disabled. She put up with low pay, little social regard, physical danger from the people for whom she was caring, and finally, an attempt to oust her before she’d qualified for her pension. She put my mother through nursing school. She never married because she thought she was “ugly.” She loved art and tried her hand at watercolors. She had friends, most of whom are dead. She is modifying and improving my brother’s cooking skills via her specific demands of the moment. She is a toughie. But cancer is eating her insides. She won’t go to a hospital, but hospice people visit. There’s oxygen (my brother rigged up a tube to go up the stairs, because her upstairs power outlets are out of date). My brother also cleans up after she’s had an “accident.” This is becoming more frequent.
She’s not the only one. Relatives of co-workers are going through these final days, and people have to take time off from work to hold vigils. My parents are approaching this journey, perhaps, being only a few years younger than my aunt. I don’t know what I will be called upon to do. And it may be that I won’t do it. I’m still working, I tell myself. I have no time. I have no travel money. It’s not something I want to face yet. And it will happen to me.
Baby boomers—who are probably one of the first American generations to be sheltered from death (except for those who went to Vietnam)—must now minister to their dying loved ones. No one escapes. First, the introduction to the process. Then, the invitation. Twenty or so years apart, but one follows the other.

My big mouth

When I quit smoking back in the late seventies, the weeks that followed contained the first moments I opened my mouth and spoke as an adult. A smoker since age 15, I’d been shy, a writer, an observer. Tranquilized by nicotine, I had no urge to verbally express aggressive emotions (which I barely felt), and no experience in doing so. Instead I wrote doleful poetry that I showed to no one. As the cigarette-induced calm ebbed, I suddenly began to feel my own angers and dissatisfactions, but I was crude and spontaneous in voicing them. I'd picked up swear words from roommates, and used them, sputtering my first complaints about human (and working) conditions without considering the effect I was having on people around me. It seemed so important to release these burning thoughts and feelings, I couldn’t contain them. I was having tantrums like a two-year-old, and I paid the price. People were afraid of me, and I eventually got fired. More than once.
I also started to write my feelings (now that I was feeling them). This was probably not always a good idea either. I once sent a letter to my mother-in-law chiding her about some of her conservative advice. The next time I saw her, she said quietly, “I’m going to forget you ever wrote that, and I think you should, too.” I felt that my true self had been denied; I hadn’t been seen by her. But I was humbled, and I did henceforth keep mum about some things.
Despite practicing various methods for minimizing reactions and modulating expressions, I was always surprise-attacked by my own outbursts of rage, followed by weeping and guilt. I learned, as an animal learns, to maintain composure in front of those most important to my survival, but I often took it out on lesser persons or complete strangers.
Developing a more civilized language for my anger helped, I suppose. But nothing can disguise a tone of voice. My impatience with callers on the phone was well-known. When the job I have now evolved to include phone work, I struggled to build a "nice" and "helpful" persona. I didn’t want to be false, but what else could I do? I couldn’t afford to get fired again. Honesty is never the best policy, I was learning.
Fortunately, as I became older and more anxious about all of these matters, I got an invite to try antidepressants. After demurring for a few years, I accepted. The situation improved. I rarely opened my big mouth in the way I’d done before. I was tranquilized again. This damping-down was experienced in such a way that I’d recognize what was bothering me, but I could hold it in, or express it differently, or even engage in an exercise of empathy, building those inner muscles until I could almost always put myself in the other person’s shoes, boots, or sandals. My "feeling" responses were considered, if they happened at all. I started to prefer pure information.
I am still learning that even considered responses may not be received well, as with my recent response to a piece of writing by a friend, a tour de force that was supposed to be a joke, a parody, and which I took seriously. I complained about this friend’s "mean" attitude as evidenced in the piece, only to discover that it was a persona; that I had been meant to laugh and not take offense. In this case, my friend had struggled to develop this persona for art’s sake, and was proud of it. I am left wondering why I was so clueless. Is there something in me that seeks opportunities to criticize and find fault with my new-found ability to consider as I respond?
In a literature class I’m taking just for fun, we were discussing Gertrude Stein’s writing, in particular, the poem “Lifting Belly.” Apropos of nothing but my inner churnings, I burst out, “That phrase gives me the creeps!” The professor gave me the same look my mother-in-law had given me, as if commanding me to pretend I never said it. I'm qualified to be an adjunct professor myself, and have taught in the evenings now and then, but when I TAKE a class, I turn into a student, which, for me, means regression. It’s as if I had never been introduced to “political correctness” or even “taking turns.” I become the outspoken, spontaneous, complaining teenager I never allowed myself to be.
Becoming adequately socialized and modified so that no one will EVER be angry with me again seems impossible, at this point. And besides, why aren’t the people who complain about ME (or even burst out at me occasionally) worried about their own self-control and tolerance?
I’m finished with this self-modification project. My big mouth has undergone all the modifications it can take. I will say and write what I think and feel. I will edit myself for style, grammar and typos only, not for possible offenses. It’s took late for that.