nightmare

One of the posts I didn't have the courage to put up.


'I wanted only to try and live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?' (Herman Hesse, Demian)


Less than a month left until my mom moves in with me. And so my nightmares begin.

I have this guilt.

I am still financially dependent on my parents. The money I make from TA'ing is not enough for me to live on. I am having all this sex, and enjoying myself immensely. T has come to this house that they own. I have spent many a bus ticket to visit him. They have not a clue of the goings-on going on at their expense.

This makes me guilty.

I am the youngest of three. And I have always been ‘the innocent one’ of the two sisters. My sister is married now though, so she is saved. And forever safe.

From my mom’s point of view, she was saved from that hushed, evil disaster that we had grown up hearing about, but that was always left unnamed. My mom was so mysterious about this, it took me years before it clicked that this foggy catastrophe she tiptoed around was an ‘illegitimate’ pregnancy. Or maybe just being lost to a life of sin.

I believe that my sister is forever safe too. Safe from the intense gnawing worry of my mom. And now, all the focus is on me.

I should have dropped the pretense of innocence a long time ago. But it’s worked for me in the past. And I’ve been doing it for so long that now, I am not quite sure how to begin to end this act.

My parents still have, anyways, not just a financial, but also an emotional hold on me.

I really do feel sometimes like I have failed them. Not just in this, in the secrets that lie here in this blog, but in many other areas of my life.

I worry that I depend on them too much. And that it is out of pure laziness, because it is just easier for me that way, the way it’s always been done for me. So that I want to beg them sometimes to stop, to do this one last thing for me. It would be the biggest, greatest thing they could do for me, to help me out of my lethargy.

Just stopping. So I can feel myself, so my actions, my thoughts, can belong to myself.

But then, even in this, especially in this, it is not up to them to stop, but up to me to withdraw.

I am being tested. And I am failing. This feeling always that I am failing myself.

I tell my mom I want to make enough money so I can move to Japan, teach there for a year or two. It is a bit random. It is not the most brilliant or even most original of ideas, but I have the need for it. I need to get out of Canada, as much as I love this country, my country of birth. I am stuck, smothered, stagnant. I need to do this, something different, my idea, on my own.

My mom is an intelligent, articulate, educated woman. A scientist, a teacher, but well-read on a huge range of other topics too. People tell her this, often. I respect her, and it is very hard to argue with her.

She scoffs at these attempts of mine to break free. Like when I tell her that whenever she persists and nags to tell me what next step it is best for me to take in my life, it only serves to make me want to do anything but that.

Because even the best of her ideas are not my own. And now that she has owned it by putting her stamp on it again and again, even if I were to find this idea myself later on, it would still be forever hers, and not mine.

It is strange to be aware of this, to realize that maybe it is a trick of the mind, that maybe there is no real reason to feel like this. But it cannot be helped.

She gets offended and deems this nothing more than a foolish sentiment.

‘Independence is highly over-rated. Don’t tie yourself to trivial Western concepts. We are not like that.’

How do I argue with that? How do I deal with my wants being slung into over-simplified categories of East and West? These are two flat characters of a play, characters whose lines I’ve memorized and understood too well. They are not my lines and I am, quite simply, neither.

How can I explain that her words are a dismissal of my own inner stirrings? And these are stirrings I’ve tried to stem from my own self. Whatever that may mean, whatever that self is which I somehow deep down believe in. Whatever readings, thoughts, exposure has led me to my beliefs, Western or Eastern, as ultimately arbitrary as her own.

She tells me, ‘There is no shame in making use of my life, of what I know.’ And I do want to trust her life experience, except, it is not mine.

She says, ‘You listen to career counselors and the like. Why not me? I may not have all their training, but I have traveled, and taught many, and seen my share of this world. And you’re my child, I’ve known you since birth, I know you. Not just as a parent, but as an educator. I’ve watched you and I know you. Better than anyone.’

Her every word binds her to me.

She is right, I would prefer a trained stranger’s advice to her own. Partly because her advice from her times past may not work on my times to come. But mostly, because I am her child.

She does not know me fully anyways, no matter how impartial she says she is. She does not necessarily know who I’ll be from who I was. She’s seen me but she does not see me. She does not know who I’ve come to be right now.

No one does, everyone knows only a part of me. And she has too long been a part of me, from the womb, feeling never apart from me. But we are apart, and I have lived apart from her and I have grown apart from her.

As it should be. We will be torn apart from each other one day anyways.

It is not to be far from her that I want, but to be our fully realized separate selves. Is it strange to know this, to feel this so clearly?

If my mom should ever find out about my shameless involvement in premarital sex, with no intention of commitment either, she would, to put it in teenage terms, ‘flip’. I would lose her trust forever. I would lose her esteemed approval of my moral character, the one she has judged impeccable. I don’t know how we would deal with it. I don’t know really if I am ready to deal with it at all. To really fully admit who I am. Separate.

Weak.

I’ve seen it happen to my sister. I was young. It was scary to watch their fights. To see my sister cry day after day. To hear my mom tell my sister in anger one particularly bad time that she wished my sister had never been her daughter at all. I’m sure she regrets saying it. I don’t know if my sister will forget hearing it. I don’t.

I’ve heard her say many times, ‘But you, you are different, I know. You would never think of doing such things.’

I almost believed what she believed of me. Or what she wanted to believe. Or what she wanted me to believe.

I remember I wanted to believe too once anyways. To be that angel. No risks taken, heaven guaranteed.

But a curiosity and joy for life won over, and it did not push me to be more outspoken, like I wish now that it did. It backfired. I hid. I did not do a lot, but the things I chose to do, I became sneaky about. And the thing about sneakiness is, so long as you’re not caught, you only know of its reward.

Except for this guilt. And these nightmares.

My nightmare last night was gross, and I’ll be graphic about it, so you’ve been pre-warned. Walk away, while you still can, it really is gruesome. But this is all the therapy I have right now.

It started off innocently enough, with my mom asking me if I had been taking my vitamins. She asks me this often.

I said no, that I had forgotten to again. This is my usual answer.

She started to get incredibly angry at this. She started to rant. A painful, cutting rant, of the kind I’ve never heard come out of her before, especially not towards me.

We are, on the whole, a quiet, reserved family. My mom the most expressive one out of us all, the least afraid of confrontation. This must be hard for her sometimes, must make her feel pitted against her own family. When she is the one angry, and we are the ones always seemingly calm, always just running away.

But in this dream, she was harsher even than her usual.

I’ve had it up to here with you. I’m sick of this. I’m sick of taking care of you. I am just sick. Absolutely sick of you, everything about you, everything you do. It’s all wrong. Always wrong. Everything you do is wrong. Everything you do is a mess I have to take care of. I’ve had enough. Completely enough.

She went on and on. And here’s the thing, I wasn’t trying to appease her, like I would be in real life. I wasn’t hurt or scared or reduced to tears like I would instantly be in that situation. Like I always am if she so much as slightly attacks me. Though she would never attack me this way. And she would never complain about having to care.

I did not step down. I kept screaming back, first with words: ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?’ And then just the scream, all words dropping away. Just this roaring, screeching scream that wouldn’t stop. Trying to block her out, trying to shut her up. She kept complaining bitterly about me, and I just kept howling back, as hard as I could.

I felt like I was possessed. And the way dreams are, with this thought, it turned into exactly that. It turned suddenly into a scene exactly like from The Exorcist.

My screaming turned into puking, my mouth just opened wide, and it all rushed out, this disgustingly brownish steady waterfall, pink with blood, and I was surprised but I couldn’t stop. I was evil, looking my mom straight in the eyes and I couldn’t stop. And my sister was there somewhere, sympathetic, in the background, pleading silently with sad eyes for me to not do this. To not do this to myself.

But I had to, and I wanted to, to shock everyone, to do the worst I can. And it just went on, and it wasn’t just bile forced up, it was solid and chunky, it was everything inside, all my organs mashed up, all that I had ever chewed, swallowed, tried to digest, just everything, it just kept pouring out.

My mom didn’t even flinch, didn’t even stop from her grumbling, she just looked down at the growing pool of filth at my feet and said with disgust:

See? I’m probably going to have to clean up that too.

I just threw up some more. I was throwing up still when my feet slipped in my own mess, and I lay there, alone, in my own puke, afraid of what I’d done, heaving, finally done, crying in sobs of exhausted abandon.

And my mom just looked down at me, this look of utter revulsion on her face. So I felt like I was lower than nothing.

Then she shook her head and walked away.

I was left right there, right in my pile of blood and guts and filth and bile and pain.

By myself.

Waking up from that vivid dream, shaking with fear, revolted, my mouth sour, was not a good start to my day.

Some dreams are too obvious not to decipher. And my mom’s dream accusations sound too much like my own ones towards myself.

Is 23 too old to be having scary growing pains?