Beware the Helping Hand (or: How to Make a Crazy Quilt)

 

I just had one of those godawful internet experiences of losing a few thousand words I labored over for the entire evening – because I forgot to hit “update”. I was adding it to a previously-published post, so it wouldn’t automatically save as a draft. So it didn’t. But I will make an attempt at piecing it back together. The gifs are random and just a way to break up the block of text.

Have you ever had a relative you tolerated, even tried to be nice to, strictly because they were kin and you didn’t feel you had a choice? I had one of those, but no more. I had to unload this person for the sake of my – excuse me – “mental health”.

And the whole thing is so ironic, in light of what went down, and why.

My sister-in-law, my husband’s brother’s wife, whom I will call Janie, is what used to be called a “ busybody” – happily probing into everyone else’s business, then passing along the most sensitive bleeding chunks of information with relish, especially if it would serve her in some way. And this did.

She would phone me. For the past 30+ years, at least three or four times a year, she’d phone me, and talk, and talk, and talk, in her rattling-on, self-involved way – which was irritating enough – but it was worse than that. I don’t know how some people do this, but she was adept at extracting information from people – me in particular. When I’d finally get off the phone with her, which always took a lot of effort, I’d always have the feeling that I never should have told her any of that stuff. But somehow it came out. Like a robin pulling a worm out of the ground, she somehow got things out of me, largely from asking questions so none-of-her-business that you somehow answered her because you couldn’t quite believe what she just said. 

Never once, ever, in my life, have I phoned Janie, because I didn’t want to phone Janie. I don’t like Janie, and I never did. I don’t want to talk to her. Ever. And yet, for reasons I have never understood, she phones and phones, tagging along after me like a particularly obnoxious dog you can’t shake off.

This has taken a turn just lately because she started to follow my Facebook posts, and leave likes and comments on the majority of them. Some of them were nice, but mostly they gave me that cloying feeling. She was fastening on. Coat-tailing, they used to call it. Even reading her comments made me feel drained. After she read my Facebook post on “Why I Hate Mental Health” (because it has become a shallow, meaningless buzzword), she phoned me (of course! She always phones me!), and began to talk. Oh yes, I was so right! Oh yes, the mental health care system is terrible! And as it turned out, she has taken it upon herself to become a Mental Health Crusader, and has joined some sort of board of directors and gets up at board meetings and tells Tales of Terror from the Crypt of Mental Illness. 

I should have been clued in when she said she told them all about her close friend, a woman with schizophrenia whose doctor changed her meds, leading her to attempt suicide so she had to be hospitalized. She told this in colorful detail, which I am sure must have really impressed her pals at the board meeting, but while she was rattling on, my guts began to squirm. 

Did Janie, um, like, ask permission to say these things? Did her close friend want those painful episode brought up and trotted out as an example of How the System Fails the Mentally Ill? I had no idea, but my stomach-squirm turned out to be prescient. 

To further prove what a selfless crusader she is for the lame, the halt and the blind, she then launched into the story of how I had to spend three nights in a hospital corridor because they had no room for me in the psych ward, and how I had then climbed out of bed, crawled down the hall on my hands and knees to a pay phone, and phoned the crisis line so I’d have someone to talk to.

That’s the thing, Janie remembers stuff. God, does she remember. This was the kind of thing I would tell her, oh, maybe 30 years ago, but she filed it all away.  But there it was again, dredged up, fresh as paint, raw and red and glistening. She then said she told this psychiatric horror story at her board meeting, in an attempt to raise funds for one of her pet projects, Feed the Criminally Insane or something. No kidding, she told my story to impress the board. 

But there was just one problem. More than one, really, but the main one is this: it never happened. She took several different stories I wish I had never told her and conflated them, stitched them together, “curated” them into the ultimate horror story, when in reality the hospital corridor thing (which was only one night) happened in 1982, and the crisis line thing happened in an entirely different setting (NOT a hospital) in 2004. And never did I ever crawl on my hands and knees. I walked, until some nurse shouted at me “GET BACK INTO BED!” (which was bad enough, but still not crawling). So the most RECENT story, told in very garbled form, happened 20 years ago. Out of these rags and tatters,  she stitched together a crazy quilt of horror that was much more colorful and impressive than anything that actually happened. 

She did mention that she "didn't use my whole name", which she seemed to think made it perfectly OK to profit from my "story". (Though she DID say it was her sister-in-law.) She also assumed that because I had told HER about it, I was completely fine with sharing it with anyone at all, up to and including a Society for the Prevention of Straitjackets (or whatever the hell).

But this time it was different. I had had it with Janie. Forever. I just couldn’t pretend to be nice to her any more and just told her to STOP dragging up stuff from the past that I’m trying to forget about! And I tell you, she was very upset. I was raining on her social worker/self-righteous-charity-lady parade, thwarting her shining quest to Speak for Those who Cannot Speak for Themselves, the  powerless, the stigmatized, the crawling dregs of society! 

I don’t remember yelling at her any time before in all those dozens or hundreds of annoying one-sided phone calls, but I did it this time, and she was not only astonished but actually quite offended. What?? I’m not grateful for her selfless service to The Cause? I didn’t want to help her save every  mental patient who ever crawled along the floor in a psych ward?  Well, no, Janie. I don't. She finally said, “QUIT SHOUTING AT ME! I heard you the first time, so you can just stop ranting at me!” 

At that point, I hung up. I immediately blocked her on Facebook, then deleted her furious email response unread, though the first line gave the impression of a tiny little person jumping up and down and screaming. The exclamation points were practically flying off the page. So that’s the end of Janie, and I now realize I never DID have to have any sort of relationship with her. I just felt like a captive audience. I never wanted to talk to her on the phone, yet for years and years I let it happen, and she went right on studying and extracting and collating her crystalline memories of fuckups that happened to me forty years ago. (Or maybe they didn't, but it sure sounded good that way.) I’m fascinating, you see. I’m a live one. Right there in the jar, on the end of the assembly line. So her scientific little busybody mind could poke, prod, and finally present the results of her laboratory experiment to the Board of Directors, with the final goal of getting a cash grant for all her psychiatric charity work. 

I guess this has gone on long enough, and if THIS one gets deleted I give up. I guess what I’ve learned is to pay a lot more attention to my discomfort and to trace it down to the source – and then, wherever possible, GET RID OF the source so I can live my life without emotional vampirism, from my own family or from anyone else.

I've left out a few bits and pieces, but because it's my blog and I'll rant if I want to, I'll add this. On the phone, Janie recounted how she was gathering funds for her Mental Health Event (bake sale, rodeo, nude swim), and someone dared to joke at her, saying "so are you crazy too?" or something equally devastating. Janie told him to FUCK OFF, turned on her heel and walked away. (This was in public.) She recounted this proudly, as if to elicit oohs and ahhs  from me, exclamations of how brave, how gutsy, oh my, you go girl, etc. Ohhhh, thank you so much for standing up for me, speaking for those incapable of speaking for themselves! (At the same time, do you notice anything here? ANY implication AT ALL that she herself has a mental health condition is outrageous and abusive and causes her to fly into a public fury.)

Janie has never been popular in my family. No one says it out loud, because we’re not that sort of family, but everyone has had a “story” at some point. Bill’s sister Judy once told me in a sort of muttering voice that she saw Janie in her kitchen, opening each kitchen cupboard and each kitchen drawer and snooping around in the contents. She said it was like an inspection. Mostly the muttered complaints were about the fact that they never saw her husband (was he being held hostage somewhere?), and her busy-body-ness and general obliviousness to other people’s feelings. Then I heard the incredible story from Bill’s brother that Janie had once been in a cult, complete with shaved head, mantras, sexually-abusive gurus, and whatever else they have in cults. It struck me as strange, as she doesn’t strike me as someone who would take orders from anyone – or was it a sort of School for Cult Leaders, and she was studying for a degree?

Forgiveness: right or wrong?

I came across this on Facebook. I usually hate these things, whatever they're called, Little Cards of Wisdom that tell you what to do. They never suggest: they TELL, just assuming you've got it all wrong and need a lesson. 

But this one stood out. This is one that few people will even approach in a lifetime, and I am not even sure I agree with all of it.

If forgiveness means "it's OK what you did", then I do not forgive. I do not forgive the several men who molested me when I was a child and a teenager. 

If forgiveness means "I don't mind it, I'm over it, it doesn't affect me any more," then I do not forgive.

So what does it mean?

People say it's a  "letting go". If I stay angry, I'll burn the rubber down and run on bald tires (or something). So if I just let go of the memory and the damage and the way it all derailed my life, perhaps permanently, then everything will be OK.

I "should" forgive. I will feel so much better if I do.

This is some sort of psychological/spiritual imperative these days.

I don't know how to do this.

I thought I did.

But then, it has that line in it, "through their own confusions". The men who molested me were having a good time and wanted to grab someone's ass and rub up against me, and it didn't matter if it was the 14-year-old sister of the host of the party. They weren't "confused", they were drunk and lecherous and oblivious to my pain.

If they had it to do over again, they'd still do it, because the fact is, they enjoyed it and were not concerned with how much it might damage me. They did not think of that at all.

So do I forgive them? What does that mean? "It's OK that you very nearly brought about my suicide"? It will never be OK.

What IS OK is that I have a life. 

In spite of an incredible amount of personal pain, I have reclaimed it. I don't entirely understand this. I don't want to hate. I feel sorry for those sorry sons-of-bitches. I pity them (and a couple of them are dead), though I also feel considerable contempt.

Feeling sorry for, and feeling pity - are these things closer to "forgiveness", or to "hate"? This may be as far as I ever go on that glorious, impossibly idealized Buddhist path.

(But that last part, well. No matter how idealized, this is something I need so badly,  I can't even tell you.)

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Fair game: those old family photos on the internet

Blogging is an organic process, like all serious writing. (Serious! As 3/4 of this blog is satire, how can I say that? But satire is perhaps the most serious writing of all). This piece is beginning to evolve from some thoughts I've been having for quite a while now.

In spite of my general disdain for Facebook, there are a few pages that I "visit" regularly (in other words, I look at them, and read them if there's anything to read). One of them is called The Kitsch Bitsch. True to its name, the page posts tacky items, photos and videos and gifs, many of them from the '50s, '60s and '70s. There are certain themes or subjects that come up so often, it almost gets tedious. A few times a week there is a vintage recipe for a jello mold containing all sorts of disgusting "entombed" ingredients such as organ meats and canned fish. Old ads for men's fashions run incessantly, and include long crocheted vests that look like macrame, crimplene jumpsuits, mint-green polyester leisure suits, and bellbottoms that remind me of the fins on a '57 Chevy.

But the favorite is/are old family pictures, cheesy things depicting drunk people, people in wigs, goofy-looking people of all kinds.

You see this all over the place. There are posts at Christmas that show "really lame Christmas photos". High school yearbook photos are a favorite. The common theme is goofiness, awkwardness, ugliness, or the bizarre. Until very recently I was all in, eager to comment on how completely lame these things were.

Then I began to think (never a good idea, but I did): hmmmmm. Where do these things come from?

As with Pinterest, we usually don't know where pictures posted on the internet/social media come from. They just sort of . . . appear. When they do, they're apparently in the public domain and can be passed around freely, and ridiculed even more freely. Some of the comments are quite nasty: swipes, jeers, and groans. Everyone feels entitled to do this - it's a free-for-all, with no holds barred.

But lately, I have started to think: what if someone I knew, someone who used to be a close friend and had a big trove of my personal family photos, had a falling-out with me and decided to get a little revenge? What would it be like to see all my old pictures out there, including the crazy, bizarre ones, duplicated and shared again and again and again, with an ever-longer list of nasty comments appended?

I've never heard anyone say anything about this. These aren't real people! Are they? Are you kidding? Who thinks about that? They're just goofy old photos on the internet, and who knows/cares where they came from. This means they can show
drunk people, out-of-control people, people weeping or hitting each other, people with disabilities - heywaitaminute.

People with disabilities?

Of course we have the thick glasses (and I have tons of those photos - mine were true Coke bottle-bottoms before the plastic variety came along). Thick glasses are ridiculous and stupid and something to be publicly jeered at. Never mind if the person is legally blind or has cataracts or is - OK, should I stop now? Have I suddenly lost my sense of humour?

Probably.

But I've seen some of those "cheesy" photos - and I think the feeling is "oh, we all have those cheesy family photos so it's OK" - in which it's pretty obvious to me that a child has Down syndrome or some other disability that may be barely visible. It makes the person look "different", thus "goofy" and fair game.

                                                       

If I suddenly found my family trove on the internet, on Pinterest or Facebook or wherever, I'd probably feel like I had been punched in the stomach. We can't control these things because once a photo is in someone else's hands, it can be "out there" in a nanosecond. WE aren't necessarily in on the joke.

I had another thought - oh God, let me PLEASE stop thinking. What if the image that popped up on Instagram or somewhere else was your deceased Grandma, or your father, or your brother who had been killed in an accident? What if the grief was very fresh - or not so fresh, but still taking up residence in your heart?

We make assumptions on the internet, and one is that goofy-looking things/people can be mocked with impunity.  If these were real people, surely they're all dead by now. Or they don't mind it, it's just as funny to them (no matter how savagely nasty the comments are, including calling a mentally challenged person a "retard").

I don't know about other people because I'm not "other people". But there was a time in my life when, if I had suddenly seen a photo of my father's face  jumping out at me from nowhere, I would have retreated in horror and spent the rest of the day weeping. It took five years of therapy for me to come to terms with the fact that he sexually abused me when I was a child. As a matter of fact, his photo IS on the internet in various places, and (to my horror) I was ambushed by it not long ago.

How did it get there? I don't know. That's another thing. If you are having difficulties with your family and there is a schism, people on the other side of it might start posting pictures -  post them "at" you, I mean, as a form of deliberate violation or revenge. Those pictures can get around like a (real) virus: just hit "share". You're automatically the target for whatever people want to publicly say about you.

At this point, the conversation takes a right turn and people begin to say, "Oh, don't be so sensitive. It's only a picture, It doesn't matter what people think. Just ignore them." So if someone finds and posts a picture of your falling-down-drunk father and the image makes your stomach drop through the floor, it's OK.  Especially the contemptuous hilarity that ensues in the comments section.

A photo means almost nothing now, we take dozens or scores of them a day, but forty or fifty years ago it was an occasion. Families usually posed for them, but the candid shots could be most revealing of what was really going on. People had to develop film then (remember?), and out of a roll of 24 shots, 3 or 4 might be "keepers". But people often kept the rest anyway, afflicted with that ridiculous post-war habit of "waste not, want not".

So how did those outtakes end up on the internet? I don't know, but it's hard for me to believe that the descendents of drunken Aunt Martha gleefully put them out there. Family albums even end up in estate sales when somebody dies. Deaths are messy, detritus abounds, and things like that just get lost in the shuffle.

Is there any way to stop this? Why should we want to stop something that's this much fun? The truth is, it's a blood sport now and part of internet culture. But I wonder if we shouldn't stop, once in a while, and think about those dead people, or perhaps the ones who are still alive and suffering through all those comments.

ADDENDUM. One of, perhaps, many. Or not. Aside from kitsch photos, I used only my own family pictures for this. Because I don't keep weird-looking ones, as a rule, most of them aren't very weird. But all of them have meaning.

Old photos are saturated with meaning. As saturated as the godawful old 1970s Kodachrome colour process in those prints. In gathering up a few images for this thing, I did seriously think of including one of my father, which ambushed me from a Chatham-Kent Facebook page a while ago. In it, he stares into the camera with a shark's dead eyes.

For reasons I can't comprehend, I kept the two photos I found. I just did. I was going to paste them up here, but when I went to open the file, it was like the Wicked Witch of the West trying to get Dorothy's slippers off. A big lightning-bolt shot out at me and I jerked back as if I had been electrocuted.

Not that those pictures mean anything. Why such a big deal?

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As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes

 

 
I used to call this "life". I used to call this "normal". I had nothing to compare it to, since the outside looked so perfect and so much energy went into maintaining it. I see now that a number of key people in my family of origin had narcissistic personality disorder. They were not arrogant power-brokers but sad, powerless people who desperately needed a facade of control, and had to suck the vitality out of the most vulnerable (youngest) members of the family in order to feel whole/alive. You don't get revenge against such people because they have more evasive/responsibility-escaping twists and turns than an octopus. But sometimes, if you just hold up a mirror, the narcissist will start to blink and primp in it as usual, but then the death rays coming out of their eyes will bounce right back at them. And that will be that.

La maman toujours prête

And here's the French! The Quebecois casting isn't quite as effective however. The Mom doesn't have that vulpine, three-cornered smile with the slitty Satanic eyes: GOTCHA, you bleepin' bleep, you are NOT going to get away with one-upping me by appearing like a saintly surprise-giver while I stand there with my mouth open, thrown off-balance in that oh-fuck-she's-given-me-something-which-leaves-me-in-a-total-state-of-embarrassed-chagrin way. Yes, ***I*** have triumphed, conquered, VANQUISHED you, I have my foot on your neck in the snow, winning the mean little battle of the gifts with one lousy under-$5-gift from Jesusly WALMART.

And that's the spirit of the season! Wonder if this is available in Lithuanian.

Five deadly words you never want to hear

“I love you."

"Thank you!”

I heard this deadly five-word conversation on The Big Bang Theory not long ago, as part of Leonard and Penny’s six-year-long dance around each other. They sleep together; they don’t sleep together. They date; they don’t date. They see other people for a while, sometimes quite a while, and then. . .

And then poor, vulnerable Leonard drops the l-bomb.

Penny, completely disconcerted, reacts with a stunned silence, almost as if she's been slapped. Then blurts out the response that makes Leonard's heart sink into the floor.

"Thank you."

To lay oneself open in what may be the most vulnerable statement that exists, only to have it politely dismissed, indicates that the person you had all those tender, passionate feelings for dwells on a separate planet, and probably always will.

People assume this disastrous emotional misfire only happens in "relationships", which has somehow come to mean "boy-girl with sex". But it used to apply more broadly. I know about the l-bomb because it happened to me a few years ago, and though it wasn't BGWS, the script was almost exactly the same. The other person, someone I knew as a close friend through a 12-step program, probably believed they were responding appropriately and even kindly. Fairly. Isn’t that the right thing to say when you receive a compliment?

Of course. "Thank you" is a perfectly good response. 

Is "love" always seen as "romantic love" now and nothing else? I am beginning to wonder. Or do those three little words just cause certain people to turn tail and run?

In my case, it seems to me I’ve lived my life on the dark side of the moon, meaning I give much more than I receive. Oddly enough, I am often seen as selfish because what I give isn’t understood, or else isn’t the “right” thing and does not exactly fit the slot of what is required. What I have to give is suspect or too different, even if it represents an avalanche of love.

In fact, I think that’s the whole problem.

When love is doled out with an eyedropper, it does not exactly match an avalanche of love. When do things match in life? Never. But being on another planet, a very lonely one, is a whole different thing.

When, after years and years of dissatisfaction and pain, you finally break and begin to explain to the other person what you think is really going on, they are completely confused. Not only do they expect you to stick to the script (i. e. accept them exactly the way they are, even if they have had multiple drug slips and are going down for the third time), they are shocked and baffled and even offended when you deviate from it and don’t seem to care if you are finally expressing what you really feel.

But that’s not the purpose of the relationship. Not any more. It has become a chess game: your move; my move. If anyone deviates, it’s wrong and spoils the rhythm, requiring an immediate correction.

This has happened to me too many times, and not just in the perilous waters of 12-step groups where, in spite of a lot of smoke-blowing, emotional dishonesty and manipulation is practically the norm. I don’t know why I am always at the bottom end of the seesaw. I suppose the self-help gurus would say that I engineer it that way, that I make it happen myself (neatly letting all those abusive jerks off the hook: how they must love this theory!) in order to shortchange myself. And when you have grown up with alcoholism and sexual abuse as daily fare (completely denied by the family as nasty lies), perhaps it’s not hard to see why.

Any love I have seems to hang  by a spider’s thread. I’m an emotional sharecropper: “yes, massuh!” What’s the matter with me? I should be more grateful. Or so it seems. When your best intentions to help are met with an offended silence, when you risk being gutted by opening your soul ONE MORE TIME, when you make the ultimate statement and receive a handshake in return, it devastates in a way I cannot really describe.

I love you. Thanks! I’m dying inside. That's too bad!  I’m going to commit suicide now. Here, I’ll show you to the bridge!

It’s not quite like that, but when the other person is completely puzzled and thinks you’re being unreasonable and even mean when you somehow hope for more, you get that ice floe feeling. A nice pan of ice; a good hard shove.

I love you. Nice knowing you.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?

Tell me, quick – without thinking for even a second – what is the opposite of love?

You may wonder: does love have an opposite? Isn’t Love the force that guides and governs the Universe?

I wish. But let’s get back to your answer.

85% of you will have quickly responded, before you could think about it, "Hate.”

I know, because I can hear you.

If in fact that's your answer, I consider it part of “conventional wisdom”, something I analyze and criticize as a regular theme on this blog. “Everything happens for a reason.” “God never gives us more than we can handle.” “If I did it before (usually something good), I can do it again." And, most of all, "You should forgive him. You'll feel so much better if you do."

What is hate, anyway? A violent form of – well, dislike. Of being offended by, or made angry or furious by. Of not wanting someone or something around. Of aversion. Of – and now you know why Tom Robbins once famously said, “There are no synonyms.”

We all know what hate is. We hear it’s not good for us, that it eats us up. It has a smoldering, even violent quality to it, a nastiness. Hate. Hate Hate.

So surely this must be the opposite of Love, the softness, sweetness, the warm enveloping of another soul (or thing), the wanting someone around, all the time. Oh, I don’t need to tell you.

It’s supposed to be the stuff that makes the world go ‘round, and it certainly seems to be the subject of at least 85% of popular music (and not a few classical pieces: Symphony Fantastique by Berlioz being a standout).

Personally, I know that I couldn’t get along very well without it. I don’t make it happen, do not will it to happen, or even make it go away. It seems to have a life of its own.

But consider this.

Love is a wanting, a caring, a need to be near. Affection.  But the root word affect is a pretty loaded term.

Most of the dictionary definitions are kind of baffling, but here’s one that might make a bit of sense:

A person's affect (please note, in this case affect is a noun, not a verb; it is also not a misspelling of effect) is the expression of emotion or feelings displayed to others through facial expressions, hand gestures, voice tone, and other emotional signs such as laughter or tears.

Not necessarily love. Just emotion.

This is a clue to what I consider the opposite of love. If affect(ion) is emotion, laughter or tears or other such displays of human vulnerability, then what’s the opposite of affect?

A lack of affect, even an absence of affect, a disaffection?

We’re getting close. The way I see it, the opposite of love couldn’t be hate, because hate is so “hot”. Hate means you are emotionally engaged. Hate means that, in a bizarre sort of way, you care. You may even care enough to want to rip the other person’s face off or scream abuse at them.

It means the other person, or perhaps the other ideology or even object, has a mighty and powerful hold over you, much as they might have if you were feeling . . .

Love.

OK, so what am I getting at in my usual convoluted way (for it’s Monday, after all)? The opposite of love could be only one thing.

Indifference.

Not giving a shit.

Not even noticing. Staring right through and not seeing. Ignoring. Brushing past without recognizing or saying hello.

Not acknowledging or even caring to acknowledge.

In its more malignant form, indifference (not caring) can lead to devastating emotional abandonment (the kind that leads a mother to leave her child’s name off her obituary, things like that). Humans are like puppies, much more than we want to admit. We just crave nurture, not just when we’re babies but through our entire lives.

If we don’t get nurture, we grab for whatever we can find: booze, drugs, overwork, overshopping, compulsive gambling, and (apparently a favorite, by all the evidence) eating too much, which used to be called gluttony and was considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins. (And by the way, whatever happened to sin? But that’s another post.)

Indifference. It’s the empty space where a heart should be, the ultimate self-protection, the not-caring that we think will keep us safe. It’s the “I don’t care much one way or another” that you hear so often in a world which is both overly touchy-feely and completely iced-over.

In a culture where you can unfriend someone at a click, indifference is becoming more popular than ever. If there is love, and I would hope that love will survive anything that could happen to the human race, indifference is “not-love”.

It's the cool shrug (which I saw every day of my childhood), the turned head, the letting go of my hand as if she forgot it was there.

And in my case, Ultimately, it’s “you don’t exist” or “you were never born”. Do you think people can’t do things like that to each other? Guess again.

I posted on this subject already as “fiction”, but I guess I need to come clean. My mother died in 2010. To say we were estranged is an understatement. I recently stumbled upon her obituary on-line, and couldn’t help but notice that two family members were not mentioned in my mother’s official, published life history.

My brother Arthur, and me.

It still shocks me to realize that my beloved brother and I were shut out, erased, stricken from the record like Moses in exile. I’m not even sure why it happened to my brother, who never deliberately did anything to hurt the family. Maybe it was just a way to hurt me even more, because he was the only one who offered me any genuine, unconditional affection. If the rest of the family voted not to do that, then obviously he was breaking the unspoken, unwritten rule.

Was it his mental illness? Did they think he could casually turn that off with a switch? Just how ashamed of him were they?

I think I know. 

I’m sorry, I just can’t keep myself out of this post, though I tried. I’m not some sociologist. When I married at age 19, I landed safely in a family whom I know loves me, even in the face of the usual day-to-day irritations and annoyances. I walked out of one system (because I had to), and into another, of my own free will.

My husband didn’t fall from the sky; I picked him out of all the men I could have given my life to.  He isn’t an alcoholic or violent or abusive or mean. His family doesn’t even drink. When his Mum died recently, it would not have even occurred to them to leave my name off the list of close kin.

According to my mother, or her wishes at least, she had two children, my eldest two siblings. And that’s all. I always thought she had four. Funny how that works. A friend of mine, appalled at what they did, said “If someone from your home town read that obituary, wouldn’t they wonder where you and your brother went?”

Oh, but my brother and I were never born, never even existed! Thus my husband, kids, and grandkids don’t exist either. Stricken from the record, permanently. Perhaps it's because we dared to think that we were treated less than lovingly as children. Surely that's grounds for permanent dismissal.


And people get all upset and legal if they're cut out of the will!


There is nothing my children could do, nor my grandchildren either, even viciously slandering my name, even murder, that could cause me to cut them dead like that (or, worse, declare them never-born). The omission renders the whole thing a lie. If someone can casually obliterate two pregnancies, two births, two lives, how can you trust anything else they say?

I think there must be a name for this that’s a lot stronger than mere indifference.

But one thing is for certain: it’s not love.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm