“I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the kind of people we become.”
(Things I Have Been Silent About) Azar Nafisi
I love how she says we articulate what has happened to us by the people we become.
That even if they all guard their words, and keep silent about unspeakable things, in the end we are the proof that ‘something’ happened.
My life is the proof, the way I act, the things I do or don’t do, and all my quirky idiosyncrasies are like a hidden treasure map pointing back.
I am who I am today coming from whence I came!
I am a perfect articulation growing up in the environment that I did.
We learn how to deal with others, the world and ourselves by naturally emulating what our parents do or what situations we had to live with.
The characteristics we carryon generation upon generation boggles the mind.
I used to say that I learned more of what not to do by watching others, yet in the end I was more like my mother than not.
We both carried the same toolbox, inside were two ways of dealing. One was to holler louder and more often and the second was stone cold silence and walking away!
I recall many many times, too many to count, that she ran away. She would go away for the weekend, run and not look back, no phone number would she leave, disappear for days, and I was left in charge.
So for those days, I would stand in her shoes, her mess and her turmoil, forced to take care of her life.
Left with many little kids and babies with various needs, menus and food, bottles and diapers, older kids disrespect –for they were free of mom and let loose- I was left to deal the best way I could.
She may have found temporary relief, for she came back rested and ready to once again pickup her life.
I resented the hell out of that technique.
Maybe all those times were preparing me for the biggest mess of my life!
And ironically or not, she went on a trip of her lifetime to Australia in the first months of her granddaughter stating her grandfather (her husband) molested her, she was once again far far away from her life.
I remember not even being surprised, for it was sooo typical.
Here we were her kids, once again in various stages of need, sitting in the biggest mess of all, a mess the two of them created, and she was no where to be found.
This time, I could not step in and keep the boat floating until she came back, it tipped.
That was probably the first time I didn’t try and keep things going, the first time I said no, the first time I allowed the messes to just lay there uncovered up.
My phone rang and rang and rang. Her children calling me crying, hollering, wondering and confused, calling me, for she wasn’t available. I listened and heard things too many to count, all affects of living in that home, I heard the cries and heard the denial, yet there was nothing I could do.
Somehow, someway I stood and listened, while my whole life was dying.
I am not sure what they all wanted or what I was supposed to do, but what I did was simply stand in the mess and tell them what was there.
I stood alone separated from her life, yet in a mess anyway.
What I did know now was why.
Why I was the way I was, why she ran when she ran, the why of this and the why of that, yet I didn’t know how to fix any of it.
It is hard to phantom how a mother could run so far away or how a child makes it through the roughest spots alone.
My mother’s mother died when my mother was two, she was motherless, and somehow I feel the same. The time when I needed her the most, and when my siblings needed her the most, she ran.
It is my belief that at those times, something came in for her to deal with and without tools to deal, she ran.
Running and hollering as far as I can tell don’t fix anything.
Finding a third answer was my goal. Mostly what helped was standing in reality and dealing with what is.
Maybe that alone is the third answer.
Once I got used to walking fearlessly where few would trod, to pick up a pedophile here and a wounded part of me there, and really seeing an absent mother, and feeling all that was required, I was unlearning many things.
Unlearning is like unwinding a top that is so tightly wound. It is like I was turning and turning and turning trying to fit her ideal of me, societies ideal of me, spun into something I didn’t even know.
The unlearning is unwinding layer by layer all the things I did, for all the wrong reasons.
I can see now stepping in for her allowed her to be lazy in her life. Trying to keep her boat floating allowed it to stay afloat for that many more years, it may have been better for it to sink earlier. How many girls were damaged while I kept her boat floating?
My little hands grew into big hands rowing her boat to hell. We were in the same boat heading in the same direction. And in addition my children came into the same little rowboat!
I learned that lesson the hard way. I will not pick up an oar in another’s boat, nor do I expect my children to row for me, or anyone.
I love that we each have our own little rowboats!
I have no idea where this little boat will take me, what sights I will see, when the river will require me to paddle like hell, or when I can sit back and enjoy the ride, but I am eternally grateful that I am able to row alone.
“Row Row Row your boat gently down the stream, merrily merrily merrily merrily, Life is But A DREAM!”