difficult

I didn’t think it would be this hard, but the more I think on it, the more this starts to feel like an opus.

The task: Write about how my mum was. I’ve started this project before, in another side-journal, albeit with a different motivation. My prior intent was to catalogue a few lingering fragments of memories, so they could be released from my memory. Once out and in the open, the parts of my mind they once inhabited would be clear, the memories of emotionally difficult moments having served their purpose.

Now, this project feels like something much larger: To recover those fragments, put them into some kind of order, and both expand and condense them.

At first, the hard part was in remembering. Then I discovered my old journals, hundreds of entries, and initially I thought I’d struck gold. I used to write constantly, especially when things were hard at home. I am aware that my writing style endeavours always to be objective and factual; surely, then, these journals would contain detailed accounts of the events that took place, and my precise feelings towards them.

Alas, the entries hold only mentions and allusions, with little in the way of direct accounts. Despite writing in private journals – unseen by all but a handful of other anonymous writers likewise venting multi-dimensional teenage feelings – I couldn’t bring myself to talk about what was happening. Not directly.

I channelled my hurting mainly through other side journals, but even these are more cryptic than I remember. Nothing is clear, nothing is obvious. I can recall now how this was entirely intentional, and I’ll come back to this point later, when I talk about “boy”.

Now, some time ago, a strange thing happened to my journals. They are now largely out of order, and most of them are dated August 2008. And so, as I absorbed myself in these old words, trying to assess their chronology, I found myself reading a kaleidoscopic picture of multiple personalities. This was certainly a step in the right direction, this mass fragmentation of entries showing a new picture, one I had never intended. The more I read, the more patterns began to emerge.

The journals reminded me of how desperately unhappy I was, and how trapped I felt. I could see my natural hope weaving in and out of the entries – in older posts, it was there in full force, as I was bright, eager to share, keen to listen. I remember a friend I had gained on the journaling platform remarking on my “smile campaign”, my personal mission to spread joy. Similarly with the later posts, troubled though I was by a history of things I didn’t understand at the time – but granted leave from the home that had caused me such pain – my glittering hope and ambitious optimism were present again, they had returned.

But there in the middle, consuming the majority of the space among these old snapshots of self, was a hopeless, lost, hateful, depressed, tortured young man, completely broken and utterly imprisoned.

I therefore had two two before me: Discover how he came to be, and remember how it felt to be him.

Thousand Cuts

The first task, it turns out, was the easiest. One of the major patterns I saw was how often that early version of me – my natural self, sunny and relatively unharmed – was being told how shit he was. And how oblivious he was to it, often even welcoming of it. Here are some excerpts, all from different entries. I have tried to order them by chronology as best as I can recall:

[re: online quiz results] The Female Cliche score, which I’m more happy agreeing to, was higher than the Vanity score. I’m glad I’m not dominating (another trait my mum believes is high in me),

…

i saw an episode of ‘Men Behaving Badly’. One of the characters (Nick?) is desperatly clingy, and my mum turned to me and siad, “Who does that remind me of?” I asked if that’s really me, and she said yes. I asked why, and she told me it’s a trust thing. I’m terrified of being unwanted and left alone, to the extent that i actually push people away with my neediness. She said, one day i’ll meet someone like [her], who i can trust, who i won’t feel the need to be so clingy to.

…

I’ve been feeling pretty rotten for a-g-e-s. Apparently, according to my mum, i’ve been low for the past few weeks. This is probably true, but i can’t be sure myself, because i find it difficult to keep track of my mood.

…

[I have] mood swings, too, i’ve been told. I’m unaware of them.

…

I told my mum that my gf was gone for a while, and she said she understood. I asked this will affect me, and she said i might be moody, temperemental, snappy, aggressive, emotional, upset, and i said, yeah.

…

Mum just reminded me of something the doctor said: I’m coming off the drugs, so coping with reality is going to make me somewhat irrational.

…

I’m s’posed to start counselling again. My mother honestly believes i need to do MORE counselling. I’ve NEVER wanted to do counselling. The last person who coulselled me told me to stop coming because there was no problem that she could see. So, either my mother is the only one who sees this enormous problem, or there’s a significant problem with her, and she’s too stubborn to admit it.

I am currently re-writing this entry, and this is the part that has called me back most strongly. Previously I ended this section here, allowing the quotes to speak for themselves. But after talking to my granny and sister, I slowly came to understand how damaging these unrelenting, spite-laden words really were. It was a constant barrage of criticism and control from a person whom I trusted unreservedly; a person I went to for reassurance and understanding.

As freely as I would talk to anyone, that early me was not as capable with other people as I later became, and my understandings of how people are and how they behave were predominantly sourced from my mum. Countless times, late at night, I would stand in her bedroom doorway, sometimes sitting for a longer spell, and talk about who I am, how I fit into the world, and just what the deal is with other people.

I recently wondered if I might be on the autistic spectrum, such was my level of disconnect from other people. But I could understand. How other people seemed to feel and think didn’t align with my personal processing, but I wanted to learn, and I took in everything I could. Most of all, I wanted to know what the components of me were, being so obviously distinctively different from other people. I honestly thought I was an alien.

This is the essential context the earlier version of this piece was lacking. I was a highly determined sponge, malleable and impressionable, eager to eat up any information about who I was.

And there was my mother. Telling me who I was, how I felt, filling in the gaps left by my negligible memory and my unending need for self understanding. 

Picking at me. Criticising me. Telling me I was over-emotional, moody, temperamental, dependant, irrational. Sending me, over and over again, to counselling, constantly reinforcing the idea that I really was separate from others, that I was inherently broken, inherently a wrong human being.

Setting the groundwork for the later, unveiled viciousness: Calling me selfish, spiteful, lazy, an “arsehole like my dad”. Provoking me, taunting me. She had sown the seeds of susceptibility, and the me that she grew into being was a self-hating, angry, bitter young man who believed in the construct she’d worked so hard to build. Years of bile-slathered identity fragments, finally fully formed into a son she could be justified in hating.

Home is Where the Hate is

The edits stop here. I will the following sections later.

A correction on what I said earlier: I did find a few entries (among >700) where I was explicit. Again, the dates are all off throughout the journal, but they do offer some insight:

The first are named “shithead” after what her partner called her, entering a room and saying “alright shithead”. They capture the everyday mood of living in that house: Tension, anxiety, and hostility. The constant expecation that at any moment, my mum could explode into another rage, or, even subtler, put you down for something arbitrary – always on a whim, just because she felt like hurting someone.

I don’t think I could find the entry where the partner strangled me because I said he looked like a monkey, but I’m sure it’s buried in one of these journals somewhere. He was a partner she inflicted on us, but primarily inflicted upon herself. For all I understand now about abuse, manipulation, and the games my mum would play, I still don’t udnerstand why she felt such a strong need to be continuously hurt. I don’t think too that those entries covers the period where we were told “I’m not your mum anymore”, and the house was just us kids – but again, I’m sure that’s in there somewhere.

“Homeless” mentions my mum biting and scratching me – that’s one memory I remember vividly, though I’d forgotten how vicious she’d been – and I’m guessing the main topic of the enty refers to one of the earlier times she kicked me out, because I still seem to be surprised. Kicking me out became a habit of hers, and eventually it reached a point where, if I stayed at someone’s house, the very next day, without fail, we would have an argument and she would kick me out. Actually, eventually it eached a point where spending a few hours at someone’s house got me kicked out. This threat lomed constantly, much like the myriad other invisible threats that always allowed her to do whatever she wanted while keeping me as a prisoner.

The start of “shithead 1” has an interesting observation:

Now, when my mother’s upset, she tends to go into a sort of anti-me mode.

Eventully I wised up to this, and grew resistant. This next journal entry is from much later, and shows the eventual transformation, from placid acceptance to fury and frustration:

The most relevant part of that entry is in the opening sentances:

I am so sick and tired of hearing “what i am” from my mum. Years ago, she would insistantly question every thing i did, to the point where to answer her i’d have to analyse every little word i said, and every little action i made. It turned me into a self-enveloped fool, focusing on my self so much that i couldn’t see past me. She compares me to my brother, even worse, to her.

And:

I would like to be closer to my mother, but she pushes me away every time she tells me i’m not good enough.

Among most of these journals, interestingly, is a lingering hope. I was pretty slow to accept how bad things were. It’s scary to see how much trust I had in her, now that I understand her mechanisms. How ready I was to forgive her, to trust her even more. The unending loyalty, stemming from alliances she bred among us children, turning us against each other and teaching us that it didn’t matter who we hated, as long as we were always on her side in the end.

There’s also, throughout all of my writing at that time, a strong undercurrent of trying to make sense of everything. I see, in hindsight, that it was a hopeless endeavour. It wasn’t supposed to make sense: Clarity is the enemy of abuse, because it lets you see things as they are, rather than what the abuser wants you to see.