In therapy, I am discovering some deep-seated stuff in my psyche; as it turns out I was raised to believe that I’m a bad person, deserving of punishment. And I internalized that idea of myself as an irredeemable fuck-up. The proof is in my poverty; everyone knows that you get what you deserve, what you work for. This view, developed for me by my parents, was further cemented into place for them by Fox News and the rest of the right-wing noise machine, year after year. And although I knew they were being fed propaganda that predisposed them to a lack of compassion for me, I still wanted their approval. I tried so hard, and when my depression, anxiety, and autism prevented me from having the relationships and career that I was “supposed” to have, I blamed myself. And I punished myself. Now I wonder, even if I had been convicted of being a bad daughter in 1997, shouldn’t my punishment be over now?
It doesn’t matter where the self-hatred started, as much as it matters that I stop doing it. Writing is my superpower: it’s how I express myself best, the best way I can make myself known, understood, a part of humanity that matters. We can’t really know ourselves without other people around to interact with. Our families and friends show us who we are, and who they want us to be, what’s socially acceptable or “normal” in a given society, and we take that in, process it, and modify our behavior to fit in or to rebel. What I learned in my family of origin was that there was something “wrong” with me. I know that believing this lie is holding me back, and I want to live a life that matters, I want to participate in my community and fully be a part of the human family. It’s harder than I thought to dislodge my idea of myself as a bad person. I know that I can write my way back to health, and that’s what I’m going to do, with the help of my counselor.
When my daughter was four, I suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. I’d been asking for help for two years, but my parents didn’t think helping me was convenient. Lost my job and home. My parents took my daughter. My mother manipulated me into signing some paperwork that she faxed to the hospital. I protested but she said my daughter needed medical treatment and I had to sign right away. There went custody. I never imagined that they would refuse to give her back, that they would cut me out of her life, and their lives, so completely.
For five years I was hell-bent on getting her back. I’d gotten a couple thousand dollars as a bonus at work and I thought I could hire a lawyer and get my daughter back. I’d set up her room, lived next door to an elementary school. But there was no way; they just outspent me right away. My lawyer told me, “They think that’s their child.” If I’d had unlimited funding, like my parents did, I might have prevailed. Instead I had to accept that she was never “coming home,” that her home was with my parents now, she was getting old enough that to disrupt her life would be wrong. It was pretty soon after that when I attempted suicide and was hospitalized again.
It’s really difficult, hard work, to write about this stuff. But I feel compelled to be known. I want my voice to be heard. My daughter doesn’t speak to me now; she’s in college and that may change. But I’m writing for her, so she will have some explanation for who I am and what happened. Maybe she will never read it, but maybe her daughter will. Either way, I have to get it out. All of that mess, that ugly green ooze, the infection I’ve been pushing down in my heart all of my life, has to come out into the light of day and be sorted. I want to be accountable for the mistakes I have made, but also stop blaming myself, stop hearing my mother’s voice in my head saying STUPID STUPID and other, worse things. I want to acknowledge that although I may be on the spectrum, and have always tended to melancholy, with the right support I could have raised my child. They didn’t have to keep her away from me like I might contaminate her in some way, with my food stamps and my lower-class job.
And so I will write. I’ll go back to the beginning and write everything I know about my grandmother, growing up a basketball fan in rural Mississippi, my father, who was dying in the same hospital when I was born; my mother, who went to business school at a time when women couldn’t even wear pants…. So many people and places and events and emotions that resulted in me, and eventually my daughter. As I write, I hope to heal these terrible, terrible wounds; and I hope that as my heart is lightened, I’ll be more functional, and then maybe I can get a counseling job and support myself and not have to worry about homelessness.
Because I am ashamed to be poor. In our society, it’s a shameful thing. We even call it “inequality” now. I’ve learned that once you’re kicked out of the upper class, there’s no working your way back. And there’s no amount of pluckiness and spirit that will fix it, because the game is rigged. There is no safety net, if you don’t have family support. There are millions of people like me, underemployed and living in constant fear and isolation. The supportive programs that exist are already overloaded. It is all too easy for a person like me to become homeless, even in Eugene. And I’m so ashamed that I can’t take care of myself. I wonder what life would be like if I wasn’t carrying all this heavy pain. I am determined to find out. Thank you for caring.
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