Balancing Act, 7

I have been through a lot of weird shit in my life, Gentle Reader. I am still transcribing my journals from around fifteen to twenty years ago or so, and oh, the horror! The Horror! Right now I am working through a 43 page letter I wrote to my already deceased mother, just to tell her about some of the really interesting and whacky things that had been happening to me in recent years. What I find particularly intriguing is my tendency and vulnerability in those days, towards drama. Not just any old drama, but high drama. I was living in a prolonged state of operatic grandeur, or so it often seemed. It was all really rather pathetic, you know. I also think that a lot of those live tableaux vivantes to which I often felt subjected could well have been avoided or circumvented with a few extra changes in my lifestyle, but primarily I would have gone through life feeling a lot safer if I wasn't so goddamn poor. I also wanted to live as openly, generously, honestly, creatively, and as lovingly as possible. Over following blogposts, I will treat you to some edited and redacted samplings here to back up my theory: "Mon. 13 Jan, 2003 Dear Mom: You’ve been “dead” now for twelve years and four days. What’s it like? Being dead, I mean. I know that you are around somewhere. I sometimes “feel" you. And you have visited me in certain dreams. Going through with you your experience of dying and death was for me highly mystical experience. During your last six months or so, you mentioned that preparing for death was like waiting for a door to open. You said this with certainty and conviction. I have often sensed in visions and dreams that you are in a kind of purgatorial state and there are a lot of things that you are working out right now. Do I miss you? I don’t know. But I need badly right now to talk to you. We had a very complex and tangled relationship. I want to tell you about it, about my experience of you. Of course, during my childhood, you were my primary reality. This is the classic “mother” thing that we all experience. From when I was first able to walk you allowed me lot of freedom. Consequently, bad things often happened to me, like nearly drowning in the ditch when I was two, and running away from home when I was four--or was I three? I don’t doubt that you cared, but I also doubt it. I think you had mixed and conflicted feelings about being a parent. Your death came at a very difficult time in my life. I had been living with a person whom you didn’t like at all. Perhaps because they reminded you of (your ex, not my father)? They had enough traits in common, and we were both very stupid for letting them lead us along. I allowed D to steal my identity. The others in our Christian community took whatever was left. So, that’s how I was when you died. I felt very lost, consumed by people who had elected me to be their mentor. So, I experienced compounded loss--the loss of you, my mother, and the loss of my individuality, through a rather perverted Christian work. During the last eight months of your life, Mom, I did undertake a slow breaking away from this person, who had taken over my soul. But having you to take care of severely retarded my healing. I don’t blame you. This is simply what happened. I befriended street punks and prostitutes in order to create distance from D. I would feed them and I believe they did care about me, though I would hardly call it friendship. They helped distance me from that individual, who refused to leave. I didn’t know at the time that, being the leaseholder of the house, I could have had them legally evicted, with police assistance if necessary. So you died on a winter day thick with melting snow in the same hospital building in which you’d given birth to me. I was too tired to do anything. I slept a lot. I missed your cremation. There was no phone in my West End apartment, and my brother was unable to reach me by phone at the house in Richmond, since I was never there. He was furious later. I told him he hadn’t told me the date of the event. It got nasty, I gave him shit then hung up on him. Truth was, I was too worn out from caring for you and others to want to attend your cremation with my brother and Dad, since they both hated me but were willing to put that aside because they expected me to be strong for them. Well, I was already sick of their emotional blackmail, and I had already put more than enough of my life on hold in order to accommodate such emotional infants. They had no inkling that perhaps I also needed caring for, not that I could expect that from either of those two. So, I slept through your cremation. Sorry, but I think you understand." That, Gentle Reader, occurred in January, 1991.