Somewhere along the lines, over the years and so on, I lost the capacity to blame someone, something for the unhealthy mess I am in.
Auto-immune disease, it spells it out, doesn't it. Especially to someone who had to spend five boring years in secondary school learning ancient Greek.
Because, auto, that tiny innocent prefix, means "self".
In my younger years I was quite skilled in finding blame elsewhere. My mother taught me. She was the expert in finding blame - there was The War, obviously, then the cruel occupying forces, the lack of decent contraceptives (if only the pill would have been available to me, one of her favourite sentences when we failed to entice her), I could go on. And yet despite her so fervently despising us, her offspring, she taught us that we were beyond blame, much too superior, too intelligent, too gifted to be made responsible for things going wrong on our way to greatness. My mother's children never made mistakes. It was simply impossible.
This indoctrination does something to you when you are a teenager. It makes you despicable, is what it does. Angry, haughty, sarcastic and ultimately, very lonely.
It was the driving instructor who cut me down to size, who stopped the car abruptly after I had once again blamed the driver of the other car for whatever it was that I had missed. If you can't accept your mistakes, get out, he said and waited. For a while. More than 40 years later, I still feel the wave of shame and recognition all the way to the pit of my stomach, while I fight back the tears.
Anyway, that was a start and years later, I could say to my child, many times and in so many different ways, face your mistakes, go and fix this, you can do it. You will feel so much better afterwards.
And yet, the urge is still with me. If only I could find someone, something to blame.
But: auto, meaning "self".
Something completely different but nevertheless on my mind requiring urgent answers: swifts, could their swooping and swaying up there in the high cerulean summer sky be happiness, are swifts happy or is it just exercise, feeding, survival?
6 comments:
How awful it must have been to live in your mother's skin. Perfection is a curse of the frightened and unworthy.
What a gift you received from that instructor even if unwelcome.
Well, I don't think you can blame your disease on yourself. It just happened. I mean, technically, yes, it is your body that's fighting itself in a way but you yourself didn't wish it, cause it, encourage it.
I've often wondered that about birds- do they fly for pleasure or just for necessity? If you find out, let me know.
a pivotal moment. you could have reacted with anger and learned nothing. the most valuable lessons I find are the most painful. and surely the swifts feel joy even if their soaring has purpose.
The body does what it does. There is no conscious effort in its mistakes, and no blame. Interesting question about the swifts. Makes me think about our long ago ancestors, the hunter gatherers. Were any of their journeys for pleasure? Mmm...
Blame's a game. They rhyme so it must be true. Short-term gain, long-term reflection at one's leisure (which US citizens, to my fury, pronounce as lee-zhur.) which almost always brings about a change of heart. We imagine ourselves to he unchanging, adamantine in our attitudes; in fact most of us are closer to partially-fried omelettes. We flip and flop, changing our views four times within a single pondered sentence. Such flexibility may well be a sign of adulthood but I may also change my mind about this before I bang down the dot key that terminates this comment.
It's so much nicer and easier to blame others rather than look at ourselves. I look back at my young self and shudder at how self centered and selfish I was. I can still be that way at times but it is tempered these days. It seems that all I do these days it look back, a part of aging I'm sure. Maybe I'm trying to find patterns, figure things out. I had a dream about a week ago in which I spent the whole dream trying to avoid giving birth to my son. A heartbreaking dream indeed.
Now, I try always to look hard at myself but I was taught lies and it's difficult to figure out what's true and what's not. More work I suppose:) Perhaps that it was the last third of life is for, to figure out our shit and then hopefully pass it on to our grandchildren?
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