my mother and i are avoiding each other these days. we talk, but don’t have the energy or the will to really talk about the issues that bother us. my mother, my poor, amazing mother who grew up in an age and a strict family culture where parents were never, ever, ever challenged, sometimes doesn’t know how to verbalize her thoughts and feelings. it comes out in incoherent huffs and puffs. sometimes i want to tell her: come on mama, say it. say it. let’s talk about it all. but when we have to face each other every day, there’s only so much conflict a rational person, what i hope i am on a good day, should be willing to invite.
i am the strongest version of myself with her, though. i am part indignant teen with her, petulant and cranky and just as cruel as she can be when she starts stonewalling. but i am also a fierce defender of other people who i think won’t stand up to her. they don’t need my advocacy, i’ve never been asked to do it, but i have amazing courage to speak my mind to my mother, especially when i feel like she’s done someone else wrong. where does that come from?
what right have i to tell my mother of the ways i disapprove of her treatment of other people? everywhere else in my life, speaking up is seen as a virtue, as a mark of strength and honor. at home, this characteristic doesn’t get me very far.
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i started following emily gould’s tumblr, and have been reading some of her interviews, and she and another memoirist interviewed each other about their diary habits as kids, and emily gould mentioned that she stopped writing religiously in her diary when she had her first boyfriend, and she later thought it was because she finally had someone to tell all her secrets to.
i never could keep a diary as a kid. i never knew who i was writing to. the “Dear Diary…” openers always felt so forced, though i tried those, because that’s the way people kept journals in movies and books. i had an imaginary friend as a kid–her name was daisy, we didn’t see each other much beyond the occasional chat–but even i knew at that age that addressing my entries to a concept (not even a person!) that didn’t exist was stupid. and if i was not writing to the imagined ever-faithful but totally silent listener, would i be writing to myself? that too was a preposterous thought. why would i write to myself? i talked with myself all day long inside my head. i did love collecting notebooks, still do. but i always wanted to know someone was there, that the words would be heard. these days, i still don’t really know (though i have a tiny hint) of who i write for, at work or on any of the other places where i put stuff.
even this tiny corner. i have a vague sense who reads this. i think i wanted this space to be a place to store personal, nicely crafted pieces of writing. pshhh. it’s definitely not that, but i can’t figure out what shape it’s taking now.
and now i am on twitter, which i guess i shd leave for discussing another time, because it really is an odd apparatus. twitter, for example, has me typing should as “shd.” it also has me writing down and sharing snippets of conversation and sarcastic reactions to the news i’d usually keep to myself. i used to tweet about food cravings and cobbled together meals, but then i changed my twitter name from meebobebo to my real name, an acknowledgement that i am trying to make it as a professional writer and i need to start attaching my name to things, or something like that. and then the food cravings tweets, and tweets about ice cream flavors stopped all together. not that they were so personal–as open as i can be, i usually regret every personal detail i put up online about half an hour after i’ve posted it. i think in this age of the internet and of personal branding, i am supposed to be crafting some persona there. i think. i still haven’t figured out the rules of that game.
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“we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” -kurt vonnegut, mother night, who i know was not referring to twitter. but whose words i think of often when i am out in the internet jungle.
Filed under: family, the internet
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