MAY 10, 2008 Barenaked Ladies: NEXT TIME

I think I know why I enjoy this song so much. I think my mother could have written it about herself! lol

Barenaked Ladies: NEXT TIME

[CHORUS (x2):]
You can always get it right next time, next time
You can always get it right next time

You can count on me to mess it up
You can count on me to let you down again
And in time you'll see that I'm your only friend

[CHORUS (x2)]

Comfort in community obliterated
Given opportunity I hesitated
Even my humility's humiliated

[CHORUS (x2)]

Next time, next time

When you die they make a list
of every love you never kissed
Of each regret and each mistake
Every choice you'll fail to make
Oh well...
Oh well...
Oh well...

It's a shame I have to wait until the ending
Everything I've yet to break is surely bending
Every vow I ever take is just pretending
That this mess I make is worth defending

[CHORUS (repeat)]
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I've come to a conclusion or epiphany... I used to swallow my feelings or disassociate myself from my feelings whenever it came to my mother. And I think that might've been why I've been so tolerant all this time. Nowadays, that's completely different. I LET myself feel what emotions come to the surface when my mother is the way she is and I understand that what I feel is intense anger.

I did Murray's survey for Anxiety [http://dev.www.uregina.ca/anxiety/
and click on RESEARCH >> ONLINE SURVEYS >> Tonic Immobility & Trauma] and it actually made me think of something that I don't think I was ever fully conscious of. Yes, my cousin molested me many many times, at times he frightened me or disgusted me and made me angry, and what he did was wrong, and no I shouldn't feel guilty, etc etc etc...

The thing that incenses me is that my own mother tried to say it was my fault and that I might have done something to provoke him. And then she went around defending the molester. And she made me confess everything, not in a way that was careful and healing or helpful so she would know what happened, but more like a Monty Python Spanish Inquisition. I don't know what her motives were other than perhaps she didn't even believe me and wanted to hear every sordid detail.

My mom used to be a nurse at the Regina Correctional Centre. There were a couple of church-going gentlemen that organized some religion experiences to inmates - Father Doug (a vet in the war... an honourable tough old bird with sarcastic charm and wit who knew a lot about life) and Reverend Murray Logan (he was a great family man who was in a band, and I think he was a minister of a Mormon church - I used to babysit for him and his doctor wife, Dolores). When we were attending to service for the criminals, mom allowed me to sit on a pedophile's knee. I didn't know what this man was in prison for. I just felt a vague unease about him, and I hated how his hands were all sweaty when he held my hand during prayer circle. I hated how he looked at me, and so I didn't look at him in the face. And why oh why oh why would she then tell me after we had attended several of these outings that he was a pedophile?? Why didn't she just say to me that we had to stay close or that there were certain people we needed to avoid. Why didn't she tell me ahead of time that there were people like that: I would certainly have made sure not to go anywhere NEAR that man. It boggles the mind...

And on top of that... I wasn't allowed to excel because of my 'weaker' brother. I wasn't aloud to be proud of my accomplishments because apparently mom didn't think Chris had the ability to accomplish anything. I was ignored because Chris 'needed help' and later on Robin was physically ill and mother would harangue him too. In the midst of all of this I felt alone and sad and abandoned and that I was unworthy of attention or much else. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that it was considered bad if I showed off in front of Chris because then he would feel inadequate and incompetent.

Additionally, we three kids were not given enough space, physically or emotionally. My mom has huge boundary issues. Especially when things became emotionally charged and we really needed space. And we tended to thrash out and strike, not our own mother, but ourselves. Which I think was something we learned from both mom & dad. For instance, when mom was not listening and just yelling at us, and we lost control in frustration, I would smash my own head against a wall (that bothered her, so I kept doing it, hoping she would leave me alone); also my brothers would punch holes in walls and doors. I did occasionally bang dents onto my dresser drawers with a brush, kick a wall, or shove things off of tabletops. She would not leave us alone, but would follow us around like a vulture when we attempted to retreat to our rooms. She's thrown change at me in front of a friend (who never came back for a visit since), she's called me a scatterbrain to another adult on the phone while I was in the same room.

And on top of that I was under a spell of some kind. I had to be good, not only because I was the oldest, and that I had to be an 'example' of morality and perfect behaviour, but because of how bad I imagined myself to be. For some reason (I think because of my mother's family situation with her depressed mother and her sisters/my aunts: one being an alcoholic & the other being a 'sleep around'), because I was the eldest and the only daughter, I had to redeem myself, and also because I thought perhaps I couldn't be forgiven for what I did. I was expected to accept whatever my mother wanted, without thinking for myself, without judging her, without protest, without 'teaming' up against her with dad or my brothers. I didn't believe I ever had choices (until I left home), because if I ever asked for something I was made to feel that my feelings or choices didn't seem to matter. If I ever thought for myself or expressed myself, I think mother felt threatened by it instead of letting me be myself. Being myself was somehow not a good thing. If I spoke up against something she did, she didn't listen to the reasoning or feeling behind it, she was threatened by it somehow. Even nowadays, if she does something to upset another person, and they naturally react the way they feel toward her behaviour, all she feels is that person's anger and somehow feels wounded by it or rejected by it. She doesn't seem to remember the reason why the other person is angry at her but just that there is anger toward her.

Also we learned later in this family not to take gifts from this woman. What she offers is not a free, unconditional gift, but a contract. "If I give you this, then you have to do this for me." Or it will be a 'free gift' for a while, but then she will change her mind, and suddenly you are obligated to her for the 'favour' she granted you. We've all fallen into the trap of the bribe, and we have learned not to trust people who give freely of anything... Or at least we are fairly suspicious and it takes a long time for us to open up or feel like we can accept help or gifts from people. Even now she still tries to get us to move into a duplex that she would own half of, or offers us timeshares. We have told her multiple times that we don't want those things. She has also recently been conveniently forgetting the rules we set for her: she is starting to call multiple times during the day, and before a reasonable time in the morning that we set at 9AM. And here I thought perhaps she was capable of change. It's been proven to me time and time again that she doesn't see what's wrong with her (despite several people telling her otherwise either directly & verbally or indirectly by avoiding her) and therefore she doesn't feel she needs to change.

Now that I have brought all of this to the surface instead of burying it, I feel like a huge weight has sloughed off me. I'm impatient to start over and I can't wait to move into our own house. The only problem is, that to remain safe, we have to pretend to get along with my mother in the meantime. And that does bother me, that we have to play to the enemy until we are safely on our own turf.