In Lisa "Suckdog" Carver's recent book, Drugs Are Nice, she recalls a statement her father made that I will attempt to paraphrase here; I cannot quote it because I loaned out the book.
"[sic]Lisa, you have no idea how hard it was not to hit you growing up. My parents hit me, my grandparents hit my parents; I didn't want to hit you but it was really hard not to -- sometimes you really deserved it. I did it, I made a conscious effort not to hit you so that it would be that much easier for you not to hit your kids[sic]."
Seriously, I wish my parents had thought of that. Because he's right, it's fucking hard to come from a place of violence and not hit them. I've read study after study that practically proves that violence, although it starts out as nurture (haha), quickly imprints itself and becomes nature.
I come from a habitat of extreme violence. Of being hit with fists, of being hit with objects, of bribes from parents not to tell other people where the bruises came from and of yelling as a normal substitute for calm talking. I am a yeller and a hitter and a tantrummer and I spend about 73% of my day quelling rage, whether it's directed at society, the Bush administration, gas prices, my lot in life, my son, my husband, sexism, fatigue or finances; I am in a constant state of stopping myself from completely flipping out. And, as any adult on the receiving end of my rage can attest, I can disassemble the constitution of a grown man in three paragraphs...I've done so and have been ashamed of it. I have become quite skilled at expressing my discomfort and dissatisfaction with my tongue and brain, working in quick conjunction side by side. I have frightened myself.
I'm trying to stop. They don't know if it's anxiety or depression or a mood disorder; they put me on drug after drug and it breaks through, every time. I go to therapy for it because it can be dangerous, I could get myself into real trouble, I could lose jobs, I could cost us our home or funds to improve our standard of living, I could alienate neighbors, I could isolate myself in a single conversation. I'm trying to stop.
On some levels, I'm proud of it; it's handy to be silver-tongued in certain situations, like the time when I witnessed blatant discrimination against a black family waiting for their sick cat at the Pet ER on Christmas Eve (wha? I know, random) and I got insanely angry and managed to channel it into Plan B, which involved confronting the family to let them know that I saw what had happened and that I would really like to confront the admin with them (if they wanted or needed me to); Plan A involved a lot of shouting and shaming so it was good that I had the support of my sister and Brian, who helped me formulate Plan B, which actually turned out well: the family spoke, I spoke (in a normal tone of voice with a tinge of anger and authority), the receptionist and the vet cried, and the baby Jesus had a great birthday. It was actually hard to conjure the courage to channel the anger properly but I did it and it lives on the hand of other times it's been well-used, which is to say not many. I give it the "thumb" position, because it's the most significant. Another time I publicly confronted someone that I thought might have been libeling me online; although it turned out to be the wrong person, I felt that I represented myself well and that it was great practice, although I have yet to confront the actual agitator and that will be real hard because I heard she hits...anyway, that one gets the pinky. I could live without the pinky but the hand looks better with it.
Back to violence: I work this really exhausting night job which just gets more exhausting as I get older; I usually lay my head down around 1am and my son, the love of my life, almost without fail, wakes me up every morning in the 530/630 hour. So I average 4.5 - 5.5 hours of sleep each night, with nary an opportunity to catch up on weekends and days off, so fucked is my internal clock; I actually have to drug myself sometimes to get more sleep when I have the opportunity. I reserve time almost daily for a nap, which makes participation in all daytime activity practically impossible and I miss out on things like the park and fresh air and so does my beautiful boy. But my very first emotion of the day is anger, inevitably, at being woken up mid REM in an indescribably exhausted state that is my whole existence at this point, anger is my default, anger is the first thing I feel toward the world when I open my eyes way too early in the morning.
I often yell at the boy, whether it's to go back to sleep, a rant about it still being dark outside (soon to be truer than now, what with that daylight savings time fast approaching), a futile conversation and a loud attempt at reason with an unreasonable being about how "mommy works late, mommy hasn't had enough sleep yet, mommy's not ready to get up," none of which work at all and are surely planting the seeds of resentment and future rebellion in other ways -- sleep deprivation and angry moms are the actual gateway drugs, not marijuana and alcohol! Get with the program, Nancy Reagan.
This thing could get long if I got into all the research that proves that people rarely transcend their fiscal demographic, that it's something like 90% of four or more generations stay in the same financial class as the previous three before the cycle is broken...the point I'm making is that we're poor, we both have to work, we're undereducated laborers that made our beds long ago and aren't necessarily too old to change direction but it's damned hard to get a foothold on progress without motivation, funds and time...from that point I will make the point that it is futile to suggest getting a dayjob, because daycare costs approximately a gazillion dollars an hour and they might actually hit him and I can't risk that.
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