I started watching MAID yesterday and it hasn’t made me cry yet. I
watch Alex as she hurtles from crisis to crisis, leaping over puddles that
inconvenience her relentless pursuit of survival. She can’t even think about
thriving in a world that fails to acknowledge her worth as a human being.
When
Danielle tries to push Alex into tapping into anger, the dull rage that swirls
endlessly inside Alex barely ripples. I resonate with that. Anger takes such a
lot of energy that is better put towards knocking down another obstacle she
never sees looming on the horizon.
Other people’s houses, other people’s
children – totally I get how in the maelstrom of mother’s hand to child’s mouth,
one’s sense of efficacy and connection becomes warped. Alex writes that it is
hard not to want other people’s things. Yes, and it is hard not to want other
people’s lives.
* * *
When I worked as a checkout operator in Coles, I was still
living with my parents and still studying. But my memory clearly conjures up the
precise distance I perceived, between the products whose purchase I facilitated
for other people, and my own lack of access to these products for my personal
benefit. Stock-take took place regularly in those days, always after the store
had closed at midday on Saturday. It had been impressed upon me so firmly,
during my orientation to my job, that if I were caught even involuntarily eating
from a packet of something that someone else had left open but unpurchased on a
shelf, I would be summarily charged with theft and lose my job. This warning was
given to every new employee, but I became so frightened at this prospect, that I
couldn’t even see myself making a legal purchase of nuts or sweets or chips or
yoghurt, lest I inadvertently jeopardize my reputation and employment.
I mean,
this hurts. I might have buried my anger too deep to let it burn me on the
surface, but I have access to several layers of pain. There’s the dull and
constant pain of blood pumping through my veins, marking in time, my
dissociation from the reality of my connection with the children I bore and the
children I raise. There’s the sharp and acute pain that strikes whenever I am
confronted by someone else’s reality, which, after piercing through my armour
and wounding me in the gut, subsequently deprives me of something I had thought
was certain and real. There’s the irritation that buzzes my consciousness,
drawing a cross-hatched pattern across my senses in these days when matter
shifts about almost at random, unbalancing my centre, rendering everything in
disorienting shades of perpetual uncertainty. There’s the pain that throbs down
deep, threading through my very marrow with reminders that I am responsible, I
am culpable, never innocent of blame, especially when it is unfairly projected
upon my person. Intention is irrelevant in indeterminate circumstances that
shape my actions and impel me towards repair, covering the breach, mending
relations, smoothing the way for others. I picture myself grovelling, lying face
down in a mud puddle, trying in vain to flatten my big behind, cease my
fidgeting, to make the passage less perilous for the stream of entitled
mendicants lined up along the path awaiting their chance to tread upon me in
their pursuit of whatever it is they believe they have a right.
* * *
No one
ever bothers to ask Alex what Alex needs or wants. Alex has no time to think
about what Alex needs or wants. Alex runs fast. Alex is snared so securely in
survival mode that Alex only responds to two things: whatever shadows her and
whatever shoves itself into her face.
It’s a story so banal, so familiar, so
mundane as to parallel documentaries of natural history, focusing rather than on
some animal species, on a young female human’s life journey of inter- and
intragenerational trauma.
Alex is abused, just as her mother is abused, and
quite possibly her mother before. Alex is aware of the damage her own daughter
incurs. Alex chose not to have an abortion. Alex chose to bear this child
despite the stated wishes of her child’s father. Trapped, Alex comprehends the
horrible truth that although she herself has no value in the world, and although
her own daughter will likely turn out despite her bestest efforts, to grow up in
a world of abuse and struggle, Alex is nonetheless responsible for her
daughter’s life.
Alex is now held accountable by everyone, for each of her
daughter’s failures and successes. This is drummed into her not only by the
government agencies which insist that by fleeing an abusive partner, Alex is to
blame for destabilizing her daughter’s world, but by her experience in which she
is blamed, held responsible and made to jump through arbitrary hoops for
absolutely everything she needs to survive.
Her survival is begrudged by
government regulation. Her survival is begrudged by her mother and father, who
see Alex only for what they and their grandchild require of her. They take what
she is unwilling to give.
No one ever says thank you, or sorry to Alex.
Alex’s existence is begrudged by Sean, the young man who took control of her, by
his family and community, who all abuse Alex in turn. Alex is a nuisance. She is
an eyesore. Alex and her selfishness spoiled Sean’s chances of making it in this
world. She has saddled him with their child. Sean’s addictions, selfishness and
violence are thrown inconveniently into lurid technicolour view, but only Alex
notices. It is unbelievable that no one else can acknowledge what is going on.
The trajectory is clear. When full-time parenting, which is what Alex wants and
needs to go on doing, becomes inconvenient to Sean’s lifestyle, he graciously
allows Alex to claw her way back into active mothering of their daughter. Alex
has no choice then, but to be grateful to him, because she has no other purpose
in life than to protect her precious daughter.
* * *
Resisting the urge to place
a permanent end to the cycle of abuse takes an inner strength that musters
itself only incrementally. A few steps forward and a few steps back, in a slow
dance to somewhere. The strength might always lie there there somewhere inside,
sluggishly lumpy, dormant, and stubbornly ignored, even as it forces one to go
ahead and take another breath, despite one’s every intention to not.
Watching
MAID doesn’t make me cry. It puts me back in touch with the rage that smoulders
endlessly, consuming in brightly-coloured, frantic flames, my bruised, misshapen
fifty-two-year-old heart. I am angry about the choices I have had to take. I
have never been privileged with a smorgasbord of options to suit my tastes.
Until I was diagnosed with coeliac disease, rendering my food choices public, I
was never invited to consider my tastes in anything. My choices have always been
binary – life or death? him or her? this or that? now or then? here or there?
yes or no? I am governed too, by the toxic silence of a family bound together by
secrets and lies, as well as social conditioning that tells me I must consider
the comfort of every other person before my own.
When faced most recently with
the choice of whether to go on living, I weighed up carefully the cost to
others, of killing myself versus ending my relationship. I concluded that by
inconveniencing, yes even hurting Brown Owl and disrupting her serene and
fruitful life, I could allow myself to go on living, for the benefit of my adult
children, my young children, my ageing parents, my siblings, niblings, pets, and
friends.
And so I gathered up my possessions and I left, to start living again.
I could not project myself into the future she has forced upon me. Like the pain
of childbirth which recedes behind a smokescreen of responding to a baby’s
immediate needs, my mind forgot to remember the consequences I would bear, for
choosing life. I have forged an unavoidable, deeply furrowed path, fraught with
potholes and ditches that ambush almost every step I am forced to take. I must
face up to the consequences of my actions without the comfort of knowing that my
choice was false, made not on my behalf so much as in an attempt not to hurt and
disrupt too many of the lives of all those others who are connected to me. I
know I have caused disturbances in the accepted narratives of many people in my
life. I know that my wishes don’t matter nearly as much as my actions.
Which
brings me back to Alex, who cleans other people’s houses, just as I cleaned
other people’s houses, and just as I cared for other people’s children. I am
conscientious, hardworking, intuitive, and bold, when it comes to other people’s
houses, and other people’s children.
I struggle to maintain the boundaries
necessary for personal safety, between myself and other people’s children. This
is the curious thing. Are Wizard and Jack my children? No one says they are not,
and most people seem to think I am mostly responsible for keeping them safe and
healthy. Their daddies stopped talking to me for two months because I chose to
go on living. I keep encountering Organisations and Institutions that require
proof of my relationship to them, because of course I have no legal legs to
stand on in this Brave New World of non-biological parenting, where the
accountability reaches only in one direction, from my spirit to theirs.
The
impediment that repeatedly breaks my heart is this armour I have built around
me; my attempt to go on surviving without being impacted by the incessant
assaults upon my invisible integrity. My survival depends upon my
self-protection which stops me from soul connection.
There are years of my life
in which I don’t even know who I am anymore. Who is this “I” that survives? Who
is this “I” in connection with anybody else? If I don’t know who I am, how can I
possibly know what my children need from me? How could I ever do less than my
best for them?
The paradox of continuing to live without purpose or recognition
of what I have endured pushes my every button, impelling me towards
self-extinction. I focus instead on the external, knowing full well that one day
I will have to face the discordant music that permeates and punctuates my inner
turmoil. It will be waiting if ever I find myself at liberty to take it apart at
last and reassemble all the layers of my world to suit me.
* * *
19 April 2022
The second part of MAID made me cry, nearly all the way through. I had been
warned of this possibility by a friend, also a survivor of emotional abuse.
When
Alex returns to Sean, having exhausted her options – neither of her parents can
help her; the man who offered to help won’t stop making sexual advances towards
her; everything that hinged upon her accommodation, such as daycare for her
little girl, and employment on the island, is torn away because of Sean’s
inappropriate and addicted behaviour at a birthday party – it’s not long before
the cycle of abuse turns once more from sweet honeymoon to poisonous exertion of
control.
Alex watches and experiences all this from a distance, still holding on
to her self-belief, and reaching out wistfully towards the future she desires,
while clearly and consistently signalling to Sean that she has returned to him
on her own terms, terms which he refuses to heed, or even hear.
Sean has
literally imprisoned her. He steals her car, won’t pay for her phone credit,
makes it impossible for her to work, threatens her physically, speaks to her
with cruelty, buys alcohol instead of food, and the list goes on.
And then,
after another violent attack upon her, Alex walks away from Sean’s trailer,
carrying their daughter and nothing else. Fortunately for Alex, the DV shelter
readmits her, and supports her to regain a sense of self and purpose.
When Alex,
after multiple struggles, ultimately triumphs, my tears fall once again. This time
self-pity has set in. I remind myself that it’s really only been four months,
since I chose life. I have done quite a lot in those four months.
When Brown Owl
ensnared me, thirteen years ago, I had been fifteen years single. I had raised
my children up, brought them and myself through education, gained a
qualification and a decent, steady wage, and had even scored secure public
housing that I intended to stay in, for life. I had, at that time, enough
self-respect to have placed boundaries between myself and my parents. I was
devoting energy and time to creative pursuits that had for so long been reduced
to dabbling on the edges whenever the need to create bled too much through the
fabric of the things I needed to do to survive. My activism remained a core
value and a driver for frequent activity.
Today, I sit shame-bound and crippled
by the lingering doubts about how I traded my freedom for a sequestered
life of middle-class middle-aged privilege, I wallow and writhe and wonder how
much time I really have left. I calculate the cost to myself and my four
children. The knowledge that I abandoned Guitar Hero and LabCat on the cusps of their adulthood is something I live with, and I cannot undo.
Emotional abuse is so
slippery and elusive to define. It happens all the time, that I switch from
myself to herself. It’s so easy to take the blame, to be the fall guy, the one
with the issues. Because I am the one with the issues. I am the one at the top
of the seesaw, scared to fall on my head, wishing and hoping with all my might
that she will let me down gently, while knowing full well I am in for
punishment. I deserve all she dishes out, due to my temerity in calling out her
behaviour and attitude.
I choose life. She feels humiliated.
I feel used. She
feels accused.
I feel abused. She feels gracious.
I feel ashamed. She feels
self-righteous.
I feel worthless.
The only reason I feel at all is because I
choose life over death.
My covid quarantine output, though not prodigious, is
still quite high: a clean house, repaired bed clothes, weighted animals,
numerous items of mended clothing, half a jumper knitted, 15 job applications,
long and frank conversations with three friends, one hand- painted piece of
furniture an online inteand 3000 words. My boys will return to me tomorrow, and
I am looking forward to spending a few days with them. The last four months have
brought me to this place. I have housing, I have an income, I have resources, I
have friends who actively love and care for me.
year, my Jerusalem.
