Accommodations #1
(16 September 2022)
2022 The classic situation, an aisle seat next to an overflowing man, on a sardine tin flight from Sydney to Adelaide after 36 hours in transit, finally exhausts my reserves. I sit tense, irritated, beyond tired, waiting to disembark. Does my discomfort show itself to anyone at all? I doubt it. I remain polite.
The days
afterwards are a struggle. I walk into a tidy house, but for no apparent
reason, every towel I own is in the washing basket. All I want is a hot shower
and bed. I have brought home a suitcase of unwashed clothing and get out of bed
intermittently throughout that first, long night to unload, reload and, on
occasion, rebalance the washing machine. The next day one of my kids glomms himself
onto me ahead of schedule and refuses to leave my side. The other rejoins our
household, along with the dog, the following day. It is a full week before I have
any time to myself. Two days of appointments, two days of work, then I opt to host
a family meal at my place, rather than deal with the possibility of conflict
arising so soon after my reappearance, should one of the children refuse to go
elsewhere to be fed. Every night I fall desperately asleep whilst attempting to
read to my children, resurfacing groggily to haul myself into my own bed, only to
be repeatedly disturbed shortly thereafter by the child who is so happy that I came
back, that he just can’t leave me alone, even to sleep. At 02:00 every morning my
body wakes up with a zing! Sleep eludes me for hours. But I slip back into my
role without fuss. Older mother, marriage wrecker, home maker, relief teacher,
good daughter … This fatigue, mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, is my
normal state of being.
My
arrival home coincides with the jasmine blooming. That heady fragrance heralds dangerous
memories of myself, a very young woman, cautiously navigating my first serious
friendship as I tip-toe into adulthood. I’ve been accessing those memories lately,
trying to figure out how I slipped up, way back then. I have been baffled by
how I so spectacularly stepped out of my role as the good daughter (albeit lost
child) with the world at her feet and into another.
1987 I was determined this friendship would never be a romantic liaison. I did not want a boyfriend. I did not want a lover. I told everyone I was never going to marry, never going to have children. I planned to go back to Europe, explore my roots. All I wanted was a little flat filled with books, houseplants and my two cats where I could write and create and study and meet the world entirely as I saw fit, finally on my terms, and no one else’s.
My
experience until then had been to try and appear normal. I knew very well I
wasn’t normal, but I did my damndest to pass. This is called masking. It made
me vulnerable precisely because instead of self-discovery, I always aimed to
replicate and perform whatever others seemed to expect of me.
2022 When I meet my uncle in Texas, 37 years after spending time in his home in 1985 aged 15, he remembers me as a teenager who never said a word. He tells me he likes me much better now that I talk. His claim not to have known that I was in Texas with my folks in 1979, for six months, demonstrates how invisible I made myself. Invisibility is a shield almost as effective as shapeshifting, when you know you just can’t fit in.
For years we
had a Peanuts cartoon on our fridge at home, depicting Peppermint Patty just
standing there inside the frame, while Marcie declares “You’re weird, Sir.”
That was me. I owned that notoriety and enjoyed the feeling of belonging I got
whenever my parents said affectionately to me, “You’re weird, Sir!” So long as
I stayed with the bounds they set for me, they accepted me as the person I
presented to them.
1988 I see myself now, earnestly digging myself into a shallow trench. Yes, a tight fit. No, it doesn’t hurt, not much, anyway. I can cope. Always reaching blindly, accommodating myself to the demands of others. Does it hurt? I would ask myself. Really? Is it that important? Do I stick out? Is it that difficult? Am I not strong enough, kind enough, big enough, understanding enough, to manage, despite my distaste and misgivings? I was raised to not be selfish, to put others before myself. Is he really asking too much of me?
This is
never a process of negotiated consent. Consent is never sought. Conquest is
assumed. I see my role as choosing how to respond to what morphs from an
unwanted, unsought, unimagined idea, into inevitability. Somehow, choosing how
to respond becomes my only power. Do I stand helpless in the headlight glare?
His demands creep up on me all unawares. I am so naiive. There are many moments
of acute, mortifying embarrassment. I could list them all now. The feeling of
humiliation resonates still within me. It hurts. These days, when my
performance falls short and I am exposed as less than normal, less than perfect,
my whole body is thrown into acute physical pain.
As usual,
other people seem to know me better than I know myself. I grapple with who I am
being made to be and transform myself into that person. In this process I lose focus
on my authentic, true self. She lies discarded, bleeding out quietly in that
shallow trench.
What tenuous
boundaries I had formed by that stage, were malleable and permeable. I allowed
others to shift my boundaries incrementally to suit themselves. I struggled to
accommodate, never gaining enough traction or perspective to realise what was
happening to me, never quite making it back up to the surface to gasp untainted
air.
1989 Before I know it, my circumstances change drastically. Within a few months my life as good daughter, university student, peace activist, writer, sister, friend, traveller, is torn out from under me. I shapeshift to survive, transition rapidly into girlfriend, wife and mother, so estranged from my previous life and people that I no longer trust which way is up. I am pulled out by the roots. I sever ties willy-nilly, trying to avoid dragging others down with me. It takes years for my people to find me again. Rejected, discarded, worthless, defeated, yet I have to somehow measure up to my responsibilities.
My father tells
me – I made my bed, and now must lie upon it. My mother tells me – actions speak
louder than words. Take a reality check. It doesn’t matter whether I have
chosen my path or just gone along with what had happened to me. I don’t count.
Did I ever? Only my actions matter, especially now that the survival of others depends
entirely on those actions. And no, I am not to expect any help with babysitting.
Access to resources is entirely dependent on my erstwhile “Friend”, who rapidly devolves into a selfish, self-serving bully, intent on blaming me for the inconvenience of having a wife and children, and at the same time, intent on crushing me, using me in any way he could, to achieve what he thinks he deserves.
This is an old story. Its interest to me now lies in recognizing the steps I took to adapt, learn my new roles, acquire the working knowledge I needed to raise my children and eventually release us from that sticky situation. I don’t know that I ever came back to myself – I just keep treading water until I can’t any longer.
If I
weep now, it’s not so much regret for what might have been, but rather a retriggering
of pain and confusion that I have never dealt with. It seems that this
accretion of pain and confusion forms my only means of defense today; a sorry
excuse for boundaries. The ongoing effects of my lack of boundaries continues
to profoundly impact every relationship I have.
There is
so much work to be done. I think I glimpse the shape of myself now, buried in
that shallow trench under so many layers of accumulated filth. When I finally
dig her up, clutch her to my bosom, will I know me anymore? Will she accept me
for who I have become, the terrible mistakes I’ve made, the paths I’ve forged?
2022 I fly out of Adelaide in a window seat. I feel empty, bereft, uncertain about leaving my children, even less certain about meeting my adult children on their terms. Will I fit? Is there a place for me? Do they really want me to play a role in their lives? I feel like such a fraud, such a failure. How can I expect them to understand? All I have to go on is my hard-won self-knowledge that I play a set of roles. I mask my true self. Do they know me at all? Am I a failure to them? If they do not know me for who I have become, how can they love me? How can I pretend to play mother of the bride? This role is new to me. Mother-in-law? It’s ludicrous. It feels so risky. I feel so flimsy, unreal.
I watch the
world recede and shrink before my very eyes as we ascend. Who am I, away from
my allotted roles? I foresee the need to similarly shrink myself to size, to
not get in the way, to be accommodating. And with that, I feel the familiar inward-pulling
tug of the precious kernel of self, gird my locked ribs tightly around the
hollow of my heart, breathe deeply and intuit how to participate on this
journey, as a lone white overweight middle-aged woman on an intercontinental
flight.
Anonymity
grates, but invisibility continues to surprise me. When the flight attendants
interrupt me three times with special gluten free meals I feel obliged to eat
them, even as the young man with the window seat across from me (I am in the
aisle again) politely refuses anything but water. Here’s the thing – I’m not
really hungry, I don’t want to use the airplane toilets, but the fact that the
airline has prepared these meals for me means I feel I need to eat them and
appreciate them. Besides which my residual childhood memory associates airplane
food with good times.
During my
eight flights there and back, no one inquires or shows any interest in me. I sit
back, or lean forward, playing uncomfortable elbow-tag with the armrests, doze,
watch movies, and engage with no one. It’s not to say I don’t use my acquired life-skills
to try and connect. I do. I initiate conversation on the flight from LAX to
Philadelphia with the young man beside me and the woman next to him, with a cat
in a carrier. It’s a fizzer. (You’re weird, Sir.”) When the flight from LAX to
Sydney finally departs close to midnight, and it becomes clear that the seat between
me and the young Filipino man will remain empty, I initiate a high five with
him. It’s embarrassing. (You’re weird, Sir.)
Maybe
people these pandemic days invest less in connecting with strangers. Or maybe
it’s the way I present that puts them off. Yes, I suspect it has to do with my
inadvertently stepping beyond the bounds of my role as overweight middle-aged
white woman.
My heart
literally hurts when I leave Philadelphia. Tears course down my cheeks. No
matter how I try, I cannot stem the flow. But I have to go. I’m expected
elsewhere, and after that I have to return to my life, to the bed I must lie
upon. My one consolation is the knowledge, the truth that I did meet my adult
children unmasked, raw, joyous and bereft all at once, and was embraced.
