On Top of the Dirt

There are days when the number 44 seems impossibly large for a life so unlived. I can NOT be this old, yet the gray hair is my tell: ’tis true. I am middle aged. At other times 44 is an underestimate of the weariness that hangs around my neck like so much flotsam, when life just… sucks.

I am in a mood. The heat has me worn down, everybody wants my money (which, hey! Good luck with that!) My animals keep getting sick or hurt, or strays find their way in and crap on my floors. I keep letting people disappoint me, see nefarious schemes where there are none. I am paranoid. One day I saw 3 references to fire on tv and the internet, and then wound up sitting across the hall from a fire alarm, and my brain went nuts. “Is it a sign?? That ceiling fan hasn’t worked for years, but when I slam the door it comes on. Is that gonna be where a fire starts?” I tell you, this “being me” thing, it is no picnic. I am sure it is some sort of hormonal freak out, and I will be fine in a day or two when some gland somewhere decides to work, but until then, it is dark in my world, man. DARRRK.

One of my students came to me today, distraught, in need of therapy more than a piano lesson, so we talked. At some point we were chatting about leaving home, moving out to go to college, and I remembered the last time I saw my father before he died. It was yesterday, really, not the 26 actual years since it happened.

It was yesterday.

To say my dad and I did not get along would do injustice to the term “understatement.” Neither of us could see the real trouble in our relationship: we were just alike. I hadn’t turned as far inward yet, and maybe that’s why we couldn’t see it. I still had hope in those days, hope of a family, a husband, a career I enjoyed. Stupid, stupid little girl. When he told me I’d never “get a man,” I honestly couldn’t see how he could be so… mean. I thought it WAS just meanness, but it turns out he was clairvoyant. Not that the process was as he predicted, but the result certainly is, which makes the process irrelevant. I inherited from my father the stubbornness of ten mules, the hopelessness of 50 fat virgins, and the ability to take my self-hatred and turn it into something other people can only see as anger toward the world. Really, I don’t hate everybody, just myself, and it seems no amount of kind words or encouragement from those who think I shouldn’t will ever change my mind. It’s as if I want to be alone, that I deserve to be in my own world of pain because I fulfilled the prophecy.

I was a freshman in college, and I decided to come home one weekend without letting my folks know I was coming. The genuine joy on my father’s face when I drove up was something I had not seen since I hit puberty, and it lasted a whole day. Actually, I don’t remember how the weekend ended, only how it began, and maybe that’s good. One month later he had several small heart attacks, and I made plans with my professors to miss class and go home to see him. He died two days too early.

I? Was glad. There were enough hard feelings and bad memories that I was relieved, and my mother and I talked several times about the guilt of such a thing, but we forgave ourselves in the end. He made life hard. I don’t think I cried much for a very long time. It took a visit from him in a dream to be able to close the wound, to be able to let go of the nagging lack of feeling over his death. He warned me that one day I’d be sorry he was gone, that I would miss him. It took YEARS.

The problem is that now that I am older, I see the man behind the madness, for I am he. He was depressed. He was in pain. He was angry at himself for hurting and being weakened by the pain, for not being physically able to do the things he loved. There was so much mental hurt that it had no other option than to spill out all over my mother and me, and I now do the same thing to the people I love. I have never hit anybody, but that’s probably only by the grace of God. Plenty of trees and sticks have been harmed in the process.

By the time I recognized the pattern, I was mired in it. That, my friends, is a deep, deep pit to navigate, and it has taken me every bit of those 44 years to learn to START. I am much, MUCH better at the lying now. I am 4 or 5 years younger than he was when fate took a dump on him, and I have learned how to lie. I am not very good at it, but I am getting better. Maybe that’s what “mellowing with age” will mean for me: crafting a tightly-fitting mask that doesn’t leak “me” on anybody. Those around will be happier for it, but it will destroy me, and truthfully, that’s ok. As long as the people in my life don’t have to work hard to be my friend, right?