It’s snowed again.

I barely noticed it this morning, and I forgot that the drive to the train station last night took place in the soft snowfall, the flakes glistening in the headlights like diamonds.  We’ve had so much of it lately.  We’ve had more water this year than we’ve ever had before, for as long as anyone’s been keeping track.  When it falls softly  in the hard cold it’s easy to be surprised by the amount.

Now that she’s been gone a good three months, I’ve begun to understand my mother in a way I never could before.  There was something wrong in the way we related to each other but I always had the sense that it was determined, unchangeable.  Fixed, failed reactions to a persistent reality that wouldn’t change.  That the variables in the dynamic had been set in place and they would not be moved, no matter how aware we became of the motives. And they were fixed, that’s a certainty. I spent almost all of my life angry at my mother for what turns out to be good reason–but I couldn’t see how helpless she was until she was gone.  I couldn’t see how helpless everyone was until she was gone.

Christmas eve I counted out dinner plates with my brother, we were trying to determine the number we’d need for his family, my family, parents, and his guest.  ”We need nine,” I announced, and my brother thought a second before saying, “No, we need eight.”  I corrected him, “Nine…count them out:  four for us, four for you and your family, and one for…”

“I know what you’re doing, but we need eight,” he said.  I was still counting my mother in the “us”, even though she wasn’t there.  It’s an old habit I can’t break.  Now that she’s really gone it’s occurred to me how much I missed her when she was here, how much I needed her when she was here but I had to do without her.  How angry that made me, for so long.  How I could never get past that anger, long after I became “an adult”, even long after I could see how desperately she tried to make that up to me.  How much she needed me and how impossible it was for me to respond.

I let that anger rule over everything.  I have trouble determining where it starts.  The first time I knew it was there I simply walked away from home.  I was barely old enough to walk, but I climbed and kept moving.  There were a number of instances when I was a schoolgirl where I just walked.  I’d walk out of my house and into the street and into the city, it would be hours before anyone knew I was gone.  I took myself out of school and out of family life and out of whole days this way, and it was rare that anyone would notice.  It was the only way to take myself out of feeling furious.  The only way to make myself think of something other than what I was contending with at home, why no one could seem to stop it.  By the time I got to be 12 years old it was so painful that physically removing myself was the only way I could cope.  I was completely broken, and I knew my mother could see that.  What I couldn’t see was how badly she wanted to change that but could not.  How sorry she was for not acting, not being able to act.  I never forgave her for that, not for the trying, but for the inability.  I never saw it until now and now it doesn’t matter.  Blame is such a stupid thing–all it does is confirm your own poor judgment.  Whatever it was I needed her to do for me, she needed me to do for her.  We were both limited, both blind, both paralyzed.  Anger was just a dumb animal response I wish I’d been smart enough to see past.

Lately I’ve been formulating a few new conclusions: the first being that I’ve been quite an immature brat for the majority of my life, and I’m getting no satisfaction from being that way.

Not that I ever did! But now it’s just much more impossible to ignore.
M. and I had a confrontation last week after that trip to Toronto debacle, and in his eyes I’ve become mean. Justifiably angry about a lot of things, but ultimately very mean. And I wasn’t, initially. But back then I wasn’t so frustrated and so bent out of shape about my life–I still had some idea that it could work out okay.

I might have an inkling of that at the moment–little “good” things that happen that let me know I shouldn’t only see the negative at all times. Tiny little gifts of luck that there are reasons to hope. M. also told me it was obvious I was hating myself completely, and that I’d lost all my passion. I know he’s been thinking that for a number of years but he’s also been incredibly patient about me. Understanding and forgiving too. Maybe we’ve come to a point from which we can move forward.

So I’m going to try and move forward.

Thinking about RS again, I tried to apply M’s observations and I realized just why things turned out the way they did. I chose someone who was ultimately very generous and loving–really just someone who wants to give that to others, but I was so fucked up about myself that I never understood that clearly. I wanted someone who had enough faith in me to encourage me to be the best person I could be, and he did that: but when he said it out loud (once he told me he wanted to be here to “kick my ass into shape” so that I’d really pursue my goals with passion) I was actually so shocked by what he said that I got angry at him. He called me several times to apologise for saying it–and even said he was begging me on bended knee to forgive him. I should have realized then what I’d pushed away out of my own cowardice. And he still tried, after that, but much less aggressively–with gifts of books and diagnostic tools, rare medicines from India I could never find here. When he gave up his interest in Homeopathy, it was because he closed the door on me and he wanted no part of that common interest anymore. In his eyes I’d failed myself, even with all his encouragement: it’s the same kind of dismissal my father must have felt, though his encouragement was no encouragement. I’d fallen into so much of my own failure and my own fears that by the time RS and I actually met, I was terrified of even being around him. And so angry in my frustration that all we could do was disagree with each other all the time. I had let him down–despite his tremendous confidence in me; and then I’d begun to push him away because I doubted his sincerity and his love for me. I understand how far this pattern goes now–and how long I’ve held it in place.

In the past I’d always thought my choices in men were blind–completely idiotic in some cases, but it seems that on some level I do know what I want and I do choose good people. M. for his unconditional love, and RS for his pure good will and depth of love. It took me until he was gone to recognize that. I don’t want to continue making the same mistakes forever. I also don’t want to be jumping through hoops about what others see as my potential anymore–I just want to become the human being I am supposed to become, with my own spirit not just intact but thriving.

It’s the only potential that matters.

When I wandered around your old home base, a place I’d seen for the first time in my life, I made a note of the number of things which reminded me of you.

The street names that were your name.
Pilots. Airplanes. Propellers.
Rocks soaring out of the earth floor, as red as sunset rays.
Doctors everywhere I looked.
Flowers on old trees opening after the cold.

I met a man on the monorail at the airport who told me to look out for the artwork in the least likely places: 5280 tiny whirling blades in the tunnel, fluttering as we passed by, working hard in half-obscurity. Mountains that hold palaces, places no one knows about except the locals.

Height. Altitude. Pressure. Gold.

I wanted to tell you as much as I could, so much. The more I felt your presence around me, the more I realized that all I was really seeing around me were bold signs of your absence.
At that moment I knew: you weren’t ever going to be back.

Today I forced myself to come out of my house for a few hours, and wandered around outdoors where it is becoming sunnier every day (but it’s still a bit chilly). My father’s been mucking around in the plumbing in the house, and as a result my kitchen sinks haven’t worked all day, and more and more water’s coming in from the drains as we speak. Naturally, he’s yelling about it to me, as if I were the one who took tools to the pipes on my own and made sure the disasters would result. This anger that comes out of us so easily–it’s been shattering me for a lifetime. Deep breath, everyone. I’m in turmoil about what follows.

I stumbled into a conversation the other day about the nature of rape and incest, and how its forms go unacknowledged in the world around us because they’re so often such a deeply embedded aspect of family life. Now, in my mind, I always knew this meant that patriarchal societies like our own turn on the idea of some man owning people as if they were property, and passing on that property to sons or selling their property (daughters and wives, whores in the “stable”, all the same thing in this economic set up) as chattel. And I always knew, on an intellectual level, that that means “ownership” of the women in the family as a means to produce more “property”–children. And I knew, as well, that “ownership” also means they can assign a value on a person’s worth–hence the big deal about virginity and “honour” and all the nonsense that so many men still believe in with all their hearts and minds, as individuals–and so many cultures still enforce as a tenet.

And then I remembered that this is true in our family, where my father’s preoccupation with me and my “value” often ended in violent battles between us. Where, many times, he intervened between me and a man and our own relationship in order to do damage to the relationship by opening up the noxious point again and again. How he made it clear to me, in words and fisticuffs and belt marks, that I didn’t even possess my own sexuality or body, that it was his to control. And that he would destroy any relationship I ever made with anyone else as long as he could, because of that fact.

Well, I guess it’s not as if he “raped” me, or anything–no, not technically. But there it is–a direct line between incest, seen as a father’s right; and the destruction of an individual person’s right to all that is their own by birth. It explains the outright disrespect he’s shown me for as long as I can remember–the contempt for anything related to me, as long as he could trace it back to me. It all stems from this idea of me as property, a real extension of himself, both as a symbol of him and as his marketable commodity.

I reacted to this thought as if I were reacting to a shock–because that’s what it was. I remember when I was 15 and interested in a boy who used to come around here–just interested in that way that kids are, wanting to spend time around me as much as I wanted to spend time around him, maybe to just experiment, with first kisses and a little bit of a crush on each other. I did a lot of writing back then and like most kids at that age who write a lot I kept a journal, which I wasn’t aware was being monitored for weeks by my father. Eventually I wrote about my little crush, how we’d talked about just being alone for the first time, instead of in a big group with other kids around, your typical teenaged stuff; and my father read up until that point before exploding in fury at what I’d written. Of course, I had no idea he’d been peeking in. In my mind, my privacy was my own; and what the hell was so wrong about having a crush on a kid your own age? Eventually the moment where the boy and I could just talk to each other without others joining in arrived. But I do remember we were not at all alone–other people we knew were all in attendance, just doing something else besides talking to us.

My father chose that moment as if he’d lain in wait for it to arrive. He stormed out among us, and made me feel like I was completely disgusting; he beat me in front of that boy and other people, and called me every single name he could think of, accusing me of acts I didn’t even know about at that point in my life. And that boy was not spared. My father insulted him and his family by accusing them of carrying out a plot to extort money from him (you know, they were all intent on making me pregnant, and therefore I would be forced into marrying their son, and my father would be forced into paying them lots of money until their son deigned to marry me). It’s so medieval and so unbelievably sick that my father would be so deluded (really, if I’d actually had sex with the boy and got pregnant, I’d have had an abortion without batting an eye, even then; and even then I would have been sure to have some form of birth control on hand for the event if that is what would have happened–but I had no intention of having sex with a kid I just wanted to talk to. I was 15, not 10).

My father chose to react to this child and his family as if he believed I were absolutely repulsive, that I was so awful and disgusting that someone would have to extort money from him just so that their son would accept the idea of being with me. Actually, my father chose to react to what I’d written. He secretly read what I’d written for weeks, waiting for something to act on, believing that I’d somehow reveal myself in my own misguided plans to devalue him with my actions. Everything I’d written, in his mind, was all about him and all about me as something that belongs to him, a threat to him because of my existence.

That violent event was devastating. I’d forgotten about it almost completely–the details like the boy’s name, the night it happened, but not in other ways. I’ve always “remembered” it because it’s at the heart of a depression that still lingers, maybe at the heart of my illness as well. And I was 15 at the time, the time something similar happens to most girls, and changes their lives irreparably afterwards.

Something similar happened again 12 years later, I was seeing a man I wanted to be with sexually more than anything–someone good natured, from a good family, someone who seemed to want to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him. But then things changed between us after a night when my father decided to become inflamed over our (very discreet, and also completely acceptable and to be expected) sexual interaction with each other. It’s not surprising, as I was 27 at the time and my sexual activity was my own concern. But once again he pulled the “I own your ass” business and intervened–and this time, with the man. Again things came to blows between me and my father, and once again the relationship was ruined. I never connected the two incidents, because I’d almost forgotten the first one that took place and all the pain it caused. Even now I feel like I’m the self-centered one, who doesn’t see how wrong I am in all of this, and how much damage I’ve done with my actions. That’s quite a twisted logic, to be blaming myself in that situation and not seeing exactly what the conflict was and why it was staged at all. My father believes I am his property, especially sexually. And he believes that to this day and comments on that to my husband. He doesn’t understand that that’s not only wrong, it’s transgressive, a kind of rape that bypasses the physical violation and plows straight into the emotional and psychological violence directly. Then again, I “get” the idea intellectually and yet I still feel like he’s right to think that way, as incorrect and transgressive as the idea is. It’s like I’ve internalized his hatred for me, even though I know he must be wrong, and always has been. All this time all I’ve been struggling with is that imposed hatred and that violation. How do I make myself right again? How can it be possible? Every relationship after that first one that was destroyed…because of me and the way I felt in them, the way I felt about myself. I always felt like there was something atrociously wrong with me, I wasn’t deserving of anyone’s love or attention or care–I was never sure of their intentions, and always questioned them. I was convinced I’d be dumped sooner or later, and in almost every relationship, I was: even when I would choose to leave the man.

It’s there under the entire relationship with RS–even in the fact that he was so much older than me, and quite willing to be like a “father” to me–and maybe there is something to that in my selecting him as I did. It’s behind the lack of connection between me and M.–the lack of sexual life we actually have together, since my father insists on intervening there even if only in word. I don’t feel worthy, I don’t feel like I deserve that vital part of the relationship, or even of my life. I feel like my sexuality is a destroyed thing.

It’s like that film, Prizzi’s Honour–I get it now, in a way I never could before (ironically, as almost the same thing that happened to the Angelica Huston character at the hands of her father happened to me). Fittingly, Angelica Huston as the wounded Prizzi exacts the only kind of revenge that counts: she kills her father via torture, and then re-establishes the relationship her father’s incestuous beliefs destroyed. It’s as if she wins “the argument” with her father over her worth, in a way I never could: she forces him to see he was wrong by using his tactics, a kind of war of surveillance, calculation, and violent action, and she reverses every other development that took place since her violation happened, taking a bit of the revenge out on her lover, who “bought in” to the concept of her “dishonour” by moving on to another lover altogether.

And this brings us down to the crux: the point at which all things come together, the point at which all things started to fall apart, for me: that 15 year old girl who’s still out there, wondering why the hell she’s been so beat up about nothing, and so hurt that everything else in life suffered after that. Dr. John got close to it, but didn’t name it: my accidental conversation with some other girls who’ve survived rape and incest made me see this point. They told me very clearly: in all cases of rape, the woman will always be told she’s the one who was in the wrong, the one who brought it on herself, often the one who chose to be raped in order to inflict shame on everyone else she is related to.

Huh.

So we finally signed the contract on the new car last night, and I’m finding it hard to process my emotions about this ordeal. M. took a long time to get this transaction to take place, and when it happened it came out in a way that was quite different from the way it was represented to me. The salesman was dishonest about so many things–so I’ve come away from the deal feeling completely suckered. But the worst part about the entire experience is M.’s reaction to the situation: when I signed the contract for the car, I voiced my displeasure about the car as a demo–it had 10000 kms on it, before I even saw it! And yet we were being given a price which was only a few dollars less than the price for a brand new car; finally, when the car was delivered to me, another 60 kms had been added to it–so, in effect, I signed for a car which had fewer kms, but was not delivered that car…and now M. is reluctant to demand that that change be made to our documentation, to reflect that. He’s furious with me for voicing my concern, but he seems to have no qualms about committing me and my income to this deal for the next five years, no matter what I think of the deal. It’s an understatement to say I’m disappointed, and not just with the car, which is almost irrelevant.

What’s most hurtful is the fact that I was being made to feel that I could not voice my concerns about what was obviously an unfair deal: we were buying a used car, not a new one, and yet my husband had agreed that we would pay the full price; the car was further used so that our documents would have to be changed, but the salesman decided he would try to get away without changing them (probably because he duped my husband so successfully on every other point). I found out as well that my husband agreed to pay for “delivery” charges on the car, which I would never have allowed since the car was used when we received it. I would never agree to pay those charges on a brand new car that was being made to my specifications, and then delivered: I’d never allow it on what we got. And I’m furious to the point of violence that my husband dared to silence me on these points, while strapping me to the agreement regardless of my concerns.

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt shortchanged and silenced by M. in matters where my financial stability and future have been the issue. He doesn’t see that, and it’s extremely troubling. When this discussion took place last year about this time, I felt my mind was completely made up on the matter: we were through, and it was just a matter of time before that would be evident. I looked to other sources for intimacy, and got on with things. This time around, however, I don’t think I’ll need intimacy or support so much at all.

If I can’t get him to understand this well, we are not going to last. He’s a good man, who claims to love me: but he’s a good man who acts like he does not love me whatsoever. 

Times like these, I don’t want to be married anymore.