saw this hilarious and inspiring performance by Bridget Everett and Dj Ad Rock on Inside Amy Schumer and decided to turn it into an mp3 to take on the road with me for those low moments of wondering why I exist - cuz so many of us lacked the presence of that strong woman in our lives to tell us "Fuck Em, Don't Be Ashamed, Be Who You Are!" in fact, some of us not only receive very little support from our mothers, we are often encouraged to instead Hide Ourselves, Dumb Ourselves Down and Be Less Visible for the sake of pleasing the men that would have us.
on my last visit to see my parents, my mom shuffled around serving my father while he insulted her intelligence approximately once every 20 minutes. every time he did that, incredulously, i'd look at her, like Are You Gonna Take That? and she would sigh, shooting me a glance of poor me... having been removed from this environment, i'd forgotten how prevalent was this air of brow beating and the resulting acclimated victimization, which obviously never bothered her enough to DO anything about it for the last 50 years of their marriage, so why was she looking at me with these pleading Save Me eyes? as if i could do anything about the choices she made in her life. YOU GET WHAT YOU SETTLE FOR : a personal mantra & life altering reality check that works every time. as soon as i left their presence, i could breathe again and immediately decided not to see them again.
it's taken more than 20 years to process/heal the damage done to my ability to successfully function in society, and to feel complete forgiveness toward my father. to some degree, he was just repeating the treatment he was exposed to as a child, and that is certainly no excuse, but it does warrant an explanation as to why he would violently beat and sexually molest his children. why adults of abuse choose to even HAVE children, i don't fucking know.
so now that i've finally cleared away all of the rage i had concerning The Dad The Fist The Dick, underneath that lies this other beast: the rage for the mother and why she did nothing to protect us, not before the abuse, not during, and not after.
what the fuck is her excuse???
apparently, in 1976, my father attempted to get psychological help immediately after the first incident of the sexual abuse occurred and spoke to my mother about it, but she said not to worry, that everything would be ok. in 1991, she said she regrets having said that to my dad. in 2005, she then said she regrets marrying him, she regrets leaving england, and she regrets giving birth to my brother and me. i think if i can reach the age of 60 and not scream out a list of regrets like that one, then i'm doing ok.
one of my earliest memories is being at a doctor's office in germany due to an ear infection and screaming for her to stop this guy in a white coat from hurting me with those things he's poking into my ears, and she just stood there, looking at me... the same way she would just stand there looking at me during every violent beating throughout my childhood. when i recalled this memory, she said, "that's impossible, how can you remember that? you were only a 18 months old..." so could her excuse be something as simple as the fact that she just never loved me since birth? shrug. it happens. i can actually understand that, and i think if she ever had the courage to tell me the truth, instead of coating everything in sugary denial, i could garner some shred of respect for the woman. but that will never happen. and the closest i've come to forgiving her is to knowingly decide it's not up to me to tell her the truth, or to even tell her anything at all, i can instead just let her live in the peace that her sweet denial and quiet consensual victimhood give her.
it's sad to say, but i actually found great relief in discovering that this kind of relationship is most often the case with female survivors of sexual abuse and their mothers. it's actually more common that mothers will knowlingly expose their daughters to permanent damage rather than find the strength to leave their abusive husbands. [sometimes, if the mother is also being beaten, she doesn't leave because she believes there is no way out, that he will find them and kill her and her children, and too often, this ends up being the case.] but the fact that mothers are also more likely to view their own daughters as sexual threats - seriously..?. as if any 5 year old girl has the desire to fuck her dad...??! UGH. i think NOT.
so, it's like we're fucked from day one, and when we turn to other women for support, but get MORE of the competitive you're-a-threat-to-my-being-the-most-desirable-object-in-the-room-and-now-i-will-be-a-back-stabbing-bitch-and-throw-you-under-the-bus attitude from female "friends" throughout the rest of our lives, it's not entirely a surprise to us since our moms did that shit to us already. cunts.
one night, in upstate new york in the winter of 1980, my mother woke my brother and me up at 4 am, and told us to get in the car. she had decided enough was enough and said she was taking us to live with our grandparents in england. we were both ECSTATIC~! finally, our mom was going to do something to protect us! just before getting on the highway, she pulled into a burger king parking lot, turned off the car and started crying. my brother and i just sat quietly in the back seat waiting... she stopped crying. no one said anything. after about 10 minutes, she started the car. at the stop light, straight ahead was the highway, she turned right, and drove us back to that house.
at that moment, my brother and i grasped each other's hands with a feeling of the darkest, most utterly inescapable despair, knowing there would be years of this shit to live through with no one on our side, no one to protect us, no one to tell us we should not be ashamed of being alive.
so yeah, i have been one aggro fucker for a very long time, but now that i am aware of the exact time and place in which that rage was born, that pure defiance of the weak victimized woman who would do anything for her man - even at the cost of her own children, and why the instant trigger finger whenever belittlement enters the picture...
it's a lot easier to attempt let go of the aggression and rage when you know where they come from...but i am still trying...
emotionally, i think this is why i was able to connect with the 4 to 6 Muwekma Ohlone women that were killed on this spot of land on which bleakhaus sits ~ circa 1770-1812 during the gentrification "settlement" of white san francisco and subsequent enslaving and genocide of the Muwekma Ohlone tribes. when it was first established in san francisco, the mission kept native women as slaves having killed off most of the men through violence and disease. if women attempted to escape, they were often captured by other members of their tribe who were convinced assimilation would work and forced the captured slaves to then turn around, and go back to the mission.
that turning back to the place of torture by those that are supposed to be on your side. that darkness and utterly inescapable despair, i understood it. although, i was not forced to witness the near total annihilation of 4000 years of my people's culture, religion and language, and it was then i could emotionally grasp the depth of their sadness... and...THERE ARE NO WORDS.
but i had to act on it...and since i don't possess the language skills or felt i had the right to address them, i relayed all of the details of this experience to the remaining descendants of the local tribe in hopes that they would not think i am crazy, but instead could perform the appropriate ritual to free their souls from this place.
so whenever i hear people loudly say Be Proud Of Who You Are, i instantly start crying tears of joy, just like i do when someone small wins something big or simply succeeds at anything great. i love that feeling of being told that It's Ok You Exist! it goes straight through me, straight through to the only ones who are telling me things like that...but they are not people at all...they are The Moon, The Music, The Wind and The Water.
*u can call me ph!*
