I quit my job.
I have been working for my brother for about a year now. A year in which I had just moved to the desert. A year in which I was still trying to come to terms with my sister dying. A year in which I went through great upheaval emotionally and physically.
I am still in a bit of a limbic system overload. I have blood pressure that is reading 140/100 even when I feel like I am calm. I have migraines. I have poor sleep. I have a lot of anxiety related to working with family and quitting a job that is all tied up in this emotional quagmire of emotional debt and gratitude, shame and humility, pain and suffering. I have gone back to being vegan so I can bring the blood pressure down, to decrease my cholesterol, to improve my sleep, to let go of the shame of consuming death and suffering…but that is just the aspect of trying to deal with the tangible side of the physical side of life.
I love my brother. I love the idea of a brother. I love the idea of having a brother. I just don’t think I was taught how to be a good sibling. I don’t think my brother was taught that either. Does anyone teach a child how to be a good sibling? How to care? Why aren’t we taught that in the same manner we are taught to tie our shoelaces? Maybe some of us have to walk through life only with a capacity for velcro and a complete lack of understanding of the complexity of the “over and under” that goes into tying the perfect bow with a shoelace!
People complain about how they were never taught money management. I wasn’t taught that. I was berated for not knowing how to manage my money, by the very people who gave it to me. I think I do the same to my children. Maybe I need to teach them money management! Fuck! Best put that on my little “to do” list. Teach them about how to keep accounts and to save.
But how do we learn how to love? How do we learn how to love our siblings? How do we learn how to love others in our lives? How do we learn to love ourselves?
My mother was always on a diet. Always. My sister then became someone who sold diets. “Lose weight now, ask me how!” her lapel pin would confidently proclaim. My father would make the occasional disparaging remark about my mother’s body, saying things like, “you’re mother was a stunner, she still is, if only she could lose a bit of weight…” and we carried that through our lives. Us daughters, we carried that shame for her. We saw her through his eyes, we saw ourselves through his eyes, a man’s eyes, the only man we looked up to when we were children…and we carry still, well, I do, because my sister is dead, I carry that still…I see myself in the mirror and I see my mother. I see this woman, on the corner of 50…carrying those 15 extra pounds, I think, “hey, at least I am not completely letting go…” or I worry, “I hope my husband doesn’t let me go…” or I cry at night about how no matter what, I am getting older with every minute and nothing can stop the sands of time from falling.
When I look at my husband, he’s still the same handsome man I fell in love with. In fact, I don’t even remember him with the young face he had, cleanly shaven, piercing blue eyes, sandy blond hair…I only remember those days from photographs. I suppose this has a lot to do with my memory, my inability to remember much from my past except for things that were painful or sad, my trauma response. I only see him…the man I love, I don’t see anything but him. But how come when I think of myself I worry about how he sees me? How come I fear he will see me getting old, getting fat, getting gray, all those things that cry “she used to be beautiful, but if only…”
There was a time when I looked in the mirror and I would feel beautiful, but there were more times when my reflection stared back at me and told me that I needed to lose weight, I needed to buy better clothes, I needed to wear some make up, I needed to cut my hair, I needed…I needed so much more than what I had present in my life.
I think about my sister…about how much she loathed her body while also loving it. How much she loathed her life while loving it. How much she loathed her husband while loving him. How much she loathed me and probably also loved me…and then I think about my brother too…the only vestige of that sibling bond left, and I think…sometimes I loathe him just as much as I love him…and maybe that is how he feels about me, and it makes me sad, so very sad…for him, for me, for us…because we were never taught how to love without the loathing. We were never loved without being loathed. We were never given room to be without also being told how not to be. How does one turn that around? How can you change the way things have been without losing a part of yourself in the process?
How can I learn to love myself and to forgive the past? How can I learn to forgive the past when my mother has no ties to her siblings despite them still being alive? How can I learn to have ties to my siblings without completely letting go of them? How can I let go of my brother and still maintain a healthy and loving relationship with him?
He never loses sleep over this shit, you know? I used to worry that he did, my brother. I worried he was worried, like me, but he isn’t. He operates like an automaton sometimes. He works hard at not caring. If he doesn’t care, it won’t worry him. My problem is that if I don’t care, I worry I will become an automaton. I care too much that sometimes I have to cut ties with people who don’t see how much their decisions fuck shit up for others. Sometimes the only way for me to stay sane is to avoid the insanity of others. I know that isn’t normal or healthy, but that is as much as I have learned about myself. Insanity is contagious. Like a voodoo shamen, you have got to do the work to ward off that contagion.
I have quit my job.
There are things that make me so relieved about that decision and then there are things that make me fear it was a bad decision, but the things that make me relieved far outnumber the things that don’t.
It is the right decision. It was the right decision. It will be the right decision.
Time will tell.
Me, Myself & I 