Here am I, smarty pants that I am, all stupidly nervous and calling attention to myself in the same neurotic way, resorting somehow to these old feminine tricks when I don’t need to, when I can do better than this. The gravitational pull of fear is strong, and that pull, coupled with the magnetic center of habit, is pretty heady stuff to shove off. I’ve got these lead boots on, tied them to my own feet, and I don’t know how I can get the hell out of here.
This has been going on since I was what, 6 years old? I used to remain with my face pressed the to window when mom would go out to do food shopping or, if I remember right, even sometimes when she would go off for a walk and leave me alone in the house. I knew she needed to get out, and I knew she didn’t want me with her, but how I knew this is what I still don’t know. I couldn’t have been more than six, but I remember that she used to leave for hours and I would count how many times the clock ticked before she returned, and I would lose track and blame myself for not knowing the time.
I blame myself when I’m hurt, the way that when I was a kid my parents would yell at me for getting sick. “You have a cold? You’re sick? What are you, stupid?” When someone disappoints me now, lets me down, hurts my feelings, I think to myself, “What are you, stupid? How could you let yourself be hurt by this?” I blame myself for my high expectations and for my lack of judgment. I blame myself for my vulnerability. The other person is absolved without the formality of a confession or apology.
Greedy, grubby, grabby — and all the other dwarves of my soul — these are the very things I’m afraid of being all the time. These are the qualities for which I felt, as a kid, that my mother and brother despised me: The desire for attention and affection were contemptible. My father too — let’s not leave him out of this — believes that you had better keep your back against the wall because They will be there to pick you off, one by one, like cherries from a tree or unarmed suckers at the wrong place, wrong time. So I write stuff down, even if it’s only this. I need the words. I need for somebody to say something, even if I’m the only one who does the talking.
3 Responses to From My Notebook, 1980, Cambridge
literarytype - January 5, 2010 at 9:32 am
This was a rather brave thing to post. I’m sure many of us remember such moments from our university days but it is daunting to see it in the raw.
dank48 - January 5, 2010 at 9:57 am
Andre Malraux quoted an old friend, a priest, when asked what twenty years of hearing confessions had taught him, as saying, “There is no such thing as grown-up human beings.”Very brave indeed, Gina.
ruthwrites - January 5, 2010 at 11:41 am
It’s of course always helpful to hear that others went through or are going through the same things, especially coming from you! (What? An intelligent put-together professor had fears and insecurities at one point, too?!) Thank you for sharing this. Nothing really beats getting it out of your head and onto “paper,” does it?