Thirteen disquieting statements

For me, Thursday Thirteens provide a means of examining my life through an ever changing lens. A micro-autobiography, perhaps, where the challenge is to be honest, entertaining, and (hopefully) insightful. Like any memoirist, I suppose, I am the topic that fascinates me most. The “entertainment” angle hinges on how well I can convey that fascination to my readers — and, let’s face it, it depends on precisely how honest and how insightful I can be.

That’s the theory, anyway.

Maybe I’m more introspective these days because we’re approaching the end of what has been, for us, a difficult year. The stress has done weird things to me . . . weird in ways I can’t even begin to discuss here. Or even hint at. Suffice to say (despite #13 below) I’m feeling a lot like a pupa, and I haven’t a clue what’s going to hatch out at the end of this metamorphosis.

Below the fold: thirteen disquieting statements. Things folks have said to me which stuck like peanut butter to the palate. They don’t hurt anymore. Mostly.

1. “I ruined the best years of my life for you.” As my sis will tell you, Mommy Dearest is great at lashing out, and four- or five-year-old me was as good a target as any. Even back then, I knew I couldn’t trust anything she said, knew it instinctively. I began searching for a surrogate before I turned three — surely that must mean something.

Perhaps I didn’t believe her; but to this day, I look for encouragement and support in the opinions of women, not men.

2. “I was just like you.” I’ve never mentioned my nutty uncle, my mother’s brother. Remember that line from The Wall, “Momma’s gonna put all of her fears into you”? That was my uncle, only it was Momma and Poppa doing the fearin’.

“I was smart, just like you,” he used to say to me. And all I saw was a depressed, overweight, middle-aged man who lived with his parents and whose life was hell. He’d had a breakdown in the Korean War, the story went, was discharged on a Section 8, sent to the Menlo Park VA (commonly known as the “bird sanctuary”), might have improved under the psychiatrists’ care, but his parents knew better. They sprung him, took him home, and mothered him nearly to death.

Throughout childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, I was just like you haunted me. I had to prove otherwise.

3. “You should only die!” Mommy Dearest again. Spoken (screamed, really) not to me but to the nameless, faceless them who persecuted her. But when you hear this as often as I did, the intensity of the hatred takes a knife to your soul.

Once, when I was home from college, my mother asked me, “I wasn’t such a bad mother, was I?” I said, “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” My father laughed.

4. “Will you look at yourself?” This one’s from a junior high school teacher. I was having a fit over something inconsequential, and she was pointing out that my reaction was histrionic. Fair enough, but the wording — Will you look at yourself? — catalyzed an odd schism. Forever after, whenever I get upset, there’s the upset me and the cold, detached me, an unfeeling me who looks in the mirror, sees a guy having a fit, and wonders, “What the hell is your problem? Get over it, already.”

5. “What are you thinking?” A psychologist asked me this in the summer between seventh and eight grade. The words themselves weren’t chilling. Chilling was the reaction I had when I attempted to answer his question: I looked within and all I found was a blankness.

I’ve had better psychologists since then, and I’ve noticed none of them ask that horrible, obnoxious question.

6. “This is to shrink the tumor.” This is what the nurse told my wife (then my fiancée) when she asked, “What’s that injection?” I’ve told this story before, so I won’t belabor it. The words were a wakeup call, a newborn’s slap on the ass. Welcome to the real world, buster.

7. “Don’t ever forget you are talking to a diseased brain.” This, too, I’ve mentioned before: it’s what my wife’s neurologist used to teach his students. It’s an insidious worldview; if I’m not careful, I begin seeing everyone as diseased brains. Even me.

8. “I could teach a monkey to operate.” It’s a nice thing to hear if you’re a neurotic medical student who likes surgery but can’t believe he’s got what it takes. It’s not such a nice thing to remember when you or your loved ones are about to go under the knife. My God, you think. Maybe he’s one of those well educated monkeys.

Scariest thing of all, I’ve known my share of monkeys.

9. “You’d have to shoot yourself in the foot to not get that grant.” This from a man who later headed up his particular branch of NIH — he was trying to impress me with the wondrousness of my research project. Later, when I didn’t get the grant and was dumb enough to whine to him about it, he said, “You didn’t get the work done. You didn’t get anything published. You shot yourself in the foot.”

You would think my illusions of a career in medical research would have ended then, but it took me another three years to figure it out.

10. “You could be a better surgeon if you held your pen correctly.” He was my chief resident and I liked him, at least until I realized he didn’t like me. I’m not sure what turned him. Perhaps the fact I lashed out at him that night on call, with a shooter in the ER, all of us on lockdown, helicopters circling County? (To my beta readers: yup, it was a true story.) Perhaps because I insulted the LAPD in his presence, and his dad was ex-LAPD? Who knows. He hated me.

He got his revenge by letting me know what he thought of my surgical skills. As for how I hold my pen, we’ll leave that story for another day.

11. “You don’t spend enough time with me.” As an adult, I fend off all those pesky suicidal thoughts by thinking of myself as a good father, good husband, good doctor. It’s disturbing, to say the least, to discover that my son doesn’t share my high opinion of me. See, I compare me to my father. I spend tons more time with Jake than my father ever did with me. The two relationships are apples and oranges. But Jake can’t know that.

12. “You were one of the girls.” If I really wanted to mine my breakup with GF v1.0 I could come up with better than this, but honestly, a lot of that stuff is ancient history. I know a lot of the things she said were said in anger, or because she thought it would make the breakup easier if she made me hate her. Or something like that. But this one — You were one of the girls — stuck with me because there was more than a little truth to it. Doesn’t help that she still thinks of me that way 🙂

I won’t explain the origins of the comment. It has a lot to do with poor communication and a misguided sense of romance and honor. Adolescence, in other words.

13. “You never change.” Karen trots this out mid-argument when she really wants to hurt me. Because, you see, I don’t think of myself this way. I see myself as constantly growing, constantly improving. I especially need to see myself as a good husband (see #1, above). Any challenge to that acts as a powerful goad motivating me to change my behavior. So if I never change, and I never have changed, then what have I been doing all this time? What the fuck is wrong with me?

Eh.That’s enough angst for one day. For one year, really.

Remember how this works? Leave a comment, and I’ll give ya the linky lurve you crave.

Michelle is okay with whore. (I doubt Karen would be as understanding.) And: Fun with needles.

SxKitten’s Chicago Photoblog

The beautiful (in my imagination, and almost certainly in real life, but I’ll never find out because she never posts photographs, and how’s a guy supposed to fantasize without photographs?) May, who links to this fine Shannon Stacey post, wherein she imagines her husband thinking

I need a blowjob so I can think.

Ms. Stacey? This is a real phenomenon. Don’t make fun of it!

Christmas spirit or undeniable good nature: who cares. Either way it’s cool. Lee’s tale of a good deed.

Renee still has up some LOVELY nudes. As in Oh. My. God. Lovely.

A wholly disquieting story from Corn Dog — a great accompaniment to this Thirteen.

Shaina’s on a natural high. Watch out.

Lyvvie’s grumpy. She needs one of these to cheer her up.

Internet nostalgia from Darla.

Trish’s Thirteen Animal Myths

D.