Anna C. said...
I've been pondering why "holden caufield" lived and "esther greenwood" died.
Two coming of age novels, Roman a clefs really, why did the woman barely make it out of her 20's and stick her head in an oven (Sylvia Plath), while the man lives on in god-like isolation, still worshiped though he hasn't published a thing in decades? (it's all kept in a safe in his hermitage in the backwoods of New England, I've read. When he dies, the safe will be opened and out will pour pure gold, or maybe just empty Reese's peanut butter cups n Oodles of Noodles packets)I won't mention his name he'll probably sue me as i'm sure he's copywrited his own name, as well as every sentence he's ever written, including letters TO friends and lovers. The nerve.
Am I bitter? About so few girls' stories being told, I mean. Not anymore. Because I'm going to be too busy. I've survived. Mostly by hiding in bed with the covers over my head. But damn it, I'm still here and I've got a duty, a mission...a messiah complex?
Impossible. I have no penis. How could I be a Messiah? Or even have the delusion of being one? Sometimes it's safer to be a girl.
But now I feel I need to speak for my sisters who didn't make it. The losers, misfits, rebels...the brave ones? The unlucky ones? ...suicides, overdoses, car wrecks, looney bins...
Survivors' guilt maybe. Why DID I make it? I think it has a lot to do with my decision to have cats and not children. The stress of taking care of young ones, when things start to fall apart...I can't imagine how mothers do it-- I am in awe of them.
Mad Men ---that tv series set in the complacent USA 1950's is supposed to be set in the past.
It's 2009. So why does Sylvia Plath's terror of being a 1950's Stepford Wife still resonate so strongly?
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Update: Just finished new bio of Karen Carpenter. Wowsy wow...did NOT expect to relate to her, but her quest for perfection: The Stepford Wife Disorder (not yet in DSM but I'm petitioning) as supported by family, friends, husband, society...
ReplyDeleteBy supported I mean supported in her quest to be the Perfect Stepford Wife. The perfect stepped-upon wife, never EVER allowed to come close to outshining the men in her life. You know the ones-- those that claim to be her greatest champions? Brother...Husband...
What happens when you realize the person you most trusted to help you get your act together is in truth deliberately and maliciously (driven by his own demons, granted, but I'm not worrying about MEN today--they make the laws, they run the courts, they label any show of emotion hysterical, THEY DRIVE WOMEN MAD then blame the WOMAN for being crazy.
And we blame ourselves. And we blame ourselves. AND WE BLAME OURSELVES.
No one beat up on me as bad as I beat up on myself. I was well-trained, from my female grade school "friends", my female relatives...caught in a hamster wheel of trying to appease the unappeaseable.
No one could do what I expected of myself. And it nearly killed me. I have a host of autoimmune conditions. My killer T cells can't tell a virus from my own heart muscle. Or my thyroid. Or my trunk and leg muscles. So it munches away at all of me. I've been disabled since my early 40's.
On the bright side, this gives me a freedom almost no one in this country has.
Time to think. Time to read. To explore history. To form opinions. And I've been gifted with a facility of communication...people GET what I write. And that's thrilling to me.
I'm studying lojong Buddhism, Dakini female Tibetian energy, counter-intuitive stuff that lets me embrace suffering and pain, not run from it. People sense this. I'm the person who won't freak out when you start telling me about the suicide in your life that haunts you, your daughter who cuts herself and can't seem to stop, your desire to cross-dress...hey, I was psych nurse on the last stop before oblivion. (Hello, Oblivion! How's the wife and kids).
The Florida Keys are different. People do come here to die. I've looked suffering in the face. I suffered watching my mother's slow agonizing death from cancer, cured then recurred with brutal mets to the brain when I was 13. And no one helped me through it. No one put their arms around me. No one told me anything.
So I write comedy today. But not like I used to. Not to run and hide. I acknowledge suffering. And find something to laugh about anyway...something to be grateful for. Because I'm not a helpless little girl anymore, nor a stepford Wife which is pretty much the same thing.
The truth shall set you free. A slave loves her chains. I love them sawed off and made into FABULOUS jewelry...or decorations for my butterfly garden. I keep an open heart so I don't in bitterness use those old chains to hurt anyone else, not even if they DESERVE it.
Vengence is mine, saith the lord, and HE can HAVE it. The universe does a much better job of balancing out than my micromanaging ways ever could.
I'm happy to be in the flow today...happy I found a sangha...good friends...
merry meet n merry part n merry meet again