The universe hates me. No, seriously. The word of the day is sesquipedalian. This is defined as having many syllables or using long words. So…. here we go.
Session 7
If you asked me yesterday how I felt about my mother I would have said something crass and childish. It would have rang out as funny in a different context or at least environment, but in our space, here, in this room, it would sound hollow and perhaps forced the way on a TV show a person who is cornered says something fruitless and jokey to change the tone of the scene.
But you didn’t ask me. No, you left that dagger poised at the nape of my neck with the promise of the question, and I did exactly what you wanted didn’t I? I thought about it all night.
We get a lot of time here to think. Strip away a man’s distractions and there is little left but reflection, self examination, and more than a little realization of urges. I suppose that too is the point–the slow torture of this place. I’ll tell you this: The jokes they make about these places strike rather close to the truth. The things people do and become here are shocking. It would be easier if the shock was of a good sort. Occasionally it is. Often it is not. However, that is not what we are supposed to be talking about today is it? No, we are talking about my mother.
The word I would use for my feelings about her is Labyrinthian. She is in possession of a specific quality that perhaps only exists in relation to me but in no small fashion exists. This quality is disputatious, truculent, bellicose even. She brings out in me a sense of anger and a need to prove myself and, in no small part, a desire to destroy pretty things if only to have a power over them that she has oft possessed over me.
Love her?
I am grateful for this physical shell and the conditions into which I was born. Perhaps you think I should thank her for having to fight and scrap so hard for everything and anything I ever held or owned. Perhaps I should thank her for making me feel small and insignificant even in my brightest moments. All of these scenarios are formative, but you don’t thank your jailor. What do you do to them?
This is what I’ve begun to consider in my more loquacious hours of self revelation in this place. This is how you came to me.