It's all still in my head right now, ideas swimming around in free-form, but I am beginning to piece to together a connection between my grandparents' escape from Nazi occupation in 1939, the passing down of intergenerational trauma, and my own, reoccurring, descents into victimization and self-punishment.
My mom has a tendency to brush it off and change the subject when I start to talk about my link to my paternal grandparents' escape from Nazi Germany. Maybe she feels it's a part of my identity that has absolutely nothing to do with her, and maybe she doesn't like that. Perhaps it's just a topic that causes her eyes to glaze over, the way mine do when she begins another diatribe about the state of the healthcare system.
But I don't think I should dismiss this connection I feel, this need to explore this part of my family's history, and how it has contributed to who I am, both genetically and emotionally. I wonder, is progeny responsible for the indefinable guilt I have experienced since early childhood? Do two generations of repressed trauma and secrecy have a noticeable affect on the third generation?
I've always had this bizarre sense, way back in the depths of my consciousness (however, it is a conscious awareness), that when I am out on the streets, dating ex-cons and murderers, taking drugs, and allowing myself to be abused in various ways, that I am some kind of vigilante investigative reporter, tracking down stories for which most journalists would not risk their lives or reputations. The darkness of the world has always compelled me to make sense of it, to understand the inner workings of said darkness on an individual level. Through understanding a few specific people, I am gaining a generalized education in the development of dysfunction, addiction, and learned (as opposed to instinctual) fear.
I wish I knew my grandparents' story better than I do. I know only surface level information, little more than what is available through a Google search, with justifiable reason. My grandparents, Henry and Elly Glass, were miniature-sized couple who walked slow, were perpetually cold due to prescribed blood-thinning medication intended to counteract years of Elly's Viennese cooking. Despite decades in the U.S., their accents were as heavy as they were precious and they, in true European fashion, had complete outfits for every occasion. Neither owned a single garment made from denim, and they considered peanut butter to be proletariat. Charming as they wereCulturally, we have accepted Holocaust survivors' reluctance to unveil the atrocities they have witnessed. My Jewish heritage was not revealed to me until the summer before my junior year of college. Revealed to me so casually, in passing, and as if the information had always been common knowledge, I was stunned. It's funny to me now, looking back, how plainly it had been presented to me throughout my life. Yet, as casually as it was mentioned to me that August day of 2003, the evidence to back it up was the area of contention, the question that could not be asked directly of either of my grandparents. Also, as I had always been aware of this vague family history, I'd been equally aware that it was not appropriate to ask them about it.
So how do my holocaust survivor grandparents fit into the story of my own life, filled with dangerous characters, illegal substances, and willing footsteps towards complete submergence into anomie? My grandparents, from such a completely different time and place that even with what they had to endure during Hitler's regime, I believe they would've been devastated to learn of the places I had gone willingly, the chemicals I ingested, and the men I allowed to invade my aura.
When I think about what they went through, the adversity they had to overcome, how they had to leave their country, lose friends and family, suffer who knows what kinds of personal violations in order to secure their freedom, I am ashamed of myself. What a complete lack of respect I've had for my family's history.
My grandfather always wanted me to pursue the arts. In his opinion, I should have focused on fashion design. Well, I think that would've been ab-fab, but I was too impatient to learn how to sew. I was also too impatient to learn to play the guitar, deeming null my prospect of becoming the next rock god(dess). I considered other options in the arts, such as painting, but found as a teenager unwilling to get a full-time job for any longer than six months, the cost of materials was a major deterrent. Photography offered even more absurd financial woes.It wasn't that I chose writing as a career path because of it's low overhead, I just got lucky. Writing requires no accompaniment, or special ability other than typing (but even that I postponed until my mid-twenties, opting rather for spiral bound notebook and decent quality pen).
Am I reaching here? Am I wanting to make something out of nothing because of the identity it might provide me? Probably. But I won't know what I'm searching for unless I travel down a few dead ends along the way. Too bad life doesn't have a GPS system. I guess some questions have to be important enough to be worth searching for answers, and getting hopelessly lost along the way.
Below is a flash version of the anthology from my memoir class at UW. You may recognize the name of one of the authors. And here's an "oldie but goodie" that I thought I'd throw in for comic relief.
It's late and I've been thinking...I want to have a baby. Not right now. I want to go to grad school next year and don't want to have to deal with breastfeeding and childcare, but I do want a family. I want to get married. I want to be healthy. I want to travel. I want to leave Washington. HAM does not want children, he refuses to get married, has already told me that he will not leave Washington when I go to grad school, and he said he wants to drink and will not stop, but he'll stop in front of me. I realized that stopping in my presence is not enough. Not getting married is not enough. Not having children is not enough. Not moving to be with me is not enough. He loves me, but not the way I need to be loved. I tried to break up with him because of alcohol, and he made me feel guilty about it, like I was totally out of line for wanting to be with a sober person. So then I tried to break up with him because he doesn't believe in marriage, and he made me feel guilty for that because "you'd rather just find someone who will marry you than be with a really good guy". God, he has this way of making everything that he says sound so reasonable and everything that I say sound irrational. But I know in reality that I deserve the things I want. I'm not asking for the moon, a million dollars, or to be the next Brady Bunch. I just want to leave Washington, get married, have a family, and be with someone who is passionately in love with me. Why the fuck should I feel guilty about that? How the fuck is that irrational or unreasonable or shameful in any way? It's not much. It's just a few things that I know I want for my life. Instead of just accepting that we are different and want different things, he wants to keep me as his girlfriend, keep drinking, never get married, never have kids, and never leave Seattle. It's not the goddamn life I want! I finally just conceded and said, "Okay, let's stay together. I surrender. I'll drink with you and I won't care about marriage, it doesn't matter. Everythings' fine." So I drink with him. I don't even want to, but fuck, if I don't drink with him, I hate him. I am seething with anger when he drinks around me and the only way to cure my disdain is to join him. I'm so fucking mad. I don't want this and he won't let me go. They never let me go. They always want to control me. He acts like he's so much better than all my other boyfriends, and yeah, in a lot of ways he is, but at the same time, he's set it up so it's cool for him to have female friends but unacceptable for me to have male friends. He's unwilling to read my writing or be supportive of what I'm working on. He refuses to acknowledge my past. If you deny my past, then you deny me. And by denying my writing, he's also denying one of the most important parts of me. It hurts. I'm tired of being judged and controlled and treated like a silly girl. He calls me "pet". That's his nicknmame for me. I'm not a goddamn pet. I'm a woman. I'm older than him. I know more by default. I know what I fucking want out of life and this isn't it. I want my needs and desires to be respected as valuable pieces of information about who I am. I want to go to grad school, live outside of Washington State, get married, and have children. I need a relationship that supports that, or I need my freedom. I'm tired of sacrifcing who I am and made to feel guilty about what I want. I love HAM. I'm mad at him, but I truly love him. I wish he wanted the same things as me, or that he was at least willing to meet me half way, but he's not. It's what he wants or nothing at all. I can't last in something so one-sided. I deserve to be happy, too. The things I want matter. Maybe not to him, but they matter and they're valid and I won't stop wanting them no matter what he says.
God damn it. I want to be taken seriously about this. Just because I don't look fat to you doesn't mean I'm not suffering from this disorder. I eat until I'm sick. I think about food all the time. I sometimes eat so much that I have to throw up just to stop my stomach from hurting. I am not well and I need help. I need therapy and medication directed toward getting this ED under control. I can't spend the rest of my life like this. I can't! How would you like to live your life under the thumb of food obsession? How would like all of the decisions you make to be based on when and where you will be able to eat the amount of food you want to eat without anyone seeing you? This is totally FUCKED. I refuse to spend the rest of my life under this sick spell. I NEED HELP! Do you hear me? This is NOT OKAY!!!
Now excuse me while I go eat an entire pizza and box of oreos...
I am work and nearing my period. In fact, according to MyMonthlyCycles.com, I should have started it yesterday. I feel tired and, of course, fat. I finally got enough sleep last night after not being able to sleep for two nights because I was so mad about this thing with my dad and DL. But I may end up being able to purchase a place anyway. It will only be for half the amount that I would've had, but whatever, at least I will have a piece of property in my name and the value will actually be increasing instead of decreasing like it is right now in the stock market. But I have to say, I think it's ridiculous that she's getting half of my inheritance when she's going to die a few years after him anyway. I should get at least 60%. My grandparents didn't leave me anything directly, it all went into a family trust, which means my dad gets to wield his power and control me because he knows I want a house. And he has all these rules on what the money can be used for. Like, I can't use it to pay for grad school or get breast implants. I can only use it to buy a house and only on his terms. I wish I could just move out of his fucking house and stop having this dictator tell me how selfish I am and how I think everything is about "me, me,me". What a cock-sucking sonofabitch! Seriously - we're all selfish, our own world always revolves around ourselves, even if we don't want to admit it. We spend more time thinking about ourselves than we do anyone else and that's just plain fact. He's just as selfish as anyone else, and I know because he's hoarding all that money pretending like it's all his when I was my grandparents ONLY grandchild and they loved me and I'm sure they meant for some of that money to go to me. So really, my dad is the selfish one, not me. God, it just gets me riled up thinking about it. Usually writing makes me feel better, but I'm just getting more and more angry as I write this. And the worst part is, I can't move out. HAM has a criminal record and I have toilet credit, and together we are the anti-rent poster children. But now my dad doesn't even want HAM living in the MIL apartment in the basement because he could get more rent from someone else, so that means that we'd have to live upstairs in my childhood bedroom, right next to my dad's bedroom. Fuck that noise. I don't know what's going to happen. All I know is I am sick of living with my dad and dealing with him taking pain pills and drinking every day and I hate his attitude toward me as being some incompetent little woman who can't handle money or responsibility. For a long time, he said I could ONLY get a condo because I wouldn't be able to take care of a house. That's also bullshit. I'm just so tired of him knowing everything about my life so he can always give me his opinion. I just want to separate from him and his bitchy, whiny cat and maybe not talk to him for a while so I can make decisions for myself without being clouded by his thoughts on my decisions, or his "suggestions" that seep into my subconscious so deeply that I always end up doing what he wants. He is the number one controller in my life and I've been nice for a long time, always telling him he's right and smart and knows how everything works and I'll just listen to him and do what he says but you know what? It's not me! I can't ever do any goddamn thing without his opinion finding it's way into my brain. I want out of this relationship! I want my money and my freedom, everything else will be up to me, mistakes and all.
I'm at work right now and I have to write from work because HAM and I will hopefully be spending time together once I'm off. Today I went to counseling in the morning and the gym on my lunch break. I love productive days like this where I get shit done in the morning so by the time I'm done with work I don't have anything else to do. I bought a protein bar and a salad at Whole Foods and ate the protein bar, then got an Americano after the gym. Still haven't eaten the salad yet. Today in counseling (as you know, since you were there) we talked about fat/ looks and why it is so important to me. That possibly I believe the only way people will like me is if I am beautiful and thin. I know there is more to people than looks. Obviously! I have dated various guys (and even married a guy) who lack a complete set of teeth. My ex-fiance had something he called "dick-do". That's when your belly sticks out further than your dick do. My husband was bald on top - he only had hair around the sides of his head (just like my grandpa). But the issue, of course, isn't the people I have had relationships with - it's me and my ridiculously high standards for myself. But it's not just looks that matter to me. I also want to be smart and funny and accomplished. I want to do something worthwhile with my life. And be beautiful. But why is so overwhelmingly important and obsessive to be beautiful? Am I just a product of my culture? Apparently not. Apparently, it has more to do with feeling like I can't control anything in my life, that I am ineffectual (is that how you spell it?) and so I use my weight/ food/ looks because it's all I am able to control. Damn, that's some deep shit. Why would I have such a strong desire to control anything? Maybe because people have always been controlling me and making decisions for my life. Like ALL, he controlled every move I made. And my ex-husband, RC. After college I was hoping to go to grad school or at least get a good job, but he moved me out to the mountains where I couldn't get a job and was totally isolated. There were plenty other boyfriends - paranoid, delusional, controlling boyfriends who kept tabs on every fucking thing I did, every male friend, every time I went out without them. I had one boyfriend who was so delusional that when I came home wearing one of my Dad's shirts, he accused me of having an incestuous relationship with him. I had one boyfriend kidnap me and keep me against my will until I finally escaped. I actually had to run for my life, jump over fences, and hide in a fucking bush to escape this maniac. Even my Dad - he has so much power over me that all he has to do is dislike something I want to do, and before I know it, I have given up. He's the reason I had an abortion (the most recent one anyway). There's always some dude pulling my strings from behind a curtain. I'm this pretty little puppet, just moving about the way I'm told. So yeah, that gets old. When I was with ALL, I was at my most perfect weight. My body was rock solid and I weighed about 110. I looked amazing. But my exercise routine was unreal. I spent 2 1/2 hours at the gym every time I went. And I even had to fight him for that time at the gym. It became a major source of tension in our relationship because when we were doing the long-distance thing, he didn't like not being able to contact me for those 2 1/2 hours, and when I was living with him, he didn't want to spend that long at the gym. He controlled everything in my life, so I controlled my body. But now I'm with HAM and he doesn't control anything. I am free to do whatever the fuck I want and he doesn't ever tell me what to do or try to influence me to do what he wants or thinks is right. The only thing he wants for me is for me to do what I want and to be happy. And to love him. And it's easy to love him. I wonder if he reads this? If he does he probably hates how much I talk about my exes, but it's therapeutic. I need to write about them to get them out of my system. I remember when ALL started telling me not to get too muscular because he wouldn't be attracted to me. I didn't understand this, since he always said he would still love me and think I was hot if I got fat...but not extremely fit? So of course I started lifting heavier weights and doing less reps. I started working on my upper body a lot, doing pull-ups and dips, flys and bicep curls. Then after we broke up I got even more intense about it because I was pissed. I wanted to run fast, workout hard, be big and strong and look like you better not fuck with me. But the thing about it is, it's really addictive. Once you start getting big, even though it looks a little scary on a girl, it feels good. Looking in the mirror and seeing all that definition, those giant biceps, cut up traps and lats. It feels good to be strong. And maybe I wouldn't be able to take on a 220 pound ex-con with a DV problem, but at least I look like you better not fuck with me. So yeah, control. I control my body. But no one is controlling me anymore. I can do what I want now. So does that mean that my obsession with weight and looks means something other than needing to control something in my life, or is it residual shit left over from a past of violent and controlling men? I guess I've been doing the whole weight-crazy thing since around the time my parents were in the process of divorce. I was eight then, so of course I had no control over my parents relationship. Maybe it all goes back to that. But seriously, I'm really over it! That was so long ago! I love my parents, they're still friends, everyone has moved on. I don't hold grudges and I don't hold on to the past. I'm way more of a future-tripper than I past-obsesser. I guess the reality is that I don't know why I'm such a freak about my physical appearance. I know it doesn't feel good to put this much pressure on myself, but I'm afraid to/ don't know how to stop. Oh well, I guess this is a to-be-continued situation.
I don't know if it's my period, or if I'm really starting to binge again. The medication seemed to work for quite a while. I stopped bingeing almost immediately after I started taking the medication. But i guess now since I've been on it for a while, it's losing it's effectiveness. It just seems so backward to me that the one thing I want more than anything in this world is to be hot, yet I do something repeatedly to ensure that I won't be hot. For breakfast I had my toaster waffles and eggs with agave nectar and a little peanut butter, and two cups of coffee with milk. For lunch I had a sandwich on wheat bread with avocado, goat cheese, spinach, tomatoes, pickles, and carmelized onions and a Mango Kombucha. Later I got an iced latte. For dinner I had two veggie tacos, 2 1/2 pieces of bread with peanut butter and agave nectar, and a few strawberries, plus a bunch of bites of peanut butter. Then later I had blueberries (a lot of them) with low-fat cottage cheese. Jesus Fucking Christ! I am out of my mind. That was probably over 2000 calories of food and I only did a half hour of cardio today. I am getting fatter by the second. I know part of my problem is coffee. When I start drinking coffee, my water consumption gets lower and lower until I'm back to being totally dedhydrated. The dehydration is so normal to me that I don't even know I'm dehydrated, so my brain sends a message to be body to put something in it, and my body decides that the something is food, when water is what I actually need. I was doing pretty good for a few days, but the same thing always happens. I stop drinking water and start eating more and more and drinking more and more coffee. Why am I such a fuck-up? I don't think anyone has ever hated themselves as much as I hate me. I am such a fucking failure. I want to be a size 2 and I'm a size 4. I want to eat healthy and I eat way too much. At least I'm sticking to the no added sugar, no sugars other than stevia and agave nectar. That hasn't been so bad. But I'm still eating too much. I did it yesterday, too. I was just going to have a little snack before the gym and i ended up eating a ton and not even going to the gym. I ate a Larabar, which is the only bar out there that has NO added sugar, not even honey. It's sweetened with dates. I got a latte too. And some trail mix, of which I was only going to have a little, but instead I ate the whole bag. Then I went back and bought some grapes and cherries and ate those too. I think I need to just stop eating a lot more foods. Like no fruit, no peanut butter, and no bread. And no agave nectar. Just vegetables, cottage cheese, eggs, and quinoa. Maybe a little salmon, if I decide fish is okay. I hate myself, I hate that I have no self-control. I feel like such a failure. Why can't I just control what I eat? I have to quit coffee again. FUCK.
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