{"id":19278,"date":"2009-11-16T12:36:32","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T17:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=19278"},"modified":"2009-11-16T12:38:14","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T17:38:14","slug":"get-me-off-this-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/get-me-off-this-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"Get me off this ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Amanda Painter<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

I had just spent several minutes looking through my paternal great-grandfather’s meticulous log of every theatrical performance he saw during the early years of the 20th century, complete with ticket prices, written in flowing, precise script. I was fantasizing about ancestors I never knew, wondering what other family stories lay buried in our cupboards and how many of them I might never really understand, now that my father had died a few months ago. Mom and I were trying to sort through mountains of paper still looming from his death this summer and the preceding years.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>
Amanda Painter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“A piece of paper was underneath a chair I moved the other day,” said Mom. This sounded exciting. She continued, “It was a legal document naming Herberta Moran, bringing a formal complaint against John Painter Sr. for abandonment.”<\/p>\n

Shit. I had a different feeling where this was going now. Herberta and John were my paternal grandparents, and my father had been born a good bit less than nine months after they were married. My grandfather never lived with his wife and son, much less provide any kind of home — no house, apartment, room in a boarding house. It sounded like a sad situation, to be sure: difficult, heartbreaking, lonely, disillusioning. In the 1940s, it was still difficult for a woman to initiate divorce proceedings, so my grandmother and her infant son lived with her parents for the two years while they waited for the divorce, and possibly longer.<\/p>\n

My father’s conception was always a touchy subject with my mom; not only had her relationship with her mother-in-law been awful, but my mother has always held some pretty black and white views on sex and relationships. And they are very different from mine in ways that tend to feel a bit like a demented carnival ride when we try to talk about them. My mother spoke again.<\/p>\n

“You know, it’s still hard to be a single mom. I can’t support you.”<\/p>\n

Ah, right: there it was — the whole reason she started speaking. My premarital sex (the only kind I’ve had) = pregnancy. Pregnancy = a ruined life, since I am not married.<\/p>\n

It was the same equation in college, when I first started having sex: sex = pregnancy = dropping out of college = ruined life.<\/p>\n

Things start to get really fun when we add in her view of the breakup of a serious sexual relationship: premarital sex + breakup = irrevocably damaging heartbreak = ruined life.<\/p>\n

As we all know (ahem), women have sex because they think a man will marry them. When that doesn’t happen, the disillusionment scars them for life.<\/p>\n

If we want some icing for that slice of cake, check this out: she’s wanted me to provide grandkids for at least the last five years or more. If I don’t have kids soon, I’ll be barren and bitter and empty inside, according to her. And then I’ll have to fill the void by teaching school or something. So: turning thirty = the age when she had me = time for me to reproduce. Time to reproduce + not married = about-to-be-ruined life. Clearly, my odds are running out, right? If I don’t get married soon, that inevitable pregnancy will happen in an inevitably ruinous context.<\/p>\n

I think I’m dizzy.<\/p>\n

If anyone can see the emergency shut-off switch for this ride, please wave at me on my next go-round. Normally I’d keep my head and arms safely inside, but it may be time to break that rule. I’ve been “safe” — and stuck — for far too long.<\/p>\n

The first time I learned that my father may have been conceived “illegitimately” was Thanksgiving of my sophomore year of college. I was trying to borrow the car to get to my gynecologist for my three-month birth control check-up, using some false pretense I can’t recall. My mother asked point-blank if I was having sex. I followed the advice of Seventeen Magazine<\/em> and said yes. It was terrifying, but I took heart in knowing that I was being honest about trying to be responsible for my health.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t expecting my mother to turn on me later during the holiday. I forget the exact words, but I’ll never forget the feeling of being blindsided as she hissed some backhanded comment at me about the dates of my father’s birth versus his parents’ wedding. Her implication was clear enough however, as her fear for my well-being was overshadowed by her fear of shame and mixed with resentment over how her mother-in-law had treated her over the years. And said mother-in-law was standing a couple of rooms away during a rare visit. It was a rather tense holiday.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the lesson I took away with me was to say as little as possible to my mother about my sexual relationships. I’m not entirely sure at this point whether this has worked for me over the years or against me. Generally it seemed like my private life was both private and mine, but it may have only been the former. Every once in a while my mother would come out with some piece of outdated advice or ask some clearly out-of-touch question, and I’d bounce between trying to avoid it and trying to explain why it might not apply to me (or to many people I know).<\/p>\n

The recent comment prompted by the divorce notice was only the latest in a long history of her fears generating some faulty math. It is frustrating and sad, and I wish I could find a way to get her to understand many things: that the world doesn’t quite line up with her conception of it; that there are many parts of the sex\/relationship conversation that even Dr. Phil might not get right (or even entertain), despite what she may think; that her fear, her shame, and her feared shame are not mine; me.<\/p>\n

But maybe that’s part of the problem: I want her to understand me, and that may not be possible. In fact, it looks like I may have stumbled onto some math of my own: I want her to understand me = I want her to approve of me. And wanting her to approve of me = a ruined life, since I will never be able to live my life exactly how she would like me to live it for her. That’s been apparent since I was a toddler.<\/p>\n

What hasn’t been apparent to me since I was a toddler is just how paralyzed I’ve been as a result and what to do about it. At this point, my internalized mother may actually be harder to deal with than the real one. She’s harder to see, blending in with the rest of me. Most of the time I don’t even know she’s there, which is a big part of the problem. Maybe it’s the<\/em> problem. After all, no one wants to hurt someone they love. But when “betraying” Mom = hurting myself = a ruined life, and staying loyal to her also = hurting myself = a ruined life, clearly I’ve gotten the math wrong in one of those equations.<\/p>\n

I think I know which equation is faulty. Now where did you say that emergency shut-off switch is located?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Amanda Painter I had just spent several minutes looking through my paternal great-grandfather’s meticulous log of every theatrical performance he saw during the early years of the 20th century, complete with ticket prices, written in flowing, precise script. I was fantasizing about ancestors I never knew, wondering what other family stories lay buried in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}