I've been grappling with new - to me - concerns, and even though I know some people hate the seeming self indulgence of examining the inner world - as one friend put it over dinner - I think others aren't so critical. So, having made some of you laugh about voting while Republicanised, or cheer at my Berkeley bashing, I'm heading straight down to the cellar to wallow in some blood red depression.
It has been said of me, over the years, that I land on my feet, that nothing keeps me down for long, that I am a visionary, a catalyst, an optimist, an advocate for all who are weak and vulnerable....blah blah...you get the picture. It was said that every project I touched turned to gold. I'm bright, warm, upbeat, self confident, self aware and creative. Sounds OK. Oh, yes, and 'emotionally available'. This is a California Concept so it has to be qualified as such!
I am however not described as collegial, flexible, empathetic, or 'easy'. I'm more often called difficult, combative, challenging and more recently - angry. Oh dear.
In my brief foray into online dating I gave the required one word description: 'intense'. No-one would argue with that. I say 'brief foray' because online dating is emotion via remote control, and I cannot do remote. I need face to face, I do not function well when my emotions are being manipulated through a computer screen or even through the mouthpiece of a telephone. I mean how well do you do when the words are disconnected from the body language? The eyes, the smile, the awkward physical movements, the turn of the head, the way in which the eyes look away, the mouth contorts, the veins stand up in the neck?
But back to the cellar. This depression which has raged within me and has forced it's way into every nerve ending is causing me to re-assess every part of my life, every relationship, every event and trauma. Because I have come to understand that when I was described as 'anti-social' at the age of 13, it wasn't just because I was against the Vietnam War and listened to Jimi Hendrix on a forbidden transistor radio in the woods behind the dreaded boarding school. Perhaps alcoholism, sexualisation, physical abuse, and abandonment might just have played a part....hello??????? We'll call my abandonment, and that of my little brother 'convenience abandonment' - I'm sorry, it just isn't convenient to have kids right now.
I feel as if I am tearing down the paper covering the windows of a new storefront - you know, you've walked past it for months unable to look in while they get it ready, and now it's open for business. And business it is.
I love my family. I worshipped my mum, was in awe of my father, and am proud to have forged strong friendships with my two brothers. But the Berlin Poseners - go ahead Google them - are as competitive a clan as you will find, and the pride that fuels the fierce determination to succeed is matched by a determination to keep the image alive - that image that my mum summed up neatly when she said - often - 'don't be such a bloody weakling'.
Loneliness, fear, insecurity. Not exactly Posener characteristics. In a book called 'Changing Our Lives', the author writes about my gradual disenchantment with radical lesbian politics:
'Anyone even remotely acquainted with Jill Posener would find it hard to understand why such a self assured, outgoing person took so long to become aware of precisely what was going on and how it would affect her'.
Errrrmmm...well, it has taken me 40 years to 'become aware' of how my childhood would affect me, and now I am battling an enemy unlike any piddling little government agency or police force, or industry - this is the enemy within.
And the effect is like a thunderstorm drenching me and making me pretty rough to be around. I do know that my love for my animals and their unconditional attention is sustaining me. I do know that certain kids who are in my life in even a small way are making me smile - the special needs kid who I rarely see but whom I came to adore because she doesn't know how not to trust, and the kid who wants to be a vet and the other who sees herself in the uniform of an animal control officer. I would have made a lousy parent, but it is never too late to make sure that another child does not look longingly down a driveway as her mother disappears.
The weak and the vulnerable. I've spent a lifetime standing for them with my fists and voice railing against the injustices they bear. If anyone still believes that searching through the debris of the inner world for the clues to what we do out of it is nothing more than embarrasing self indulgence - I've news for you. Go do some soul searching. You won't like what you find, but perhaps like everything else in this disposable world, you can sell it to the highest bidder on e bay.
Comments