Bet you thought I’d forgotten about you, you thing you. Two nights on, and I’m ready for zombie-hood. This is where I put in a trigger warning, but I’m not sure what exactly I’m warning against. Heroin and children. This one won’t be funny.
It has been a rough week or so on the thinking-and-feeling front, though the attention this post will give it makes it sound a lot worse than it is. I do have a life, after all. Peaches Geldof. Heroin overdose. Small children left behind. Commentary. It’s the commentary that’s caught me.
Beyond feeling vaguely sorry, and hoping it was accidental, I didn’t think about it very much. I did roll my eyes a little, because I could see the gear-up of the media…and blort. It isn’t as if I knew her. So vaguely sorry it is.
My biological mother was a heroin addict. And here I don’t have much else, because I remember very little. I can’t validate the dichotomy of loving her and wanting to escape, of feeling horrible things and never being able to produce an example. I have vague memories - being hit across the face, we had two cats, seeing horses for the first time, landing on a bed after being thrown (it was soft - and it might have been play), pointless sympathy from adults and not understanding it - and a scar on my shoulder. I remember Mum talking about it, saying “She doesn’t remember…we’ll tell her it’s a birthmark.” I looked at it when I was nineteen and I think it’s a cigarette burn. Very by-the-way. Barely visible now anyway.
Amnesia is annoying. It feels as if I belong to a club, but not really. And I didn’t (don’t?) belong to the rest of the world, because all of “this” happened to me. As a kid, I mostly thought that people were shit. That the nice smiling faces people wore were just faces. That kindness was a con. That if I was alone with anyone…but I didn’t know what would happen. It would just be dark and bad and somewhere, probably not out loud, I would be screaming. That makes everything in my head sound like an armed camp. And for a while it was. Years, even. But there were good people who lived their smiling faces, who were good. And I wanted, hoped it would get better. I wanted to be kind. Not like Them.
I was fostered when I was five, by someone who used to babysit me. Actually, I showed up for a babysit and asked if I could stay for good. Apparently that’s a big deal at five, but I have a vague feeling that Mum might have teed me up to do it.
And, you know, I’m so much better off because I can’t remember (please insert ambivalence at appropriate point). Except sometimes I do. The memories are still in there, and I walk softly if I think they’ll surface. So celebrities dying of overdoses, I don’t get all tightened up, but I do avoid finding anything out. When I was younger, I would read these things and viciously loathe the person who died, blaming them for their problems. As I got older, I guess I made peace with it. I was in a better place. Mum wasn’t a terrible person, and without memory to back that up, how would I know?
I know: she was clever and creative and artistic; the feel of her arms around me; she taught me to read the word extraordinary (extra-plus-ordinary, sound it out). But I also know it was always dark; I was afraid; she was afraid. I don’t want to remember but sometimes I do. Maybe what I imagine is in there (which I don’t - I only imagine its dimensions) is far worse than reality.
So I come across this article, and reading it again for this entry, realise I totes missed the author’s background, and I think I just explained how the above came to be written instead of a straightforward sum up and general silliness (always my first choice).
But I have no position. I can’t be unambiguous about drug addiction or addicts. But then I came across this one, and I still can’t bring myself to read it closely. I haven’t read any of the links, and may never do so. This screaming rage is something I really can’t stand (and I may rebut some wussypants thoughts somewhere near the end).
I don’t understand the second article, really. Heroin addiction isn’t going to make you person of the year. Unless you’re completely upfront and don’t give a shit, you’re going to lie to people about your addiction. The second piece points out children of addicts are statistically fucked. I’m using the technical term. And rants about motherhood and celebrity, and so freaking what? You just “proved” that Peaches stuffed up herself and her kids. Nice job in her defence. Remind me to hire you if I want to go down for something I didn’t do.
I could pick a position on what Peaches did and stare luridly in at her toddler, but I think I’ll pass. I’m stuck on, “you so totes screwed up there, girlfriend”, but even that seems rude. I didn’t know her. I could talk about the need for help for the disease of addiction. I could talk about the stupidity of victim-blaming. I could, but I won’t.
Pointless sympathy, on the other hand, drives me right up the wall. Now, I can raise the metaphorical two fingers and ignore you, but when I was a powerless kid, sympathy only made me feel pitiable. I already believed I was the most worthless thing alive. Cut that shit out.
So. Screaming rage. I avoid it. I try. And I wonder if I’m weak for doing that, if I am nothing but a big fat chicken. And then, spiralling, wonder if that it’s that original feeling of worthlessness makes me pause first, and (want to) fuck off when the yelling starts. And then I remember or, more rarely, have those moments of peace, where I’m not angry, not furious, and the answer doesn’t seem to matter that much. But I would like to know if leaving rage behind is an answer (not so much whether I’m a big chicken). There is a lot I would not have survived without it.
If the answer is love I need to find an immediate bucket, because that is just too saccharine for words. It might be, it might not, cynicism aside, but I don’t think love is the answer for me in particular. Love was a door. A way of seeing other possibilities. What I don’t want is to be enraged. Furious. Yelling at the the world*. Forever looking backward and assuming it will happen again. Some other bastard will hurt me, and it will validate every horrible thing I’ve experienced. Reduce me to a little one shivering in the dark. Afraid of bad things happening, I’m fine with. That’s caution and repeating the past can eff off.
* Yelling at the world, or having stern words with it, is surprisingly easy to do with a clenched jaw. You don’t clench your teeth, you just tighten your jaw. I don’t know why I’m offering advice on this - although being icy and controlled can be hilarious if you manage to keep your temper - the headache afterwards can be bad.
The story continues (one of the few times I go back and edit this thing).
At the risk of repeating myself, love and peace, peeps.
