Nil has encouraged me to come back here. I haven't felt like writing here for ages. In some ways, I guess, I know that some of what I might write will be some of the last things I write and that sort of tangles me up a bit because it creates a type of writers stage fright. I think these remaining posts will just be less focused.
There are things I want to write to my brothers, final things, that I'm not looking for a response to. It's just what I wish for them. I feel like I'm leaving them in a mess, not my mess mind you, but a mess created by our mother, that once learned as children, they can't seem to unlearn the dynamic. My family behaves like that television series Succession. A quagmire of competition, resentment and secrets.
My eldest brother once filmed our mother, and asked her why she had so many kids. On film her reply was that she wanted us to have someone to talk to. Her example given, if I remember correctly, was something along the lines of: You know, if mom does something you don't like you can all huddle together and have a grumble about mom.
That's really not a reason to have kids, and the answer was the type of answer you tell your kids because it's much sweeter than the truth. Each one of my siblings, at one time or another, has cornered me and regaled me with a tale about another sibling doing something worthy of gossip. I've been guilty of this too over the years. Coinciding with those moments have been the times when each sibling has cornered me once again to tell me of a time when our mother cornered one of my siblings and regaled them with a tale about one of their siblings doing something worthy of gossip. She pitted my brothers against one another and like all good children they carry on with what they've learned. She created the same dynamic with me but not towards my brothers but instead my father. I fought with my father for years all based upon what I had been told by my mother.
A lot of wasted years for me, I'd say.
I was taken from my mother around the age of eleven. Got swept out of my home and away from her, and thought it was a long journey for me, each step of the way I was placed into the arms of angels. I don't have any complaints. I'm done and dusted with that. I feel a deep sorrow and pity for my brothers yet I love them deeply. They are the only family I 'know of''; but I don't know them at all. They got swept away to California and remained a unit in some manner. A unit I wasn't a part of. I feel certainty in writing that each one of my brothers harbors a pain similar to mine; for me it's all a Greek tragedy.
But I'm going to go now. I can't make anyone feel what I feel. God knows I've tried.
I'm calm knowing my departure. My dear friend Sue who has known me since I got swept away from my mother asked me just the other day, she wrote, "You fought for your life so many times. Is it time to rest now?" She often over these years has asked me things like that, things I've had to ponder. She was one of those angles whose arms I was placed in.
Is it time to rest now? Good question. I am tired. I never wanted to live forever. Any bucket list I might have ever had really only contained a few items. Number one on the list was to become as whole a person as I could unlearning what I learned from my mother and replacing it with who I felt myself truly to be. I think I got damned close on that one. I feel whole and completed. Another item on the list was to prove to myself, ---of course proving my mother wrong--, that I could sing well enough that others would want to hear my voice. I accomplished that. I'm a very good singer. I wanted to be an opera singer and that never happened, But Blanche Moyse thought I was worthy of that role and insisted that I audition for another opera singer, which I did, singing Caro Mio Ben. But at that time, I already knew that I was not the type of person who was emotionally suited to that kind of profession life. I'm not cut out for that. Instead I lent my voice to avant-garde musicians and had lots of fun doing so.
In my youth I would have to describe myself as a bundle of crazy. Inside I had endless wires looking for a socket. I left my mother electrocuted and frazzled. All those wires needed reconnection and while the majority are in place now, leaving me calm inside it took decades to reassemble my internal network. While I was crazy, I would have been the last person suitable for a career in opera. But to have been pushed for an audition as a much older and calmer woman gave me a sense of pride. It also made me understand that what others saw from the outside was someone finally capable and much more whole. what others saw tended to match my insides. I just didn't want to be an opera singer anymore but that was a proud moment for me.
I'm not tired in the sense of feeling weary, sour or bitter. As odd as it may sound I feel like there isn't anyone left to play with. Many of the best people in my life are on the other side now and I have big plans for a yack fest once I arrive. I'm not interested in so many things that are available at present.. I feel a bit like a fossil. I write this knowing that those that are in my life right now might scream a collective yell saying: But what about me?! I'm here, I'm fun, I play with you. Why not stay for me? To those dear ones I say: I will stay as long as I can and I will enjoy every moment on this earth with you. You are a part of my blessings. Don't worry about my love for you.
I feel like what's on my mind is never on anyone else's mind. That feels like a type of loneliness. Like I have no-one to talk to about the things that matter to me. I'm probably skewed in this respect. One of my brothers once said, and I've come to feel the same: I've had the best education money could buy and it left me with no-one to talk to. So in this sense I do feel a need to rest.
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