The Jealous Girl

There we were back in '87. So much simpler then. 

Growing up in my family always felt like a competition. In order to get attention, you had to be the best, the smartest, the prettiest and any signs of weakness were unacceptable. Character flaws were attacked, ridiculed and flaunted by siblings (and sometimes, parents) with ruthless abandon.

My sister and I were always at each other's throats. It seemed that she could do no wrong. While we both exceled in school, she did particularly well in the subjects that "mattered" to our father. While I was great at reading, writing and history, my sister adored math and science. In the few times that I was able to pull out a higher grade than my sister in one of these particular subjects, I made sure to tear down my sister's work so that I would cast myself in that much of a greater light.

Remarks about how she would one day be the doctor that would take care of our parents, while I would be the daughter that struggled to keep her head above water, were constant (and perhaps self-fulfilling). She was the golden child with her long, straight, blond hair, lean and tall frame and perfectionist tendencies. Anything she had going on - be it homework, extracurricular activities, or social life - outranked anything that may have been happening in our home and took precedence over all (even to our parents). And as she was cast in this light, I, too was cast into a very different light.

I was the plain one. Unruly, mousy brown hair, stockier than my sister, and a tendency to rush through things based on a lack of patience, I was the household disappointment. It was more important for me to learn to cook, keep house, and raise children than to focus on extracurricular activities, friends or even school work.

I learned to seek out my sister's flaws, bring them to light, exaggerate them to cast myself in a better light. Where my sister could be rather bossy and comandeering to her friends, I learned to be the nice one, the understanding ear, the person that they could trust. I learned to steal her friends and turn them to me, to cause her jealousy to seep out and poison the friend's opinion of her.

We fought constantly (it's something of a legend among our brothers), but it all came down to who was the best, the brightest, the smartest, the most-talented. There was only the best - and the loser.

As my sister and I have grown up and gone our separate ways, it's no longer important or necessary to seek out ways to hurt her. It is no longer necessary to cast myself in this great light of important or best at her expense. I am content in my own life, in my own family, in my own world.

However, in my professional and personal life there have been women that I felt were a threat to me, my job or my family. I have attacked those women with the same manipulation that I had honed over the19 year history with my sister. Like a sharpened dagger, my jealousy of their obvious talents, knowledge, skill or beauty would attack, stabbing holes into their facades so that I may be exalted from the shadows of their now exposed shame. Malicious gossip, snide remarks and pettiness would tear down my "opponents" leaving them confused and in the dust.

In addition, my perception of myself is so skewed, so distorted that I have also attacked girls that embody the characteristics of my own self distortion. I see myself as an unattractive short, round, glasses-wearing, know-it-all with frizzy, untamed brown hair. Should I meet a girl that has these characteristics that shows me any signs of weakness, I would attack her, I would tear her down, I would slay her, as if in someway attacking her has conquered those images, those feelings about myself. The delight that I would feel in my "victory" was abhorrable, reprehensible, and disgusting. And the guilt that I would feel later only added to the destruction.

I fight against these tendencies every single day, because I know that they are just as destructive to me as they are to the people that I attack.

We, as women, should not have to attack one another to feel better about ourselves. I think somehow in our male dictated society we have learned that that is acceptable behavior - but it is so not. My realtionship with my sister is as close to irrepairable as it can be because of the words and actions of a childish me, I have missed out on truly knowing awesome people because of my own self-hatred,  and this is not acceptable to me.

I hope that I can teach Z that jealousy is useless. That it gets you nowhere in life. That it leads to other destructive behaviors. That is distorts trust, faith, hope and beauty.

My one wish is that she grows up to be content in her own skin - frizzy brown hair and all.

Bad Parenting 101

I don't like to think that I am a bad parent. But I am.

I don't like to portray myself as a bad parent. But I am going to.*

I use scare tactics to curb my child from killing herself, or making an ass of herself, or just plain out irritating me, whichever the case may be. There, I said it.

And I feel so much better.

Okay, not really. (Not really, about the feeling better part, I still have all of my own guilt, you know, and I am probably gonna own that until the day I die.)

Now, back to the scare tactics. I say things like,

"Everytime you make that screaming noise, you are killing Bambi"

or

"One day you will be so big that when you jump on my bed, you will hit the ceiling and we will have to replace the ceiling because you left all of your blood on it. Do you know how much a ceiling costs?"

or

"If Mommy can't get privacy to go to the bathroom in peace, then I will move in with you when you get married." (She is obsessed with marriage and husbands and babies, it feels a little abnormal for a 3 year old).

I potty trained her by traumatizing her with the very real threat of throwing her big girl panties in the trash when she would have an accident.

I am unsure what is going on here. One flip-flop, a piece of pizza, chocolate on the face. I am a bad mother. 

Sometimes, when I am tired of her rough housing, when I have told her to stop repeatedly, and then she hits me in the face (again) or tries to choke me (again), I will "die". I will lay on the bed or floor, close my eyes and not respond to her pleading for me to get up, please wake up. One time, she tired to cover up what she had done by placing a blanket over me and sitting on me so that Hubs wouldn't find me. Another time, I heard her go in the kitchen, nonchalantly report my death to the Hubs, and then ask for an apple, like it was just another day.

There are times when her tantrums are too big for us to both be in the house, and I walk out onto the porch to get away from her.

There are times that I give in to the tantrums because it is too cold or I am too tired to fight anymore. And she wins.

Which makes the next battle even harder.

There are times when she trips and falls, and I laugh because I have warned her and threatened her and she has to learn (that falling is pretty darn funny! oh, and that her momma is always right).

There are are times when I have stood up, turned off the TV, turned off all of the lights in the house (with her behind me every step, screaming her head off) and crawled into my bed as though I have not heard any of the screaming, pleading, foot stomping or felt any of the angry little fists or kicks, because I just couldn't take anymore.

I have not put aside a single penny for her college education. Firstly, because there are no scholarships for retirement and I would really like to do that some day, secondly, because the scondary degree (while expensive) really does not offer a student the type of guarantees that it used to and lastly, because no matter how smart you are, how high in your class you are, we are all doing the same thing after graduation: working to pay for our cars, our kids, our houses and our retirements. As long as she grows up to find contentment in life, I am happy.

Yeah, I am a bad parent, but at least I make you feel good about your parenting.

And I guess it could be worse.

* Please don't send DCFS to my door. That's my biggest fear in life, that someone would take my child away from me, which may be why blogging about my frustrations is the healthier alternative.

On Fear

Fear consumes me.

There have been tangible moments in my life, moments that, had I just listened to my fear, big, bad things would never have happened. To me, to my family, to my friends. Had others not laughed me off and proceeded with their plans, the Unknown would never have caught up with them.

I feel like women (or maybe all people, but who really knows what men think) have this sense when something big is about to happen. Especially when something bad is about to happen. There is a heaviness, a current, a restlessness, a something pointing directly towards the Unknown, but we do not know what it is. Lori discusses it here (read her blog, by the way, it's hard and raw, but the writing is so good that I feel like I have known her forever). 

The problem is that I am feeling all of this now. Something big is about to happen, something that is going to change my life. And I am scared.

At first, I thought it was just the weather. I mean it has been balmy and 85 out here for the last two weeks and it's never like that in February. Then, I thought, maybe it is just the month of February. My father died 3 years ago on Valentine's Day, it's a hard month for me to cope with, but this year, Valentine's Day floated on by like it was not a big deal and it didn't hurt as much as it has before.

The Fear is pushing me into dark corners and hard thoughts that I try to overcome everyday.

I can point to exact points in my life that I have felt this way and the subsequent major life changes that have happened to correspond with it. I can explain to you the way events turned or swayed in ways that they never have to coincide with said event.

Maybe, in my old age, I am turning into a bit of a conspiracy theorist (I guess it would not be that big of a leap), but until the Unknown reveals itself, I will be snuggling my family a little tighter, holding on to what's important and praying that God brings us through as unharmed as we can be.

And letting Fear know that it cannot control me.

 Update: Two days after writing this post, our car died. You can read more about that here.