Me - continued

So. I won't stop with saying I'm immature and broken, like a little glass teddy bear that's been dropped a hundred times and hasn't quite shattered, but rather been chipped and fragmented, leaving razor-sharp edges upon which the unwary can slice themselves open... I'll go one further, and try to explain why I'm this way. Not that you care, probably, but this is my blog. The whole point is to give me an outlet. I'm trying to make myself feel better. Your participation is not mandatory.

The main reason I am the way I am is, as with most personality traits, simple genetic predisposition. If you'd ever met my parents, or my sister... she's gonna need a name, really, and even though everyone who might ever read this knows who she is, I'm not going to put her actual name on the site. It's too personal. My sister shall be referred to as Jessica Rabbit, first of all because she is a long, slinky, red-headed Jessica Rabbit type, and secondly, because I can be generous with her. In real life, she's not bad--she's not even drawn that way--but I think she always wanted to be. So, in my blog, she can be bad, in exactly the nicest way a woman can be bad.

So. We'll start with my parents, and move onto my sister in a moment.

If you know my dad, you'll know that he's a sort of blustery, boisterous, aging Lothario, life-of-the-party type. His liveliness generally comes from alcohol, and later becomes belligerance (in that, he and I are very much alike--I'm like a church mouse unless I've had a few pints, then a party animal, then a crazy bitch with a chip on my shoulder) but in his natural state, my dad's actually kind of shy and sweet. He likes children, in the appropriate way. Coaches baseball. Has been, basically, a dog whisperer all his life, in spite of being bitten when he was quite young. Instead of giving him a phobia, it gave him a sort of transcendental calm. I have seen him place his hand on a snarling German Shepherd (the dog breed, not a blonde called Klaus who watches sheep) and within seconds, the dog is relaxed, friendly, tail wagging away, a slightly bewildered look on its face, as if to say, "Wait a second, I'm a finely-honed, well-trained, eat-small-children-for-breakfast attack dog. How the heck did that guy just come up and start rubbing my belly?" But by then, the battle has been lost, and the dog and my dad are friends for life. Seriously, life. If my dad disappears, then shows up two years later, the dog gets one sniff of him, and starts rolling around on his back, a playful puppy once more (I am not exaggerating, I have seen this with my own eyes).

So that's my dad, naturally. A lover of animals. A gentle man, who prefers coaching baseball and soccer, to having wild nights out. A melancholy soul, who chases women, not because he's a tart, but because he needs the affection and kindness that only women can provide; he needs the tenderness that was so absent from his own childhood.

But. The flip side of that, is an angry, bitter little boy, prone to temper tantrums and childish outbursts, who will never fully understand or accept the fact that life's not fair. His sensitive soul is continually buffeted by even the most minor storms, no insult or injury is beneath his notice, and with every passing day, he becomes more and more wounded by all the shit that life throws at him. He is self-destructive, prone to addiction, and desperate to escape the lonely confines of his own tortured thoughts (also, he has a chemical imbalance).

And my mother. She is so quiet, so shy, that she makes him seem like the party animal he tries so hard to portray. She believes in a loving God, who, if she were honest with herself, continually lets her down. He giveth, and He taketh away, and she refuses to assign blame, but instead, cries in the night and beats her breast and prays for a brighter tomorrow, and all the time, she is tormented by thoughts of her own failings and inadequacies. She claims to be a happy, easy-going person, but I know that deep down, my mother contemplates suicide every day. She is tired, and often feels defeated. Because she is so merciful and forgiving, people think she is emotionally resilient, and they just shit on her, all the time, never seeing that every time she lets another one of them step on her, a part of her soul is crushed into dust.

But she accepts it as her Christian duty, her struggle to be a good person, and she lets the entire world take advantage of her. She is not prone to rages, like Daddy, but she cries when she is all alone. My mother--Mama--is as wounded as my father, but in the way of a woman, a mother, she keeps her hurts to herself, nursing them silently, sometimes not nursing them at all.

It's hard to say which of them I worry about more. My dad, recklessly self-destructive, perfectly capable of accidentally committing suicide, or my mom, apparently patient, withdrawn, carrying around a festering internal hurt that no one ever thinks to ease.

And this combination, this myriad cesspool of dark and bright, of tears and wrath, of supreme selfishness and subservient selflessness, is the crockpot that simmered the stew of my sister's and my own DNA.

It is no wonder that we are the way we are. The wonder is that any of the four of us have managed to make it to adulthood and beyond. My parents are middle-aged now. I have children of my own. People who are, ostensibly, too fragile to live, have in their own way flourished, and even managed to breed.

But I look at my children, and I am so afraid. What if they turn out like me, like my mother, like my father? Worse yet, what if they turn out like their father?

And so, I am resigned to my mother's role in life. To pray, to forbear: to hope for better things for my children, than were given to me. And yet I know, we are at best only marginally better than the sum of our parts. More often, we are no greater than that, and usually less.

I look at the parts that have gone into making my own son and daughter, and I wonder; how will they rise above that? And I think of the parts that have gone into making me, and I wonder, how on earth will I give them anything better than the life that I had?

But the truth is, my life has been better than that of my parents. I am better off than they were, at my age. And so, with a little luck, my kids' lives will be better still.

And where they're concerned, at least, I will make every effort to smooth my own rough edges. I would not have them cut themselves on me. And maybe if they don't, they'll grow up softer, rounder, less abrasive than I did.

I do not want this trend to continue.

I want my children, at least, to be happy.