23-Why I Forgot My Name, Again—Part 1
Good morning, friends. This narrative is about to get rather murky. Some may label it fiction. Others may be concerned for my mental health. I’ve balked at writing it, pulling back into my shell three times already. This is my fourth attempt, which I’ve labeled v3 because I don’t want to admit to the first version.
“When I read it, I thought how this opens up the conversation around abuse's long-term effects. And how we can function with multiple aspects of ourselves clamoring for assertion and attention.”
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When last I left my hero/ine, me, I’d just monumentally betrayed myself for the second time. Well, third, but I don’t want to count that middle one. But damn, damn, damn, coal-burning dithering ding, ding, ding[1], yeah, it matters. Allow me to recapitulate.
I’d had a crappy childhood, right? Right. I’d protected myself—aka true self/real self/authentic self—by retreating into a turtle shell, from which I could make slow, steady progress toward absatively nothing, a nothingness I’d been groomed for since birth so I would conform to the expectations of my clan, my family, and, specifically, my mother.
I suppose that sounds nasty. Mother blaming. But removing my own and anyone else’s knee-jerk emotional reaction, it’s really just a statement of fact. Most of us are raised to conform to others’ expectations. Circumstances alter cases, as Thomas Halliburton famously said, and my formative-years had been a step beyond dysfunctional, bordering on the realm of abusive. My nurture-input scale weighted to the negative.
But no human child can function in the real world from inside a shell, so I used an “other” to go about my daily life. Someone who wasn’t so damaged, frightened, cowed. Someone who could laugh and learn and be out there amongst “the English,” as the Amish say. Someone who didn’t have a separate name until Tom came along and called him Harris.
All this is non-unusual for someone like me; the psych world has a plethora of explanations and labels to suit the subject. Non-formally diagnosed, I simply called it “life.”
Harris is gay male. Existing within the murk of Claudia’s (my) dysfunctionality, he has little self-esteem, less self-regard, and almost no ambition other than to not get hurt. He’s the one who chameleons to match whatever person/place he faces. He’s a good guy, but I wouldn’t/don’t count on him. He’s tactical. Functional. Gets the grades, does the job, cleans up the mess. But is as boring as whale shit.
I know, I know—whale shit glimmers iridescent orange in the moonlight. How illusionarily romantic. But under the sun, it just looks like shit.
Jeff is the other side of his coin; energy incarnate to Harris’ placidity. Jeff is furious all the time. All. The. Time. He’s the me who fights to stand up for myself at every turn, and rages when I, too-petrified-to-breathe-without-permission, shoot me down. Spirited and adventurous, Jeff’s the “fuck you and the horse you rode in on” me who thinks with my dick and gives my life forward drive. Without Jeff, I’d be a mouse who never tries anything, never takes any chances, never throws the dice to see what might happen. Where Harris keeps a low profile so I can stay out of trouble, Jeff revels in it. When I let him, I keep me energized. I should let me do that more often.
He hates my weakness and compliance. He knows I’m like him, I’m gay male (Claudio?), and is ticked off more-than-words-can-express that I haven’t yet gotten up the nerve to ask for a new deck of cards and a new deal. We-me fight about it all the time. All. The. Time.
Howard-me takes care of business. When Jeff impulsively enlisted and just as impulsively got me discharged, cooler, steadier Howard wanted to find a way to stick it out. (In another dimension, Howard prevailed.)
Quietly competent, almost scholarly, Howard is the self-educated me who mastered all those jobs Jeff lied my way into. Howard knows how to make things work, to organize, sort, devise, implement. Howard, bless me, is the me who deconstructed the entire Ghostwriting Professional Designation Program and who innovated creative analysis, PMA, musical line editing, and so on and so forth and scooby-dooby-do. He can get angry, but I get over it as quickly as it comes.
It was Howard-me who conceded that no matter how much Tom and I fought, I’d always stand-and-defend him, always protect and care for him, always willingly be the breadwinner, the guy who did the repairs, installations, maintenance, yadda yadda yadda. Howard is straight male, eminently pragmatic, and never panic-driven. He always rises to the occasion when Jeff lies my way into situations I’m non-prepared for and always has a passable rationalization when things go south.
Howard’s great; he handles finances and taxes—Harris sure as hell can’t! He occasionally wants to take off and leave, but I always suck it up and come through. I can count on Howard-me to pull yet another rabbit out of the hat when necessary. I should listen to me more often.
And then there’s Bobby (aka Eric B, aka Ricky). Bobby is my mother’s vicarious show-biz child. Bobby comes alive in the spotlight, never passes the chance to crack wise, and can see the gold in anything or anyone. Where Claudia is pathetic and weak, Harris plodding but reliable, Howard pragmatic and clever, and Jeff rashly fearless, Bobby is confident, strong, compassionate, and non-relentingly non-afraid. Nothing gets him down. He knows how to exploit Jeff’s courage, prod Harris’ productivity, lean into Howard’s brilliance, and ease Claudia’s terror. Let’s face it: Bobby is a fucking rock star.
I love Bobby. I’ve always wanted to be him. And I am, sometimes. Just not often enough. I live my “best life,” as the medicos like to say, when Bobby is dominant. Problem is, I’ve never figured out how to make him stay. Jeff’s impetuosity, Harris’s insecurity, or Greg’s negativity always seems to undermine him.
Oh, did I forget to mention Greg?
Greg’s a GDMF ball-buster. He spots every pothole, hears every wrong note, groans over every typo and overlooked solution. Relentless, always with a sneer, a jibe, an undercut, Greg is me as my own disapproving father figure who notices every smudge, sees all wrong, spares no rod, and accepts no excuses. And I’m usually right, damn me all to hell!
Now that I think of it, Greg is nothing like my biological father, who was a mixture of Harris and Howard. He must have grown out of my mother’s dark aspect.
Sometime during 2015, my mother confided to me—and later to my son-in-law, a shaman whose presence in her home ignited the slow-burning fuse of our family’s implosion— that a mean, ugly girl who did terrible things lived deep inside her. She mentioned it a number of times without adding more so I, raised to minimize/dismiss my own problems, assured her she’d never done anything all that terribly wrong in her life.
This was before the family implosion. Before the kill-me-now repressed memories and revelations and recognitions poured in. Before six decades of unremitting abasement and rejection and gaslighting manifested in two major falls wherein I messed up my ribs and broke my face and one undiagnosable CheezeWhiz® incident de-cognitivized my brain and put me in a wheelchair for six months.
Looking back from the other side of all that, I see now her admission was as close to a confession—not an apology—as she could muster. And it did fill in one piece of the puzzle: did she realize what she was doing when I was a kid?
Granted, we all change masks throughout the day as we interact with different people and face varying circumstances. Even my others put up a protective visor when occasion requires. But the individual behind those different faces remains constant, a self-actualized conglomeration of that person’s overall perspective, motive, and agenda. He, she, they, or it knows they’re adjusting their persona to fit the occasion. They’re in complete control of said outward alterations.
Mom’s repeated references to her mean, ugly inner girl told me she knew exactly what she was doing when she cut me off from my father and brother in toddlerhood, when she left me alone in the hospital at ages six and fifteen, when she denied/hid the truth about my immuno-compromization.
She did it all with malice aforethought, Your Honor. I don’t like owning up to that reality. And I less like the way it makes me feel.
If it please the court, I’d like a ten-minute recess.
[1] How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, and Willie Gilbert, based on Shepherd Mead's 1952 book of the same name. Wikipedia