I am not a stranger to fear, fear of beginning, changing, and constructing an entire plan by myself. Somehow for years I've avoided having to be a "self starter" (perhaps due to the slightly bite-sized and regular homework assignments, the loopholes in an ostensibly Dewey-based education system from truly "constructing my own education," and other ways I've slipped through the cracks or out of the system without letting it make me feel upset too much.) I've been surprised and blindsided by the combination of having to develop the skill of being "the CEO of my future decisions (responsible for top down planning)," being forced at work to take drastic initiatives and also construct things from top down, as well as a differently flavored ability to self reflect that began in my early mid 20s. (As I gain distance from my childhood that I've tried so hard to imprint with fidelity on my brain, my memory comes to new conclusions and falsifies facts.) This may be because I am the type of person who continually checks in with myself on my status and how I'm feeling, the kind of person who curiously noticed veins popping out on her hands and had to reconcile to them. Or maybe I am like a person whose muscle has atrophied to a breaking point and who notices how weak they are when they have to use them. I am continuously shocked about new developments that I register before their crest both in the collective and in myself before I reconcile myself to its long term existence. I am curious and overwhelmed that this is a muscle slightly different from the ones I've had to use. One thing that seems to define being an adult is others taking a more or less hands off position to curating your activities. You curate the course of your life with long range goals that I used to find super annoying and pointless on health class worksheets or soft skills segues in all the fact memorization of public school.
I also considered long range goals the corporate self help harping of Type A people, but perhaps it is necessary for the survival of people who don't know how to dictate the course of their lives without imposing outside structure. Hollywood has always pictured Type A women portrayed by Amanda Peet and Katherine Heigl as side-note effective, but annoying and in desperate need of a lifestyle change. Their ability to streamline themselves and their team as an effective speeding bullet toward their bottom line is powerful and assertive in the business world, but definitely not a trait in someone I would want to "have a beer with" or talk to. Chris Traeger's relentless, desperate positivity in the face of aging and loneliness is also seen as more of a trite crutch and less of a tool that maximizes success. Taking the reins of my career life and redirecting it myself terrifies me and doesn't stir me from an inert state. Perhaps giving shape to my ideas with the large exoskeleton of long term and short term goals emulates an imposed outside structure that I so long for.
I have been content to remain a child, a baby, that is what I'm told. I have often surrendered to a sense of fidelity and hope. There is a possibility that I will never achieve any personal goals or career. Time is not going to steer me toward something or change me magically. I have continued to be someone who is inert and doesn't move unless there's outside imposition. This is a personal trait I could use to my advantage by lighting an artificial fire under my ass, whether igniting the historic shame I knew since childhood, the shame of when a spoiled and sheltered person feels when caught by an outside authority, at being outed for being spoiled, the fear of outside judgment that keeps us spoiled babies behaving disgustingly only in the shelter of a house with two acre zoning.
I used to love to read a site that called on people to discuss and reflect on their lives with a Jungian and Freudian slant. People would reflect on how their past got them to where they are and, while it also involved terms like "collective consciousness," "projection," and "shadow," it also involved a great deal of reflection on roots, or blaming things on the mother and family. The people on that site frequently came from raucously bad childhoods and broken homes, unbelievable horror stories, and looked back with forgiveness and the understanding of the strength and positive qualities it developed in their lives. They talked about how things currently unpopular are meaningful, such as one's roots and family tradition, the ego, the idea of male and female energies, one's values, boundaries, and what couples owe each other to make it work. They forgave the sins of the mother and gained strength of character, denied a childhood, they gained resilience. I wondered where my parents played into my problems because as far as I could see, though spoiled into a horrifically selfish paste, I was given a lot of love and support my whole life. I really am a difficult, controlling, selfish, egotistical, headstrong person. It can't be denied that as a child I sometimes felt like a "monster," over sensitive to itself, completely cold and callous to other people's emotions, and it took a while to deny the monster within while still taking selfish actions.
Now I am beginning to see what choices my parents made that left my muscles atrophied after childhood. And why they made them. I was an oversensitive and easily depressed child. I remember begging to see various R rated Oscar nominated movies, Dead Man Walking, The Green Mile, etc., saying I could take it, and coming home with my eyes bugged out and depressive thoughts in my brain. I remember when I got my first watch at six years old, and how, being taken to a beach traditionally inhabited by old people and half empty, in my most Dixie cup color schemed windbreaker, on a windy fall day, when I sighed about how time flies, or saying at 10 years old how I felt like an 80 year old woman. Thoughts like these are typical for the wondering mind of a 10 year old.
With the rush of pubescent obsessions and later adult responsibilities, our brain gets slightly quieter about these things. This is why I wasn't taken to depressing ceremonies. Until a couple weeks ago. Granted, my nuclear family is three people (plus me) who had to move for a job away from our Brooklyn distant relatives on one side who tended toward trashy Russian Brooklyn fashion and mores. I dreaded having to go to extended family parties as a kid with the scarlet haired women with penciled on eyebrows and six course meals at tacky Russian restaurants with unspeakably bad 80s haired pop pumping in from all the tvs. Or awkwardly hanging around when my parents visited friends and had no one to babysit. As a glowering spoiled kid I was receptive of very few people, most of them being my brother. I believed that "kids ruled" and didn't have a now-fashionable retro sense of how a Confucian style respect for elders or African style being part of a large community is what prevented millenial happiness after the Boomer evolution following America's nuclear family, two car garage 50s. I'm oversimplifying, I really was an intense, literate, deep.... horrifically spoiled and sheltered, kid. And kind of still am.
I was curious how to universalize and theorize about my Russian Jewish roots, what could I say about the women of my family and the attitudes I inherited from them. I felt more like a liberal arts student than anything else, and for a long time didn't care to dissect my cultural identity like this interesting website invited me to. Especially because a certain war whittled away at elders who led completely different lives than their expatriate children, liberated by the Iron Curtain. A friend of mine with a coven-like sensibility was interested in channeling my grandmother. Hmmm. How little my grandmother and I have in common and what a shame it is. She lived in a village with several sisters which was probably cleaned of men in WWII. She suffered through famine, migration to the city outside her village, had her husband, a tank commander, die of gunshot wounds in his prime, as well as her oldest son who I don't hear much about, and had to raise her two boys by herself. She was inveterately kind and helpful to others, I hear, and, while using corporal punishment and things to keep the boys in line, sacrificed her personal happiness to raise them. In other words, like at least one of her sisters, she was an indisputably good, strong, matriarchal woman who learned to provide, scrimp and save, as the poignant Zhvanetski skit says about the war generation. The kind of women who save shoes, ship out cheaper items to relatives, work endlessly, recycle underwear to the embarrassment of their grandchildren, and demonstrate the strength and kindness tested by years of privation. This goodness is a kind of power. I'm a weak sauce, to be kind to myself, intellectual and we have nothing in common.
I had to attend a scary event and had to learn what my family was about. Stories were passed around about the strength of my grandmother's sister. The descendants of my grandmother's sister differ from mine in the way they kindly and evenhandedly accept and continue to socialize with people we disdain for their selfishness and wrongs toward us, specifically the offspring of my grandmother's slightly more evil sister. And also they don't avoid my annoying uncle like I probably shouldn't do. My grandmother's sister was not only a peerlessly strong and kind woman, but a first female medical graduate, a sought after heart surgeon, and one who did not disdain to help pretty much anyone, who remained positive and welcoming. Matriarchal strength is an interesting virtue in a culture that still has patriarchal values, so many strong and good women in this war generation of my family.
How did they relate to the generation of women who emigrated to the US? Some of our relatives are certainly self sacrificing and welcoming, but the bleakness in their lives that they hide scares me, so it's not often that I visit the avenues at the end of the alphabet in Brooklyn. Perhaps the coddled children, the ones sacrificed for, who finally profited from their parents labor for their comfort are the ones not tested for the strength of their kindness, and as a result, layabouts reclining and being fed grapes. I find that Russian Jewish parents are slightly less cold, expectant, and demanding that their children succeed than Asian parents. Or at least this is how I was allowed to loaf about in liberal arts school. Unconditional love also doesn't balance accounts, so I was ignorant of structural responsibilities and what I "owe" other than it amounts to everything. So I am neither strong nor good, but receiving beneficence and guilty.
I spun out after this event, I weakly sought some help or someone to calm down my obsessive emotions. (The obsession is a 2009 development that I used to fight the darkening uncertainty of my post-Clinton and post-Bush environment with serpentine ritual. Everything had to be more okay than my closing doors four times and spending 20 minutes picking out mismatched socks for a "good day.") This was maybe why I was sheltered by my parents from the disease and suffering as a child, maybe it's in my nature to be sensitive, emotional, and fall apart like a two year old. In my family, it's well respected to either freak out only when there's reason or to maintain composure for the sake of others. Perhaps selfishness is a cardinal sin in our self-sacrificing culture. One that judges people on the strength of their goodness in crisis moments or their ability to nurture and protect others. And, in Russian Jewish history, there are so many crisis moments.
Maybe I was born sensitive, requiring shelter or else my nervous constitution make me lie on the floor and throw up. Maybe I deserved a childhood devoid of the selfish, neglectful, addict parents that forced the people on the site to step up as children and act like adults. Perhaps if I were required to clean blood off a wall or cook my brothers and sisters dinner as a child I would have fallen apart inside. Part of being an adult is not being allowed to fall apart on the outside or obviously and pleadingly, overtly be unhappy and seek help.
I can say that one thing at the root of Jewishness is the unconditional love and nurturance of the children. And not necessarily pressuring them to fit a mold or withholding physical affection. Some children are fed and fed, physically as well as emotionally, as the stereotype goes... bagels, potatoes, and tomatoes shoved in their mouths by worried grandmothers as they are trying to play on the beach. So much of Judaism has been holding out for a better time, shoring up strength for the future, and taking care, because sacrificing for children is worth it simply because they are our children and we want them to be happy. When the debt to parents is immeasurable, how is it going to be paid off? Where do our responsibilities begin? They seem to ask for nothing and give everything.
I can also say that two generations into my family, there is a tradition of women unexpectedly becoming worried, overprotective mothers. My mother, her sister, my cousin, worry and tend and circle their children like brood hens. However, my maternal grandmother isn't described this way. Gay and fun loving, she and my grandfather created an intellectual household and nurtured their girls, but their long work schedules allowed the children to run free. Somehow my mother developed an internal sense of pride, independence, and also following the rules out of respect to herself. She wasn't disciplined or coddled into it. I don't know how she did it's part of her character. Neither was my paternal grandmother this way, obviously, due to using the rod on her boys. My brother and sister weren't even raised the way I am and this may be why I'm at a disconnect. Or why I don't gain profit from blaming the past on why I am so weak muscled now in terms of coping skills and adult ability. Perhaps I over coddled myself.
I also considered long range goals the corporate self help harping of Type A people, but perhaps it is necessary for the survival of people who don't know how to dictate the course of their lives without imposing outside structure. Hollywood has always pictured Type A women portrayed by Amanda Peet and Katherine Heigl as side-note effective, but annoying and in desperate need of a lifestyle change. Their ability to streamline themselves and their team as an effective speeding bullet toward their bottom line is powerful and assertive in the business world, but definitely not a trait in someone I would want to "have a beer with" or talk to. Chris Traeger's relentless, desperate positivity in the face of aging and loneliness is also seen as more of a trite crutch and less of a tool that maximizes success. Taking the reins of my career life and redirecting it myself terrifies me and doesn't stir me from an inert state. Perhaps giving shape to my ideas with the large exoskeleton of long term and short term goals emulates an imposed outside structure that I so long for.
I have been content to remain a child, a baby, that is what I'm told. I have often surrendered to a sense of fidelity and hope. There is a possibility that I will never achieve any personal goals or career. Time is not going to steer me toward something or change me magically. I have continued to be someone who is inert and doesn't move unless there's outside imposition. This is a personal trait I could use to my advantage by lighting an artificial fire under my ass, whether igniting the historic shame I knew since childhood, the shame of when a spoiled and sheltered person feels when caught by an outside authority, at being outed for being spoiled, the fear of outside judgment that keeps us spoiled babies behaving disgustingly only in the shelter of a house with two acre zoning.
I used to love to read a site that called on people to discuss and reflect on their lives with a Jungian and Freudian slant. People would reflect on how their past got them to where they are and, while it also involved terms like "collective consciousness," "projection," and "shadow," it also involved a great deal of reflection on roots, or blaming things on the mother and family. The people on that site frequently came from raucously bad childhoods and broken homes, unbelievable horror stories, and looked back with forgiveness and the understanding of the strength and positive qualities it developed in their lives. They talked about how things currently unpopular are meaningful, such as one's roots and family tradition, the ego, the idea of male and female energies, one's values, boundaries, and what couples owe each other to make it work. They forgave the sins of the mother and gained strength of character, denied a childhood, they gained resilience. I wondered where my parents played into my problems because as far as I could see, though spoiled into a horrifically selfish paste, I was given a lot of love and support my whole life. I really am a difficult, controlling, selfish, egotistical, headstrong person. It can't be denied that as a child I sometimes felt like a "monster," over sensitive to itself, completely cold and callous to other people's emotions, and it took a while to deny the monster within while still taking selfish actions.
Now I am beginning to see what choices my parents made that left my muscles atrophied after childhood. And why they made them. I was an oversensitive and easily depressed child. I remember begging to see various R rated Oscar nominated movies, Dead Man Walking, The Green Mile, etc., saying I could take it, and coming home with my eyes bugged out and depressive thoughts in my brain. I remember when I got my first watch at six years old, and how, being taken to a beach traditionally inhabited by old people and half empty, in my most Dixie cup color schemed windbreaker, on a windy fall day, when I sighed about how time flies, or saying at 10 years old how I felt like an 80 year old woman. Thoughts like these are typical for the wondering mind of a 10 year old.
With the rush of pubescent obsessions and later adult responsibilities, our brain gets slightly quieter about these things. This is why I wasn't taken to depressing ceremonies. Until a couple weeks ago. Granted, my nuclear family is three people (plus me) who had to move for a job away from our Brooklyn distant relatives on one side who tended toward trashy Russian Brooklyn fashion and mores. I dreaded having to go to extended family parties as a kid with the scarlet haired women with penciled on eyebrows and six course meals at tacky Russian restaurants with unspeakably bad 80s haired pop pumping in from all the tvs. Or awkwardly hanging around when my parents visited friends and had no one to babysit. As a glowering spoiled kid I was receptive of very few people, most of them being my brother. I believed that "kids ruled" and didn't have a now-fashionable retro sense of how a Confucian style respect for elders or African style being part of a large community is what prevented millenial happiness after the Boomer evolution following America's nuclear family, two car garage 50s. I'm oversimplifying, I really was an intense, literate, deep.... horrifically spoiled and sheltered, kid. And kind of still am.
I was curious how to universalize and theorize about my Russian Jewish roots, what could I say about the women of my family and the attitudes I inherited from them. I felt more like a liberal arts student than anything else, and for a long time didn't care to dissect my cultural identity like this interesting website invited me to. Especially because a certain war whittled away at elders who led completely different lives than their expatriate children, liberated by the Iron Curtain. A friend of mine with a coven-like sensibility was interested in channeling my grandmother. Hmmm. How little my grandmother and I have in common and what a shame it is. She lived in a village with several sisters which was probably cleaned of men in WWII. She suffered through famine, migration to the city outside her village, had her husband, a tank commander, die of gunshot wounds in his prime, as well as her oldest son who I don't hear much about, and had to raise her two boys by herself. She was inveterately kind and helpful to others, I hear, and, while using corporal punishment and things to keep the boys in line, sacrificed her personal happiness to raise them. In other words, like at least one of her sisters, she was an indisputably good, strong, matriarchal woman who learned to provide, scrimp and save, as the poignant Zhvanetski skit says about the war generation. The kind of women who save shoes, ship out cheaper items to relatives, work endlessly, recycle underwear to the embarrassment of their grandchildren, and demonstrate the strength and kindness tested by years of privation. This goodness is a kind of power. I'm a weak sauce, to be kind to myself, intellectual and we have nothing in common.
I had to attend a scary event and had to learn what my family was about. Stories were passed around about the strength of my grandmother's sister. The descendants of my grandmother's sister differ from mine in the way they kindly and evenhandedly accept and continue to socialize with people we disdain for their selfishness and wrongs toward us, specifically the offspring of my grandmother's slightly more evil sister. And also they don't avoid my annoying uncle like I probably shouldn't do. My grandmother's sister was not only a peerlessly strong and kind woman, but a first female medical graduate, a sought after heart surgeon, and one who did not disdain to help pretty much anyone, who remained positive and welcoming. Matriarchal strength is an interesting virtue in a culture that still has patriarchal values, so many strong and good women in this war generation of my family.
How did they relate to the generation of women who emigrated to the US? Some of our relatives are certainly self sacrificing and welcoming, but the bleakness in their lives that they hide scares me, so it's not often that I visit the avenues at the end of the alphabet in Brooklyn. Perhaps the coddled children, the ones sacrificed for, who finally profited from their parents labor for their comfort are the ones not tested for the strength of their kindness, and as a result, layabouts reclining and being fed grapes. I find that Russian Jewish parents are slightly less cold, expectant, and demanding that their children succeed than Asian parents. Or at least this is how I was allowed to loaf about in liberal arts school. Unconditional love also doesn't balance accounts, so I was ignorant of structural responsibilities and what I "owe" other than it amounts to everything. So I am neither strong nor good, but receiving beneficence and guilty.
I spun out after this event, I weakly sought some help or someone to calm down my obsessive emotions. (The obsession is a 2009 development that I used to fight the darkening uncertainty of my post-Clinton and post-Bush environment with serpentine ritual. Everything had to be more okay than my closing doors four times and spending 20 minutes picking out mismatched socks for a "good day.") This was maybe why I was sheltered by my parents from the disease and suffering as a child, maybe it's in my nature to be sensitive, emotional, and fall apart like a two year old. In my family, it's well respected to either freak out only when there's reason or to maintain composure for the sake of others. Perhaps selfishness is a cardinal sin in our self-sacrificing culture. One that judges people on the strength of their goodness in crisis moments or their ability to nurture and protect others. And, in Russian Jewish history, there are so many crisis moments.
Maybe I was born sensitive, requiring shelter or else my nervous constitution make me lie on the floor and throw up. Maybe I deserved a childhood devoid of the selfish, neglectful, addict parents that forced the people on the site to step up as children and act like adults. Perhaps if I were required to clean blood off a wall or cook my brothers and sisters dinner as a child I would have fallen apart inside. Part of being an adult is not being allowed to fall apart on the outside or obviously and pleadingly, overtly be unhappy and seek help.
I can say that one thing at the root of Jewishness is the unconditional love and nurturance of the children. And not necessarily pressuring them to fit a mold or withholding physical affection. Some children are fed and fed, physically as well as emotionally, as the stereotype goes... bagels, potatoes, and tomatoes shoved in their mouths by worried grandmothers as they are trying to play on the beach. So much of Judaism has been holding out for a better time, shoring up strength for the future, and taking care, because sacrificing for children is worth it simply because they are our children and we want them to be happy. When the debt to parents is immeasurable, how is it going to be paid off? Where do our responsibilities begin? They seem to ask for nothing and give everything.
I can also say that two generations into my family, there is a tradition of women unexpectedly becoming worried, overprotective mothers. My mother, her sister, my cousin, worry and tend and circle their children like brood hens. However, my maternal grandmother isn't described this way. Gay and fun loving, she and my grandfather created an intellectual household and nurtured their girls, but their long work schedules allowed the children to run free. Somehow my mother developed an internal sense of pride, independence, and also following the rules out of respect to herself. She wasn't disciplined or coddled into it. I don't know how she did it's part of her character. Neither was my paternal grandmother this way, obviously, due to using the rod on her boys. My brother and sister weren't even raised the way I am and this may be why I'm at a disconnect. Or why I don't gain profit from blaming the past on why I am so weak muscled now in terms of coping skills and adult ability. Perhaps I over coddled myself.
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