I'm Working (It) Out

There's a blog entry that I started a couple nights ago. It was gonna be titled "Crying and Sit-Ups" and it starts like this:

"It was 5:30 in the evening and I could already smell night climbing into the winter sky. I was due on E16th & Irving in fifteen minutes for the Urban Word Slam Poetry Finals, and there was no way of getting there in time. The strawberry ice cream colored walls of my bedroom pushed and pulled away from me as tears streamed down my face, and my abs felt like a rubber knot being squeezed tighter into itself. The linoleum tiles of my bedroom bore their hard geometrical pattern onto my back as I repeatedly set my back down and hauled myself back up. I was on my fifty-first or fifty-second sit-up and there seemed no way to get out of my system the anger, shame and frustration which had accumulated in my body during the previous 30-someodd hours. Hair wild, hands lifting my head, tears and sweat saturating the neck of my T-shirt, I moaned and groaned and yelled and screamed while crying that my dad is an asshole, a degenerate, a horrible human being. It would take me at least another thirty minutes to feel like myself again.

"Let me first say that I'm well aware of the masochism involved in this type of activity. I realize that I physically punish myself for the resentment that I feel towards my father, and that I feel good about the act and results of said punishment. Whether I do so because I feel I shouldn't resent my father or because I need my physical condition to match my emotional one, I'm not sure, but I am certain of the link between said resentment and extreme physical activity. In some ways, I feel that exercising the pain away is proactive and keeps me emotionally and physically healthy by providing an outlet through which to vent.

"Whenever I feel like the world's crashing in on me, I drop to the floor, do as many push-ups or sit-ups necessary to squeeze the pain out of my mind, or run around a track until I've exercised the pain away."

*****

My dad, who is in many ways an amazing father, has many quirks and faults. For one thing, he's never had much of a social life. For another, he likes to play mind games in order to gain, what is in his mind, supremacy. Points of fact: Instead of teaching me to overcome my insecurities as a child, he fed on them so that he always felt needed. Instead of overcoming his own insecurities, he blames many of his flaws and problems on my mom. He comes from the old school variety of child-raising, which, much to the detriment of everyone involved, includes the inability to accept any ideas that weren't originally the parents'. He is the prototype of the tight-lipped father figure who neither excels at providing emotional support nor accepting constructive criticism.

*****

Being the second-to-last in a tight-knit family of ten children, my dad had a lot of factors against being the dominant personality of his family. His two oldest siblings were forces to be wreckoned with, whirlwinds of personality and life experience who impinged upon their younger siblings' ability to come into their own character. His parents were colorful characters whose life stories culminated in a kind of mythos - magical powers and panacea amulets, religious polemics with Biblical proportions, shootings, betrayals, blackmails, murders, et al. - that would extend to his siblings, cousins, and their children. His own father, who lived with us from the time I was seven until I was nine, faced the Japanese during the second world war, had a quick and righteous shot with a pistol, and would smile in someone's face before beating the shit out of them for some unironic and very deserving reason.

Yet, by the time he married my mom (who was as close to a debutante as he'd find in the old country), my dad had gained the authority to speak his mind and have the rest of his siblings take heed. He'd offer advice, and they'd follow his words like law. He'd make suggestions, and they'd relinquish dominance over a situation. It was in this way that I suspect my dad's ego became bloated.

*****

Fast forward to this past Friday: My dad was talking about his job and I was dyeing his hair. He was complaining about office politics, and telling me that he was reconsidering taking the raise in status and earnings that had been offered to him months beore. He asked my opinion: How should he handle the office politics? Was he right in his actions?

I told him my opinion, said what I would do if I was in his situation, and all the while my brother and I were exchanging knowing glances. You see, my dad has a tendency to make mountains out of molehills when it comes to his job. He'll make issues out of things that needn't be issues. He'll take into account positions that needn't bother him simply because they have nothing to do with him. He has good intentions (I get my lofty ideals from him), but he doesn't know how best to use them - so he spends all his time making straw arguments.

Very lovingly, I said to him, "Dad, with all the love and respect in the world, I'm telling you this: Maybe if you got more of a social life, you wouldn't worry so much about all of this stuff. Maybe you and mom could go out dancing, take walks in the park, take trips together. It'll be good for you-"

"I don't need a social life. Only people with no confidence need social lives. They need the validation. Not me."

Trying to defuse the growing tension, my brother laughed. "Then you're saying that sis has no confidence, because she always goes out."

"Well," said my dad, "most women have that problem."

It wasn't so much his words as his tone that really got to me. He was trying to be malicious and hurtful. He was trying to get to me. He was trying to tear me a new one. And "tear me a new one" he did.

We got into a huge argument right there and then. My main problem was that I was in all honesty being forthcoming and loving with my suggestion, and that my dad had taken it upon himself to tear me down. And for what? Because he was hurt? Because he's used to doing it? Because he's the one with social issues and low self esteem?

So I plopped down on my bedroom floor, started doing sit-ups, and cried and cried and cried until my eyes were puffs. That night I was due out to hang with my girls, Opera Singer and Trini Jew, and there was no way I'd be sobbing myself to sleep. I had to get all of the negative emotion out of my system so I could have a good time.

*****

The next day, though, was a different story. I'd had an awesome night out with the girls + some guys (including Rob), and had made it home at 4:30 in the morning. I was due at Nuyorican at 10, so the latest I could wake up was 8. And despite all this, I made it to Nuyorican, wrote the beginnings of a long-mulled over piece that everyone loved, and felt really, really good... until that night, when my father and I got into Let's Have an Argument, Pt. 2.

So there they were: all the problems my dad has with me. That I'm promiscuous. That I haven't settled on a career. That I plan on being in school till I'm 40. That I'm spending all of my time writing, creating, traveling, teaching, when I could be holed up in an office, cubicle, or other "respectable" line of work where I feel unchallenged and/or unfulfilled. That I have so much untapped potential.

To be short, all of the problems and insecurities that I've ever had with myself were flying out of my father's mouth - and this realization felt surreal. At once, I texted all of the people that I thought I might see that night, and said that I wouldn't be able to make it out because of some family issues. Then I cried and screamed and did sit-ups until my abs felt like they would burst from overexhaustion. Lastly, I continued working my body over. I continued stretching, pulling, pushing, jumping, running, screaming, punching. I continued to evaluate and harshly judge and criticize myself and my situation. I continued to feel bad about myself.

Then I stopped. In that sudden and brief moment of frenetic energy, damning accusations, soul searching, and parental forgiving, I found a clarity that bordered a religious experience. Snippets of scenes from my day-to-day life formed a montage in my mind - jogging around the track, lifting weights, writing on the subway, talking with the power writing students, laughing with Opera Singer and Trini Jew, dancing with Rob, flirting with attractive strangers, having coffee with Past Tense, having three-hour telephone conversations with Best Guy Friend, playing with Justice, looking for work, spending time with my baby brother, reliving JHS with D.A.Y.,...

Indiana Poetess (aka BKD) texted me and said that I really needed to move out of my parents' house, and that my time will come - and all I could do was laugh. My time has come. Whatever the next step is, it's happening right now.