52 Faces: January 2009

I'm dog sick right now.

I was sick right up until I left for NY. Once there, I spent one blissful month running around in sub-zero wind chill, happy as a clam on an average of 4 hours of sleep, taking free journalism workshops and cramming in all my friends into a week. I felt like myself again.

Then I return to go to my friend's wedding in San Diego, come back to Hell.A. and promptly fall sick again.

I cannot chalk this up to coincidence. It's like my body hates me being here and something is very wrong.

I've spent the week cooped up in Jifo's house in the middle of nowhere, carless and unable to get around, speaking to no one but him. Jifo himself had to go on a business trip that left him exhausted. Life is beating us into a bloody pulp and I have no idea why or how to stop it.

He's too tired to take care of me, I'm too tired to take care of me and that's largely because I get pretty much zero sleep when I'm around his monster snoring. His C-pap machine is coming on Monday (the thing that helps sleep apnea), but I simply can't wait that long to get a good night's rest and I'm slated to return to my own apartment tomorrow night.

I hate my nonexistent life here. I'm scrambling for a job; I didn't let myself nap - I couldn't nap this past week even though I was sick because I was too busy pushing myself to apply for jobs. I'm tired of not making enough to cover my expenses as a "freelance writer".

I've been miserable since I got back and I cry and fight with Jifo every night. I'm isolated and lonely here and I've been in a deep depression since my father gave me his biennial abusive "talk" where he talks and I listen and nod while my self-esteem crumbles into dust. This year's was particular bad - I haven't done a thing right in the last 8 years since graduating from Harvard, I'm a child who's soon going to get old and lose my estrogen and no man will want me, yet all the men I've chosen to date thus far have been "easy prey" and therefore below me, reflecting on my self-worth, and if I continue down the path I'm going on I will end up in a horrible place. He then drudged up some random anecdotes from the last 4 years that I don't even recall telling him and twisted them so that I sounded naive, stupid, or both.

The gem was when I asked him how his life was going and he said, "Miserable!" But that, "Money is more important than happiness!" The resounding theme was that it was time for me to grow up and stop trying to be happy and just get a miserable 9-5 job like everyone else in the nation.

It is very difficult to have been raised and loved by a complete and total a***ole. There is a talent in his family line, passed down through the generations, of grinding your children into broken people. They do this by turning every detail of your life into proof of your utter worthlessness as a human being. My love of living in different cities every few years and being bicoastal and able to pick up at will to follow my career path is construed as "running away from reality" or because I "have no more friends left."

It's amazing how many years of my life I've spent letting my father rip me apart. In my earlier self-preservation days I tried to yell back or walk away, at which point he would call me a "coward." If I cried, he said I was "weak." After going to therapy school, I've learned better techniques of dealing with him, but it took almost three decades before I finally saw his abuse for what it was. And only because my stepmother woke from her nap and walked into the kitchen after the 2 hour tirade was over and when I asked her why she left me alone with the man, she replied, "I heard him going on and on and I thought, Why do you take his abuse?"

So I've come up with an action plan, people, and I'm going to rely on you to help me remember it. My father has grown smarter in his ways, so the plan must encompass every method he employs to sneak in a harangue.

The 52 Faces Self Protection Plan

1) If he asks if we can "talk" about my career/school/plans/new job/etc. - SAY NO. There is no such thing as "talking" with this man. Then WALK AWAY.

2) If he manages to turn a casual, friendly conversation into an excoriation - WALK AWAY. The second he begins to say something hurtful - WALK AWAY.

3) WALK AWAY NO MATTER WHAT - whether he calls you a coward or weak or starts yelling - WALK AWAY.

4) Remember - you have a right to be spoken to fairly and not to listen to abusive language. You have a right to set healthy boundaries for yourself.

Jifo brought up the good point that this plan actually strengthens my relationship with my father by reducing the resentment I will feel towards him and helplessness as I am unable to vocalize my own opinions in the face of his intolerance.

Too many hours of too many years were spent listening to him put me down for dating a black person, for following my dream to become a working actor (which I actually manifested), for not going into investment banking or law, for not making six figures yet, for being a sentient, sensitive human being, for putting my friends first, for judging people based on their capacity to love, for dating a Christian, for dating a Pinoy, for dating a poor white kid who worked for his money and drove a beat up car (this was HIGH SCHOOL for god's sake), for taking an internship at the ASPCA and volunteering my time to shelter dogs.

This man could find something bad to say about the Dalai Lama - and he has. He downright hates the Dalai Lama, which I find hilarious, and gutsy. My father is the only man who dares to call the Dalai Lama a crock and a hypocrite in Louis Vuitton shoes and the world needs people who can be that irreverent. And I think the DL himself wouldn't mind, in his unattached Buddhist ways.

So here's to compassionately setting boundaries between me, the emotional, artistic writer-type, and my father, the man who finds fault with the Dalai Lama.

I followed the Lord into a darkness in my life this weekend. A well of grief has been tapped. I cried myself to sleep two nights in a row. My heart feels like it has been broken open but I let it, because despite the dimness that has clouded my vision in the last few months - the last year - I remember, far away but there, the ability to submit, an openness to the Divine, a trusting, a spaciousness for my grief and my pain to be held and not to be scary. In short, I remember faith.

It has been difficult. I have class from 9-5 and very little sleep. But there is grace. In the form of just being in my home city again; in the form of L.S. and Test King, with whom I can laugh loudly for a few hours and not feel alone.

I was up all Saturday night in pain and strife, not sleeping until 9 in the morning. But I dragged myself up to take the train into the city with my stepmother, secretly clinging to her solidness to get me through. I numbly ate the pizza slice she bought me before she had to zip off to work and then I brought myself to church, cold and tired but feeling more awake with each moment. "I'm coming, God," I thought, as I hurried down Lexington Ave, and soon I was in the warm auditorium with music playing onstage. I sang loudly that day.

O waiting has been hard, my lord
But I've done it for you and for me