Worthwhile resolutions

“This poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me . . .; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.” –Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

So Virginia Woolf wrote about William Shakespeare's sister, who was just as much a poet as her brother, but who never wrote a word.

One year ago, my New Year's resolution was to start writing again.

Getting back into writing has been a goal of mine since I finished college, but I never quite got back into it. As a child, I wrote every single day-- I made little books out of printer paper. As I got older I started writing more complex stories. When I was 11 I started writing in a journal daily. I began just after midnight New Year's Eve, 1997. When I was a teenager I wrote a few lengthy stories and many, many bad poems. Once I got into college I stopped writing for pleasure, although I enjoyed weaving a narrative voice into my essays.

I planned to spend 2008 writing a story, the plot of which I had a vague idea of, and reading 50 books. I didn't do either. I spent 2008 creating life and freaking out about where my life was headed. I beat myself up about not keeping a journal while I was pregnant, but honestly I didn't really want to document what I was going through. I was stressed out and miserable for most of it. And of course, doing any writing for the first few months of my daughter's life was impossible; I was lucky if I got to eat three meals and take a shower every day.

So, here I am, a year later, starting to write fairly prolifically again, for the first time since high school. So, my New Year's resolutions are the following:

1. Continue writing.
2. Be more adventurous, less shy, more confident, less timid.
3. Read, if not 50 books, as many books as possible.

"This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so . . . and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; . . . then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. . . . I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while." –Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

The elusive signifier

I dreamed that I was still caught in the repetition. I had broken up with Anthony to pursue an ex-boyfriend yet again, only to realize that I had made the wrong decision and I really did belong with Anthony. I tried to remember why I had broken up with him and couldn't-- I could only remember what good memories I had with Anthony and how miserable I was.

I woke up snuggled among Anthony and our daughter and a cat, and happily realized that I hadn't broken up with him, hadn't cheated on him. Bad dreams are so good at making you feel grateful for the status quo.

Why am I still dreaming of the repetition? Perhaps this blog is starting to trigger some disturbance, as I hoped it would. I'll have to listen hard to hear what my unconscious has to say.

The truth of the unconscious, the truth of desire, cannot be found in the traditional Freudian way, by delving into the past. The unconscious insists on being heard in the here and now--- through speech, through behaviors, in dreams and in bodily symptoms. The main way that the unconscious repeats itself is through signifiers, words or sounds that repeat in an individual's speech, which she cannot hear but which conceal an unconscious meaning. . . . Repetition is the manifestation of the unconscious, of the drive, and of desire. (Quoted from my senior thesis.)

I have let go of the repetition in my relationships. In the past I was constantly dumping one poor boyfriend for another, constantly looking for someone who was better for me.

Now that I'm married, I have given up the search. Even before we got married, even before my life was tied to him irrevocably through my pregnancy, being with Anthony felt different. I felt a sort of freedom from other men. I was still pursued by other men, but I felt nothing for them, instead of the ambivalence and curiosity I had always felt before. When someone asked me out, I felt amused instead of anxious. I felt calmer. I no longer felt like I was performing.

Something, though, still repeats. While I was pregnant, I had recurring dreams of Anthony abusing me, leaving me, or getting hurt himself. I called him often while he was out, always afraid he wouldn't get home safe. I still have recurring dreams about breaking up with him (but it's always out of my power; like I'm a victim of dumping him). My unconscious insists on being heard. What exactly is it saying?

True Love: Part I

In Swann's Way, Proust wrote of Swann's jealous love of Odette, triggered by her absence. He was completely uninterested in her until she was unexpectedly absent from where he wanted to meet her, and suddenly his love was insatiable. He wanted to know everything about her, her whereabouts every second; he needed to possess her completely. As I read the book, I recognized these jealous tendencies in myself, and it has repeated with my husband.

My roommate of the time introduced me to him. Before we even met I found his online journal, and began reading. After we met, I read the entire thing. I wanted to know everything about him. I needed to possess him just as Swann needed to possess Odette. It is an impossible desire. One wants not only to possess the other's body and self but their past, their time, their existence as a whole. Anthony lived a few hundred miles away, and while we were apart I was jealous of everyone that got to be near him. I held grudges against people who had wronged him before I had even met him. I fantasized about meeting him earlier in his life. I mourned the years we spent apart.

I have written about the hysterical neurotic and her need to keep desire unattainable. Anthony, by his own nature, kept himself at arm's length. He is very shy and incapable of understanding why someone would want to know everything about him. He refused to answer all my questions, and it tormented me. Of course, this made me even more hungry for the answers. He is still a closed book (without, however, being impossible to communicate with), and perhaps this is part of why our relationship works.

I have mentioned Lacan's sexuation theory, whereby the woman must choose between trying to be the man's object of fantasy, guessing at his desire and trying to emulate it; and accepting her aloneness and navigating desire in her own way. I met Anthony after several months of trying to do the latter.

I wrote a letter to my mother which I never sent, when I had ended a relationship with The Other Guy:

You and I are both navigating womanhood, Mom. You need Daddy, you depend on each other like old friends, but you pursue your own desire. I think you want me to do the same— to follow my own desires, to be independent, but also to have a man in my life, to not be alone.
And this is what I want too. Easier said than done! There are so many complications, Mom. I want to be what he desires. I want him to be what I desire. But he’s not. And I can’t stand to be exactly what he needs; I feel stifled. I want to be independent but not alone, desired and desiring, without depending on a man, but not lonely, either.
But the independent woman who follows her desire must acknowledge that she is alone, according to Lacan. It’s so painful and yet it rings true, Mom! I hope I can learn to navigate it like you do.

I wondered about how my mother was seemingly navigating her own desire, while still maintaining a close partnership with her husband, my father. Their lives have always been separate but together. They enjoy their own hobbies, most of which do not overlap. They are very different people, and yet they are in love. One does not possess the other; they are not bending over backwards to please each other. There is mutual respect. All my life I have been looking for this kind of relationship with a man, but I was too eager to become exactly what a man wanted, and too good at it. When I split up with That Guy, I made a firm effort to stop this bad habit.

Anthony did not make demands of me. He accepted me as is, allowed me to be myself and loved me. And I finally had the strength to be myself. We didn't have everything in common, and we didn't need to. Our senses of humor were compatible and we spoke the same language. I still marvel at how wonderful it is to say something and be understood. We talk to each other about our passions, which are completely different from each other. He supports me in doing what I want to do, and what fulfills me (example: this blog). Finally I have found a way to navigate my own desire with support and companionship, just as my mother has done.

Disturbing desire

I've been going through old things. Stuff I wrote in college, when I was first getting to know Lacanian theory, and later on when I was immersed in it researching and writing my thesis. At that time, I was enduring the final throes of a relationship gone sour. I was taking a wonderful course called Disturbing Desire: Proust, Woolf, and Lacan, which was an extremely apt name for the class. The excerpts we read spoke to what I was going through in very disturbing ways.

"Our belief that a person takes part in an unknown life which his or her love would allow us to enter is, of all that love demands in order to come into being, what it prizes the most, and what makes it care little for the rest." --Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. This was not the case with my fiancé of the time. We were attending college in separate states (geographically and otherwise). The trouble with him was that he was not absent enough.

The hysterical neurotic must keep her desire at a distance. Achieving her desire is her worst fear. Love is at its most intense when the object of love is at a distance, unattainable, impossible.

I kept my relationship with him on the rocks in order to keep the relationship. The arguments, the threats, the ambivalence-- I maintained my desire by manipulating the situation. Only if I kept him at bay with constant fighting could I maintain my love for him. The relationship was doomed. At the time I wrote:

Desire is the desire of the Other. I keep rereading this concept and I think of my desire for him, how I must respark it again and again by keeping him at a distance. I feel like the omnipotent Other, trying to make him guess my every whim and conform to it. He is such a bad guesser. “I’m worried about our relationship,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry,” he says. I sigh: “That is not the problem.” I wish he would keep me at a distance like I do him, so that I might desire him like I used to. “The only true paradise is a paradise that we have lost”. He is not lost; how can I desire him?

Okay, so a bit more clarity here. Why am I rehashing an old relationship? Certainly I no longer feel any twinge of emotion. No regret, no lingering flame, etc. The reason is twofold:

1. It's Christmas, and the first Christmas that I am introducing my husband to my family. Two years ago I was spending Christmas with That Other Guy. The fleetingness of love disturbs me a little. I want to explore how my current relationship is different from the old one. How is it that I have, seemingly, attained what I wanted-- I married my beloved, we live together, we have a beautiful baby girl-- and here I am, sitting happily beside him, content with my life? I have never felt so settled, so happy, so satisfied. I want to explore what changed for me and how that came about.

2. During the crashing and burning of that old relationship, I was looking at my life through a Lacanian lens and writing about it. This is my first time with this exercise since then. So I'm not just rehashing the relationship, but looking back on exactly how I was reading my life into Lacanian theory and writing about it. I remember it being very disturbing and very revealing for me. I'm hoping to prod and analyze and be disturbed again. The unexpected things that pop out of such a psychological journey are amazing.

So, we let go of the old relationship, my old experiences, and begin exploring my love life of the past year and a half.

A thing I wrote years ago (slightly modified), and a response

My father and I share afflictions– quick tempers, stubbornness, and the weight of our own standards for ourselves. When I think of what’s been passed down through generations of my family, I think of his family– their traits, their values. There’s very little of material worth that’s been passed down through the Edwards family, but none of us complain much about that. The Edwards stubbornness is legendary– my great-great grandfather died refusing to go to the hospital for an intestinal blockage. Incidentally, his wife was killed in a hunting accident– her gun went off while she was hopping a fence.

My father hates two things above and beyond anything else in the world: waste, and laziness. His abhorrence of waste came through necessity– as of yet, no Edwards has been able to afford the luxury of waste. My dad’s a notorious packrat. His greatest fear is throwing something away and later finding out that he could’ve used it for something. When my great grandfather died, my dad cleaned out his garage. Dad came home with a boxful of old junk– mostly stuff my great grandfather had hoarded for countless decades. Grampa was a packrat, too.

My dad’s loathing of laziness is a trait all his own. He works hard, and expects others to do the same. He can, however, allow for failure in others, as long as their intentions were good. He can’t accept failure in himself.

Six years ago, my father didn’t come home from work. He owned his own business then, a small shoe repair shop that never seemed to turn a profit. On the door of his shop that day, we found a note: “Gone home for the day. Sick.” My father’s car was gone, along with a bunch of his belongings. On the counter in his shop, we found piles of unpaid bills and various financial forms. I was sick with guilt when I discovered that the forms that drove him over the edge were my financial aid forms. His business was deep in the red, and had been for years, and he hadn't paid taxes in a dog's age. Like a good Edwards, he hadn’t said a word about it to anyone.

Two days later, my father called from West Virginia. He’d felt compelled to drive south, to escape the bills, the stress, the pressure. He had contemplated life and death, gained some perspective, and decided to return. Another two days and he was back, and my parents began picking up the financial pieces. Beyond what pertained to practical matters, such as selling his business and getting the taxes in order, we never spoke of it. The ordeal fell out of conscious memory altogether, only to resurface at random. It takes me by surprise that I have managed to forget this incident, to genuinely bury it.

At the time, I could not figure out how my father could have done such an irrational thing– taking off without a word to his family, leaving us in suspense for two days before he called, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. Now that I, too, have gained some perspective, what he did seems to fit. The same Edwards that can’t admit he’s sick enough to see a doctor, also can’t admit that he’s wasted 20 years on a business that will always devour more money than it delivers. It’s a failure that reeks of laziness, of not trying hard enough. This self-destructive mindset is my affliction as well.

I had a hard time in high school, like a lot of kids do. Periodically I found myself stuck in an existential fog, unable to justify my life, to attribute any meaning or reason to it. It was during one of these times that I found a little note from my dad, scrawled in his almost illegible handwriting– Always remember, no matter how dark a day may seem, there’s someone who loves you – me. –Dad. He knew what I was going through and understood exactly what I needed, because the life or death question runs in his family too– Am I, myself, a waste?

Since leaving home for school, I’ve felt a rift between myself and my family. I’m the first Edwards to go to college, the first to move to a city far away, and the family picks on me about it. Their teasing is good natured, but there’s a palpable distance separating us now. I feel like I’ve jumped ship. Straddling the two worlds in my life, I feel like my great-great grandmother hopping over that fence. Like her shotgun that delivered the fatal blast, what stays with me is the question, the affliction. Like a good Edwards, I keep it to myself.




Miranda,

I just finished reading your piece, it evoked a storm of emotion in me, I am
first very proud of you and your insight. Not everyone can or will examine
themselves with such accuity. I look back to the time I left, overwhelmed by
stress, guilt and uncertainty. I know without a doubt, had I not gone, I
would not be here today. I hope I have not scarred those I love too deeply.
I also hope the lessons to be learned will not be overlooked. This
"affliction" can be a terrible thing but there is value in knowing yourself
and your motivations, I am learning.
I know and feel the separation you wrote about, I really think it has more
to do with your growing up than your going off to college. For my part, I
feel I have to learn who you are all over again and I want to give you the
space to become that person without inflicting the limitations of my small
world upon what can be your great big world. I think that you are headed for
a great life that you are only beginning to imagine. I love you and am very
proud to have you for a daughter.

Dad

The hysterical neurotic

". . . in order to maintain his desire, [the hysterical neurotic] tries never to supply a possible fulfilling object for that desire, and in this way the resulting dissatisfaction remobilizes his desire in an aspiration, always more and more remote, toward an ideal of being" (Joel Dor, The Clinical Lacan, pp 80-81).

Nothing is more terrifying to the hysterical neurotic than having her desire fulfilled, so she avoids it at all costs, focusing on impossible ideals as objects of her desire. Nothing is ever good enough for her, least of all herself; she strives to become perfect aesthetically and intellectually, all the while berating herself for her perceived lack of beauty and intelligence. Making any important decision, such as choosing a romantic partner, is a source of endless anxiety for the hysteric; she puts off the decision as long as possible, and when she must finally decide, she is plagued by doubts about whether she chose correctly. Nothing she has is ever good enough; there is always something more, something better, to desire.

My heart was in my throat as I read about the hysterical neurotic. This kind of repetition was continually unfolding in my life, in my relationships: I would fall for someone, become the woman of their dreams, and ultimately dump them for someone else. I found it impossible not to look around for someone else, difficult to say no to the first guy who pursued me. Caught up in the problems and conflicts that always crop up in relationships, the new guy always seemed so much better for me, so much more understanding, more attractive, smarter, etc. I wonder how he is in bed? I wonder what our children would look like? I'd leave guy 1 for guy 2 and the same thing would happen again.

At the time I was studying the neurotic structure, I was engaged, but starting to have my doubts. We had gotten engaged too soon in the relationship, and it wore on us. We argued. I always felt like we were speaking two different languages. The sex was great, and I was naive enough to think that compatibility in bed meant everything. I was sure I had ended my repetition of trying to find someone else. I hadn't.

Half my problem was my constant fear/belief that someone better for me was out there. The other half was thinking I had found this person when I hadn't.

I wrote yesterday about the choice involved in the feminine position-- to become the object a, the complement to the man's fantasy, or to accept one's aloneness and navigate desire in one's own way. For certain I was doing the former. To some extent I'm sure I still am.

I considered myself a relationship chameleon-- I took on a man's interests, his tastes in music, his preferences, his sense of humor, and ultimately tricked many men into thinking I was perfect for them. I didn't really do this consciously; it was easy, natural. I would start dating a man, and all of a sudden I liked everything he liked. I would say things that made him laugh. I would pretend he pleased me in bed. (I know my husband is going to read this and start freaking out.)

My last semester of college, I started realizing that my fiancé of the time was all wrong for me. I painstakingly broke it off, and for once there wasn't a new guy awaiting me. I avoided serious relationships for a while. I had to get to know myself outside of a relationship. In the past I had only known myself by knowing who I was dating.

I went on a few dates. I had to accept that I wasn't going to be perfect for every man. I tried to just be myself. I had to deal with rejection.

By the time I met Anthony, I had figured out how to live without needing constant validation from a man. I felt secure in myself. I was, I think, starting to navigate my own desire. Consequently, I was able to have a real relationship. With Anthony, I could finally be myself. I felt completely accepted by him. I could reveal to him the worst parts of my personality and he still loved me. He encouraged me in finding my own way. He pushed me (still does push me) to find a career that I love, something that'll bring meaning to my life.

Still I fear that I'll end up dissatisfied; that my nature really is that of the hysteric and I'll soon be caught up in the repetition again.

A note about names

Birth of the (m)Other

Homage to Birth of the Other, by Rosine Lefort, a Lacanian psychoanalyst.
According to Lacan, the Other imposes language on the child. Babies are born helpless, at the mercy of their parents and language. She must address her need to her primary caretaker, the (m)Other, in the form of a demand. Needs can never be fully satisfied, however, or even fully expressed-- language imposes limits. What the child demands is not just satisfaction-- when the child cries in hunger, she is crying for unconditional love as well as food. This need/demand for love is never satisfied. What's left perpetually unsatisfied is desire.


Navigating desire

Homage to my senior thesis in college: Lacan, the Buddha, and the Self: Navigating Desire and the Human Condition.
Desire is crucial in Lacanian theory. A child's first desire, born of the unsatisfying response to the demand, is to become what the Other desires. A child notices that the (m)Other's desire goes beyond the child, that the mother has a lack, and she seeks to become that very lack. At some point, the child must be given a firm no-- you cannot become exactly what your mother desires; you cannot fill that lack. This shifts the discourse to the child's own desire.
To vastly oversimplify Lacan's sexuation theory: A woman must choose either to attempt to become the complement to a man's lack (much like the baby tries to become the mother's lack), to become his fantasy, or she can acknowledge her innate aloneness (the Other can never satisfy her, and she will never be the perfect complement, because it is impossible) and navigate desire in her own unique way.


Violet

I'm not set on Violet; I may change it at some point. I first came across the name in Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved; I fell in love with the name and dreamed of bestowing it on my daughter. However, my husband wasn't fond of the name and in the end, neither was I-- it's the name of a character, not a real person. It makes for a decent pen name, I think.

Into the void

So thus begins my recollections of the past year and a half in no particular order. I was trying to figure out exactly where to start, and the first thing that popped into my head kinda surprised me. Here goes.

The first thing I want to work through is the death of my neighbor's daughter.

I brought Téa up to Maine for the first time in October. When I got there, my mom informed me that Kristen had killed herself. I thought she was joking at first. I searched her eyes for any sign that she was kidding. She wasn't. I started crying.

The story goes, Kristen had a jerk of a husband and two sweet little daughters, aged 3-or-so and 10 months. She'd been struggling with depression for several months, and was getting worse. She begged her husband not to go on a fishing trip he'd planned for a weekend, because she didn't feel good, but he went anyway. Her mom came by to visit, and she was just about comatose with depression. Her mom (who's lived across the street from my parents since before I was born) brought her home and tried to get her into counselling. Apparently she was hospitalized for a while and then released; I'm not sure when that happened. The night of her death, her parents put her on a 24-hour suicide watch. Her mom even brought her into the bathroom to keep an eye on her. At some point, she was out of supervision for a few minutes (I don't know exactly why this happened, but I certainly can't blame her parents-- watching someone every minute is difficult, and I'm sure they thought she'd be fine by herself for just a moment). She shot herself with the one gun in the house they had neglected to dispose of.

I don't know why they took their eyes off her, why they had guns in the house, why they had so many guns in the house that they could possibly forget one, or how she got a hold of that gun. It doesn't matter. She had it planned; it would've happened one way or another.

Her jerk husband now won't let Kristen's mom see the little girls. She loves her granddaughters and spent a lot of time with them when Kristen was alive; they would obviously be a great comfort to her now that she's lost her daughter. But the asshole won't return her calls. It's a tragic situation all around, and it couldn't have happened to a less deserving family.

I grew up with Kristen and her brother. My mom wrote them into my baby book as my "first friends." Kristen's mom babysat me. I hadn't really talked to Kristen since I was 12 or so, but we saw them across the street, her daughters playing in the yard. She seemed happy. I know she was a very intelligent and kind person.

Her suicide hit me hard, especially since she left behind two little daughters and I had just given birth to a little girl of my own. She was still nursing the younger one. She must've been so miserable, so ill, to take her own life and leave her family. Not just her daughters, but her brother, a year older than her, her mother and father (she was especially close with her mother) and her 12 year old sister. This will impact them all for the rest of their lives.

I can't imagine leaving my daughter behind. She freaks out when I take a shower. Even though she's only 3 months old, I think it would really traumatize her if I suddenly disappeared. She knows my face, my smell, the sound of my voice. I comfort her best and I'm her only source of food. It's amazing what a unit we've become in 3 months; we'd be devastated without each other.

I have thought long and hard about Kristen's suicide. I've run the scenario over and over in my mind. The blast of the gun. Her parents running into the room to find her dead. My parents heard the screams from across the street. Several emergency vehicles came to the house. Kristen was rolled out in a body bag. My parents saw the family bringing out chairs and pieces of carpet. Things that got messy.

I try to figure out what her state of mind must have been. And what it must feel like to find your daughter dead, when she was alive just moments before. And where Kristen is now. I'm not religious, but I can't think of her soul as being in the same place with my grandfather and aunt Sam. I don't feel her watching over me. She just feels gone.

A beginning.

I realized the writing bug had bit me when I was answering survey questions on my other blog, and my answers became so ridiculously long that no one would ever read them.

I kept a journal for over 10 years, writing regularly if not daily, until the summer of 2007. I don't know exactly why I stopped. Shortly after that, I met a man who changed my life completely.

In late September 2007, I met Anthony. We hit it off (read: hopped into bed together) right away. We fell in love, despite our relationship being long distance (I lived in Massachusetts, he lived in NYC). In early February 2008, I found out I was pregnant. We freaked out but in the end decided to suck it up and have the baby.

On September 22nd 2008, one year to the day after Anthony and I first "hit it off," I gave birth to my baby girl, Téa Lourdes. I spent the subsequent 3 months falling madly in love with her.

I always kept a journal because I didn't want to lose anything. I wanted to record all my important memories. I feel like I have the past year and a half stored up in my head, waiting to get out in words, and I feel an urge to finally get that done before the memories start fading away.

And, this may be too ambitious, but I'd also like to revisit my Lacanian research and entwine it with these memories somehow. Maybe add a little psychoanalytic perspective to my life, to give it more meaning. The interpretation of memory can't be separated from the memory itself. Memory is only a reconstruction.

We'll see where this goes, I guess.