Blind Ignorance

A selection from The Sound of Magic, an upcoming memoir.

We all know having children comes with an exponential amount of responsibilities, more than you ever imagined, more than you expected. It humbles you. The lessons you teach them, intended and unintended. The way you speak to them. They watch how you care for yourself and others. It creates ripple effects into their future. It builds upon who they end up being, how they walk in the world, how they treat others. Most especially, how they treat themselves. It's the most important task in the entire world, being an active, attentive and caring parent.

How could I possibly know this, since I do not have children myself?

Do you remember what it was like being a child? Do you have the ability to empathize? I am listening intently and I am comprehending what people tell me when they speak about being a parent.

There's so many reasons why I didn't have them. I knew from a young age that I didn't want to have children, my mother even told me I never talked about it. My father was disappointed and pestered me: "when are you going to give me a grandbaby?" clearly not respecting my choice; he gave up on me entirely. Cool.

There's only so much we can blame our parents for. It is wise to accept that it's all in the past and there is no going back to shame them for their awful actions so that they could change their behavior. We are the only ones responsible for our wellbeing and happiness as adults. Take that pointed finger to the mirror. The faster you acknowledge it, the faster you can heal.

We also have to stop idolizing our parents with such harmful phrases that normalize abuse such as "They did the best they could!" "They didn't have access to the knowledge and therapy we have today." "It's your mother/father/sibling/family, though!" "Honor thy parents." "God will judge you."

Obey. Forgive. Repent.

Ignore. Denial. Repeat.

This was the *stray cat I brought home. He was insane, in a ding-dong silly boy kind of way.

There are things that you discover as you age that have a way of reminding you of how blatantly ignorant your parents were. None of them perfect, we were never asking for perfect.

Mine were more concerned -nay- obsessed about not spending money on what they didn't want to spend money on or what didn't seem worthy.

I was prescribed glasses when I was maybe 6 or 7.

I was told by my parents that I didn't like wearing them, and that I could see just fine. They performed their own "test" at home by having me stand at a distance and holding fingers up to see if I could make the right guess. Of course I could see at a distance, I was farsighted.

They exclaimed, "damn doctors, just trying to get money out of us!" I was told I didn't need glasses by my parents, who are not optometrists.

As you would assume, I struggled in school. I was in remedial reading and math. I held books within inches of my face, squinting. Fatigue took over after only a few paragraphs. In band, I had to write the notes in their letters in large bold print above the staff on the music sheets so that I could play without bending towards the stand to see. The music teacher noticed and said I couldn't do that, so I quit the next year. I was second chair flute at one point and played the guitar. I dabbled with clarinet and trumpet. I loved it, I also wanted to sing in choir so badly, I wanted a career in music in some way.

*(Not-so-fun fact: I was kicked out of the house twice as a teenager for getting into trouble doing menial, idiotic, typical teenage shit. One of the times I got kicked out was because I brought a stray cat home. I received no support of course, lessons are to be learned the hard way. I had to sell my guitar and flute for food money.)

It wasn't meant to be.

I was, and still am an anxious test taker. I would cry and wail for help as a young child, but since I had three other siblings in the home at the time, and two of them had more severe learning disabilities, they got most of the attention, understandably.

My poor grades and attitude caused me to be grounded, and often. I was told that I was lazy, not trying hard enough, because they knew I was smart. I was a bad girl. I just wanted attention, that was selfish and I needed to be punished.

Middle school and high school were interesting. Hormones are fascinating. For a spell, I could see up close just fine. I was on the high honor roll a few times in middle school, I was able to read. Harry Potter held me together in those rough years.

I was in honors English junior year. The teacher for my creative writing class pulled me aside one day and asked if he could keep my short story assignment to use as an example for future classes. I was bewildered. I was good at something? From what I can remember, the name of the story was "How The Cat Got Snake Eyes."

As things leveled out senior year, my eyesight faded again. I would put my Dad's over-the-counter reading glasses on instinctively, knowing there was something wrong with my eyesight. Sometimes I stacked 2 of them on top of each other just so I could see the computer screen and read books. It was never quite right since we all have unique vision. I never asked them for help, they were always so flustered with everything else going on in life.

I barely graduated high school. I failed several classes and had to retake them. I think my GPA was a 1.9 at some point. The poor grades were also due to neglect and frequent emotional and physical abuse that happened in the home. I couldn't focus, I was constantly anxious, afraid, my stomach hurt nearly every day, walking on eggshells and expended quite a bit of energy in composing my face and actions so that I didn't look or seem angry.

I had started a job as a cashier at Sam's Club about 6 months before I graduated. I got promoted quite quickly to cashier supervisor, that was a huge learning lesson. It was too stressful, so I transferred over to the optical department.

The optometrist and manager watched me quizzically with furrowed eyebrows as I held my face several inches from the computer, squinting to read the numbers on the screen. They quickly put me in the exam room.

Ah, there it was, a prescription for farsightedness!!

I devoured books. All kinds. Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson to understand our universe better, Thich Nhat Hanh and books on Buddhism and Daoism for my salvation, Virginia Woolf and bell hooks for my sanity. Fiction and non-fiction, fantasy, romance, self-help, science, history, dystopian, mystery, adventure. Everything!

I excelled in college, averaging a 3.8 GPA over a five year period.

I am smart. My parents were right about that.

I moved to California to be with my love. My to-be mother-in-law said I could live with her, rent free, so that I can finish college without struggling to survive.

That lasted about 3 to 6 months, when her then boyfriend (that ended up being her third husband, then third ex-husband not too long after) told her that we were leeches and we needed to learn how to live on our own. This coming from the man who refused to acknowledge my presence for years, who looked past me at family gatherings and shook my husbands hand as I stood there staring at him. Very cool.

So she moved in with him, and we were forced to find housing on $9 and $10/hour wages. In California, in one of the most expensive areas to live.

My parents refused to help. College was a choice, they "did it on their own" (my Dad with a G.I. Bill), so we needed to do it on our own. They didn't take the time to understand and research that college in the 60's and 70's were MUCH different in the early 2000's. Everything cost exponentially more.

I think my Dad gave me enough money for one semester, once, after I begged him to help. I tried to go into the Air Force, to make my veteran father proud, but they denied me due to my Asgood-Schlatter's disease. Told me to "try the Army." Yikes.

I tried for federal school loans, my parents were very upset that they needed to provide their financial income. "It's none of their business what we make!" Wouldn't you know it, they made enough money and I was disqualified! I told the financial aid person that I wasn't getting any help from my parents and the woman scoffed at me, "Well they should be helping. It's their responsibility!"

And then we ran out of money. We did our best, we scraped and saved for years. I took out several personal school loans, ones that I am still paying for today. I have about 4 years left of this prison sentence.

I never finished college. I was burnt out after 5 years of working full time, sometimes with a side hustle and going to school part-time in the evenings and weekends.

At the time, I felt like a birthday cake mix that someone started to make, they combined the ingredients and then left me on the counter. Never to be enjoyed as intended.

Ruminating over the potential that was lost still causes some pain from time to time. I try to look at my life as it is and accept it as best I can.

Yet, I learned a lot. I learned that I didn't want to become a therapist after all. I learned that people rarely change and that I was pursuing a career as a therapist so that I could change my mother. I wanted her to be the kind of person that I could be more comfortable around, one that wouldn't hurt me with her words and actions. I learned that we cannot force people to change, that we cannot control anyone and to accept people exactly as they are. I learned that I wanted to become a therapist because I needed therapy from my childhood.

That last year of college I decided to take classes on subjects that piqued my interest, such as astronomy, earth sciences, anthropology and world religions. I don't regret it.

After all these years, after shaming myself for not trying harder, I know now that it wasn't my fault. I am not to blame.

My parents and my mother-in-law are directly to blame for this outcome.

I am no longer angry at them. But I also don't forgive them. They made these choices knowingly, not caring about the consequences and stand/stood by their choices.

This is not going to sit well with most people:

You should NEVER forgive people who do not acknowledge their mistakes, who refuse to communicate, who make excuses for their harmful actions and most importantly: those who do not take action to change. Forgiveness is for those who feel ashamed for what they've done, for the ones who want to make amends and make an effort to change their behavior. Forgiving someone is a sacred act, it is a precious gift and it is not to be taken lightly.

With all that being said:

Children are the ultimate sacrifice, it is beyond my comprehension to imagine how difficult it is to be raising children in these times. You are all superheroes to me.

Whether you have kids or not, religious or not, we all should strive to do better than the best we can. Some days we won't be able to, and we shouldn't beat ourselves up over it either. We should always reach for a higher evolution of mindfulness and help each other as a global community.