Armitagemania onset, or: my, it’s taken a long time to write this

Probably because I don’t like remembering this day all that much. Fills in this placeholder.

Spring 2005: the first signs of trouble at work. Spring 2006: the sudden, overdetermined end of a long, productive, but also troubled, relationship. An attempt to leave my job fails — the interview starting on the day after I ask that we stop talking to each other. Summer 2006: Unable to face the possibility of continuing in my job, and suddenly able to take advantage of a grant, I make a transcontinental move that I am no longer comfortable with given the end of the relationship. Reactive stupidity deals me a severe personal consequence. A lonely year ensues, spent in a city by myself. Two more attempts to leave my job fail. Fall 2007: the beginning of the harassment. Paralysis; loss of self-confidence. Writing slows to a trickle, but I begin an academic blog in the subsequent spring. More job applications collapse. Fall 2008: a move back to the U.S., back to the job I have been unsuccessful in leaving, and the now roiling trouble there becomes openly apparent in the case of a friend. Office politics become nauseating; writer’s block sets in. I look at the list of available jobs, apply for a few, but begin to doubt whether I want to continue in the profession. Fall 2009: the ongoing trouble at work creates an impossible situation for me and several friends. I have to close the first academic blog. First exposure to Armitage: North & South. December 2009: the last chance to resolve the problems at work evaporate. Trigger of Armitagemania, when my friend and colleague the former Cambridge professor puts North & South in my hands to console me. I drive home for Christmas, spent, like the latest one, in the bosom of my family, with the predictable feelings of loss and alienation. (And the chain of negative events continued into Spring 2010, when I would also decide not to attempt to stay in the job any longer and provisionally, the profession, but that would be getting ahead of my story.)

For now: onset. January 7, 2010. The afternoon.

[I realize this post, which is about my emotional distress in a particular situation and written from my POV, may tend to make you critical of my parents. Please don’t be. I wasn’t the easiest child and they’ve stuck with me for over 42 years despite several profound disagreements. Be honest: imagine how exasperated you’d feel if I were your daughter. I’m extremely sensible that many people with lost or estranged or absent or deceased parents would be grateful to have parents who care as much as mine do. And this story isn’t so much about the confrontation with them as about the way that the problems facing me at the time converged. You could even say they did me a favor.]

***

I’d had a hard time getting myself motivated to go home, even though, at least hypothetically, I wanted to go. Because of the religious problem, and because I always packed a research trip into December/January, and because I then ended up spending Christmas with the family of the SO, I hadn’t spent the Christmas holidays with my parents since December 2000. It seemed like time. My parents’ home is very quiet. Not just acoustically quiet — well insulated, surrounded with trees — but quiet in other ways: devoid of much technology or media; off the beaten path; populated by fellow introverts heavily invested in maintaining personal space; and at least in the winter, not heavily visited. My parents are both actually conflict avoiders; I’m the one who’s always bringing turmoil into their midst.

So I did want to go, because I thought the quiet would let me think, but I didn’t know how to get there. I submitted grades, in the nick of time, and then fell back into a stupor, essentially staying in bed for three more days except to eat or go to the bathroom. What finally got me on the road was a reminder from my SIL of the date of my nieces’ Christmas program at school, which they were eager to have me attend. By that time, in order to do it, I had to drive the entire 1300 mi at a breakneck pace, but I made it home, saw the program, and collapsed. I had underestimated how badly burnt out I was from all the tension at work and how long any kind of recuperation was going to take; as the calendar flipped on 2010, I was sleeping only twelve hours a day. Admittedly, I had started to wonder how I was going to get myself back in the car, or if I did make it back to my apartment, how I’d get myself to the office.

For some reason, on January 7th, something jarred loose, but not in me. We’d just packed up all their Christmas decor, and the three of us were sitting in the living room, carefully avoiding the topic of who was going to have to climb into the attic to put it all away. The sun had set hours earlier, but snow was still falling. My mother, who (apart from our major religious disagreement) has stayed carefully away from discussing my behavior since a memorable blowup we had in September 1998, when she told me that my problems at the time were related to what she called “reading so much that you’re making yourself sick,” said, “something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“All you do is sleep, and when you’re not sleeping you’re not at the computer or reading or writing or playing the piano or even watching television. You just stare out the window, watching the snow fall.”

My mother is the press secretary for her marriage; it’s her job to say the unpleasant things that both of them feel. Now that she’s done it, my dad will perforce say something. Because he never broaches an unpleasant topic, when they’re criticizing me, I never know where exactly the reproach is coming from or who has the problem. Of course, they share a lot of opinions after fifty years of marriage, and they would call this “parenting with a united front.”

“We’ve never seen you like this, honey,” my dad adds. Sure enough. The full-court press.

I sigh. I look out the window. Snow is falling. We’re all three silent for two dozen heartbeats.

“See, that’s what I mean,” my mother persists.

“Do you have something against snow?” I say, trying to make light of the conversation. I’m pretty sure I don’t have what it is going to take to have this discussion with them. “Snow is pretty. Do you want me to put the stuff in the attic? Just give me the flashlight.”

“You know what I mean,” my mother says. It’s no use — they’ve decided we’re talking. “What is wrong with you?”

I swallow. “I’m going to have to leave my job,” I say. There. It’s on the table. I’ve discussed it with friends, a bit, but not much. In our branch, quitters are often shunned.

“We know you’re unhappy there, honey,” my dad says. “Why don’t you just look for another university? One around here.”

“It’s not like that.” I don’t know how many times we’ve had the conversation about the unconventional features of the job market for professors and why he never pays attention. “I’ve looked. I’ve been looking for years. No one who’s ever gotten close to hiring me believes I want to leave the job I’m in. And I’m overqualified for most of the advertised positions.”

“Well, you have to keep trying,” my mother says.

“I’m never not trying,” I said.

“Aren’t you working hard enough?” my dad asks. “Maybe if you just made a little more effort–”

“All I’ve done since I got the Ph.D. is work,” I say. My voice is taking on a dangerous tone of resentment. G-d forbid I should draw into question the Servetus family work ethic and its implicit reward schedule. I make myself breathe deeply. “I can’t work any harder. Work is not everything.”

“Well, you wanted this career.”

“So you’re saying I should do whatever is necessary to keep it?”

“Be reasonable, honey,” my dad says. “You were the one who wanted a Ph.D. We just wanted you to go to college, and be a teacher or maybe a nurse, and settle down and marry. It’s probably too late for you to have kids now, but at least you could get married. Then you would have someone to take care of you.”

“I can take care of myself,” I say. I already know they’re not the most enthusiastic grandparents, so this isn’t his biological clock ticking. This failure of mine is up for discussion, too?

“That’s what I mean,” my dad says. “You’re too independent minded. If you want to get married you need to be more compromising. You never make any effort to please anyone. Be a little vulnerable. You have to show a fellow that you need him a little. Let him be the boss once in awhile.” He winks at my mother.

“I have a boss,” I say. I’m losing my cool. “I can pay people to take care of my car and fix things that break and move heavy stuff. I want a friend. I want someone who understands me.”

“And you spent all those years with ex-SO and what for?” my mother picks up the strand. “He was your friend, and he understood you, I guess, but he didn’t want to marry you.”

“No.” What else is there to say? I know they really approved of ex-SO and so must have drawn the conclusion that I was the problem. I said very little to them about that — and I’m sure they thought their thoughts. But their notion of the relationship or what it meant was very different from mine/ours, and it would have been impossible to explain to them what was going on. I don’t blame them for criticizing something they never had a chance to understand — but I didn’t expect they’d throw this particular deficit in my face after three years, either.

“He didn’t,” I say, looking down at my hands. I want to cry, I just want to wail and howl. Am I only worthy if I work? If I marry? But I’m damned if I’ll cry in front of them. I’m dodging, now, though, and I’ve got to get back on the offensive.

“I think you just have to stop being so…” my father trails off, and then picks up again after a pause, “…insistent that you’re right. You have to go along to get along.”

He’s offered me the opening. “So you’re saying I’m too principled?”

“Too uncompromising, maybe.”

“And who taught me that?” I ask, defiantly. “Where did I learn that principle was more important than anything else?”

The room is silent.

“Maybe,” my mother says, after a few more beats pass, “you need to rethink your principles a little.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my principles!” My reply is a bit of a yell and a sob, all at once. “There’s nothing wrong with me!”

“You may think you’re not the problem,” she replies, hotly, “but what do you think is going to happen? You won’t have a job, you don’t have a husband, you don’t have–,” I know she’s going to say, ‘Jesus,’ but mercifully she stops herself, “you won’t have anything. What will you do?”

“I don’t know,” I say, “I just can’t live this way. I don’t care any more. I don’t know what is going to happen. I don’t know what I will do, okay?”

“Honey,” my dad says, “you can’t avoid–”

“Don’t call me ‘honey’.” As the sob threatens to unstuff itself, I get up, excuse myself, walk to the mudroom, and pull on and lace my boots, and shrug on my coat. I wrap on the extremely long, fluffy, pink crocheted scarf my mother made me for me during a physical therapy session after she sliced a fingertip off on a table saw, and mentally tell myself she would hug me like the scarf does if she could just find it in her. I fish my gloves out of my pockets, and walk out of the house. Down the driveway and down the road. I’d walk forever, I think, if I could just walk away from myself, but caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt, even if it’s just down the road that I’m running and the snow is falling as far as I can see. “Round the block” is something like five miles, but I walk downhill as far as the railroad tracks, and when I consider following them, it occurs to me that I’m going to have to walk uphill the whole way back, and my coat is not reflective, so it’s a bit foolhardy, the whole thing. No pauses to look around; I’m not “from here” any more, so I’m not acclimated, and it’s cold enough that I have to keep moving or the the sweat from the walk up the hill will give me a chill.

When I get back, the house is dark except for the outside light. They’ve gone to bed. Now who’s avoiding what? I know I’m not going to be able to sleep, and I don’t know what to do, and though there’s more than enough booze in the house, I don’t want to drink, and I don’t think I have enough concentration to read anything. I can’t think of anyone I can talk to about this conversation.

My parents are not wrong. I’m at the end of a rope and looking into an abyss, personally, professionally, and it’s so tempting just to let go of it all and let myself fall in. What am I going to do?

I scrabble through my bookbag in frustration. Something, anything, to distract. My fingers fall on: the clamshell case with the North & South discs in it, given to me by my friend and colleague the former Cambridge professor. I wasn’t planning to rewatch it, actually. But: Ah, yes, I think: mind numbing, tearjerking, BBC romance. Enough pathetic deaths that I can cry without embarrassment. The kiss at the end. That striking actor.

I’m still shivering as I turn on the TV and DVD player and thrust the first disc in. I turn off the lamp, settle back on the coach, draw the afghan over me, and press “play.”

~ by Servetus on January 7, 2012.