Otherwise Maladroit

10 January 2001 Written for Pulitika Issue 3

No Comments From Sentimental Fools. Please.

There I go again. At the aftermath of a heated (albeit one-sided) argument, after yapping away indignities about my mother’s comprehensive capacity, I was crying and my mother was literally red with fury. She shrieked about how ungrateful I was and how bloated my ego was, all of which were true. When I recovered from my self-pitying drama segment, instead of saying sorry, I managed to retort with last minute snipes near the end of our verbal crossfire. Somewhere at the back of my head I wanted to apologize, but in the heat of an argument when you want to drive that you are right (in my case, to thump at my chest like the Lord of the Jungle) all I could think about is how much damage I could inflict.

And what damage I did inflict. Our conversation started in a familiar fashion. I was complaining about society like a true armchair revolutionary: in self-edifying moral tones. I was tuned in to MTV since I loathed noontime shows, so I had plenty of material to fuel my homily. Damn this, damn that – you get the picture. My mother was faintly amused at my comments, but I was unsatisfied by hers. When I got to the point where I was criticizing consumer society I was consciously irritated by her (as I perceived it) naïve replies, and I was already making passes at her lack of comprehension. At my most odious I become an authority on everything. After all, I did pass my Philosophy and Social Sciences, and that made me feel lofty.

She called me narrow-minded, and I said that my mind was so vast she couldn’t see it. Horrible isn’t it? By then I considered everything free for all: she was so bourgeois; she was so conservative; she was a capitalist drone. I said something to the effect that her mind was the size of a peanut, and I remember that I wanted to follow through about doubts to the similarity of our genetic make-up. I never got that part in, because I was already calling her something else.

By now you’ll doubt it if I say that I truly love her. You may say that love and respect go hand in hand, but I don’t believe that. I know I love her, because I cannot comprehend life without her, because I need constant reassurance that she will always be there, because I sleep with her when I am reminded of Linda Blair in the Exorcist, because I want to keep her house bound to ensure that she will be safe, because I feel jealous that our cat can fit on her lap and cuddle and I can’t, because at the danger to her health I embarrassed myself by screaming until she came back to me, because when I still used to pray I asked God to take me first before her. I’m that selfish, I do not want to know the pain of losing her, so I’d rather she mourn over me. But I totally do not respect her views, because as I see it, she is only parroting what the boob-tube is spouting. I love her so much it hurts, but I’d rather we don’t have a conversation. Clear enough? Well, join the club. I can’t understand it myself. (By the way, psych majors, I’m an only child. Analyze that.)

I wish I wasn’t so impressionable. I wish I had rock solid faith in an absent God. I wish I liked Britney Spears. I have the tendency to ride every idealistic bandwagon that I encounter, even if I know I’ll never act on it. All I want is to float in a limbo of bliss and ignorance. However, reality constantly asserts itself, and I am caged in self-depreciating pessimism. So what can I do? The best that I can: I apologized. She was sniffling; I was through with that so I was not. It wasn’t a TV family-drama, “awww-shucks” reconciliation; it was awkward. We cared for each other, regardless of what we’d say, or rather what I would say. It was a ceasefire, at best, until the next time I get bull-headed in a china shop.

posted by Otherwise Maladroit @ 4:46 PM