20 February 2003 - 23:11 - puer fatuus mendaxque

Let me describe for you an entry that is no entry.

It goes something like this:

I had a conversation with my mother yesterday -- actually, I mostly listened to her talk. It started with her asking me the question, 'Are you sure you're gay?' and covered:

'You and your sister... it's a terrible disappointment to me, you know. I'm very sad. Not angry, just sad.'

'Why are you gay? It's not like you're particularly pretty, or really effeminate, or anything... and you know, a lot of society still isn't comfortable with seeing two men kissing. Can you explain to me why you think you're gay?'

[attempt follows: 'It really seems that I'm just attracted to guys, you know?']

'Then why do you spend all your time with female friends? And are you sure that "attraction" isn't just... admiration?'

[lack of segue]

'Have you ever tried marijuana? [extended discussion about the poor judgment of the son of a family friend, blah, blah.] I don't think you're like that... I trust your judgment.'

'Your sister and her friend... it makes me sad, you know, because it looks like your sister is playing the part of the man? Maybe if it were the other way around, I'd be OK with it... I wanted my daughters to be able to be provided for... at least with her, I have some explanation, she was always something of a tomboy, but I just don't understand, with you...'

'Don't have sex too early, OK? Don't have sex with boys just because you think you've already said you're gay!'

'I'm such a failure as a parent. None of my children talk to me. Aren't you lucky -- you'll never have to deal with being a parent if you're gay.'

'You know, I still don't feel comfortable answering my friends' questions about your sister and her lack of romantic involvement...'

All of the above was, of course, in Chinese, and every time I tried to answer, she interrupted and changed the topic. It wasn't, on the whole, a very satisfying 'conversation.' I sort of figured it wouldn't be a good time to mention adoption or anything, or try to introduce radical new notions of causality (is it really because I said I'm gay that I am attracted to boys? That one was new to me), and I left that feeling incredibly frustrated. If I weren't having the same conversation with her every time, and if she weren't always bringing everything back to 'I must be such a failure as a parent,' and if she didn't keep ignoring everything I try to reassure her with or bring up... I'd probably find something else to make the rest of my day terrible, but I'd like to think that things would be a lot healthier.

Please excuse my incoherence.

And then, a second half to the entry that never was:

When I got to my cello lesson today, something in my face must have looked terrible, because after my short section of Britten, my teacher asked, with some concern in his voice, 'Is everything all right?'

Well, yes, it is, as long as I don't think about how I'm feeling. Because if I do, I might realize that, no, nothing feels all right, because suddenly it doesn't feel as if I know anything at all, and I feel increasingly unproductive, and if I look at things very closely, I don't think I even like myself very much. And I'm confused, because I seem to remember that feeling happy and secure in oneself is a lot easier that it is for me right now, and I don't want to be narcissistic, but I do believe there is a middle zone between regular self-excoriation and fulsome self-praise, and I seem to keep missing it.

What frightens me most these days, I think, is that feeling of being completely at a loss, of having absolutely no idea how to make it so that I like myself in reasonable amounts, of no longer even having the certainty that this is just a temporary thing and that I'll be back to full functioning once school starts up again. Like the Britten, this particular mood is one of the first times I have come up against something that seems so impossible that I cannot fall back on my former pattern of working both through and around it, and there's nowhere to go when I'm the one I want to get away from for a while. I know full well that just telling myself to be happy won't work, but I'm at a loss for other ways to deal...

I tend not to like talking about my feelings, because I'm used to getting mocked for them -- as if, because I seem to be talented, I shouldn't have any right to have little confidence in myself, or feel in any way bad. It's not as if I particularly like feeling like this, or that this is how I usually feel. But now, I'm hoping that writing some of this will help me get at least some of my frustration out, or maybe help me see some new way I could approach everything. So far, it doesn't seem to be working.

Latin gives me some control over myself because what I am trying to do is something that I can do, where I have some control, where everything can be thought out.

But when it comes to living, I seem an incompetent. After all, no one gets a manual, right? and surely this is some normal adolescent hormonal swing...

why is it so damn difficult to get over, then? and why, if this were cast as a battle, do I think I'd be losing?

I promise you -- that was no entry you ever saw.

I'm perfectly fine.

They say, by the way, that the percussionist should be fine -- his surgery got moved up, took half the time they expected it to, he's starting to move about, and chemo should finish off what they couldn't get out around the edges. So there are good things happening.