My good girlfriend called me today completely and utterly at the brink of losing it. She’s about to move to a new city and she’s nervous, understandably. Of course I can relate, I’m about to move to a new city too. She’s a single mother, just like me and we both are dealing with the unspoken maternal drama of juggling a big move, a creative career path and leaving our little one with the only family she knows (and school) while we get ourselves acclimated in a new town, settled and ready for our little ones to join us in time for summer break.
I feel her pain so much in this because there is so much to do and a lot of trust that must take place in order for peace of mind to happen– so that all of the rest of it can happen, at least somewhat happily.
When she called me, I knew instantly all of the subtext in her voice that she was reluctant to say aloud. She didn’t have to. I’m going through it too. Other people’s stuff.
My friend, we’ll call her ‘Glory’, has an interesting mix of familial units. Somebody in the mix is a drinker, somebody in the mix is a pill head and one of these somebodies in the mix can be really petty, mean, erratic and a bit of a control freak. They actually play off each other, she says. When one has a problem with her, they all kind of gang up on her, if only to break her spirit. She tries to stay focused and positive and just work on her goals, but the end result is always the same– UTTER FRUSTRATION!!!
Of course, all of her familial units love her son to pieces, but they have issues and she’s leery, as she should be. She made the decision to move because she hasn’t any logical job prospects where she is and she was presented with a great opportunity in San Diego. Her son starts school in a few weeks and it didn’t make sense to pull him out of his current safe haven with his dad near by and at least one consistently sane grand-parent and sibling around. Her thinking is that because her son will be in school 9 hours a day, what can possibly go wrong???
The voice of reason in her is screaming–EVERYTHING! And that if something happens, she’s at least 5 hours away by plane to get it fixed. OMG. What will she do? How would she deal? The alternative, of course, is relegating herself and her hotsy totsy degree to being a manager at Wal-Mart, because nothing else is working itself out in the job department. Of course, she could take her son with her right away, which adds to her struggle and his because getting him into a good school where she’s going this late in the game is virtually impossible.
So… here she is on the other end of the phone, frustration brimming tears that you can practically hear fighting its way through the phone and down my listening face.
She tells me, “it wouldn’t be so bad if they could just be easy until he starts school. At least then, I could get a gauge of what my options really are. But they are really tripping and all I can see is their stuff right now, when I got so much stuff to do before I can even begin to pack.”
She tells me that mostly the tripping family members are so far in denial, they keep their respective issues to themselves, to the point that if you didn’t know they had a particular issue, you wouldn’t know they had issues–if you catch my drift.
However, she’s noticing that the closer she gets to her move, the more they pick on her, almost as though they’re trying to block her progress, to keep her under their thumb and ugly influence. They try to guilt her by questioning her mothering abilities. They interrupt her on future-work-related conference calls with any number of petty dealings. They find ways to discourage her plans. When she’s working on her portfolio, if the child is with them, they guilt her into coming to get the child by saying, “come and take care of your child” situation irrelevant. She gets it, her mother is doing her a favor by watching her son to begin with, but her mother,while great with her son, has issues with ‘Glory’ for her career path. So she works, at any whim, to make ‘Glory’s’ life more complicated than it needs to be using the only weapon she can–her son.
One of Glory’s siblings helps the process along by being their mother’s tag team. By the time Glory arrives to pick up her child, the two of them are cack-cacking on the phone or in person(about her and in full ear shot of her) about how she thinks she’s this and she ain’t about that. Which hurts, understandably. Meanwhile, the two of them aren’t doing a dang on thing for themselves, their own lives or their own happiness. Are you catching where this drift is going now?
Now if there is anything about my girl ‘Glory’ I can say that’s true–that girl is a rock. She’s confident and fabulous and has a knack for making ways out of no way at all. Wherever she goes and whatever she puts her mind to do, she will no doubt succeed. If I know this about her knowing her only a few years, you can best believe her family knows it too. I’m gathering that they may be a teensy wittle bit jealous by this character trait in her. Particularly if they can’t find the same traits in themselves.
What do we know about misery class? Yes, yes, yes. Misery loves company, doesn’t it? Misery is just like bitterness. It’s a plague. It eats aways at the spirits of normally good natured people until all that’s left to hold on to is a whole bunch of Fugly no body can give a proper name or logic to. Misery is easy to avoid in folks you could care less about, but family creates a whole new scenario to a situation and makes other people’s stuff harder to dodge, particularly in ‘Glory’s’ situation. Besides, if I’ve learned anything from my friend Dr. Argie Allen, I don’t think her familial units are even the slightest bit awares of what they’re doing. They’re simply following the script of who they are.
To be honest, I could give my friend no reasonable advice. She’s knows the same things I know. She sees the world in practically the same ways I see the world. It’s so ironic that we are dealing with similar scenarios on our way to our new lives 3,000 miles away from the ‘home’ we’ve known all our lives.
The one thing I did ask her is if she honestly, in her spirit, felt her son was safe with her family. She said, “yes”. She also said she felt guilty as hell for having to leave him in the first place, even though she barely has a place to live herself, at least for the first few months. I said, “yes”. I asked her if she thought she was feeding into her family’s crap to try to talk herself out of going and ultimately her growth? She said, “I’ll get back to you on that”.
I heard a quote once that I think is completely appropriate for Glory’s story.
“When somebody gives you a gift that you don’t accept, who’s gift is it?”
The gist of this post is a parable of sorts using the life of a friend to tell the truth. Greatness makes some people uncomfortable. We all have to sacrifice something to get somewhere. When people–it doesn’t matter who–see you doing something for yourself that they can’t muster the courage to do for themselves, it makes them feel badly. Like crabs in a barrel, people will do anything to keep themselves from feeling badly. So instead of offering you their backs to step out of the barrel with, sometimes, they try to pull you back down to share their fate (the hot pot, no doubt). It’s nothing personal. It’s the nature of crabs and unfortunately of some people. Somebody wise has been known to say, “you can’t choose your family, but you sure can choose your friends”.
That said, the best thing we who wish to be barrel free can do is to congregate with like-minded folk who strive daily for their greatness, plan our work, work our plan, collect our children and go. You have to go to grow after all. Leave the barrel to the crabs.
As far as ‘Glory’ is concerned, I can’t be certain, however, if she’s anything like me, I’m pretty sure her more crab-esque family units will be appropriate motivation for her to do what she has to do and be swift in whatever time frame her little one will be spending with them while she’s transitioning to her new life across country. Let’s send her a healthy dose of positive energy as reinforcement, shall we?
The moral of this story. I can’t call it. Just some food for thought. Thank you for reading this though. I salute the divinity in you. Peace and abundant “crab free” blessings. -e-