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Lifetime Victims

I was really horrified yesterday to learn on the pop-psych show that children have no choice in refusing to go on court ordered visitations with a divorced parent.

Doesn’t this strike anyone as a sick thing? I know that I used to freak out no matter which parent was taking me away from the other after a week or two of being in one place. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean kids who are thirteen, fourteen years old, they don’t have any choice. That parent could be a screwed up drug-addict and if the court wasn’t in the mood to recognize that, the kid would have to go with them for the visit. Well, that’s what the pop-psychologist said, anyway. True to her pro-weekend-father stance, she thought it was great.

Speaking of that sort of thing, Todd and I were talking this morning about people who take one event in their life and draw it out through the rest of their existence, and revel in being a victim. Kitey’s very temporary girlfriend, the one she came here with the first time, is a wonderful example of this. She belongs to eighty million different groups — Vegetarian Lesbian Women Smokers Who Have One Outdoor Cat And No Dogs And Sometimes Eat Fish But Not Often — that sort of thing, and is by all accounts a very irritating person. Things got really weird when she was here (partly due to the fact that Todd and I had no idea that she was going to be staying here) and she ended up staying in New York City. We were sitting on the porch before she left and she told me she thought I had a problem with her because she was Jewish. Since I had no idea that she was Jewish (not to mention that the only religious affiliation that I have a problem with is any branch of Ye Olde Fundamentalist Rabid Fanatic Christian Church) this seemed like a ridiculous argument to me and I told her so. She persisted in believing that this was the case. Interestingly enough, Kitey told me when she was here this for this most recent visit that this woman had sat her down and said, “D’you know, I have to admit that part of what was so difficult for me about what happened at Sage’s was that for the first time I knew it was about me and not about being Jewish. So I had to look inward instead of poking my finger at everyone else.”

Anyway, so we were talking about the victim mentality, and I said that I truly didn’t understand the way that people run around wanting apologies from people who’ve hurt them. First of all, I’d probably die on the spot of shock if my father ever actually said he was sorry, and secondly, what does that change? Nothing. It doesn’t change a thing. People who hurt me aren’t given chance after chance to do it again, they’re simply not allowed back into my life. The end. So what does that make me? An unforgiving person, I guess. Marian, on the other hand, is amazingly forgiving — I did some incredibly shitty things to her in the name of Hurting You Before I Get Hurt and when I came crawling back to say I was sorry she was right there for me.

I was really sad to find out the reason that I haven’t heard from my English aunt in so long — her father passed away recently. I only met him once but he was a sweetheart and he and his wife seemed devoted to each other. Her family is extremely close and I know this must be terribly hard for her.

Spent some time yesterday updating the “questions people have (almost) never asked me” section of the Crunchier and Crabbier page, had quite a bit of fun doing it. When Todd got home we sat together and read the latest 90210 summary by Danny Drennan — he is one of my web heroes — and laughed ourselves off our chairs. Ate pizza for dinner and then went to sleep. I ended up having a terrible dream that my father and Ruth had decided to open a combination movie theater and family restaurant and Todd and I were standing in line to get in. Ruth’s sister (who in “real life” I actually got along with relatively well) had a baby with her who she was screaming at because it wouldn’t stop crying. Eventually I said, “Gee, maybe if you’d quit screaming at the baby it would stop crying,” and she gave the baby to me and shut up and so did the baby. Then just before I was going to walk into the restaurant I realized that I didn’t have any shoes on and was afraid that they’d kick me out. Dream analysis? Don’t eat yucky chain-pizza-place pizza just before you go to sleep.

© 1995 QN Podcast (formerly Quirky Nomads).