Holding Patterns

Long, worthwhile read if you have some time.

“We all hate our parents for not acting as we would, and my hatred in this moment is particularly intense. When she plays the victim, I end up playing the parent, and I am boxed into the role of keeping up appearances. I can’t figure out how to break out of it—to authorize myself to not function—to be sad in a way that is disruptive. To do that would be to take the starring role in my mother’s sickness. I want someone to recognize that what I need is a dog bed to loll in, day in and day out. At another time, the person who would have bought me the dog bed was my mother—the witness to the child’s suffering. Now, she is the star, and I the coddler. When our food comes, she gets exactly her order and they fuck mine up.”

[from N+1 Magazine]

Holding Patterns

My grandmother calls me every Saturday around the same time, between ten o’clock and eleven o’clock in the morning. Actually, she should be calling me soon, but this time I’m not going to answer—my phone is in the other room. My grandmother lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so far north she’…