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July 21, 1997 3:34PM EST Last night I cried my eyes out on Sabs' chest after re-reading some of my school reports from elementary school and junior high. The judgements the teachers made about me were in some ways correct, but missing half the picture. Somehow I don't think any of them ever realized how much turmoil was going on in my head. If I seemed so distracted it's because I had so much going on inside that I didn't really have time for what was going on outside. and keeping up with school on a minimum of thought was so very easy in comparison to the emotional struggles of my heart. My father never had much patience with my emotional outbursts, or withdrawals. He somehow always managed to make me feel small and unimportant. He was probably doing this to curb the massive ego which inhabited my small frame. An ego which made me incredibly self-absorbed, yet I was shy and and reserved in public, inept at social situations. This was not always so. Apparently I was very outgoing and charming and loquacious between the ages of 2 and 6. What on Earth happened to make me the sullen moody and sad child of my later childhood? One of my teachers commented that I didn't smile often and that my class participation was poor and that I was often alone on the playground. My withdrawal was criticized. My inability to socialize was attributed to my own lack of desire to reach out to others and the moodiness which made me an unpleasant companion. It seems no one realized that I didn't feel like I COULD reach out to anyone. I was pigeon-holed as a foreigner. The kids would always ask me to 'say something in english' for amusement value. I got sick of it. I wanted to go home. When we did 'go home' all I wanted to do was go back: my classmates had finally gotten used to me and I to them and I'd started to find a place in their midst, only to be yanked away and thrust once again into the same situation. Over and over again. My father wonders why I'm not aggressive and ambitious. Perhaps it's some sort of defense mechanism: lay low and no one will bother you and you'll get by just fine. But I also like to do great and nifty things, and like to be recognized for them. I've just never wanted that to create a gap between myself and my peers, yet it always seems to do just that: geek, nerd, brain. I just wanted someone to talk to. My dad was often very critical when all I needed was a mild rebuke, too violently angry when all I needed was a warning word, his solutions to my problems always seemed to be too extreme to me. I often feel like he has an idea of me that he keeps trying to fit me into, one which isn't actually me. I wonder if he really sees me ... Our differences are sometimes clashingly loud. They meet headlong like a rushing train. Because we really are so intensely alike. We are stubborn, intelligent, well-spoken, forthright, blunt, self-righteous, charming, generous and selfish, temperamental, thoughtful people. We both think a lot. We just don't think the same way about the same things. My father is very concrete in his problem-solving. He's an economist, a finance-guru. He is from the land of facts and math. Math was my weakest subject in school. I am intuitive, artistic, my problem solving follows twists in logic which don't always mesh with my father's more linear process. As I've gotten older, my mother and I have gotten closer and closer together while my father and I keep drifting farther and farther apart. Maybe we really are just, too similar to really get along. I don't know. Sabs says I'm not that different from everyone else. That I needn't feel so alone. I know it in my mind, but as usual my heart has trouble keeping up with my more developed mental faculties. I've had an adult intellect for a long time. But emotionally I don't know if I ever will grow up. My emotional plane is a canvas of sudden changes in color, rarely stable, in constant flux, a raging storm, a calm sunny day, grey rain in november, wind in the spring on a high hilltop. Mercurial. I don't handle my feelings very well at all. In a sense I've sacrificed my mental abilities to the solving of my emotional problems. I think my father saw this bright shining future for me. But that's something I'll never be able to reach until I've worked on my demons. I've turned all those abilities onto the problem of dealing with my feelings. I'm reaching to find ways to just be. When I lived in Belgium and felt like I didn't belong there, yet didn't belong in the States either when we returned, I must have lost something that grounded me. I am eternally searching for home. I do not know where I belong. I do not hear the calls of patriotism. I am not moved by national anthems or flags. I do not know what it means to be a nationalist. My allegiance is to no single country, no single town on this planet. In fact I have nothing to be allied with except myself, the memories I carry, people who are close to my heart and a powerful belief in love which carries me onward despite setback after setback. In the film Mother Night which I saw recently, the main character and his wife choose to be a "nation of two" in the face of the nightmare of World War II that was rising around them. The concept appeals to me. With Sabs perhaps, who understands that loneliness of Being Foreign no matter where you go, we will be able to have our own "nation of two". My family was always my home when I was little. I keep searching for some physical home, I go back to all the places I have lived, looking and looking and looking for that place where I belong. I don't know when I will finally realize that the only place that I belong is in the hearts of the people who love me, in whatever place I choose to make my own. I know these things in my mind, as surely as the sun rises and sets. But my heart still hasn't learned it and still wakes me in the middle of the night with tears of longing for a place to call home. |