Throw Momma from the Bus

I tried to write this post from at least six different angles before finally throwing in the towel, which also happens to be the same as throwing my mother under the bus. (Sorry, Mom. Good thing you don’t read my blog—probably.)

When I was in kindergarten, my mother dressed me up as a lawyer for career day—complete with a little briefcase and everything. My skirt suit matched what she wore that day. What I wanted to wear was my red cowgirl boots and a fabulous dress with a tutu and carry around paints because I was going to be a cowgirl, artist, singer when I grew up. Ambitious.

My concept of what I wanted to be slowly morphed into one big question mark by the time I hit sixth grade. My father saw this as an opportunity to influence me toward what he believed was the wave of the future. It began with software developer or computer sciences, but when I showed an almost degenerative ability in that area, he switched to bioethicist or diabetes counselor for old people. Maybe a computer science specialist, bioethicist, diabetic gerontology counselor. I think we know where I got my ambition.

Whenever my mother would overhear one of our conversations, she would smile knowingly and condescendingly. Silly of us to even discuss what my options were. What a monumental waste of time. She knew what I was destined for, but she would bide her time until I came to the inevitable conclusion myself.

English is what I ultimately wanted to major in in college. I love reading books, so I should do what I love. Not so, said both my parents (Father could betray me at the worst moments!). A college education was for studying something you couldn’t do on your own and preparing for a real occupation. What in the world did I think I could do with an English degree they asked, their voices husky with laughter.

Joke’s on them. My first job was book editor. Although I think the argument was a draw since I didn’t major in English and was still able to land an English-centric job. But in my diary I counted it Buttercup 1, Parents 0. Obviously I couldn’t count on them for any sort of occupational advice in the future. (That didn’t stop me, because who wants to be responsible for a decision that big? It’s easier to just blame your parents if it goes horribly wrong!)

However, the company I worked for was not ideal in many ways, and soon after my second year I started looking for a way out. I moved back home due to a confluence of forces and considered everything from working two part-time retail jobs to going back to school. This is when my mother preyed on my weak mental state. Why didn’t I study for the GRE? In fact, she’d even pay for the test if I also agreed to take the LSAT.

Folks, my parents cast long shadows. They’re both lawyers and are wickedly awesome and adult and involved and responsible and intimidating. My mother, for example, worked for the DA’s office straight out of law school prosecuting criminal drug cases and never lost a case. Then she was recruited to do the same thing by the US Attorney General’s office—so on the federal level. She could have been a high profile judge or something by now, but she decided for her family’s sake she’d confine her awesomeness to her and Dad’s law firm and running the women’s ministry at church and starting a band program in our school and serving on city committees about things like LCD signage and ethics in law practice and on and on it goes.

So part of my lifelong reticence to pursue law could be rooted in not wanting to compete with that shadow. But what played an even larger part in my decision was that my parents worked so hard all the time. We were never on a vacation that my parents weren’t also working. My brothers and I were in daycare from the time we were toddlers, and when we were too old for that, we had to be involved in extracurriculars because my parents worked all day and then some. If my mom had to pick us up from school or an extracurricular, she was always late. It was just a question of how late. If it was under half an hour, she was practically on time.

Now—this isn’t some sob story. We had family dinners, my parents were involved in school and homework, we went on vacations together that were awesome, and my parents never missed a single game, debate match, or play. My brothers and I have never felt neglected or abandoned. In almost every way, my parents were exemplary in their roles of mother and father. But that didn’t leave any other time for my parents—no personal time that wasn’t either filled with work or kids or both. And it was a strain to fit it all in.

And, to be concise, law just doesn’t appeal to me.

When I took the LSAT as a way to get my GRE paid for, I studied really hard because I can’t not take tests and studying seriously. This was a mistake. Not only did it get my mother’s hopes up, but it also confused my poor mind into thinking “So we’re into law now? Guess I should plan out a career trajectory.” And that’s what I did. Which is how I ended up thinking I should totally be a jury selector or a mediator. What you’ll no doubt notice is that neither of those involve being an actual lawyer.

I did well on the LSAT. When I finished, my father took me out for a celebratory dinner of fried fat at Chili’s, where I confided to him that I wasn’t sold on being a lawyer. But how would I ever tell my mother?

“Buttercup, honey, I don’t understand what you think your mother will do to you if you don’t pursue law. She’s never been able to restrain herself with you and your brothers. If you decide to pursue psychology, she’ll jump on the bandwagon. Just show her you’ve done some research know what you’re talking about and she’ll start helping you plan the future you choose in no time flat.”

(In case you can’t read his tone from the “honey” he threw in, his voice was filled with paternal patronization. He clearly didn’t think there was any reason at all to believe that disappointing my mother was something to be feared. I find this surprising considering how many years he’s been married to her.)

The night after the LSAT, the nightmares began. Horrible dreams where I was either swallowing my teeth or my teeth fell out or my teeth broke while I was eating something. Every night.  

And then I stopped working on my law school applications and started researching non-law careers instead. The dreams stopped. Obviously, my subconscious did not want to go to law school. Now to tell my mother.

I did as my dad suggested, gathering up loads of information about current job market trends and job stability projections and salary averages and gave her a binder of information.

“What’s this?”

“Just some research I’ve been doing on possible careers.”

She smiled. “What type of law, you mean?” She opened the binder.

“No. I don’t think—” Her smile was gone and she was arching her eyebrows in disappointed disbelief. “I don’t think I’m going to law school probably. Maybe. I don’t know!”

I squawked and ran away.

A couple days later, my parents and I were eating dinner. My mother’s lips had been perpetually pursed since my super mature, confident confrontation with her about my future. Staring at her dinner plate, she asked me, “So which law schools have you applied to so far?”

My father and I paused, exchanging a worried glance. Surely I had made it clear that I didn’t intend on attending law school.

“Mom, I’m not going to law school. I’m going to take the GRE and do something else. Probably something in psychology. Did you read all that information I printed f—”

She threw her napkin down, scooted back her chair, and cut me to pieces with her ice blue glare. “Well don’t expect me to take any part of it. Clearly you can’t make up your mind or stick to decisions you’ve made. I don’t even want to hear about it since it probably won’t happen anyway.” She stood up and stomped away in her ridiculous house slipper/sandals.

I was too stunned to even tell my father “I told you so.” I never pass up an opportunity to tell my genius parents I told you so. Eventually, after a few minutes of silence, I turned to him and said, “Uhm. Did you expect that?”

He laughed. Laughed. Clearly he didn’t understand what had happened. My mother had disowned me. Over not going into the profession she had chosen for me probably when I was first born but definitely by the time I was in kindergarten. Even in my worst imaginings she hadn’t reacted that way.

“Well, we’ll just have to work on her,” he said. As if it would be as simple as that. Cha right.

It has been two years since I took the LSAT and crushed my mother’s dreams (she eventually started talking to me again), and I finally took the GRE this August. I took it blind because I couldn’t be bothered to brush up on math. Which is why I scored somewhere in the 30^th percentile. Taking grad schools by storm and totally proving my mother wrong. Right.

The problem with this is that I won’t be able to get into a program until Fall 2014. I’ve decided to take courses that will count toward my program as an unclassified student which is way more expensive, but I can’t stand the idea of putting my future off for two more semesters. However, the program I was/am going to apply for is changing in 2014 and might take longer to finish, and some of the classes I asked to get into have refused me. Which makes me just want to study professional writing and give altruism the middle finger.

This place feels very familiar. In undergrad I had wanted to study English but ended up majoring in social sciences because that’s what my parents suggested. (I actually ended up majoring in the same thing my mother majored in—surprise, surprise.)

I told my mother I was thinking about just studying professional writing because I scored super high in verbal on the GRE and they’d probably be thrilled to have me instead of apathetic like the psyc program was.

“And what job can you get with that?”

I sighed dramatically as I’m wont to do with this line of adult questioning. It’s so tiringly practical. I much prefer to dream about the types of things I might do one day given enough time to practice my trade and maybe a little help from God. Like be the next J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin. How I feed myself or pay my insurance during that practice time will just work itself out.

“Well, I could maybe just teach adjunct and write and edit freelance…”

Her eyebrows raised as if she was surprised that I was capable of such stupidity, but her eyes were coolly disdainful. She knew full well I was capable of that level of stupidity. So this was going well.

“Buttercup. You need a full-time job with benefits. Without one, you’ll end up poor and homeless.”

I laughed. She didn’t. Okay, so that was a serious argument.

“Mom, I will not end up homeless if I don’t have a job that pays benefits. Plenty of people have jobs that don’t pay benefits and they have a place to sleep—some are even above the poverty line.”

“Name one person.”

I seriously didn’t think I would have to because there are so many careers that are contract based. And yet, every single one of those careers completely flew from my mind. But thank God I listen to NPR.

“All of the support staff in D.C.” She looked doubtful. “It’s true. They all have to go on Obama Care.”

She rolled her eyes and went back to reading her book. I waited a minute or so for a response. Maybe she was just thinking.

“Are…are you mad because I won the argument?”

She snorted. Won the argument. As if! “I’m not going to talk to you when you’re not even making sense.”

What???

“Uhm…”

Still not looking up, she said, “We’re not going to have a conversation about this.”

I got up to leave the room and said over my shoulder (I think I’ve already proven what a scaredy cat I can be), “So that’s a no on you supporting my decision.”

“What decision? You don’t even understand the opportunities or consequences tied to your proposed change in plans.”

Lawyered.

The thing is, she’s right. But how could I possibly know all the consequences and opportunities attached to any decision or course of action? This is what paralyzes our generation, I believe. Our Baby Boomer parents are financially supportive, but they aren’t very supportive of our dreams. Sure, when we were young they were all, “You can be/do anything you want to be/do!” But then we grow up and they’re all, “I didn’t raise you to be a humanties major!”

I am not concerned with fulfilling my parents’ dream(s) for me—obviously, since I’m not a lawyer nor a bioethicist, computer scientist, counselor to diabetic oldsters. But I do want their approval of my career choice I eventually land on. I want them to be proud of me. I want my cake and to eat it too.

Add to this my mother’s argument, which is exactly why I hadn’t chosen another career. I had thought editing books was it. But I was wrong, and the possibility that I can choose wrong again terrifies me. It’s a type of failure. And since I cannot know all the opportunities and consequences attached to my decision, I find it impossible to fully commit to a decision.

Giving rise to the Peter Pan Generation—the other name professional condescenders call the Millennial generation. It’s not that we don’t want to be hardworking professionals. It’s that there are forces in our lives that try to talk us out of making the decision we want. Which delays it for a while. And that is why we’re almost 30 or already in our early 30's and still trying to figure it all out. Perhaps what our generation is missing is the fire in the belly that makes us defy all other opinions and all obstacles and all self-doubts.

Why do you think our generation is finding it so difficult to decide what career to follow? Or, if the career has been chosen, actually pursuing that career?

YA Addict Anonymous

Six months of working from home and I’m more than ready to return to the workforce. No deadlines, no schedule, no structure make Buttercup a very slow girl. The work ethic is there, just not the diligence when I could be watching Adventure Time or reading books. Gobs and gobs of books.

And what have I been reading? The only legitimate book is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. Began it in November, and have steadily made progress so that I’m in the middle of the story. Unlike the other books I’ve been reading (we’ll get to my silliness soon enough), Tolstoy cannot be read in a single day…or night, as the case is more likely to be. Like all Russian literature of that time, Anna Karenina is encumbered with too many points of view and sprawling explanations of characters’ personal philosophies and the events that change those philosophies. The character develops not by overcoming some heroic flaw, but by showing a progression of social and religious beliefs. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment “overcame” his belief in Nietzsche's superman to Christianity’s Christ. Levin in AK has an evolving social-eco-political understanding of muzhiks and how they fit into his life as workers on his farm. As his understanding evolves and changes, so do his actions rationally align themselves to reflect those changes, and so we see the character develop as his relationship with the Russians peasantry develops.

It makes for slow reading. A few things have lodged with me, and eventually I might get around to exploring them in a blog. I have always sympathized with Russian internalization. The characters are forever analyzing themselves, their actions, and others. In that way, I feel very Russian. However, this rational alignment of actions to beliefs I do not find to be true in life. People just don’t behave in accordance to their personal philosophies most of the time. But more of that in some future Russian post. (I know, what fun!)

So Anna Karenina is my legitimate reading, but I’ve had quite a few illegitimate page turners as well. Young Adult fantasy fiction. Shiver me timbers, is it addicting! I didn’t always love YA. In fact, when I was a young adult myself, I read adult books such as Murakami, George R. R. Martin, classics (of course!), C. S. Lewis, Neil Gaiman, and loads of historical fiction about Queen Maud, Mary Queen of Scotts, and other primarily United Kingdom-centric personalities. Now that I’m in my middling twenties, I’m reading YA like a teenager. What’s that all about?

It began with Harry Potter—that seemingly innocent series of J. K. Rowling that makes the magic world seem so fantastically and ridiculously opulent and somehow plausible. It took me a year to finish the series because I just couldn’t bring myself to read of the death of beloved characters, but by then I had the YA bug. The next book club I was in was Looking for Alaska by John Green. Mister Green, I believe, has more to with my unnatural obsession than any other author (even J. K., though she got the ball rolling).

Hello. My name is Buttercup Harding, and I am a female whose favorite genre is male coming-of-age novels.

John Green is a master. Hilarious. Each character is quirky but believable and identifiable and endearing to the nth degree. After reading Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (not his best), he landed on my list of literary loves. His talent totally deserves to be on my list, but the fact that I a) identify with high school-aged male protagonists, and b) identify with the themes/messages of the books worries me about myself.

For instance, An Abundance of Katherines ends with three different epiphanies by the three main characters: 1) I’m not a doer, 2) I’m self-centered, and 3) I want to matter. All three of these I identify with, and that worries me that at twenty-whatever I am still struggling with the same issues of high school students?

What book genres do you read and why? What’s the appeal? Do you think that your late twenties is an appropriate time to be coming to terms with such issues as selfishness and wanting to matter? What literary character do you most identify with?

Did the laptop jump, or was it pushed?

After quitting my full-time job, I lost a lot of my angst. I think it is in no little way correlated to the fact that I’ve spent less time in the presence of one J-Bare, who can wax philosophical and theoretical and analytical and psychological on any subject. I’ve gotten out of the habit of analyzing. This is bad because, as I’m about to show, I need to regularly analyze not only my external world (which I positively cannot stop doing) but also my internal world (which I negatively ignore 99% of the time). It isn’t that my angst is gone, necessarily, but that I’ve stopped maintenance on my internal state, assuming that now that I’m in a better place, I’m hunky-dory emotionally too.

The past few months have been wonderful in so many ways: going on a trip around the world, getting to see my little brother for the first time in a year, quitting a job with too much work and too little reward, working for myself, and having the freedom and time to explore my options for the future. And those wonderful things are what I’ve been focusing on. I don’t think many people would describe me as an optimist because I’m not smiley sunshiney positive Sandra Dee all the time…or ever. My default mode, though, is to look for possibilities and opportunities. To see what can be. That’s the definition of optimism.

This past week, “what is” crashed in on my “what can be.”* Several things happened in a seventy-two-hour period. 1) I paid my credit card bill, and without giving away too much personal information, my bank account isn’t at a level I feel comfortable with. 2) The coffee shop seems to be stalling and my brother/part owner keeps changing things on me. 3) Jasper, my big, lovable, old man dog, had a seizure. 4) I got next month’s credit card bill, and there isn’t going to be a bank account left after I pay it. 5) My computer committed suicide.

*Dear editors who are reading this: I apologize for the scare quotes, but I felt the sentence was unclear without them. I swear that it was an agonizing decision on whether to include them or not, and I did not add them in cavalierly.

The morning of the laptop crash I woke up early (for me that means before 9 a.m.) to finish a manuscript. I’d been working on it too long in small increments while also doing research on the publishing industry and query letters and working on the coffee shop (of course!). I was determined to finish by noon because my brother had promised that we were going to work on our business plan that afternoon. Since I’d recently paid my credit card bill I was keen to a) get paid for the manuscript and b) get the coffee shop up and running as quickly as possible so I would have a steady income.

Grant was supposed to be doing yard work while I was working on editing—both of us securing our temporary incomes in the morning so we could invest in our future incomes that afternoon. Just before noon, my brother walked into my apartment with his miniature dachshund and informed me that a lawn crew was about to show up, so he would be working outside after they left.

This made me angry. Why hadn’t he been outside working this entire time? We could have been working on our business plan while the lawn crew worked. But since I was crawling through what should have been a fast manuscript and wouldn’t be done for the next couple hours, I decided I couldn’t really talk. So I returned to my editing, more determined than ever to finish it and get one thing off my plate since it looked like I would be the only one working on the business plan that afternoon.

Shortly thereafter, several things happened all at once. I paused in my editing to save my manuscript, as anyone who regularly works with documents habitually does. The lawn crew showed up. All three hound dogs let loose barking and baying at the top of their lungs.

The software froze, as it had been doing occasionally.

Barking.

I told the dogs to stop barking.

Barking.

My mouse and keyboard shorted out.

Barking.

I told the dogs to stop barking.

Barking.

The computer was five years old.

Barking.

I told the dogs to stop barking.

Barking.

I lashed out at the closest body to me hard enough to elicit a yelp from Jasper, who cowered at my feet. “Shut. Up.” Ceasar Milan doesn’t have anything on me. When I have energy, my dogs feel it. And I was radiating red. Jasper curled up on the couch. Buckley hid underneath the bed. And that stinking dachshund with her annoying yip ran to the kennel (a place she usually eschews).

If this was a momentary flare of frustration or stress or anger, it should have faded just as quickly, and I should have felt immediate regret for hurting Big Boy. I didn’t. I had left rational, optimistic, analytical Buttercup. I’d stepped out of my brain and fully into the locus of emotions. In this instance, I don’t think the locus was my heart.

When I was younger and I got angry at my parents or my brothers, I would throw my shoes and Barbies at the window in my bedroom. It was a large target and covered by wooden blinds that made this beautiful, satisfying cacophony when hit. The physical action coupled with the resulting racket expressed my frustration and soothed my ruffled emotions. I suppose that influences me still today.

When, only seconds after sending my dogs into hiding, my laptop continued to flicker at me unresponsively, I pounded the keyboard with my hands. Of course, nothing happened. It wasn’t worse or better—and neither was I. The image that had been circling my head since the beginning of this episode swam dizzyingly clear in my mind’s eye. The satisfying crash. The comfort of exacting revenge on the cause of my anger and frustration. Expressing my negative energy in more than just words.

I decided, consciously decided, to take my open laptop and spike it into the ground.

It made a jittery plastic thud on the carpet. The screen swung forward and then back, revealing the spidery effect violence has on sensitive technology and the now 96% dark screen. The casing skewed slightly apart so that the laptop had a pitiful hangdog appearance. What a hick laptop would look like if Disney decided to make the computer version of cars with fancy Apples and the more varied PCs populating the movie as characters.

It was satisfying for all of thirty seconds. And then I was even angrier with myself. This is what happens when I don’t keep tabs on what’s going on internally. I break things. So now I’ve got the laptop on life support, hooked up to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

What have I learned from this other than emotionally I am still a five-year-old? Optimism is all well and good, but you have to check it with your present reality and adjust possibilities accordingly. And, most importantly in my present circumstances, not mentioning external concerns as they occur can build into an internal problem.

This is not usually any issue with me, but I have the hardest time broaching certain subjects with family members. Because then it is always personal, and I only really have seniority on my little brother, and he’s in India. So I’m low man on the totem pole.

I’ve got some serious conversations coming in the near futures with family members, and I need to make some decisions. Do I continue to help my brother with his dream, which I dearly want to see him achieve because I think he’d be great at it? He could seriously be the OKC Monopoly man. Or do I start building my future, volunteering with different populations to give counseling to see whether or not I want to be a clinical psychologist or an industrial/organizational psychologist?

Whatever happens, I’ll continue writing. Share with me what emotional outbursts you’ve had in the not so distant past. Did you, too, feel like you shouldn’t be acting that way now that you’re an adult? What caused the outburst or what did you learn from it? How do you keep tabs on your emotional health? (I’m asking because despite my resolve to do better, I’ve always been woefully inept at understanding my own emotions.)

P.S. Jasper is fine. After initially ignoring a proffered snack as a bribe (a first in Big Boy’s six years), he climbed into my lap and got a full-body doggy massage followed by some chicken broth. I swear I do not usually hit or yell at my dogs. They’re spoiled rotten.