John Lacey Gets Personal

My day started off so beautifully. I woke up uncharacteristically early. I had a shower, I got dressed, I did my Morning Pages. I headed off to a nameless chain restaurant for breakfast. At that restaurant I was surprised to recognise the face across the counter. It was a girl I went to primary school with. A girl, actually, that I had a huge crush on back in the day. Or at least I thought it was. I ordered and took a seat. Food materialised. I started eating. Finally my suspicions were to be confirmed…

“It’s John, right?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I replied.

“I thought so.”

She continued to tell me about what she was doing, what she had done, what she had majored in. She had just accepted a position at a local university. I commented that I had seen examples of her journalism in local newspapers.

She quizzed me about what I was doing and I gave her the same stock answers I give everyone. “Oh I worked at this place for five years and decided it wasn’t for me. Oh I’m taking a break. Just doing a bit of writing. Oh, this and that. I have a few websites.”

I didn’t even think about how disingenuous my explanation was until much later. Indeed I didn’t really stop to think when I gave it. I have noticed lately that I scarcely meet direct questions with direct answers. When my mother asked me where I was going today I just mused mysteriously, “Oh I have some things to do.” What does that even mean? I accuse people of not taking an interest, but it isn’t like I reward them when they do.

But at any rate I wasn’t in a position to big note myself. I actually lacked even the inclination to try and talk up my achievements. It was funny because there were moments when I’m sure she was almost giving me cues. “Didn’t you work on radio for a time?” she asked.

“Oh that was just community radio. Unpaid thing, obviously.”

She even asked about what I was writing. I muttered something, probably largely unintelligible, about the blogs I look after. People don’t know what blogs are. It would be much easier if I was writing a novel. People know what novels are. It was a bit like when I was studying audio engineering; nobody knows what audio engineering is. So they take a guess and irrespective of their guess I sort of nod and say, “Yeah, something like that.”

(I am beginning to see a pattern here. I’m chronically insincere.)

At any rate, I eventually completed the conversation and my breakfast. Went and had a coffee, visited the library (since the tables and seats by the river were wet after early morning dew) and did creativity exercises I had been putting off for three weeks. I felt so accomplished. I felt so happy. I came home to my house for the first time in weeks feeling like I could just exist in my own space.

I got home and it was wonderful. For a while. Quickly the tensions relating to the funeral of my grandfather rose again. A family member had disagreed with the requirements of a service booklet to be handed out, redesigned it, only it didn’t work. That family member was going to finish it and take it “to the printers” tomorrow. The funeral is tomorrow. Did this person have no concept of time? Certainly their ability to conceptualise seemed similarly flawed. Three pages doesn’t divide into two very easily. After reworking the document from scratch, including retyping the entire text (copying and pasting seemed to crash my software), we went to my brother’s work and printed 200 double sided pages.

Certainly a fun way to spend the night before a funeral. I can only imagine what other exciting last minute “challenges” we might enjoy.

The point is I went from being a happy and uncharacteristically fulfilled individual, to an exhausted mess of a human being in the shortest space of time… and all because I interacted with my extended family tree. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

This, dear readers, is the part of the blog entry where my inner Dr. Phil speaks from somewhere deep within the back of my psyche (somewhere, one imagines, not far removed from my inner Oprah). “So how’s that working for ya?” Inner Dr. Phil says in a familiar Texan drawl. “Perhaps you’re giving these people too much power? Perhaps you need to take yourself out of this situation? I made a decision a long time ago that it was better to be healthy alone than to stay in a toxic relationship.”

My inner Dr. Phil is hard to shut up. A penchant for watching him has made him a regular guest in the inner workings of my brain. And all in all what he says usually seems to ring true.

The reason my relationship with one half of my extended family is so good is because we only see each other maybe once or twice a year. I really don’t see myself reflected in them. Indeed, if I thought I could, I would be deeply concerned. Okay, I just don’t like them. I don’t share their values. I wonder at times if we are really related, if its even technically possible?

I could never understand why visiting half my family felt like a completely alien experience, and visiting the other half felt like such a profound unspoken homecoming. I actually still don’t understand. I’m not sure I really need to understand. I just need to find a way of operating. A way of preserving my sanity. A way to stop giving away my power to these people (as my inner Dr. Phil might say). My earliest memories of these people always seem to involve them being petty and critical. As a kid I just decided it was easier to “disappear” than withstand the barrage of criticism. As an adult, still, the strategy works pretty effectively most of the time. However they still yield an undesirable assault on my psyche even when I avoid them. I need to go from being reactionary to genuinely not caring. I need to release the need for criticism from others. I’m sure Dr. Phil would endorse such action.

Categories: Personal Universe
Tags: family