Renounce THEM All

"Never forget who you are," said Mom.

"How could I?" I groaned.

And yet, during two very unrelated times in my life I had done just that- totally forgotten, no even forsaken, who I truly am and who my family is. And yet, I was never embarrassed, nor ashamed directly of my past or upbringing. It was so much weirder than that. On these separate occasions I had managed to build a lifestyle around a myth, the myth of my "Positionality." Yep, that was THE term as I had learned it in college. What it meant to me then and what it means to me another 20 years later, those are complicated stories, indeed.

College: "There is no 'innocent' Positionality. This was meant in terms of the Reader to The Text. But, it was discussed often on a much larger scale. What does each of us bring to a conversation or an understanding either of a possible reading of a book or of one "reading" of the ways of the world? This was presented as highly political. What part of upholding Racism do I personally have? What are my exact biases and stereotypes by which I judge and/or vote against Others?

I literally sat there in college and said that I was sorry. I denounced my real story, my family, and my individual life path. not only because I felt great pressure to do so as to be politically correct in the early 90's, but also because I simply did not know. I did not complicate the conversation by being real about Classism in this country or world, nor about just how much my family was doing for me, aka, had given me their whole lives just to go to college- to live their American Dream which was supposed to make me "better" than them. Hell, my Mom worked for years in a job she couldn't really stand and my Dad in a hot steel mill for months on end just to get overtime pay to pay my private school of my dreams tuition and largely in cash.

What I never said to them at school was that my Mom had taught me to be hard as nails and smart. She told me I could not rest on good looks, so I never thought I had any. I went off to college and adamantly joined the tail end of the Post-Post Modern Feminist Movement. My life had lent itself to dissecting men as superior. I knew I was not born to be a dominant as I have no penis, so I thought I had better be domineering- it seemed like the only way to go.

So, renounce I did and with the best of them. I swore up and down that I just had White Privilege, to be college educated in a mostly white artsy school. I swore that I, who had always championed the underdogs and "minorities," basically because I had always felt myself to be one, on the outskirts somewhere of fitting in, of looks, or of economics. We were at once taught not to believe in stereotypes of Others, but nobody really wanted to hear of the intricate fabrics of my life, why and how I was even there in their white castle.

Then, when I got home after all that and tried to explain myself and how happy I was to have had this revelation of my humility as a White Privileged Woman with a degree, this only served to make me weirder or more estranged somehow from my Mom. On one hand, she had told me to go off and become "more" than she was or get a "better" job, but later she also let me know I was acting "uppity" and who did I think I was? I never could win with her, I never could win in the world. She had told me I would not and then also said over and over in childhood that I could be anything I wanted to be. (Well, I guess she hadn't meant a snob, or a artistic bum, or egats bisexual.) I tried to impart my wisdom of the world on her, what all I had learned about my Positionality and of my relative Princess stature in this world. I think she said something to the tune of to get my head out of my ass, find a job, and be just like anybody else in that.

The other significant time that I forgot ALL about myself was for the nearly 20+ years that I was in therapy. I was supposed to there learning life skills to make me into some much better version of myself, like how to effectively communicate and how to phrase words to get my needs met. I attended and graduated from more than three specific programs, not the least of which was DBT, or Dialectical Based Therapy in which I was learning to "explore" what makes me happy, to slow down and indulge my every emotion or symptom as "valid," to be forever Mindful and to blame my Mom and family. I was forced to accept that MH issues were in my brain chemistry as well as my actions and that I would never be free. I was always and forever to be "In Recovery." This point of view may be meant well, to relate that a person need to maintain one's health and wellness, but to me it came to mean that nobody outside of my family truly did understand or even care me with any level of insight or intelligence. While I did go into the Mental Health System with false beliefs in certain Imposters who embodied or were really metaphors for my depression, by the end I had learned to be on guard or "hyper-vigilant" against real people I encountered who are willing to do and reap the benefits of careers of re-programming people on how not to be themselves and on how to think, think, and re-think every single move or decision we make.

Further, what is detrimental about this standpoint is that it taught me to be a victim, to see myself constantly as having something to overcome, to fight against what grew inside me, to fight it all the time, to ignore what parts of me my therapist didn't like because she is not in my family, aka did not find "useful" to me anymore because she ultimately did not understand ME and had not been able to take my real Positionality into it at all. Many, many years before all this, when my Mom still referred to Psychiatrist as "head-skrinkers," I should have listened to my Momma. I should have just walked out on the true Imposters, those who assume the space of telling others what to do and how to do it in life without regard to real looks into backgrounds, families, or leeway for uniqueness. My parents understand that we have no luck if not bad luck and exactly how to be strong and deal with it. My family knows all too well how to cope, overcome, protect our own, and be creative without having our heads in the clouds. The biggest part of this time I erroneously chose to believe in a system which systematically sought to deconstruct and therefore destroy unflattering or annoying parts of myself which I really regret is the amount and years of my time and life I had devoted to being a devotee to the brainwashing. I did not have to surrender my life to the Mental Health and Wellness and Recovery Movement and system. This was the kicker. I had walked right in and introduced myself only so they could try to chizzle me down, because I wanted to be the different one in my family.

I went in thinking that I wold break the cycle of some stuff that goes on in my family, in families. I thought I could outsmart my Mom, my Dad, my only brother, as if their realities on my subjects were not also valid, important, and more insightful than any outsiders'. I tried to throw my family away again, adn again because I thought I had to do what I was told to succeed. I had tried to throw my life away and then fell victim to victim-hood as I attempted to unlearn who I am.

It would have cost a less money, time, lock-ups, and effort just to hear my Mom and family out on many things. Not to mention being on doctor's drugs. A long time before all of this Mom had always said I could always come to her or better yet go outdoors and take a walk or something! Now, that I have spent a million dollars on college and therapy, as well as price of several rounds of wounds on my pride, when the real shit in my life really hit the fan- NOBODY was there for me as professionals turned their backs and fake friends fell off, except my family or those who are POSITIONED around me and my true sense of self and well being.

I am less angry now, over time; but I never want to forget these feelings, the intensity of my emotions when renouncement has done me wrong. If there is something I do not like about myself my Mom may say to change it then! If I go with my heart, I win. I have ample hobbies, a job, and a few good friends. I do stop and smell the roses. But, I will never, ever change who I am to be a so-called better person again. I learn every day and grow, but that doesn't mean a life time of talking in a paid room anymore. Next thing you know those headshrinkers will be taking credit for this- saying how well adjusted I am doing, how much I learned from them.

Either in college or therapy, the key has been for me simply to remember to breathe and to go with my gut. I can adapt and wing the rest. THAT is the way of my family, that is the way of I.