Opening Cans of Worms

by sequinnedmannequin

I’ve just sent an email that is bound to create a shitstorm. Uncharacteristically, I spent several days thinking about it and garnering opinions before sending it and still it has been sent. I feel like I have two cowardly, emotionally inept, selfish men in my life at the moment – one through choice, one through DNA – and I have to tell at least one of them how I feel. As one is my father and the other the love of my life, I’ll let you decide quite how Freudian my attraction to the opposite sex is. The love of my life – who plainly holds me in no such regard; in fact treats me not unlike a piece of old chewing gum that won’t come off the sole of your shoe however hard you try and even if you do eventually succeed mysteriously reappears a while later with even more tenacity than before – has excommunicated himself, so candidate number one for shitstorm email number one is Exhibit A: my father.

He recently sent me a well-intentioned but incredibly patronising article about Facebook, privacy, and the dangers to one’s job if there is too much personal information on there. Bear in mind that my father is almost 80, has been using the internet for a matter of months, and doesn’t really have much idea how it works. I started my first blog when I was 14. That was 12 years ago. So I started framing a response and then all this… stuff… came out and I rambled on for pages, as per usual. Anyway, I thought I’d put it here because it very much encapsulates my prevailing mood at the moment and kind of sums up my current battle: to get the fuck out of rat-race culture and do something that feeds me on more than a purely superficial level. I want to line more than my bank account.

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Hi Stan,

Thanks for your letter and concern. However, I have been using the internet for over 10 years now and am aware of the implications of my actions as well as having my privacy settings arranged in such a way as to minimise the risk of anyone seeing my status updates who should not. I also choose to trust people not to use my openness against me, and if they decide to screw me over then I consider that to be their problem. As with all areas of life, I do not do flagrantly stupid things, but nor will I pander to paranoia and scare-mongering and let this fear of possible attack – whether physical or by other means – dictate my life. I refuse to live in a world where I have to consider so carefully everything I say or do in case it has the potential to invite negative ramifications in the future; where does that road end, and how can we predict what is going to happen? Some might call this naive, idealistic, immature, even irresponsible, but I take responsibility for any consequences. I fundamentally reject the idea that I should have a work persona, a social persona, an online persona, a whole set of different personalities based on other people’s expectations of me. If this means I end up getting sacked, so be it. I’d rather not be working for an organisation that can’t accept my humanity anyway. I would rather be unemployed and destitute but believe in myself than turn myself into a corporate drone just to be secure and not upset the status quo. I’m sorry if that worries you, but I am just not the kind of person to hide what I think and feel, even when perhaps it would be prudent. I appreciate your concern from a fatherly point of view, but can you honestly say that you are this kind of person either? You believe in karma; I believe in honesty – to me, to hide what I feel, to refuse myself expression, to shield aspects of myself from the view of certain people in case it offends their sensibilities (sensibilities which I therefore must necessarily disagree with), is just as dishonest as expressing something untrue.

The more I think about it, the more it seems obvious to me that the prevailing judgements of the world are there simply to keep us bound and restricted from living our lives in the ways that would truly benefit us. All this conservative, terrified clutching at routines and regulations, the insistence on having job security, on fitting in with The Way Things Are, on abiding by a significant amount of rules, laws, and bureaucratic nonsenses – all this is just to hold us under and scare us away from breaking out of the system. This system benefits only those who are at the top of the tree – and even they, though they may look like they have it all, are bound by the very systems they’ve created. The fact that anyone who voices disagreement, or who registers an intention to take themselves outside the system, or who says they don’t care if they lose their job because a colleague saw a picture of their breasts on Facebook, is labelled as any combination of insane, deluded, immature, irresponsible, idealistic, and naive, is testament to the fear inherent in others’ reactions to those who refuse to conform. These adjectives all have negative connotations and all imply foolishness, immediately discrediting the one being described. It comes from the same place as those who condemn the strikes today, or the protests of the past – this idea that we should not complain when our situation is unsatisfactory, when our government has failed us, when our basic quality of life is being reduced; we should just put up with it and soldier on because it’s ‘naive’ to hope for anything more. This dissuades others from joining the party and we become apathetic. It won’t make any difference, we think, and if we go and march down Whitehall with a placard we’ll be labelled a crackpot. And then they win. Then no-one stands up, no-one fights, and the few who do are the scapegoats, the crazies held up against the wall to demonstrate that everyone except these few mentalists is happy with their situation, so why should we listen to the nutjobs? Nothing changes. We accept our situation and go on unhappy. If hegemony is really doing its job, we don’t even know we’re unhappy. We don’t even know we’re in a situation. This is just life. It is natural and normal that it is this way and there is no alternative. But there is always an alternative. You just have to be willing to go out on a limb and deal with the swathes of people telling you you’re being stupid or impractical – even if these people are your family, your friends, your colleagues.

I’ve spent so much of my life – and I still do – being terrified of transgressing social norms, of doing something ‘wrong’ in case I attract attention to myself, and I’ve had e-fucking-nough. This is my life. I work with the rules I believe in, and I do my best to evade the ones I do not. I struggle to respect those who tow the line just because they believe they have to. In my line of work I have to uphold an awful lot of incredibly stupid bureacratic form-filling ridiculousness and follow an array or redundant procedures. I hate that I have to perpetuate this, but I do, for the time being. And I do it because it is a necessary sacrifice right now whilst I work out how I can improve my situation. In life, I have more choice. Some things I have to do, and I can see the sense of them, and I don’t begrudge doing them. Some things I have to do and I resent it because it’s ridiculous, but I still do them, because I have to in order to live my life as my life is presently arranged, in order to be involved in society in this configuration. Other things I am led to believe I have to do but I do not – it is simply that the Powers That Be *want* me to do them. This is where I get to refuse. At some point I have to acknowledge that this is MY life, and I CAN make decisions, even if I feel completely fucking powerless (which is the aim of all the scaremongering ‘don’t be so naive and immature’ talk).

I’ve got a little sidetracked here. I’m just not willing to compromise who I am in order to fit in with what someone else wants me to be. Not any more. If my employer thinks that the fact I sometimes get drunk or wear slightly revealing clothing, or that I sometimes mention frustration with my job, or anything else that I could do that casts a ‘negative’ impression, is more important than the fact that I am good at my job, that I turn up, that I am a responsible and helpful employee, then fuck them. Quite frankly. When the world is so bonkers that what people do OUTSIDE work, in their own time, the evidence of which is visible on their personal social networking profile, can actually get them fired from their job even if when they’re IN work they’re an exemplary employee, the world and its ‘sensible’ ideas about what I should and shouldn’t do loses all my respect. It’s absurd. And not only that, but it throws up a range of other issues – it highlights that drunkenness, swearing, and nudity, are all things that lose us respect and detract from our ‘professionalism’ and therefore make us less employable (this was highlighted in the article you sent). But why? We all do it. We all go out and get lashed, we all do some stupid stuff sometimes, we all look ridiculous on occasion, we all sometimes wear inappropriate clothing – but what has this got to do with our ability to do our jobs? I don’t agree that I should have to pretend I am some kind of straight-laced, super-professional workaholic in order to be appreciated by my employer or successful in the workplace. I mean, I DO have to, but I don’t think that should be the way it is. And so I choose not to comply. I AM that person who gets drunk sometimes, who wears skirts that are perhaps a little too short or a dress that is perhaps a little too tight. I am that person who gets upset and angry and swears. They employed that person – presumably for a reason. If they want to go and look at my Facebook, that’s what they’re going to see. They don’t have to look. And if they do and they’re offended, and they’d rather pretend I’m a shiny plastic cut-out of a human being and would prefer me to suppress my personality and pretend I don’t have a life outside of work, then I REALLY do not want to work for them. Like really a lot. This notion of having a professional identity is one I don’t agree with. Therefore I do not comply with it. This disadvantages me in terms of society at large and its values, in terms of what society has deemed ‘employable’, in terms of ‘getting ahead’ in the job market, in terms of being ‘successful’ (and because of this is immature, naive, irresponsible, etc., etc., as above), but it advantages me greatly in terms of my self-esteem, personal happiness, confidence, and independence, and to me THAT’S success.

Anyway. That’s the Facebook issue. As for the rest… Email isn’t the place to discuss it really. There’s a lot there. I had managed to quell most of the anger I have towards you, but when I saw you in Totnes that opened it up again. I have little hope of this ever being resolved – yours and Clare’s accounts of what happened when I was a child are so diametrically opposed that I can never hope to know what really happened. You both believe you know the truth, and although neither of you can because the truth is long gone now, I can’t even cobble together a suitable approximation based on your interpretations as they differ so much. This would not matter if you did not feel the need to use past events – most of which I was not present at or privvy to – as ammunition against Clare now, or as evidence to bolster your case as the injured party in this situation. Your intentions and desires – to be my sole carer, etc. – are largely irrelevant to me, however, and my opinion and feelings are formed primarily on what I have experienced first-hand. I know that you think Clare blocked you from fulfilling your wishes and therefore I am angry with you for being an absent father, and you feel this is unfair because it wasn’t your fault. I disagree. Your physical absence from my early life is, in fact, the least of my concerns. I could go into what my concerns are, but I do not know that it would be helpful – I feel that it is impossible to talk about this without tensions running high, without defensiveness on all sides, and as such I have tried to start afresh over the last few years, to move forward from this point now with the relationship we have now, as adults. This was relatively successful until I saw you in Totnes and now I kind of don’t know what to do – I don’t want to argue, I don’t want to fight, I don’t even really want to talk about it, I’d just quite like to go on as we have done and leave the past where it is, as an unrecoverable mythology that we all have our own ideas about.

I understand that you have hurt about Clare. I understand that you want us to spend time alone, and I completely am fine with that. I never said I wasn’t or that that couldn’t happen. However, I WOULD like to be able to see the two of you together sometimes, too, because you are my parents, and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request. I gather that you’re saying that would be hard for you but, to be honest, I kind of feel like one of the main aspects of being a parent is self-sacrifice and sometimes having to swallow what you want to do in order to make someone else – namely your child – happy. I don’t think it’s fair to put me in a position where you tell me that I can only see you if I see you alone, and if I refuse to comply with your wishes then I don’t get to see you at all. You are shooting yourself in the foot. I don’t feel that you are in a position to lay down the law here, or to set the agenda, and frankly it just angers me so that I end up not wanting to see you at all. Talking to you can be like walking on eggshells, and this is why I perhaps don’t contact you immediately when I come down to Devon – whatever I do, whenever I call, whatever I suggest, it’s never satisfactory and you almost always get in a significant grump with me about something – and don’t tell me what it is, just act out your feelings. I get that when you talked to me last you were trying to convey these feelings, but what I think you don’t understand is how prickly your mode of expression is, how hard and angry – it doesn’t make me want to help. It doesn’t make me feel soft and sympathetic towards you. It doesn’t make it easy to be in your company – it feels like an attack. You said I’m always defensive, but you also said that you’re always angry and you have to keep this at bay, pretending it isn’t there. But do you really think I can’t feel it? Just because you’re not saying it, it doesn’t mean I don’t know. Even if not on a conscious level, I think it is significant that you perceive me to always be on the defensive – why might that be? What might I be responding to? I appreciate that we probably push each other into these offensive/defensive positions, and I’m not going to deny that I do feel defensive around you – I simply feel that it might be helpful to look at your part in that too.

I also don’t understand why the onus is on me all the time; I do have a phone, I am contactable, if you know I’m going to be visiting you can call me and suggest something rather than leaving it to me and then getting angry when I haven’t done it soon enough, or when I don’t have a specific plan of what ‘I’ want to do. It isn’t fair. You’re the parent. I don’t care if I am an adult – you’re still the parent. And I’m not saying it always has to be you, I’m not saying I’m not willing to take responsibility, but I don’t feel the balance is tipped the way it should be at the moment. You resent that I don’t get in contact enough, you are unhappy when I don’t make the right suggestion for things to do or places to go or times to meet, and yet you won’t call ME up and tell me it would be nice to see me, when would be good, maybe we could go for lunch? Why would I want to ring you to make an arrangement when all you ever seem to be is angry and unsatisfied? It doesn’t exactly send the message that you want to spend time with me – and on the one hand you’re saying that you want to see me and I don’t contact you enough, or soon enough, but on the other you’re saying if *I* want to see *you* I must abide by x, y, z, and fulfil certain conditions – sorry, but I’m not bending myself into some kind of geometric shape just to bask in the glory of your presence. It doesn’t work that way. How about you make me WANT to see you? It doesn’t matter if we’re related or not – to want to spend time with someone they have to be offering you some kind of positive experience, and if all I’m getting is the reverberations of your latent, unexpressed anger, and antagonism about my mother (who you are just going to have to accept I love unconditionally, and always will, and any efforts on your part to reduce my opinion of her only backfire on you because it DOES NOT MATTER to me what she may or may not have done in the past that I don’t know about when I have so much to thank her for that I DO know about, that I experienced first-hand, and I know that you feel marginalised and fucked over because you think you wanted to care for me more than you did, and it hurts you because you don’t think it’s fair that Clare gets all the glory and you feel she restricted you from getting the same, but if your hope is to ‘open my eyes’ to the truth, to paint yourself more positively by degrading Clare, I think you are being immensely selfish. Why would you want to destroy my image of the person who has done the most to love me, care for me, keep me safe, and promote and protect my welfare in the best possible manner she could with the available mental, emotional, and physical resources? As my father, if you value my happiness more than your own – which I think a parent should, I’m afraid – you will swallow your mean desire to build your own reputation by devaluing someone else’s. When you insult Clare, you wound me. When you said that if it wasn’t for me you would’ve said goodbye to Clare almost as soon as you met her and never thought of her again, that was one of the most upsetting things anyone has ever said to me. I genuinely thought you were friends. You have a better relationship than most separated parents I know. I thought you liked each other and cared for each other inasmuch as it’s possible given the obvious difficulties of the situation – she certainly does for you. To have you say that the person who is most important, most valued, most loved to me in all the world is effectively worthless in your eyes is utterly horrible, especially as I genuinely had no idea you felt that way. What child – whatever their age – wants to be told that their father doesn’t actually like their mother? You may see Clare as someone unconnected to our relationship and as someone whose presence you resent, but you shouldn’t forget that denigrating her is never going to endear you to me; fair it may not be, but the way it is it surely is. I’m sorry if that’s hard to accept, but it is not going to change) anyway, as I was saying – It doesn’t matter if we’re related or not – to want to spend time with someone they have to be offering you some kind of positive experience, and if all I’m getting is the reverberations of your latent, unexpressed anger, and antagonism about my mother, it’s really not much of an incentive. You can love someone unconditionally, but not enjoy their company unconditionally.

This is long! I didn’t intend it to be this epic but it’s what came out so… here it is. I don’t know. I just really don’t want to start dredging up issues from the past that haven’t been causing problems up until now. I’ve done a lot of my own coming to terms with things over the years so that we could maintain some kind of relationship; it might not be the one either of us would have ideally wanted from a daughter/father but it’s the one we’ve got and I’d rather enjoy it for what it is than expend energy fighting the universe, each other, Clare, fate, time, distance, whatever, because of what it isn’t.

I hope you are well,
Jess