It’s 2 a.m. in Gatlinburg. I’m out on the deck of our cabin, hoodie engaged, enjoying the ha-ha-not-free wireless we paid $12 for. The world’s tiniest creek is babbling several feet below me. The wind is blowing and my feet, despite being besocked, are cold. My grandmother is just inside, her hearing aids resting on the night stand, a frightening C-PAP machine strapped to her face, the television blaring its early-morning mediocrity to the world. My parents are in the sweet suite below, the one with the giant jacuzzi (Grandmaw and I only got a semi-sweet jacuzzi, bummer).
We’re done yelling, maybe. Hopefully done crying.
It’s not been a pleasant night.
I swear to God, watching my parents get old is breaking my heart into ragged little pieces that pierce like knives when I breathe. A weeklong stay here inspired in my mother the need to bring with her the entire house, including Christmas decorations and baking supplies. Which is fine. I’m all for staying in one night and making a shit-ton of treats. But we also brought the entire pantry — frozen cocktail weenies, cans of soup, six single-serving cups of peanut butter, oatmeal, roughly 24 bags of microwave popcorn, etc. — including the Christmas tree-shaped salt and pepper shakers, a container of toothpicks, the entire medicine cabinet, a Mag-Lite flashlight, fifteen tiny containers of Nutrisystem lasagna, and MORE GOD SO MUCH MORE. And then we even stopped by the on-site grocery to get even more shit. I … I don’t know.
We’ve got no cell service in our cabin, and it took me a tension-filled half-hour to figure out how to connect to the wifi (seriously, you buy a fucking timeshare, shouldn’t they throw in free wifi?), so the instant we got there, we kicked things off on the wrong foot by not being able to call and check in with the legions of people just waiting on pins and needles to hear about our safe arrival. (In my family, you call when you leave, you call when you stop to pee, you call when you get there. PERIOD.)
Things have been tense in the family lately. It all came to a head tonight, of course, because people just need a cabin on a mountain to give them an excuse to fucking break down and act like children. The passive-aggressiveness hit a level even I couldn’t handle and I had to go from room to room, pulling adult plus adult plus adult into a common area so we could work some shit out and stop acting like angsty 14-year-olds. I yelled at them through a veil of tears that clearly announced my fear and anxiety. I played therapist and said things like, “That’s not helpful or constructive!” I think it worked, if just a little. There’s more shit to work through and tomorrow may end up being harder than today, but at least we all got a little bit off our chests and hugged it out at the end (however superficial said hugs might have been). It’s hard trying to resolve conflicts whose roots were formed probably before you were even born. It’s even harder trying to work through issues you yourself aren’t even fully acquainted with. It’s fucking gut-wrenching watching the most solid thing in your life — your family — waver and buckle like some shittily constructed apartment building on the perimeter of a college campus. The thought of my parents as vulnerable, imperfect beings who don’t know how to solve their own problems levels my concept of life itself. I look up to them as the people on this planet who have their shit together and who will have their shit together for eternity. Knowing that that’s not true? Well, it terrifies me.
Is that naive? Am I late to this particular terror because I’ve been blessed with a pretty solid non-divorced family? Maybe.
But holy fucking shit. The crazy that courses through my veins: It scares the hell out of me. It’s there. I feel it bubble and surface every now and then in my own life, away from its source. I work hard to keep it at bay. But I worry that there is something beneath my skin that ticks, that some day will implode/explode without warning. That I am a product of my destiny. That as much as I want to look at the ways my forebears are flawed and build a different self, a phoenix out of the ashes, I am just biding time until I re-enact the exact same things that have already played themselves out in other lifetimes.
I don’t like seeing my worst qualities surface in my parents. I watch my mom clam up and pretend she’s not here and my dad get overly emotional and abrasive and I freeze in disbelief. I hear myself threaten to leave if people don’t straighten up and I realize that’s just as passive-aggressive as the shit I’m trying to get them to exorcise, and that I am playing cards that I know need to be folded. I don’t like knowing that who I am was more or less determined before I even came into existence. I want free will. I want to be in charge of myself. And, on a micro scale, I want to be able to leave a room without it causing turmoil and drama. Is she mad? No. Maybe she just has to piss. Maybe she just wants two fucking seconds to herself to think. Maybe everyone should chill out and stop being so goddamn tense about EVERYTHING.
I love my family. Family is the most important thing in my life. I blog about it constantly. But holy shit.
We may be the most dysfunctional functional family on the planet. Maybe not. But maybe. We have prolifically hilarious conversations that defy description, and our entire narrative arc reads like some kind of Southern-fried absurdist melodrama. I mean, the first thing my dad did when we arrived at our cabin was to erect a rebel flag on the deck. Yes. Really. But we’ve got problems. Plural.*
We’ve been here roughly ten hours and already, all this. I am putting out fires as best I can and it leaves me sobbing in the bathroom and flushing periodically so no one suspects anything fishy like private emotion.
It is now 3 a.m. and I’m inside the little apartment. It got too windy and cold for me out there. Grandmaw’s still got the goddamn TV blaring. I came inside and turned it off, thinking she was asleep. “I wa wa-in tha,” she muttered from underneath her C-PAP machine. I tried to find the button to restore the channel. I found it and recoiled from the insanely loud volume and close-up of Lindsay Lohan. And now? I’m in the next room on the couch. Her television is roughly 50 percent louder than mine. What can you do? But I am about to get in our smallish jacuzzi tub and finish off this bottle of wine. And then maybe sleep for a few hours before everyone wakes me up at dawn.
It’s going to be a long week.
*Name the movie this reference is plucked from and I’ll e-smooch you on the e-cheek.
There’s always a family that’s more dysfunctional than yours. Always.
You are a saint for even attempting this “vacation.”
Four Rooms – Always a favorite of ours. I need to stick it in the dvd player again sometime soon I think.
All kinds of somewhat poignant and arguably-wise things pop into my head to share with you, none of which seem especially appropriate or useful. Like me looking for a life vest to throw to you. This will have to do: Hang in there. We’re channeling good karma your way.
This post really hit home for me. Nothing has yanked the rug out from under me quite like watching my parents age. Best of luck. Thanks for writing this.
I was 13 when I realized my dad, who I always thought was the smartest guy ever, was insane. I mean, clinically—pathologically—unhealthy. And that nothing he ever said could be taken seriously, and pretty much everything he’d ever told me, and would continue to tell me, would be a lie that I would have to learn to deal wtih. It’s a mind-blowing moment when you realize your parents aren’t infallible.
I’m in therapy right now ending my relationship with my dad because he is unwilling to apologize for past physical abuse and refuses to stop emotionally abusing me and the rest of the family.
The fact that you guys are actually taking time to sit together in a room and talk shit out—even if talking at this stage just means yelling your emotions at each other across a room in complete chaos—is monumental.
Hang in there; it sounds like you’re on the right track. Let me know if you need anything. I can FedEx Slankets if I need to. :)
Snatch.
oh no. crap wrong movie, and its too late to erase it. oh well you can e-punch me on the e-nose instead. ugh, i’m embarrassed. i KNEW that too!
Oh, do I feel your pain with the family drama. My recent shouting match fight with my father made me feel more adult that ever. When did I get to be the age where my parents could start treating me like one? I mean, no matter how much I age, I’m still their child.
Coming from parents with 31+ years of marriage under their belt, it is still hard when I realize they don’t love each other all the time, and that, in fact, my mom might have been happier without him.
Sigh. Well, the new Muppets special is available on hulu. I hope it brings you joy in a time of colliding universes.
We know that Winterson’s method of coping intrigues us, so give it a shot. Start with your family as a collection of nuclei and go from there. Unless you’re watching that crazy movie with the ships and the Indian. Not aah-AAAH, but aah.
Have any of you used the Nutri System? I interested in trying it out, but I heard the food is pretty much al powder that you add water too.