Oedipus and Jocasta- A Modern Tragedy

I guess life isn't simple. I have spent the last few months in a situation that completely defied reason. Where was the logical explanation for events?

Soul searching, well, as you can see, I've done a fair bit of that of late, but those of you who have been reading between the lines may have been wondering when (and if) I was going to mention exactly what it was that was torturing me and how this situation arose.

And it's taken me a while to come clean with myself about that.
Because beaten down and tired though I am, I am sure the one who beats me down and tortures me feels genuine pain.
Does she really believe the things she says about me?

That's the hurtful part. I know I'm not the person she describes. I know who I am.
And now I can see precisely what went wrong.

These things shouldn't really be online, it is true. But I guess, I have no choice.

Sometimes, people don't always realise what it is they wanted.

I suppose I had better start with some background, and for that, we have to go to the topics of conversation everyone in RL, knows I don't like to talk about.
If I talk of the years before University, it is only really school and my part-time jobs I talk about.

My home life, I try to forget.

It winds me up when people bang on about how good the nuclear family is.
Crap. If you think that it usually means one of two things. Either you REALLY were one of the lucky ones and copped two good 'uns, or you are still wandering through life in your parent's shadow, living the life THEY wanted you to lead.

Well, not everyone has it that lucky. Being able to pass on genes doesn't make an expert in bringing up children and many parents have no skills whatsoever in that department.

Both mine were poor. Not ones out of ten, that would have put them in the nonce category, but certainly neither of them scoring above five.

Oh, we were well fed, nice house, the 'concern', the close reading of school reports, the family meals, all that crap.

But we were additions to it. As if two years after the wedding, starting a family seemed an idea. Honeymoon, tick. Mortgage, tick. Part time job for the Mrs, Tick. Three piece Suite, tick. Kitchen, tick. Eldest son, tick.

My father always said that he never really knew his Dad and regretted that, because they never got to know eachother, though God knows they had years enough. The lived near eachother all their lives, my grandfather dieing of colon cancer in 1989, a year after retiring.
He was a workaholic and never saw his family. It wasn't a happy marriage.

Well, let's just say my father and I were never close. He was the sort of father you get nervous of, because he DOES believe in corporal punishment. Right up until I was big enough to belt him one.
After which point we just argued at eachother, and once I was old enough, I just used to walk out and go live with my Gran for a bit.

Even now, we don't speak much. My mother tends to ask me round once every couple of months on a day he's gone to his boat. We can't be together in the same room too long. He likes to bait me by choosing topics of conversations that will provoke me, such as why the country is over-run by 'inferior races', or why religion is irrational. Occasionally we do have a pint together- he's less confrontational in the pub.

So I'm closER to my mother. Don't get your hopes up.
My mother's mother left when she was two and she was fostered. Maternal instincts, she has few. She's not the sort of mother who you can talk to. Oh, you can have great conversations with her about Russian history, or the Lord of the Rings. The peculiarities of your love life, no.

I can remember one occasion in my life, when I know she was very worried for me, and she put her arms around me and cried.
It shocked me a bit.

I was 25. She'd never done that before.
Three words I've never heard from her lips. I. Love. You.

Does she? Of course she does, I can see that. Has she ever expressed it, as a mother would?
She can't. I don't hold that against her. I'm actually quite fond of her, though or reasons mentioned above, I only see her about six hours a year, for of a couple of hours at time. And of course, most Christmases.

But I don't straight away see her, the way others see their mothers. I could see that even as a child. You could see going to your friends houses, their relationship with their parents was more natural. The way these things appeared in films.
Sort of, the ET family.

I remember a few years ago, I read a passage in Morris about Maternal bonds.

Morris states that the hugely increased period humans spend with their parents, means that the maternal bond is cut later than in most primates. This means most people have a need, once having cut it, to find a similar bond. That ONE human being, they can always trust. Hence, human monogamy

Morris states that those why DON'T have this bond, or break it early, or pretty much unable to make monogamy work, or take any relationship seriously. Interestingly, he also noted that the lack of a support structure as a child, often means they develop heightened understanding of spatial and interpersonal relationships. In other words, they get used to building large networks of people to protect them, rather than relying on a single person.



Well, that's ME down to a 't'. I knew that as soon as I read it.
But there is something Morris overlooked. And I only understood myself due to recent events.

Yes, you have no real understanding of what it is like to have that bond. But didn't you always envy those who had casual, laughing, hugging, help-yourself-to-some lemonade, mothers?
How many times have you thought 'I would think, right now, I want my Mum. But I don't. What I wish is that she was the kind of Mum, I 'd want right now.'

How many times have you felt proud of some achievement and wished your Mum would ring you and get REALLY excited, not just the smiling nod you get when you tell her weeks later?

And it's dangerous.
I have been in two very strange RL relationships with women significantly older than me, which were based on two completely irreconcilable dynamics. I now realise that, I just wasn't honest with myself about it. The complete disinterest in sex on both occasions on my part tells me exactly what both those women were to me. Someone to hold you tight as you sleep, stroke your head and tell you it was going to be OK. At those occasions in my life, that's what I wanted. You are culturally conditioned. Every man has a mother who will always care for them.

And you don't realise what it is you are really doing. In the case of the second, I pretty much declined sex most of the time, so my best mate saw on the side. It was no big secret. Though she was disconcerted when she found I knew all along, had in fact given my consent before she started seeing him as well.

Well, in May this year, I ended up in phone conversation with someone on the internet. And something went badly wrong. Had any degree of logic been applied, or objective analysis, alarm bells would have rung in my head. Because what happened next, ended up causing two people a lot of harm.

You see, this is where, to be fair, it gets a bit dark. Too much phone conversation about Nietzche, in which you also bare your soul to a total strange, with a lovely, caring, I-want-to-hold-you-tight-and-look-after-you voice can be dangerous. You're starting to really face a crossroads in your life, and then it happens.

The Love you've looked for all your life.
But not THAT type.
The other one.

I said I Love You. I meant it, I can see that now. But I can also see, that I was using a meaning that hadn't occurred to me. I was saying how I felt, it was completely illogical, and I should have thought about what it was that I was saying.

But it WAS a powerful feeling, and one COMPLETELY different to the many other times have thought I've been in love.

It was 'Will you be my mother?' Love.

Someone to call and say they love you. Someone to listen, hear all the stuff you WANT to tell your mother. And I did. I told her EVERYTHING I wanted to tell my mother. I told her all the sh*t, my mother doesn't know. I told her my fetishisms, my fantasies, my fears, the worst stuff I could think of, hoping that she'd still be listening, a tear in her eye, the unconditional love of a mother.

And she was.

Did I feel gratitude to her? Yes.
For weeks I just carried in this. It was unique, like nothing I've felt before.
Which should have been the giveaway. this was something wildly different.

Those of you who Do really have a maternal bond, imagine that bond. Now imagine you FELL into it.
Because that's what happened here.

But I couldn't see it.

Of course, after a while the novelty of actually having a mother, wears off. Your real mother calls you once a month, not every day, and she has no involvement in your social activities.
It only occurred to me recently, that the real divergence on viewpoint on so many things between me and this person boil down basically to the different roles we were playing for eachother.

I don't think I ever saw her, as anything other than a mother, not really. I get annoyed if my grandmother rings me. Because she would ring me non stop if she had the number, I call her once a fortnight to see if she is OK, knowing she doesn't know 1471. I won't give her a contact number.

Fact is, after a while, I didn't need a Mum to cry to any more. It was a confused time. She was saying, have your feelings changed, I was saying 'Please don't call me.' I guess she was confused. It must have seemed to make no sense, that you love someone, in a way that really makes no sense, because you don't want them to contact you, comment on your blog, or otherwise hear from them.

Because you wouldn't your mother to call you, uninvited. You call mothers, they don't call you. You don't tell your mother all the things you do, she doesn't expect you to. And you certainly wouldn't want her commenting at your blog.

And that's those of you who get on with their mothers.
Of course, I still didn't get this myself, really.

Suffice to say, Me and Mum fell out, many times. First was because Mum didn't like my female friends online. And then, oh, let's not go in to it. Suffice to say, there was always the danger she could get angry and publish my real name, at which point, my life would be ruined, ot at least the most important point in it, that this blog remains eternally separate from the name of its author.

And this is what never made sense to me. I knew talking to her was dangerous, I knew it was only putting off something inevitable, but I couldn't see what.

I'd scream down the phone in hysteria 'WILL YOU LEAVE ME ALONE! DON'T CALL ME! DON'T CALL ME! LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE MY BLOG ALONE!'
And she'd calm me down, the soothing voice of the mother.
And she meant it. I think, for her too, it was a mother's love.



And that was what I wanted.
And so it carried on. You'd go to bed, thinking 'But when does this end?', after telling her you still loved her, when what you meant was 'Thankyou Mum, for scaring away the woman who was scaring me earlier.'

The Baker finally put a halt to it, the phone calls anyway. He didn't put his finger on it, but he was pretty livid about the whole mess, and said I should have told him.

I think he sussed what was going on, because he did say in a roundabout way 'I can see how it happened, in that respect, you can be...unusually needy. You need to stop it, Crushed. Be honest with yourself.'

And so, I tried to. But it never quite worked. I didn't really understand what it was I was trying to say. I couldn't handle the situation, that's for sure. It just seemed impossible to draw it to an amicable close- all I wanted by this point.

Because yes, I wanted her to leave me alone. But I also wanted her to hold me tight and say 'It's going to be alright. You can face the world now. Your Mum listened to you.'

And so, to the closest woman to love me as a mother would, from the son my mother never had, Sorry.

Can't we just leave it be, and stop hurting eachother?