So and so took three minutes out of her busy life to complete a task for me. What can I do to show my appreciation? I could thank her a thousand times but it doesn’t seem like enough. I could offer some selfless act followed by another selfless act but pretty soon my feeling of accomplishing true gratitude will wane meaning I have to keep proving just how grateful I am.
I can trace it back, trace back where my fears of being ungrateful start. I can go back and see the look of disappointment on my mother’s face and hear her use those words, “Disrespectful, ungrateful, disloyal.” After all she did for me, after all she gave up for her children and I’d have the nerve for one second to forget it. I had to prove minute by minute that I understood her sacrifice for lowly me. I still do it today, try and prove that I’m grateful for small and large gestures.
For me, there is fear in receiving gifts. Don’t get me wrong, I like receiving gifts, gifts I can touch, put my hands on and put in a safe place where you can’t take it back. In my family if they knew you liked something it became a target. One particular thing you’d think I’d let go of is when I’d done something, who knows what, and the mother had me walk my favorite 45 out to the trash and toss it. I had a life size Jukebox in my bedroom. It had flashing lights and was so cool. I don’t remember why she bought it but I remember bringing it home from Service Merchandise. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. It played 45’s and the big LP things. The only record I had in it was “The Rose” by Bette Midler. For some reason that song touched me. Whatever I did wrong she decided the perfect punishment was to have me walk it out to the dumpster and toss it. Not just any dumpster mind you, the dumpster where she said my body would be found with its skin removed one square inch at a time. What I learned was that if I like it, if I loved it it was a target. If I showed appreciation, if my eyes brightened, if I smiled when viewing it, it became a target. How was I suppose to balance my true appreciation and still keep the item safe? And how on earth could I understand why she’d go out of her way to give such huge gifts to someone so lowly? How do I express appreciation to a superior when that superior makes it clear my expressions are worthless and will be used to hurt me later?
I caught on real quick that if I liked it it was a target. Once standing in my grandmother’s driveway I tossed a Mickey Mouse glass on the ground. It was better to get rid of it on my own terms than to watch my mother crash it against the pavement. It was another way to keep control of an out of control situation. I can’t count the number of items I destroyed before my mother could.
All of this spills over into my life now. Don’t act too happy about it because it’ll go away. Show as much appreciation as possible but keep your distance. This is all going to go away. And why on earth would anyone take even a small bit of time from their day and give it to me? What’s the catch? How much is this going to cost me? I can only think of walking to the dumpster with dashed hopes and letting go of an old 45 record.
I own a Mickey Mouse glass like the one I dashed to pieces long ago. It’s in the cupboard, up high, in the back behind a Norman Rockwell glass. I hardly ever touch it for fear of breaking it. We might break it just to prove we can endure it. Maybe if I show just how grateful I am to have it back and complete one selfless act after another I’ll take my eyes off the target.
A Walk To The Dumpster
Monday, November 26, 2007-1:35AM EST
I used to get the “ungrateful little shit” lectures but at least my parents never made me throw away things for misbehaving. I tend to feel like I don’t deserve to have anything good either.
I’m not sure if I think I don’t deserve anything good it’s that I think that good is eventually going to leave. Sometimes I’d rather make it go away than “let” it be taken away. It always felt like I set myself up. I let my guard down, she realized I liked something and that’s when she tossed or broke stuff. I was good at not cracking, not dropping a tear. I just looked at her while she did it w/ no expression at all.
I have a hard time admitting I like something, because I don’t want to be pigeonholed (get that something every Christmas) and I don’t want to be teased about it.
If I wanted something really bad–the latest Monkees album, for instance–it always cost me something I wasn’t willing to pay. My mother controlled our finances and my stepdad would go to bat for me if I mentioned wanting something. I always forgot; forgot that the price I’d pay for verbalizing my desire was another sexual mauling.
It’s hard for me even now to get something new. Like you, I wonder what’s the catch. I grew up feeling like a prostitute. It always angered me as a child to be so gullible as to think for one second that my abuser would go to bat for me out of kindness. But time and again I’d forget. Forget that when he went out of his way to ensure I got what I wanted, he’d take it out on me in despicable ways.
Sadism is so creative, isn’t it?