There are many things that I have come to admire about my mother as I have grown into a woman myself. She stands maybe four feet and eleven inches tall in flats with dark brown almost black hair, which she denies is that dark. Her eyes are a deep almond-brown and her cheeks always make her appear to be smiling despite the fact that much her life was a disappointment. As an adult I have come to admire her hard work, disciplined demeanor, humor, diligence, determined nature, and above all her honesty. My mother instilled many good values in her children and of all the things she taught us honesty was the greatest of those virtues. Unfortunately, I developed my sense of truthfulness into a type of blunt force trauma of honesty that many people do not expect or appreciate. I try not to be brutally honest unless people ask for it but when they do I really let them have it, which I am sure makes me difficult to love or live with.
My mother and I are two of the very few people in this world that are honest to a fault. We would rather admit to our mistakes and suffer the consequences than let someone else take the fall. We would rather be truthful despite the fact that it is not in our best interests to do so. There should be more of us honest people in the world but the unfortunate truth is that we live in a society that rewards the liars and the cheats. The liars and the cheats can create the illusions of supply and demand. They can create the illusion that you need this product or that furniture to be happy and it works. Regular everyday people are so enamored with the need to appear wealthy or happy that the liars and the cheats prosper off of their hard work. Take a look around you. Maybe you are sitting on a comfy queen size bed with fancy silk sheets, reading this on your ipad, kindle, or maybe even on your smart TV. Do these things make you any happier? Do you still fight with your spouse or your kids about the same old shit? Did these objects make you feel whole? Or do you still have to run to the store to find something to stuff in that unending crevice deep inside your soul?
Our homes are not the only place where we attempt to keep up appearances though. In this day and age social networking sites like Facebook and twitter surround us. Our both outward and personal life appearances rule how we live our lives. I had a friend in college once who made me take over 30 photographs of herself and her boyfriend before picking the appropriate one to put on Facebook. At the time my other roommate and I knew that this relationship was a total sham. These two people standing in front of us with their matching glasses, scarves, and boots were not in love anymore they were simply complacent. As I gazed at the photo I realized that this didn’t matter to these two individuals because they looked happy to everyone else and that charade was the only thing that mattered anymore. The friend I took the picture of posted it on Facebook and one of her friends commented,
“Oh Jade, you are so gorgeous! I wish I looked even remotely that cute.”
I was so frustrated with this illusion that I wrote back
“Hahaha you should have seen the thirty negatives we took before this photo.”
This one comment on my friends Facebook page almost ruined our friendship. My friend arrived home late from hanging out at the pumpkin patch with the boy she didn’t love anymore. A secret that even she didn’t really want to admit to herself and reamed me.
“That really hurts my feelings when you tell people that!”
“Why?” I responded deeply confused. “We all do it. I don’t know a single girl that doesn’t take a million photos because they don’t like the angle, they feel fat, or they look ugly. Why can’t you just realize that you are beautiful and none of those people’s opinions matter?”
Jade responded in frustration, “I don’t feel beautiful in all of the other ones okay!”
That is the real crux of the matter isn’t it? We have trained ourselves on what real beauty is and it fits a specific mold. Facebook isn’t truly about connecting with others anymore it is about being jealous of the people you know who fit the mold. We have built these elaborate lies to live in where even our shit smells like roses on the Internet.
I am the first to admit my guilt. I don’t post much on Facebook unless it allows me to be perceived a specific way. I post a lot of hiking and kayaking pictures because I want to leave clues for people that I am into the outdoors. I post my favorite quotes of which there are multitudes because I am a small collection of memories, the things I’ve read, and my own experiences. I post funny conversations I have with my spouse instead of the stupid fights we have on a regular basis. I rarely post unflattering photos of myself. I hardly post anything that may make me seem anything less than a person who wants to lead the charge for the good and the just issues of the world. I attempt to look positive in the face of adversity when in reality there are many days that I battle with depression. Days where I want to lay in bed all day, draw the blinds, and sleep the pain, frustration, anger, and exhaustion away. I am, much like everyone else, attempting to fit the mold. I mean let’s be honest, I’m not exceptionally pretty so I make up for it by posting only the good parts of my life: exceptionally fun adventures, witty retorts, meaningful quotes, photos of nature, and portraits of general positivity. This world of lies we built to hide who we really are is not real. The nitty-gritty parts of people are what make them enthralling to get to know. People do not want to know the person who never cries and never has anything embarrassing happen to them because that person is not human. People want to know your joys, sadness, pains, hopes, dreams, faults and failures. We desperately need these parts of people to make them seem vulnerable because that is what makes them relatable. These are the things that make us real. So it isn’t any wonder that my mother and I have begun to despise social media because it is all a compilation of well-crafted lies. Maybe our society is obsessed with these sites because we believe if we tell ourselves the lie long enough then it will eventually be the truth. A sort of fake it ‘til you make it type of thing.
As a result of receiving my mother’s gifted ability to see through misgivings and untruths and to be painfully honest I began to learn the hard way that my father and my mother did not share the same views on lying. My dad was really great at divulging information to his children that was better left unsaid. For instance, I had no idea what sex was but I was aware that my parents didn’t engage in it very often because he was always complaining about it to Ophelia and myself.
At the time I felt so much less than Ophelia. Why would my dad confide in her but not me? The thought didn’t occur to me that maybe it was because Ophelia was super great at listening. As a child I don’t remember her asking many questions or feeling the need to regurgitate information that she had heard or learned unlike myself. Instead Ophelia mostly read, went to karate classes on Saturdays and kept to herself.
On Sundays we used to meet my mom at the Burger King across the street from where she worked. Her and my dad would sit outside in the 100 plus degree weather, smoke, drink coffee, read the newspaper, and exchange stories about their jobs. We would always arrive hours early so my father could expel his emotional enema into Ophelias’ ears while I played in the outdoor play place. Apparently Ophelia was too cool or maybe she felt too tubby to want to play inside the play place with me but she always left me alone to do my bidding elsewhere.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
On this particular Sunday I was getting tired of being left out of the conversations so I stayed to listen to one rather than running off to have fun immediately. My dad proceeded to tell us why he wished he had never married my mother.
“I wish I’d never married your mother.” He stated, “We never have sex and she got fat.”
Looking back on it, what a misogynistic thing to say! She got fat because she bore you two beautiful children and worked overtime so that we could all live comfortably. If he had gotten fat you wouldn’t hear my mother bitching about it because his value as a human being simply wasn’t measured only by looks.
“What does that matter?” I remember asking
“We should have gotten divorced a long time ago but we haven’t because of you kids. Maybe we will when you turn eighteen.” he went on rambling and I was left in a tailspin.
My father may not have recognized it in that moment but he taught me three things about life. First of all you should never be fat because not even your husband will love you if you are fat. The second being that my father didn’t really love my mother and the third being that you should never believe in love. Love does not transcend the odds. This man was not concerned about love or devotion he was concerned about how often he got laid and whether or not his wife was attractive by society’s standards. As I was experiencing this life changing epiphany my mother arrived in her beat up old brown Chevy Celebrity. My mother stepped out of the car and I half expected her to be in a state of outrage because my father must be honest with her! He must break down and tell her immediately how he felt since he so freely shared this with his two children. I don’t know if my mom could handle a divorce. To my astonishment my father didn’t say a damn thing to her about the situation at hand. Not a thing about it all day. I chose to ride home with my mother in the car because I felt awful about what I had heard.
For the next few days I half expected the ball to drop so when it didn’t I was frustrated. One day I was sitting at the bar on a bar stool in our apartment looking into the kitchen as my mom made me my favorite lunch, Spaghetti O’s, on the stove. What a good mom I thought? She always feeds me and she’s always there when I need her. How could he say these horrible things about her when all she does is take care of all of us? I was drawing a wedding dress on a yellow-note pad because I couldn’t get it out of my mind. That’s when I said it,
“Do you ever wish you hadn’t married dad?” I asked.
“Never. Why do you ask?” she responded.
“No reason…” I trailed off now scratching the pen through the designer wedding dress I had just drawn. I had almost scratched a hole through half the pad of paper before my mom replied,
“No. Come on. You asked me for a reason.”
I hesitated but I chose to tell the truth because that is what my mother would want me to do.
“Dad just said the other day that he wished he’d never married you.” There’s a pause.
“Why would you say something so horrible to me?” my mom asked.
“He said that you don’t have sex anymore and that he doesn’t like that you got fat.” I proceeded despite the fact that I was almost in tears myself.
“Roslyn! Why would you say something like that to your mother?” she shouted at me through tear-filled eyes.
I responded through my own sobs, “Because you told me to always tell you the truth.”
This information had been eating a hole through my conscience for almost two weeks now and it felt so relieving to get it off of my chest. Yet with that relief came the feeling of guilt because I had simply given my pain to someone else. My mother and I didn’t speak for the rest of the day, then she went to work still half-sobbing, and when my father came home he was furious with me. My father screamed and yelled at me about how “this is why I never share anything with you! At least your sister knows how to keep her damn mouth shut!”
How could I have told my mother all of the horrible things he had said and yadda yadda yadda. At the time I thought that I had really done something wrong when in reality if my father didn’t want anything he said to be repeated then he should have kept all of that negative talk to himself. I had a new understanding of my eight-year old sister who had been carrying the burden around of this type of malice for years. How long had my dad been talking about my father and mother’s impending divorce? This divorce that my dad spoke of never came to fruition because I would later learn that my dad was all talk and no action.
Finally after all of the yelling and frustration came to an end my father asked me why I would tell my mom those things.
“Mom always tells us that honesty is the best policy. How can she make things better if she doesn’t know that anything is wrong?”
What a poignant statement for a child to make. How can she make things better if she doesn’t know that anything is wrong? It is a simple statement and still a large part of why people get divorced today. A lack of communication is death to a marriage. It wasn’t like my mother knew what he was thinking! Also as an adult I recognize that their sex life was in the can because my mother felt fat, ugly, exhausted, underappreciated, and unloved all of the time! Why would she want to sleep with someone who debases her based off of her looks? While my father blamed much of their problems on my mother the blame was equal. Why wasn’t my father concerned at looking inwardly at what he could have improved upon?
In that moment he was silent.
“Well isn’t mom right? Honesty is always the best policy, isn’t it?” I implored.
“No. Honesty is not always the best policy. Sometimes you just need to tell little white lies to keep everyone happy.” my father replied.
Look around man! No one is happy here! Your wife is at work probably quietly sobbing while she keeps customers on mute. Your other daughter is practically catatonic because she can’t handle these adult concepts and is therefore constantly stuck in a book! I was the only one that was happy because I obliviously didn’t know what was going on at the time and now I am unfortunately disillusioned. No one here is happy.
Please understand that I do not want to paint my father as a woman-hating monster. My father was simply born in the 50’s and raised by a generation of people who held fast to strict gender roles. Few woman went to college. Many women did not have jobs. Woman weren’t supposed to be involved in the finances of the house. Hell, woman wore dresses all year round regardless of where they lived and the weather they were subjected to! To give you an idea of how strange this time was, I once found a guidebook on how woman were supposed to behave in the 50’s. Presumably this book had been purchased and passed down to the women of our family throughout the ages when they were of age to be married off. Among the things that I thought were ridiculous, women were supposed to have their man’s favorite alcoholic beverage and slippers for him at the door when he got home. Children were supposed to be seen and not heard. Dinner was supposed to be ready as your husband walked in the door and above all you were to keep your mouth shut if you disagreed with your husband. I like to think that my dad was an unfortunate byproduct of the age in which he was raised. However, at times this is hard to believe when you hear the slanderous things he says about women sometimes.
Later on in life I would learn of the terrible things that my father would unload onto Ophelia. One time my father told her that if our parents got divorced he would take me and my mother would take Ophelia. I cannot imagine the pain that this must have inflicted on Ophelia let alone the hate for me that it must have spawned. I will never understand why you would say that to your own child. Why you would even think these things is beyond me. After Ophelia told me this it was clear to me that people told little white lies all the time. For instance, my parents always said they didn’t have favorites but it was clear from my fathers’ previous statements that they did.