Everything is Foreign

"Maybe the reason I want to live in a van is so I can feel in control of what is foreign from my stable little home pod,"

    I thought to myself earlier today. 

    It's a rainy day, which means I couldn't do the van work I needed to do for today, so what else to do than sit and psychoanalyze myself in hopes of combating my depression?

    So that's what I did all day, and of course that meant diving into my childhood trauma, wounds, etc. Somewhere along my metacognitive, inner child rabbit hole I came across this thought I've been holding onto for a couple years now:

The word "Mom" feels foreign in my throat. 

    When I tell stories about her, and when people ask about her or my family in general, I'm struck with this self-pity that I use that word less frequently than the average person who has a living mother. The word "Mom" has therefore begun to feel more like a tonsil stone than a word when it comes out.

    I've attempted to write a poem about this concept with no success so far. I think my creative brain has been slipping lately which I hope to get back after some deep van-life meditation. Today, however, the concept did cause me to go further down the rabbit hole of consciousness and what this word "foreign" even entails for me. This is why I'm writing now about what I've concluded, which is...

    Everything ever is now foreign to me.

    Here's what I mean by that.

    When I was a child, my grandparents took me to all these places. A double decker along the cliffs of the Grand Canyon, a rainy beach in Charleston, a dinosaur museum in what felt like the boonies of New Mexico, a hotel in Amarillo where we woke to a tornado warning, a low-key Best Western in Little Rock, etc. Nowhere along the I-40 did any sight go unseen--at least from the car windows. All of that was fun. Truly. That, plus genetics (I think), made up much of my adventurous spirit today.

    However, my mom also took me places.

    She moved us to Temecula when Riverside became too unsafe, then to San Diego, then back to Temecula, then back to San Diego. Within San Diego, we moved around from place to place as well. As I've mentioned before on my blog, we stayed with many friends, family, and family-friends. Most of the time people would invite us to come stay and kicked us out only when they'd had enough of whatever toxic behavior my mom and her boyfriend at the time were guilty of (including a time when said boyfriend sat in his car watching pornography in plain sight in an apartment complex where us kids would run and play openly). In fact, most of the time it was her boyfriend that would get kicked out, not us, as the people who housed us pitied us, but my mother would retort, "If he gets kicked out, we all do," and thus my mother chose her toxic relationship over any stability or safety for her children.

    The first time we moved, my mother was so depressed that she would disappear into her room she made out of our friend's garage and my hygiene practices were not enforced. I went over a month without bathing at that time, and remember coming home from school and her finally realizing how dirty I was, unbeknownst to me, as she pointed out the physical dirt build-up on my arms. \

I made a recent discovery that my ADHD will permit coffee to work on me if I'm depressed.

   

    In general, I was not in stable or predictable predicaments throughout my childhood as we were homeless. We couldn't stay too many places for very long until we got our own apartment in San Diego where we stayed for 6-7 years before I decided to live with my grandparents. Even when we did finally stay in San Diego, I was at an age where I was developing a sense of independence that my mother's narcissism found confrontational and so her personality also began to change as she began having narcissistic rages when I was around 9 years old. She became foreign to me from how I had originally known her to be growing up.

    So everywhere we moved felt foreign--new. On top of that, much of the abuse I've encountered, even in my adult life took more away from any stability I've ever desired. Some of the specific types of abuse made even my own body feel foreign to me. And when I was adopted by my grandparents, some of the emotional distance they'd create by claiming I was just like my mother and treating me like my emotions and needs were overdramatic also made me feel like I was foreign to them. That nobody understood me. 

    Moving from California, where I'd lived my whole life, to profoundly different culture-wise South Carolina, felt totally foreign. In an effort to seek my grandparents' approval, I tried to mold my entire identity to conservative Christianity which was absolutely foreign to my liberal punk rock upbringing. I ended up marrying and divorcing an actual foreign man from another country hoping I could mold myself to fit some foreign cultural standards. I've tried, in college, to fit the mold of a public school teacher and couldn't quite grasp what that was "supposed" to look like because professionalism alone felt foreign to me. I realize, now, that molding myself to suit what is foreign is what I'd been taught to do to stay in places that were safe--mold my habits and character to live with friends, family, and family-friends. People-pleasing, changing my identity, and carving myself out so I always had somewhere to stay and nobody would "kick me out."

    This disconnect from myself made me resentful of my grandparents and my ex-husband in many ways. More resentment followed the abusive behaviors I endured from either. Whatever I was doing to mold myself just to feel safe was not making me feel safe at all and instead caused me to disconnect from myself while still being abused. Double whammy kick to the chesticles.

    I had to let go. Let go of what was once familiar to me in pursuit of something foreign to call my own. 

    An oxymoron. Foreignness is familiar to me and yet I've had to let go of almost everything I thought familiar in pursuit of more foreignness. Everything is foreign.

    Clearly I intend to fry your brain, Reader--fry it like an egg.

    So now I'm starting to embrace this concept that everything is foreign. Most of the people who are able to love me right now are not my family. They are not familiar, so they are foreign. Even the two remaining family members I have are foreign to me as I was disconnected from them for so many years. Over time may these people no longer feel so foreign as bonds strengthen and we endure more experiences together, but right now much of what I know is foreign compared to what I once believed was familiar--including the word "Mom."

    The van just means I get to safely explore what is foreign by my own means--and I will have somewhere safe to be at all times in the meantime. I do not have to mold myself to explore new territories and the unknown. I can just be in my metal shack on wheels, leave when things get rough, and stay where I feel safe or understood and accepted for who I am. No more molding. Only exploration of all the cool aspects of travel, places, faces, and discovery with some hiccups along the way.

    I may even go another month without bathing at some point unless you consider the biodegradable wet wipes I'll keep on hand for emergencies to be a means of bathing.

    So let this idea of foreignness be a lesson to us all about how life is about shifts and changes and how every new person and experience will always be foreign to us. There are even hidden corners and crevices of every person we love that will seem foreign to us. It's inescapable. We must learn to embrace it even if it's uncomfortable.

    Vanquish the xenophobia!

"The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown."

-John O'Donohue

Listening to: "I Can See the Pines are Dancing" by A.A. Bondy