Already a ghost

On “putting out,” time and again

I’ve always been dubious of the idea of the importance of first impressions. People love to fling about: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression!” <finger wag!>

I’m in the thrall of the BBC1 comedy “Ghosts” at the moment (streaming on HBOMax). Per usual, BBC does everyday sitcoms better than the U.S., with a totally implausible storyline made both lightweight and lovely in turns.

One key ghost is Lady Fanny Button, played by Martha Howe-Douglas. For a good deal of the series she is a stereotype — a send-up of Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey.

But this wouldn’t be the BBC hit it is if this character stayed two-dimensional. When her backstory is unraveled, her character becomes easier to love, funnier, and much more present.

Right now, binging on TV is my way of escaping. There’s a revolution occurring in my head, and sometimes I don’t really want to look that closely. Of course, as it turns out, the revolution is everywhere.

Questions I Can’t Answer

I am waking up to a realization of the weird futility of life. While there is so much beauty, it comes with so many questions. The big GOD sort of questions like:

What is the point? Literally, what is the point of all this suffering? Of these endless repeated cycles of humans being born — of having to learn the same lessons that billions of other people have already learned?

Why does a parent like myself have to live through the experience of watching the children I love be tortured with depression, ADHD, puberty, bullying? And more? After having lived through the sadness myself as a teen?

What is the point of this?

I asked this question to my mom one day years ago — I was driving in my minivan alone and called her. I was bereft with worry and frustration.

“Mom!” I was crying. Thank goodness she was not unused to that.

“What is it honey?”

“Mom! Why? Why do parents have to RE-LEARN all of this stuff? It makes no sense! Why can’t all the learning just be transferred? Passed on? WHY?”

I could hear her inhaling on her cigarette and blowing out.

“I don’t know honey. I just don’t know.”

Impressionism

In these past dozen years, I am pretty dang sure that first impressions of me have not been good.

Even as I was swarmed with beautiful children around my legs, my smile was forced and strained. I have been on edge. I have barked at those beauties in the presence of others. How dare I? I have tried to talk, walk, exist while my brain has been mush.

I have simmered at the invisible and cumulative impact of mothering that goes so very ignored by our culture (or worse, blamed). And on top of that, the unbalancing experience of atypical parenting.

Why is this so hard? Why does this have to be so hard? It makes no sense to me.

The problem with first impressions is they are seen through the eye of moment, the environment, of assumptions, of cultural expectations. Am I expected to take this on, every time I go out the door? Am I expected to “put out” something that is at the very least palatable — again and again?

Personally, I am fuckin tired and menopause has caused me to gain weight on my tummy. Plus, I like people better after I get to know them… don’t you?

All the effort to “be seen” seems like another construct I shouldn’t have to solve.