failure mommy

Page Six

monday 28 april 2008 greenfield

Failure mommy. That's my greeting banner on my cell phone. Those are the words I see every time I open it, so I won't forget. A mommy who can't protect her children is a failure. It's a stupid mommy who trusts the wrong people. It's an incompetent mommy who can't buy a house in which to protect her children and her life. A stupid, incompetent failure. Whatever else I am, good or bad, I am a failure.

And human beings, in their infinite meanness, never cease to remind me (for many years now) that I am a failure. "You're so gifted, so educated, you have so many talents...", and then they go on in smarmy, roundabout words (never direct) to say: Why are you a poor slob on disability with no house and no car and no anything? Why do you need to borrow $20? Why do you need a ride? Why do you need a cheap rent? Why haven't you made anything of yourself with all your brains, for christ's sake?

So... ask my raging immune system that question. Ask it why it made me too sick and too tired to keep working. Ask the people who never hired me for the better-paying jobs with good benefits when I did work, why they didn't want me (I'm brilliant but weird; I don't shmooze or fit in). Ask my human family why they can't look after me some, the way a lot of other families do for their disabled members. Don't ask me, humanity, why I never made anything of myself. I tried. And every time one thing didn't work out, I retreated into my wounds for a while and then got up and tried something else. I don't personally know anyone who tried as many times and as many ways not to be a failure as I did. Shot down every time.

So... here we are in amerika, where if you don't have at least a certain societally-determined amount of money and a house and car of your own, you probably can't protect your right to choose your own lifestyle, and you probably can't protect what's dearest to you. I certainly couldn't.

Update 18 July 2009: The feelings are still the same. I failed at everything you need to do right in order to protect yourself from the psychological garbage of other people. I failed in money, and so could not buy my own home and live my own way. I failed to marry and get my own home that way. I failed in being able to blend in smoothly and participate lightly in all the social flimsiness that people practice. I failed not to be autistic. I failed the fourteen animals I love as big as the sea.
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