1
No commands were necessary, nothing was spoken. You were shown by example and subtle correction how to raise no dust, how to mistrust your feelings, burrow under your life and with your own hand throttle down whatever fresh shoots emerged. You never found out why this happened to you, why you had to be born into this kind of family.
All you knew was that the real, open life was elsewhere. You saw it in the way other families talked to each other in parks and restaurants, the way lovers and friends laughed on the streets. Didn’t understand why you couldn’t meet each others’ eyes or speak without mumbling. Why every emotion, surfacing, seemed to turn hostile.
There was some evil, some shame that could not be brought to light without catastrophe. No cause. If there’d been a cause, it could have been confronted.
The life of the house revolved around the mother, its only healthy root. Communication took place through her. She was drawn into the deadlock of mistrust as if by a confidence trick. She gave it all she had, but it was always too late. The shame saw in her an opening, a breath of life, and used it until she had nothing more to give and she closed up too.
2
You did all the things one had to do, you made sure you were secure, buffered against life, just as your parents had done.
You went to the biggest city, as one did. Walked back and forth through the sooty roar of traffic every day, as one did. Watched life from behind a pane of glass.
You remembered the Dutch porcelain girl on your father’s desk, surrounded by bills, the hourglass in her hands measuring time until time ran out, until time was turned over and ran out again. There she stood, in her red bonnet and clogs, forever mute and smiling, letting time slip through her hands.
3
When, after many years, you felt you had reached a kind of end game, you were given some pills.
You invested what little hope you had in them, and something happened.
They didn’t change the world. They didn’t remake you. They didn’t raise you up like Lazarus. But they let you act, and come out from your shadow.
You saw your past in a new light. You saw the injustices you’d let yourself and others be subjected to. There was no reason for them, but you hadn’t seen it at the time. There was no one to blame.
You saw how differently we grow up, beset by different problems. You saw how life, even compassion, were possible after all.
You decided to live. You looked for the deepest thing on earth and found love. You loved love, but had never learned to show it, so love couldn’t love you back.
When out of his hiding place came God…
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Tags: Fictitious autobiography
