Me and Lucille Bluth in New York
August 17th, 2008So I got super extra fuming mad yesterday. Looking in my purse, my Sidekick demanded that I twitter my emotions! And twitter them I did! And today people are wondering, what the fuck happened out there in New York City to make you tweet such angry tweets?
If you have never watched Arrested Development then you will not understand the full nuances of my references to the Bluths. Please go rent it and watch it, not for me, but because after you watch it you’ll stop thinking that you’ve wasted your life on nothing, and realize you’ve wasted your life dealing with the craziness of the people you are related to, and it was unavoidable so you might as well just accept it.
Like Lucille Bluth, my mother is relentlessly critical, and hypersensitive to any criticism toward her. She took us (me, my sister, my sister’s stepdaughter) to see August: Osage County which is all about a horrible, selfish, critical mother and her daughters. My sister and mom were jokingly referring to me in the name of one of the daughters in the play who is bossy and impossible. An hour or two later we were at a restaurant when I point out some similarities between my mom and the mom in the play, in what I thought was the same joking vein. Wow. I got my head bitten off so hard, I can’t even really describe it–my mom became super angry and defensive, saying over and over “well I’m sorry I’m not perfect” and “you certainly weren’t perfect either you know” and when I tried to explain, hey, I just thought we were poking each other with little humorous truths but in a loving way, and BTW you were doing it to me just an hour ago, she barked at me “Just don’t say another thing. Don’t say another thing. Don’t say another thing!”
My friend JB showed up right at that minute, so I acted as normal as I could for the next 20 minutes or so, finished my drink, ate my food. My sister’s stepdaughter said something about how her stepmother (my sister) was cooler (to travel to NYC with) than her mother and my mother said “well a stepmother doesn’t have to deal with how ungrateful daughters are.” At that point I pulled a bunch of twenty dollar bills out of my purse and handed them to my sister and said my goodbyes.
Being super mad at your mom reduces you back to when you were 16 years old. Like Michael Bluth! You do immature things and act in an entirely reactive way. For me, just as if I were 16, I went out with JB and stayed out as late as I could and drank as many drinks as I could. And came home and *almost* booked a ticket back to SF early. Credit cards should have breathalyzers on them. But I’ve been in this rage sinkhole enough times to know: just go to sleep and you can always book that ticket in the morning.
The most Arrested Development moment was when my mom called me in the morning to fight with me some more. We have adjoining rooms and I’d locked my door to her room, but we still shared a wall; so as we were yelling at each other, I could hear her voice in the next room in addition to her voice in the phone. Infuriating and ridiculous all at once. And when I got off the phone I wanted to call Ivan and complain about her but I couldn’t because she could hear every word! So I just took a long shower instead. Basically I am trapped just like in highschool all over again and it still sucks.
We patched it up enough today to see another play and have dinner. I’m still mad and yet also cognizant that this is my life; this is my parent, what kind of stand can I possibly take regarding her total narcissistic, thin-skinned, Queen Baby disposition? I think I just have to live with it.
I realize that reading this doesn’t in any way convey how horrifying it was when she got total Crazy Eyes and yelled at me, with 40 years of fury all built up, in a public place with people staring and trying to look away. I think any one of you could have said the same things and it would have been not nearly as upsetting. But as Evany Thomas always says, your parents know exactly how to push your buttons because they CREATED your buttons. So if this all seems dumb to you think of a thing your parent says to you that just drives you over the edge and then mentally copy and paste it over this blog entry.



