You remember in Adventure Time, when something really troubling happens to Finn, he gets a certain look in his eyes and says, "That's going in the vault!" And he locks away certain memories, suppresses them, so that he won't have to disturb the appearance of peace?
Four years ago, I had to cut my parents out of my life. It wasn't just because they voted for Trump, even though I had explained why they couldn't, and my mom had said she wouldn't, and then she did, and then she scolded me for being a bad loser. It was the other things she said that proved she didn't give a shit about me, or any of the people I cared about; asked me, "when did the gay thing become such a big deal for you anyway?" when almost every person close to me fits somewhere into the lgbtqia+ spectrum, and she knew that... I realized she didn't have my well-being at heart, nor the well-being of anyone I cared about, and then in a sinking moment I realized that I didn't love my mother anymore. That I couldn't even choose to, which is what I had been doing, despite the way she treated me and others for years.
I was walking around an unfamiliar yard, a place Caleb was house sitting, a week before christmas 2016. I paced around and tried, for the last time, to explain my values to my mom, and why I thought she was not just mistaken, but dangerously wrong in her politics. From the high ground of the recent election, she scolded and sniped at me, unable to hear me over the rumble of propaganda. I remember this conversation and its physical setting vividly, and I remember the rapid hardening of my heart. I'd forced it to be soft and pliant toward my parents for so many years, despite knowing they were full of shit, manipulative, and so often unkind in ensuring that I always did what they wanted me to, or else do nothing at all. I put my life, my sense of self, on hold repeatedly for years, because when I would discuss a big change with my parents, they'd talk me down from it, and I couldn't reconcile the possibility that they could always be wrong about what was best for me. But they were.
I felt my heart close up. I felt anger rush in, anger that kept me awake long into the night, and woke me with a start, for most of the next two years. Anger emerging from unaddressed hurt, at realizing I'd diminished myself to please these very small people, and that in the end it could never be enough.
Tonight I'm thinking about this because I can recognize that this wasn't without further-reaching effects. It's become harder for me to... be there for other people, in the intervening years. Harder for me to remember that other people really can care about me. Easier for me to take smaller perceived slights, get hurt and angry, and then not be able to address it. Harder for me to apologize; not because I'm not sorry for times I let people down, but because I worry, needlessly, that my apologies will be received with venom instead of forgiveness.
In a way it's like all of the anxiety I had about the ways my parents did treat me for so many years, but which was concentrated on them, is still rolling around inside me but points in other directions now. There's plenty else to be anxious about, too; many atrocities and indignities have been suffered on the world by the hideous dipshits my parents have been convinced to identify with. I've been on the verge of bankruptcy for most of the last three years. Everything goes increasingly to shit.
And the thing about the vault... things go in the vault, now. But I don't choose to put them there. They just vanish. I forget for weeks or months at a time about... all kinds of things. But mostly conversations or appointments with the people closest to me. And I'm not aware that it's happening. It's almost like... I still can't believe or fully trust that anyone really wants to talk to me; the effort of beginning a conversation feels so fraught with the possibility of being attacked or having to apologize for something, that it's so hard to start. And then I do have to apologize, because some ridiculous amount of time has passed with me frozen in anxiety, or tottering around in oblivious effort just struggling daily to do the work required to survive, plus whatever other other bullshit I'm embroiled in.
I can't even say exactly what the problem here is. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the emotional fallout of having watched my mother's petty cruelty sever what was left of my connection to my entire family, and most of my past. Nobody in my extended family has tried to talk to me since January of 2017. I have to assume they, conservatives all, have written me off as a maniac. And I'm not saying I'm not a maniac!!! But I don't think I am. I think I'm a sensitive person who has had a deeply difficult time enduring life in this very bad country.
My sensitivity is what's finally been diminished somewhat. It feels very strange to realize I just don't feel as strongly about most things anymore. I think some of that is from my antidepressants, but this was true even before that. I just can't keep feeling bad about every little thing that I used to. There's enough ambient hurt.
As I'm typing I feel myself spinning out into a dozen tangents, so this isn't a coherent essay. I sort of just wanted to capture a description of this non-deliberate vaulting that occurs, but also to note that recently... the vault has been opening periodically. People and events that I haven't thought of for many years have been springing to mind, and without the hurt that accompanied them for various reasons over the last 15 years. I can look back on things with fondness, rather than resentment or despair. Or, with less of the latter. It's kind of nice. Feeling sentimental about the past, instead of like I'm being run through with a horse-propelled lance.
Anyway. It used to be that anytime one of Trump's horrid attendants did anything public, I'd immediately feeling boiling rage toward my parents. I'd be explaining it to them, chastising them, screaming at them in my head, and ultimately getting nowhere. I was finally able to let go of that, after I embarrassed myself about it in front of Sara as we drove her new car back from New York, before I let her down as just another emotionally-unavailable man-appearing person, despite her only ever being kind and caring to me. And this week, as we see the fruits of unchecked disinformation finally reaching the calcified heart of our government, the one thing I take comfort in is not thinking automatically of my parents. There are more present specters to deal with.