Coraline

I finally got around to watch the film "Coraline". I had been putting it off because I was afraid that it would be too triggering. It wasn't. It gave me a lot of food for thought and brought up some old memories, not of my parents, but of a friend I had many years ago. We used to hang out with the same group of friends but I didn't know her very well. Then, all of a sudden, she took a shine to me. I say "all of a sudden" because it literally felt like a switch had been turned on. She would constantly call me to talk and to arrange outings. At first it was fun and l was flattered and amused by the attention but after a while I started to feel smothered. Before I had a chance to "plan my escape" though, she moved on to someone else. Just like that. Like a butterfly or a bee moves on to the next flower. I felt relieved. I guess that in a different set of circumstances I would have felt abandoned and let down, but perhaps because I was already feeling "choked" in the relationship, her moving on to someone else felt like a happy solution. Watching the smothering "other mother" reminded me a lot of that experience, of how at first the attention feels so good but after a while it feels like a straight jacket.
I see my experience reflected in Coraline's experience with the "other mother", in how she picks up the signals that something is wrong and frees herself from the tight grip of the "other mother". It reminded me of my relationship with Mr. Ego and how -just like the other mother- he never forgave me for freeing myself of his influence and control. The analogy of these types in the film is very accurate: how they use people to amuse/entertain themselves and then move on to whoever he holds their interest next (their new toy) once they've sucked up the soul of the previous one, but how they will still keep the "discarded" souls in captivity. (This made me think also of the character of Ursula in The Little Mermaid.)

I was discussing the film with a friend and she pointed out how people like the other mother can't pull the stunt on their own, but need a host of other people around them to help them create the environment/set up needed to deceive their victims. I can see that a certain amount of talent is required to create such a setting. That they use said talent merely to trap people is very sad. Instead of using their talent for good, they spend their lives designing a human fly trap. 

Winter's Bone

             Last night I watched the film "Winter's Bone". Though it was painful and bleak, quite brutal even, I thought it was a very accurate allegory of the emotional life of ACoNs. I related so much to the 17 year old character "Ree", who has to look after her mentally ill mother and her two younger siblings, with her father gone and hardly any help from anyone around her. To her "having a family", even an extended family that in reality not only amounted to no family at all, but did damage to her as well. And isn't just that the emotional landscape that we ACoNs grow up with? With a mother who is not a mother, a father who is emotionally absent, and having to be the emotional "parent"to your siblings (and sometimes your parents as well) without any help, any guidance or any support. 

             What is so striking about the film is how all the adults in the film are not adults at all. Most of them are on drugs and unable to be "present" for her or to offer any assistance. All they can give is "scraps". She outshines them all in maturity, common sense and sensibleness. They have nothing to offer her (emotionally) because they are all in such a mess themselves and can't get out, let alone help her. You know how we all grew up hearing about how we should listen to "older ones" because of them having more experience on life? When I was in my late twenties/early thirties I felt that there was no one to go to for answers because they "older" ones seemed to be in a bigger mess (emotionally speaking) that I was, and how could they help me? One of them even said to me: "You're working things out in your thirties that we're only now working out (in our sixties)". When she said that, I thought: "What hope is there for me then, if the ones that are suppose to show me the way, haven't got a clue themselves?"

The adults being on drugs represented to me how all the adults in my FOO (including my extended FOO) were "hooked" on Narcissistic Supply. TR has a brilliant post about how NS is a form of drug addiction (see http://inbadcompanyinc.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/narcissist-supply-one/ ) The kids (I'm including cousins here) don't get a look in because all the attention is going in the direction of the adults. Because of this, the cousins don't develop close connections among themselves either. 

Though the film is very raw and certainly not for the faint hearted, I found Ree's character inspiring: her tenacity and determination to push past all the obstacles she faces, and on her own strength; her self-respect in how she refuses to lower herself to their level; her dignity in how she says to her little brother: “Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”  

I don't know if the film depiction of the people who live in the Ozarks was accurate or not, but as a depiction of the struggles of a teenager to survive among adults who don't know what they're doing, is spot on. 

The Sixth Floor

 Last night I was watching a French film (The Women on the 6th floor) and one of the characters says the following: 

( The film is about a Parisian couple who hire a Spanish maid and thus, come into contact with all the Spanish maids who live in the 6th floor of their building. Seeing how these Spanish maids approach life, changes the French couple's outlook on life) 

"Those women on the 6th floor are alive. We are dead. We need to find our 6th floor."

Talk about serendipity happening again... ;)

All Unhappy Families...

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

This is the opening line in the book Anna Karenina. One time when I was googling the quote I found a thread of someone who was asking about the meaning of the quote on yahoo answers. The reply he got was this:

"Happy families understand human nature, not in an abstract way, but in a practical way that allows the fulfilment of its members. Since happy families follow nature and are tuned with those natural needs they're all very much alike. Unhappy families march to the particular flaws of the individuals within it and therefore don't function according to nature or as a family. The unhappiness within each unhappy family is uniquely their own path."

I though this reply was pretty much spot on. However, I do see a common thread in "unhappy" (or dysfunctional) families. How else can I explain that I can relate so much to people who come from different backgrounds and have had a different family experience? How else can I explain that when I read certain books, or watch certain films, I feel like I have known the characters my whole life? That I deeply know and understand them.

Yesterday I watched "Rumble Fish". The first time I saw the film, in my late teens, I was completely drawn to this film in a way that I could not explain. After all, what did a Spanish girl from an average working family have in common with a guy (Rusty James) from Tulsa who was involved in gangs, and had an alcoholic father? But somehow at the time I felt like I knew this character and his brother so much. Watching the film yesterday I saw so much more than I did when I saw it the first time. I saw that the main character, Rusty James, is just desperate to be seen by his father and his brother. That he had been brought up being left entirely to his own devices and, while in his case this was very extreme, since the father is an alcoholic; I also, except for the basics, had  been brought up left to my own devices, with no one to give me guidance or direction of any kind. Brought up as if we were invisible, or at best, as a background prop to someone else's life. This disconnection seems to me to be the most common denominator in dysfunctional families.

There was another idea in the film that I also deeply related to. See what you think of this conversation between Rusty James and his father while they're discussing the older brother:

Father: Every now and then, a person comes along, has a different view of the world than does the usual person. It doesn't make them crazy. I mean... an acute perception, man... that doesn't, that doesn't make you crazy.

Rusty: Could you talk normal?

Father: However sometimes... it can drive you crazy, acute perception.

Rusty: I wish you'd talk normal 'cause I don't understand half the garbage you're saying. You know? You know what I mean?

Father: No, your mother... is not crazy. And neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother crazy. He's merely miscast in a play. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river... with the ability to be able to do anything that he wants to do and findin' nothin' that he wants to do. I mean nothing.

"A miscast in a play". That's how I feel in my FOO. As much as I see a lot of me in the struggles of Rusty James, I also see a lot of me in the character of the older brother. In the way he can see past the appearance of the things that surrounds him. 

This acute perception is that made us different from our FOO is also what could have driven us crazy. In my view, this "acute perception" is what causes depression. Depression as in being pressed down by a reality we are unable to change: the realisation that we've been born in the "wrong" family...

This film was based on a book of S.E. Hinton. I wondered what upbringing she'd had, to be able to describe these feelings so well. (You know that only one who has also been there could express them in that way.) And what do you know? There is not a lot of info on her upbringing, but I did find this:

" I still find it hard to comprehend how a girl could write

so insightfully about boys. Obviously girls have their own battles to go through, and they probably seem just as life-and-death, but the understanding she had of the boys’ world is still hard to comprehend.

Maybe it had something to do with her upbringing, which  apparently wasn’t easy. Ms. Hinton is still now a very private person, but she has described her mother as abusive: “when I was writing she’d come into my room, grab my hair and throw me in front of the TV, she’d say, ‘You’re part of this family – now act like it.’”

Whatever it was, she could identify with people who felt they didn’t fit in, and she was able to observe the young boys in her neighbourhood with their gangs, and family problems, and just the terrible struggles of growing up, and she was able to write about it as if she was one of them."

She was able to write as if she was one of them because she WAS one of them: another "motherless" child left to her own devices and being made to act as "part of a family" as a prop in the background. 

Monochromatic People

mon·o·chro·mat·ic 

Adjective Containing or using only one color. (of light or other radiation) Of a single wavelength or frequency

Just finished watching the film "The Age of Innocence". As I watched it, I kept thinking that the character May Welland was so utterly monochromatic: the range of her personality, while nice enough, only had one frequency. This line, at the end of the film, is quite telling:

"The world of her youth had fallen to pieces and rebuilt itself without her ever noticing. This hard, bright blindness, her incapacity to recognise change made her children conceal their views from her just as Archer concealed his. She died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious households like her own."

Made me think of the Ns I know,  they also seem to be just as flat. My husband used to have a friend years ago that came on a couple of holidays with us. This guy would never ever be in synch with the group. He only had one speed, and it made no difference whether the occasion required to be fast or slow. Made no difference to him if there was people waiting for him either. We bumped into him the other day and he remains unchanged. Just like May Welland, his world remains static. As if every day is a "groundhog day" for him.

My sister also only has one frequency. My MIL once remarked that everything she does is approached with the same intensity whether the task requires it or not. When she said this, I thought this was also true of the level of drama she pumps up. When I had a conversation with her recently she hurled all sorts of accusations. The dramatic way she was saying it you'd think I'd stolen from her, kidnapped her children and slept with her husband. Once she went away and I thought about her list of my "alleged" offences, what they really came up to was this:

• I had disagreed with her 
• I had said no to favours she wanted from me
• I had stopped hanging out with the same people as her

Oh dear, such heinous crimes... At some point in the conversation, I asked her why she wanted to be my friend if she had so much against me. She looked at me so completely blankly, you'd think I'd asked her to explain the Theory of Relativity...    

Rediscovering Cinderella

Émile Bertrand 1899
(image in the public domain)

The first opera I ever saw was "Cinderella".  I only went to the performance because one of our friends didn't want to go on her own. Before that, I always thought that opera was quite possibly one of the most boring things ever. The performance would change my mind forever. 

Cinderella was never a story that I paid much attention to when I was little. My absolute favourite was "Sleeping Beauty". (subject for a whole other post...) However, of lately I have been musing on the story of Cinderella a lot. Particularly as it is portrayed in the 1950 Disney film. On how it's such a fitting allegory for what happens in the lives of Adult Children of Narcissists. In the film, the Stepmother agrees to let Cinderella go to the ball provided she finishes her chores and finds something suitable to wear. Cinderella believes her words and works really hard to accomplish these tasks. However when the time comes and she's ready to go, the Stepsisters -being used as flying monkeys by their mother- destroy her dress so that she can't attend. It is clear that the Stepmother never intended to let Cinderella go to the ball at the palace, but she never says an outright no; she just keeps moving the goal post. Covert aggression in all its glory... It reminds me so much of the times when I toiled to have a good relationship with Narcissistic types, and nothing I did brought me closer to the person or improved the relationship in any way. Nothing Cinderella did would have ever made any difference: there was a reason why the Stepmother was keeping her in that position. She wanted  to eliminate competition so that Cinderella would not outshine her or her daughters and, while we are at it, an unpaid servant. So all the time that you're scratching your head wondering why nothing you do makes any difference, you're looking at the wrong reason for the problem. You think it's you, and that you're not trying hard enough, because if you did, everybody involved would be happy. But it's not you. Their act is a ruse.  They're only saying whatever is needed to keep you in the place they want to keep you in. You think that they mean what they say because you do mean what you say. But believe me, they don't.

The analogy that I had in mind, though, is something else. In the film two mice make a dress for Cinderella out of the scraps being thrown away of what's not needed for the making of the dresses of the Stepsisters. Real life "Cinderellas" don't have mice that help them to make a dress. They have to make the dress themselves. We try to build a life for ourselves with whatever scraps of emotional resources we've been able to scramble together, only to have it all torn to shreds by our FOO the minute they realise that we've made it and are indeed "going to the ball". That's how I felt a couple of years ago: I had worked really hard to make my life happy only to have my sister come and invade it as if it was her royal right. By the time it all exploded, I felt like Cinderella: standing desolate with my dress in tatters, wondering what to do next. In the story, this would be the bit where the Fairy godmother appears and makes her a new, more beautiful dress. In real life, as you very well know, there is no Fairy godmother (not even a "real" mother, for that matter, to help you rebuild it), so you have to start again. So you have another go and "start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss" as in the famous poem* and build it up again. The life I have been able to create for myself in these last two years is so much better than what I had before, or of anything that I could have possibly imagined. An unexpected surprise that, unlike the Fairy godmother's gifts to Cinderella, will not be over at the stroke of midnight.

*"If" by Rudyard Kipling

Blade Runner

From the time I was a teenager until my late twenties "Blade Runner" was my favourite film. Closely followed by "Rumble Fish". Odd choices for a  teenage girl really. Something about the films drew me to them. I didn't know why. Now I do. "Rumble Fish" is basically a story about a dysfunctional family. "Blade Runner" is about seeing a different reality. Recently someone lent me the DVD for "The Adjustment Bureau". I loved it too. Most of my acquaintances, when giving their opinion on the film (including the person who lent it to me) would say: "I didn't like it. It wasn't what I expected","Why? What were you expecting?" I'd ask. "A political thriller or conspiracy theory film". I found those answers really amusing. So many people I know watch a film with a preconceived idea. I don't. I go with the story and see where it takes me.  In this particular case  I knew that the film was based on a Philip K. Dick story so I already had a sense of what kind of film it would be. I have not read any of his books, though I've always wanted to, and I really don't know much about the writer. Before I went on my holiday, I listened to a BBC podcast about Philip K. Dick's life. Journalist Matthew Parris interviewed actor Michael Sheen ( yes, the guy that played the unbearable snob in "Midnight in Paris"). At one point in the interview, Michael Sheen says: "indicative of Dick’s writing is the moment where the central character begins to discover that maybe the reality that he’s living in and that he’s taking for granted may not be everything that’s going on and that maybe there’s something else going on behind it."

Maybe that's what draws me to all films based on Dick's stories. That central theme of being able to see a reality that nobody else sees.

As I'm listening to the podcast I start wondering if Philip K. Dick was an ACoN. You pick up on different threads once you know about Narcissism. There were a lot of clues in the things they were discussing about Dick's life even if they themselves weren't picking up on them. They spoke about Dick's relationship with his mother. For some reason this made me think of that scene in "Blade Runner" when Mr. Holden is running a VK test to see if Leon is a replicant:

Mr Holden says: "Describe in single words the good things that come into your mind about your mother."

Leon replies: "My mother? Let me tell you about my mother" and shoots Mr. Holden.

Well, if that doesn't reek of ACoNhood I don't know what does.