So I come back to this place. Not a geographical location, but rather this head space, where I wonder: what am I doing, really?
To be fair, this is a question I ask of myself daily, in myriad situations, but right now, just now, as I speak to no one but myself, it refers to the BIG question. Yes, that one. When do we decide that we don't want to know someone, or when do we realize that we can't actually know them? Or more than that, when do we realize that our lives cannot be disentangled, nor truly bound to another life, not in an all-knowing way.
This may seem silly (or frighteningly precocious) but my almost 10-year-old daughter and I had what looks to be the first of our irrational adolescent fights. That's not abnormal, her hormonal changes are all but visible, and the behaviors she displays are not shocking, but rather the topic of this particular "fight" was astounding. To me at least.
"I don't really know you, mom," she states with a confidence in the correctness of this affirmation, "There is so much that I don't know about you. You know almost everything about me, but there are entire parts of your life that I know nothing about."
"Well, yes, that's true, but those parts of my life don't pertain to you."
"You have friends I've never met. Friends I don't even know."
"Also true."
"Most of your friends are men."
"What?"
"Well, they are."
"No they're not. I mean, some may be, but I have far more female friends, let's think."
We run through a list of all the friends that she knows, there is a relatively short list (I like to use the word "friend" sparingly). We discuss the difference between that and "people we are friendly with" and "acquaintance" etc. She notices that, in fact, the majority of my friends are, actually women. But I feel guilty. Because in a way she is right. Not about the men, but about the fact that there are whole universes of my existence that she will likely never have access to. And it is better that way. Still, there are people who matter so deeply to me that their essence is burned into my skin, their desires have embedded themselves in my own, in such a way as to render my own desires entirely indistinct, a line so blurred it is forever lost, and I fear that she will never know them. And if that is true, does that mean that I will never truly know them either? That thought frightens me, saddens me, eats at my insides. And yet, the same can be said of the inverse.
So our conversation continues, I. and I, debating how well we know each other. For anyone who knows us, both of us, or has watched us interact, it is the most ridiculous conversation (ridiculous in the sense of laughter producing) because a) she knows me better than just about anyone in the world if only because she copiously studies the most miniscule behaviors of mine and interprets them (generally correctly). I am an open book for the astute observer, it would seem... and b) she is like a carbon copy of me, not necessarily in her likes and dislikes, but in her manner of expression, her gestures, her body language... she knows me as she knows herself, to which degree, we will discover, is suddenly questionable.
"I know my Bobie better than I know you," she wails, "and I don't even live near her."
"What do you know about her?"
She begins enumerating facts about my mother. I counterpoint with facts that she should (and does, but pretends not to for the sake of the argument) know about me. "What do I like to eat?"
A petulant, "I don't know."
"Well what do I cook?"
"That doesn't mean that you like it..."
"Well if I am the one choosing the menu, don't you think I like what I make?"
"Maybe."
"Think about it. What vegetable have I been totally in love with recently?"
"I don't know."
"Well at Jenny's wedding, what did I eat at the rehearsal lunch, when you had filet mignon?"
"I don't know!"
"Well," I point out unwelcomely, "is it my fault that you don't pay attention to what I do and I do pay attention to what you do? How is it that I know what you ate, but you don't remember what I ate? This is all observable information." She glowers at me, my logic is impeccable, but this is not what she wants to hear. "All you have to do to know me is to watch me." But this is a lie. Not a malicious one, maybe not even an intentional one, but a lie nonetheless: As much as I am an open book, there are secrets that reside under my skin, that only some people learn, and in partial snippets, shreds of myself that are released because their internalized pressure would be too great, but only partially released in order to protect my own sense of integrity.
"I don't know, mommy. See, your friends know more about you than I do."
"I ate eggplant. Eggplant. So now you know. My most recent favorite vegetable is eggplant, ok?" My voice rises in pitch and I am frustrated and exhausted. My child is weeping and holding her head in her hands.
"What's going on, baby? Why are you doing this? Of course you know me!" I try to approach her, to soften this painful truth that she has stumbled upon, the fact that she doesn't get to know me as "well" as I know her. This is the basic inequity of a parent-child relationship. I try to explain that it is better this way, that there are things that she is not equipped to know or understand about me. I try to convince her to come down from her perch halfway up the stairs, her jeans rubbing against the sandpaper edges that I will not miss once I leave this place, but she resists.
"I just want to be alone!" she wails into her hand.
"Come here, baby, it's ok..." I coax, "I love you stinky... it doesn't have to be like this."
She mumbles something unintelligible but decidedly negative towards herself, and I see the currents of adolescent self-loathing descending upon her, in oozing waves of invisible virulence.
"What was that?" I push. I shouldn't push, but I can't bear this. Can't bear her to feel bad about herself. She resists and I push harder, and she resists some more, digging her heels in.
"I just want to be alone."
"Then go!" I exclaim, exasperated and perplexed.
When she comes back she says, "I don't know why I do these things..." and nuzzles in against me, still much smaller than I am, though she is only 6 inches shorter. "I wish I didn't do this... we were having such a nice day and then I had to ruin it..."
So I let her cling to me, and I tell her it is ok. And the next day when I make a joke about her knowing me, she rolls her eyes in laughter and says, "don't start that again!"
But I am left with a gaping hole, a question mark, a perplexed silence. How well can we really know even those that are closest to us? We can live an entire life next to someone that wouldn't like us if they knew what was inside. We can spend forever filling the emotional void with inane sideline identities, conversations whose whole is less than their sum. Or, we can deeply connect with others, about whom we know only a sliver, but that sliver is direct line to the core of their being. I don't have an answer. I am here, in that place.
But today I played music, sang, fed friends, remembered some people who have touched me and passed. Today I tried to do the best I could to fill the void.
