In Loco Parentis

In literal translation from the latin, the phrase "in loco parentis" means "in place of the parent." In real life, it seems to me that there is little coincidence that the word "loco" is used so often and in such close proximity to the word "parentis."

Does being a parent make you crazy or is being crazy a prerequisite to assuming the mantle of parenthood? It is quite the chicken-egg problem for the ages. I would actually be inclined to think it is the former as my parents seem to have slipped farther and farther into the realm of eccentricity and audaciousness as the years (and the children they begat) multiplied. Maybe there is an inherent weightiness, an unyielding pressure, in the role that slowly presses down upon and little by little completely subsumes one's sanity. Everyone starts off feeling that they are "in place of the parent" regardless of certain biological truths. All hoping to shed the "in loco" prefix as time and experience accumulate. Perhaps some are successful. Others, in my experience, just become entrenched. Frustrated by the futility of it all, they give in to the "in loco"'s inevitability and give up on the "parentis."

My parents have given up. Or more specifically, my mother has given up. Even more precisely, she has given up on me. We have not spoken in 2 months and 10 days. We do not live in the same zip code, but while it is a toll call, it is not long distance. Point of fact, she is physically located 22 minutes from my workplace via train, roughly 30 minutes via car depending on traffic and time of day. It would probably take a couple of days walking, but unless the Big One hit all of a sudden such drastic means would hardly be necessary.

True, as easily as she could access me in these ways, I could access her. So this is equally my fault, and perhaps my choice, in that I am sure that I dedicate far more time to ruminating about her, than she deigns to think about me. At least it was my fault and my choice, till I actually did call her. Twice, over the past two weeks.

I am a drama queen. No one knows this better than my family does. They have had to live with that shit for upwards of 28 years. But as emotionally leaching and whiningly pathetic as I have ever been, I cannot recall a time when they have not returned my phone calls. Till now.

I called my mother 10 days ago and left her a voicemail, voice waivering, pleading for her to call me back to help me sort things out as I was wishing for a lightning bolt to strike me dead in my office so that I no longer had to deal with the monstrousness of my job. (Again, drama queen.) Whatever the content of the message, the inescapable theme was that I was upset. Given that I don't actually call my mother that often, even under the best of circumstances, my reaching out to her was something that was at least noteworthy. One would think.

But she did not call me back. She still has not called me back. And so it seems, she will not ever call me back.

As such, I have decided that as of today, I give up.

Today is the day that I have learn to be my own parent. I have been angry and upset and overwraught at not being able to get what I wanted and/or needed from my parents for years. I have bent over backwards trying to please them for the entirety of conscious life - I made school choices in accordance to what would let them brag most, I pciked a law school that they would not have to pay a dime for, I went to law school because they said it was a good idea, I have handed money over in vast amounts because they said it was the right thing to do. I even take my mother on dates with me - figuratively, but devastatingly nonetheless. She is the little figure perched on my shoulder throughout, jabbing her finger in the air and imploring "Ah, ah, ah, no man likes a woman who is desperate." Just as she kept telling me over and over in high school when I would lament that I didn't have a boyfriend. Maybe the statement is true, but my female "parentis" "in loco" never taught me what "desperate" meant. As such, I now seem to believe that any show of emotion or request for any kind of accomodation or consideration from another party, and need or desire to be prioritized even occasionally is "desperate." The only relationship I can have which is not "desperate" is one in which I make no demands whatsoever - one where I am still desperate, increasingly so, but feverishly attempting to hide it from my "partner."

Yeah, as one particular lout (who I happen to work with) told me after a drunken discussion in a bar (the content of which I do not remember, but the ending of which I will never forget): "Wow, your parents really fucked you up. And good."

I would like to say I threw a drink in his face and stormed out, but given the time in the evening and the amount imbibed, I am pretty sure I spilled my drink in his lap and stumbled away. A little less flair, but still a mustered amount of flourish.

I do not want to hold my parents responsible for the way I am today. When I am more rational, I recognize that I am and entirely fucked up individual by my own making and at my own volition. But in my less thoughtful states, I am just filled with quiet yet overwhelming rage. I spent so much of my time growing up trying to make their lives easier, to make them a little less uphappy, to get them to hate each other a little less, to love my brothers and sisters a little more. To love me a little more. I never wanted to ask for anything from them for fear of the cost that came later. Requests for goods meant someone else had to do with less or without, and all of us would have to pay the price for the bad moods that resultant stress brought about. There were no physical repercussions, there was just having to live with the increased stress, misery and unhappiness that would pervade the house.. Requests for emotional things - well, those were unimaginable. We had no language for such requests.

The word "love" was not used in my household growing up. My parents did not tell each other they loved each other. As if. Certainly they did not tell us they loved us. Emotion is weakness. I was always the weak one. I still am. My mother is baffled by me, and the crying and the attempts at self analysis and my over-sensitivity. At least she was baffled. Now, clearly, she is repulsed.

I have spent hours upon hours in recent years trying to explain her why I feel the way I feel about things. Trying to share with her things that I learned in therapy. Things that I thought were useful. Different perspectives that I had never considered. Foolishly, I had always thought that in a second-hand way, they might help her grow too. Or grow with me. I always thought that because she was listening that she was actually hearing me.

I truly am a fool.

I am a wasteful and ignorant and unappreciative fool.

I have misspent enough time and resources on trying to get my parents to change, to understand. To be my parents.

I have gotten down on my knees and begged my mother to hear me, to be there for me because I needed her. Tears streaming down my face. Begging. The only time in my life I have ever actually begged for anything.

And yet here sit - 2 months and 10 days later. Or just 10 days later. Either way. Alone.

I need all of my energy to fix my life which I have broken and have refused for the last two years to mend. I need to put away childish things. I need to accept my life as one that is whole without need of a mother.