Everyone in the writing group is getting more done than I am and seems to have a more stable life than I, and is probably putting more rational time into work as well. I know how it feels to have a slightly better situation and I am half envious but mostly ashamed that we are treated as we are here. My time goes to handling pain and shame and to doing accounts. How to come up with money for the job market, how to come up with money for law school.
The shame is really the problem since as I have discerned, I already perceive having an academic job not as a piece of luck but as the form of atonement required for having gone to a research oriented undergraduate program at a large school, having done the Ph.D, and having enjoyed it. I feel guilty about these things and seem to I believe I deserve to suffer. And since at this workplace they do make us suffer, the belief and the reality support each other. They do not produce each other but they support each other.
*
I have felt this way since late 1996. Here comes a story about my twisted ego and the ideas that plague me, the thoughts I want to leave behind.
I always knew that had I not been so selfish and cruel I would have gone to a SLAC, gotten good but not wonderful grades, “explored” a number of different fields by taking freshman courses in them, spent time in a refined country like Italy, graduated, taken a job somehow in New York, gotten engaged to a good prospect from work, and quit at the end of the year to be married in a small ceremony. I should have been another person.
My husband would have been transferred to Boston where I would have become an upper middle class matron. I would have played the piano and would have been even more refined than I am now, but less intellectually challenging. By doing these things I would have brought joy but I did not deliver on the assignment, and this brought pain.
*
Of course, by becoming a megastar I could have compensated for that, and if I had had no difficulty I could have gotten over not compensating for that, but at the same time the destructiveness designed to orient me in another direction prevented me (as it was intended to do) from becoming a megastar and even from sailing smoothly, so I have caused the family a double dose of pain. And had I been a worthy person I would have overcome all of that, but I have not, so I am not, so I deserve to die. That was my first education; it was why I liked school and school seemed easy.
*
I was not interested enough in genteel things, I was not Bohemian enough in attitude either, I disappointed, people lay in pain over my being so work oriented and I deserve to die for that reason. I see now that a very large part of the pain I am in myself has to do with the repeated recriminations in college and graduate school about my choice of university, my tastes and orientation in general, my ambition and drive, and the fact that I did the Ph.D. I cannot undo what I did and I deserve to die for it. And even if I do not deserve that, I do not always see another way to end the pain.
I do not believe these things, I know they are irrational, and they are also only one layer of how I feel, but in my present work situation they are the layer that keeps getting activated.
*
Others may be “arrogant,” “entitled” or prestige driven but the reason I needed to have a certain kind of job or else leave academia for something else high powered, almost anything else high powered, is that high powered workplaces create the kind of bubble that can protect you from being overcome by these kinds of feelings.
I liked college and graduate school, and some of the jobs I have had, because nobody there imagined or projected this kind of guilt about being who one was; moreover, people who were as we were were desired and also expected. But if you work at a place where people actually agree that you should not, in fact, have the expertise you have, and you also have the feelings of guilt and shame I have about having it, then it feels as though the world were caving in most of the time.
*
I gave into some demands in 1996 and it was like being kidnapped. I am still reacting to this event; in fact it is only just coming into view. It is like an iceberg, shining in winter sky both above and below the transparent, lapping water, growing in my field of vision as I sail closer.
People in real life are impressed with me because I do not fear to speak truth to power and I am articulate even in very intimidating situations. I have those skills because I have practice, though — the cruel inner voices I hear and have to stand up to every hour, every day, are more terrifying than the actual authorities.
I would like something to change. I would like to untie that knot this Solstice. I should have a ceremony and I need to design it. What ghosts shall I ask to leave, how shall I define them.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
1. Comparisons are odious. The writing group is all about supporting each other in moving forward however we can, even if it is only 1 hour or 100 words each week. You are moving forward.
2. I think you are inspiring others in the writing group.
3. I got just enough of the sort of family expectations you describe to understand (I think) how crippling they could be to someone who got more of them, or a more undiluted version of them (mine came with some very mixed messages, which allowed me to find a way out). I am glad these expectations are less common for women now. But you were, so to speak, on the front lines of a battle fought over education and careers for women, and you have been a casualty. You have also fought bravely and continue to fight by blogging publicly about the efforts to undo this PTSD.
4. I wish you all the best as you work on untying the knot.
Thanks DEH! 🙂
1/- Comparisons are odious but there are certain things some people have done that I have only not done because I am intimidated by my freshmen and the emotions of my department chair. I am irritated that I am intimidated and frustrated that it is happening, now — can it just end sometime, please? Can we grow up now?
2/- O good! The writing group rocks!
3/- Ay, how terrible, it is true but the vista is painful to contemplate, I do not want to be a casualty! I want to win! Win! What are the things about the Emeritus Ones: it comes down to all the exhortations about how I was unemployable, at anything, for different reasons. All the things that have happened in the workplace I am ready for, but the battle is with my family. I should define it better, it is a battle over who I am allowed to be, who I must be to … palliate their pain?!?
4/- Gracias. Part of all this is simply that I have not finished grading, not slept enough, want to just take the weekend off and spend it outdoors, and am worried about money. BUT here is the new insight of the day: what I quailed to in 1996, (a) it was a real violation, and (b) perhaps that was what they felt from my aunt. The feeling of being steamrolled.
*OH MY GOD steamrolling, that is why I got so terrified of this scene in an old movie I saw on tv as a child, a small sailboat in the fog gets run over by a huge ship that does not see it, so is not even intending to kill it and not only does not look at the little sailboat in the eye but has no eye to look at it with. Scary, I dream about it now. Bulldozers, steamrollers, and this ship, huge Miró-like mindless bodies looming toward me.
*
Anyway: all the bickering and criticism about college and graduate school, and then that steamrolling: no we will not give moral support for doing anything else, you made your bed and you will lie in it!
And also: the idea that I cannot work, would not be capable of it. So of course they could not give moral support.
Being in academia is not seen as real work and so it is the only thing I am capable of (my mother’s view). And at the same time, I am considered not capable of it and it is considered unworthy (my father’s contradictory views, of both himself and me).
Anyway. I half like going into these states of pain because they permit me to see what it is I sometimes hold at bay. At the same time, the reason I idealize certain eras in my life is that there was nothing to hold at bay, I just lived in the rational world and got stronger and stronger. I do not think that was “denial” or some other form of false consciousness, I think it was just living well. I should do some more of this.
Never, ever stop being you and seeking what you want in life. Do not give in to the desires or whims of others just to “fit in”. I like your writing style.
Thank you, Edge! I love to write, write, write.
Actually, another reason I am in a bad mood is not having worked on fiction lately. The next time this happens I think I shall — there is a level at which I go into these moods so I will have an excuse to write.
P.S. I am also just tired of going into these states. I think I go into them in part to rest, because I have not found enough ways to rest here. But mostly I learned them from Reeducation, which thought I needed to contemplate pain more. I take the time to do it from rest, recreation, and research, and then started taking it from teaching too. It is bad. And all of this is like letting my mother and Reeducation and my department chairs win. I would like to live somewhere where I did not have to fight for the right to my own soul every day. I would like to live outside the Confederacy which really is worse on gender if not (as some say) race. (But in academia we are supposed to not care about location, right, even if the location cripples your work, right, it is all our fault for not being adaptable enough, right?)
Eh ben pffff, some people can adapt, like James Lang: http://chronicle.com/article/Redefining-Myself-on-a/46072/ . That doesn’t mean we should all be like that. You are more flexible than I am; you are actually interested in the present-day world and how it might be possible to address its problems, whereas I only get interested in politics if they are more than 400 years old. If I had the sort of academic job where the only way I could publish was to write about the pedagogical experiments I made in the classroom (I swear there was a Chron advice piece about that, but I couldn’t find it), I would leave, it would not be worth it. Either I would find another way to fund the research I really want to do, or I would find something else that interested me less than my chosen field but more than pedagogical research. Location and facilities matter a great deal to what I want to do. I would not be finishing the MMP if I hadn’t been able to visit that manuscript during two different trips to the UK.
On principle, I am against letting mothers and department chairs win. Do whatever it takes.
Well I have adapted almost as much as Lang, but it is more adaptation than I am interested in. I actually have a colleague who started writing on pedagogy, and another who started publishing in what had been his hobby, a science, and moved to that department! I resemble the latter one the most.
I am trying to figure out in practical terms what it would mean to win this round. If I lose on what I think is the most practical thing, cutting loose Spanish 4, is there a way to “win” that is not cutting off nose to spite face? One does not know.