We're All Mad I Tell You... Mad!!

Through my nostaligia, my recent obsession with thinking back and pondering over those things I just couldn't quite understand at the time, I've made some realisations. About others in my life, and about myself.

The other day I wrote this and I got a reaction from Jem that I wasn't expecting. She asked if I'd written it to get at her cos she'd said she didn't like where the characters were heading (long-story-short: I gave her an unfinished novel based in "Olimpia Valley" to read, which took the characters somewhere very dark; I'd already told her she wouldn't like it so wasn't surprised when she said she didn't). It threw me. Because when I'd written the entry I'd actually been thinking about something Stephen King had written and I'd read by chance when I was a bit bored. It was at the beginning of one of the "Dark Tower" books (the recent editions) where he said that he always loved returning to the "Dark Tower" world and that it was a place he always found easy to fall back into. He mentioned how the only other world that took him so strongly was "The Stand" (which, incidently, I haven't read and therefore did not know was based in a post-apocalyptic world). So my thoughts went simply this like: How weird he has an olde worlde world and a post-apocalyptic world just like me with "Soul Mates" and "Olimpia Valley". I wrote that afternoon and the words just tumbled out and I was so high on the writing, so high on the characters; and I realised I was living vicariously through those characters; how in another life I might have made the same choices they do/did. So I wrote that entry but simplified it and just summed it up in a few words.

My thinking afterwards was how easily we misinterpret things that people say and do and automatically twist them around to fit into what we're thinking. We all do it. I know I do. I like to think I can project myself into other people's thoughts (being a writer I have to have that ability to some point other wise how would I write about people I didn't particularly agree with) but I often put my own thoughts on top and come to the wrong conclusion.

This led me onto a sudden understanding. That when a certain family member turned against me and tried to turn my mother against me in the process, it wasn't anything to do with the fact that I was in whatever form playing Mother to Amber. This woman had an issue with the fact that I was getting on so well with my father. This woman tried to turn my mother against me because of her own issues over her jealousy that her daughter and husband had always been close, that her daughter had chosen her father over her mother (her). All these years I believed it was because of Amber, because I rallied us three girls (sisters) together and wouldn't let a single one of us crumble under the pressure. I thought this woman thought I was in someway disprespecting Mammy and her parenting skills by coping while Mammy was away.

It was a nice realisation in a way. It was nice to be able to step back eight years later and be able to see things with fresh eyes, with emotions that aren't tainted by grief and anger. I've always found it amazing how wrong people can get things, how we all assume this that and the other and how nine times out of ten we're way off the mark. I've always said, "You never know what's going on behind closed doors," because it's true. The face people show you is not always the true one. Not in a dishonest way, just that we don't all run around showing the things that have scarred us (I know I don't anyway) and so how can you tell whether what one person thinks happened is actually fact?

I've always been fascinated with the psychology of the human mind. I think maybe I missed my calling ... ;)

Labels: amber, daddy, jem, life, mammy, rant, writing

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