18 March 2006
Muzzling the Inner Doberman
Linda Breitag
Listen to an audio version of this MOMbo essay.
Float back with me, Scrooge-like, to junior high science class. (You young people will know it as middle school.) No, not that time Dave Burham and I lifted up our desk tops, those ones that formed a wall between the student and the teacher, fired up our Bunsen burners, and smoked rolled-up paper towels like fat stogies. No, I’m thinking of the time we learned the word “meniscus.” For some reason, I remember that word denoting how surface tension holds water together even when there’s too much in the container. You can actually see the water bulging up above the rim of the glass as you add one more drop, then one more… Then, at last, comes the drop which sends it all dribbling down the side. OK, hold on to that picture. You’ll need it later.
For a big chunk of my life, I’ve been battling depression. It’s more p.c. these days to say “living with” an illness, but to me that image invokes a sort of roommate situation, where maybe she wears your clothes sometimes and you argue about cleaning the toilet. No, for me, it’s been more like Harry Potter fighting that Hungarian dragon-thingy. A lot of times, it’s been tooth and nail between me and the fire-breathing big D.
What’s made it worse is not even being on my own side. Can you handle yet another image? Well, in mental health jargon, the little voices in your head that sabotage your good feelings and undermine your positive efforts are often called “gremlins.” They’re little imps that whisper in your ear “you’re not good enough” and kick you when you’re down. Well, for me that image is laughable. I don’t have gremlins, I have Dobermen. Multiple large slavering glinty-toothed out-for-blood dogs who go right for the jugular. (Now before you dog-lovers start screaming, let me say that some of my best dog-friends are Dobermans. They’re sleek and gorgeous, ridiculously loving, and in my next life I’d like to be one. What I’m talking about here is the stereotype from a million TV shows and movies: you know, the dogs going crazy behind the 8-foot chain link fences, the ones straining against their nail-studded collars to rip your chest open. Those Dobermans.)
My personal Doberpeople say things I so do not want to hear. Things like: you’re the worst mother on earth/ you’re old, fat, and have no career/ you’ve completely wasted your potential/hello, if you aren’t going to earn enough money, can’t you at least clean the house once a millennium?/will you look at those yawning pores/crusty feet/sagging breasts, and so on. And on. Some days, they don’t stop even to take a breath.
Now, in more therapists’ offices, for more years than I care to remember, I’ve been told that I have to be on my own side, have to be gentle with myself, have to talk back to those mean voices. I have bookshelves groaning with titles like Start Where You Are; The Joy Diet; How to be Happy, Dammit; and oh, here’s one called Taming Your Gremlin. I have heard this message so many billions of times, my doberfolk have even turned it into one of their favorite howling choruses: What’s wrong with you? You can’t even love yourself! You’re supposed to be forgiving yourself! Ha, ha, LOSER.”
But wait! Remember the meniscus? The bulging glass? Well, not long ago, something happened. It was so small, it’s laughable. I was sitting in a coffeehouse with an old friend whom I hardly ever get to see anymore. Despite the rarity of seeing her, I was down, way down. The day before, I had pulled off my daughter’s eighth birthday party, which for me signaled the end of a long string of family birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and yearly trips that cram our winter full. Activities that, while enjoyable, also bring with them a load of shoulds that often seem to descend squarely on the shoulders of the MOM.
During the course of the party planning and execution, I had managed to insult my father, sadden my mother, and try the patience of my husband. So the young girls could make the cute boater hats my daughter had chosen as a party craft, I had decided to make one myself as a sample, a scant couple of hours before the festivities were to start. Uh-oh. They were really hard to make, and it was too late to change activities. I went into Frantic Craft Mode, and by the time the rest of the family floated home from church, I was a raving she-devil of panic and resentment. Meanwhile, we were in the midst of several weeks of my daughter performing in a local play, weeks which necessitated both very late bedtimes on school nights and multiple feats of selfless stage-mothering which underscored the fact that I wasn’t getting on with my own performing career while my daughter (barely eight!!) was signing contracts already. I felt washed-up, pitiful, pathetic.
As I droned tearfully on, outlining the dozens of reasons why I was a hopeless failure at mothering, daughtering, wifing, and generally impersonating an adult human being, my friend cut me off. In the straightforward, cut-the-crap style which makes her beloved of many, Jaimie said, “But Linda, that’s so not helpful. Believing all that horrible stuff about yourself just doesn’t help.”
Well…um. I knew that… I mean, how obvious can you get?
But something about the simplicity of her statement, completely free of scientific research on mental states, free of the kind of intellectual Rubik’s cubing I myself love to engage in, zinged right to some keyhole in my brain. A door squeaked open, a little door, about the size of a gremlin, maybe. Or maybe it was one of those swinging doggy-doors. Anyway. Her observation was the last tiny drop, the drop that broke the magic spell of my meniscus, and my will to hate myself for not being perfect started to drain away.
At this point I’d love to say I’m now enjoying endless strings of productive days, cranking out new CDs of stunning original songs, finishing a novel, running the house like clockwork, mothering like a dream, dazzling my husband on a nightly basis, and generally saving the world while keeping my skin well-hydrated. Not so. But that’s the whole point. It’s not being perfect that keeps the Dobermen out of my way. The trick is not taking them quite so seriously. It’s stopping myself from running away. It’s turning around and saying “Yeah, you look pretty vicious, but I can see your tail wagging.” Or “Hey guys, what’s that zipper running down your back? You know what? I think you’re just a bunch of bunnies in a dog suit.” It doesn’t stop ‘em cold, but it does slow ‘em down.
I still get depressed. Bummer, huh? And I’m not quite sure what to do instead of hating myself. Not sure yet how to treat myself more like a friend and less like the antichrist. But it’s a step. Just stopping all that foaming-at-the-mouth is enough for now. It’s a drop in the bucket.
Linda Breitag is a mom and a musician. She's a regular contributor to MOMbo. Her podcasts can be heard here. |
