Raise My Child

I had this friend, once. I suppose you could call her my best friend in grad school. We were inseparable for a number of years and then we had some mysterious falling out and we never spoke again. Call her Lucinda. I met her immediately after she broke up with her boyfriend. I seem to meet a lot of women this way. She was distraught. More than distraught-- incensed, traumatized. And she decided very vehemently that she wanted me to be her housemate.

It seems she had been induced to break up with him by another man, a very handsome man, who had a girlfriend. He had claimed to love her more than the earth, moon and stars.

Then, suddenly, he decided to leave her and go back to his girlfriend.

For months she would be muttering to herself about one guy or the other. The boyfriend for putting her down and destroying her self-esteem. Then the other one for seducing her and leaving her in the lurch. She would suddenly say: "I KNOW. I KNOW. He left me because his girlfriend had a car. Maybe he was just that shallow. He wanted a car then." (I think he married the girlfriend he went back to after getting a decent job so I do not know but I don't think it was the car.)

She was very pretty. She had many suitors. One thing that would happen very frequently would be that she would have obsessed suitors who would claim they wanted to marry her and then she would succumb and they would say 'no, I have changed my mind.' This happened more than once. She was sometimes very damaged by it. It made me glad that I never succumbed to those kind of suitors--the ones that have adored you from afar.

Then, she developed an eating disorder. There were many elements to this. She dismantled the scale. Food would strangely disappear. I never knew the exact details. She was bulimic but wanted to be anorexic. I was going through a thin period myself, which I don't think was good for her. I suppose it was a little eating disorder on my part, combined with the fact that someone had told me that exercise makes you less depressed. So I'd be riding my bike up hills wishing all the while to be run over by a tractor-trailer. I was not less depressed but it was something to do. I'm not thin like that anymore but I still do love exercise for its pointless, time-wasting quality.

She never succeeded at anorexia but she did go to therapy and got help with her bulimia. 

It was another one of those woman-in-distress friendships I had so many of when I was young. Because she had such great needs for emotional support, we became intensely close. She was very funny. We would smoke cigarettes on the back porch of our apartment and laugh and laugh.

In some ways she was everything I wasn't, as a woman. And my polar opposite. She was very tidy and organized and disciplined. She was an excellent cook. She kept her clothes neat as a pin. She had this special packing technique she used to travel. I noticed another major difference between us: She inbued nothing with sentimental value. She would throw away and get rid of anything. I would become emotionally attached to some coffee mug and fish it out of the trash. 

Appearances were of much greater importance to her than me. This started to matter later on and undermined our friendship.

Underneath our friendship was this very odd undercurrent. While hating herself and being desperately insecure, she also had a very strong sense that she was better than me. I can't describe how it was revealed in daily circumstances, but it often was. And very often, I would hear her subtly denigrate people. But not in a cruel way. Almost a pitying way. They were always terribly pathetic and flawed. She was simultaneously self-hating and arrogant. 

She looked down on me. And, if we'd made plans but someone more useful to her career invited her out, she would go with them. She was not good with promises. She did not value me highly, as I valued her.  I make her sound like a terrible person here, but she was not terrible. This was almost a little glitch. It was an underlying attitude, something she could not help. And very subtle. Little things here and there, nothing overwhelming.

We both graduated and we both were on the tenure track when, after a certain time of despairing of finding the right person (at 29 she was already very concerned about this...this seems funny to me now), she finally met someone who was very good looking, wealthy and professionally successful. So this was it. She had wanted to get married and raise a family and she met someone who loved her and wanted to get married and raise a family.

But she had to leave her career. He had a tenured position on the opposite end of the country. If she stayed in her tenure track job she could not get married and get pregnant. 

So she decided to leave her job. This is a big deal for someone who spends 7 years getting a Ph.D. And she was very career oriented. The surprising thing was that she did not try to find a job with her husband. That often happens--two people go out and try to find jobs at the same university or the same region.

Instead, she got pregnant. And then she kept saying how she was going to stay home with the kids. Because she didn't want anyone to 'raise my child.' This 'other people raise your child' if you don't work was repeated by her again and again. And I started to hear it other places. 

It was her decision and hers alone to make. But it was interesting that she made it in such a way to condemn everyone else who made a different decision. 

I attender her wedding and gave a speech. When it came time for my wedding, she refused to attend because she did not want to leave her children with her husband. As was often the case with her, weddings mattered when she was having her wedding but when she was not, weddings were passe. This inability to get outside of herself. Her email tried to explain to me that I should not be upset about people who would not attend my wedding because people are too busy for weddings these days.

I wrote her back--not nastily but slightly heated. That remark about weddings being yesterday's news got to me because if she had a breakup, the world was falling apart. But if I had a breakup, she urged me to be philosophical and would quickly become impatient if I wasn't. If she was seeking a job, this was understandably stressful but when it came my turn to seek a job I was too keyed up and this bothered her. So that statement got to me.

This September, I ran into a friend of hers at a conference--call her Nancy. This woman was much more like Lucinda in her polished self-presentation. She was standardly pretty--the sort of woman who shopped frequently at department stores, who gets her hair done and her nails, who wears semi-expensive clothing. More conventional in other words. And I had that strange feeling that she was looking down on me, almost as if she was revealing what Lucinda though. Because after you talked with Lucinda about a person, it was hard not to feel superior to them. She would dissect them as a sort of pathetic case. She had done that with Nancy, talking about the inferior men she always desperately pursued. (Nancy was pretty in a very anglo-saxon way and such women often marry well, so she is married now.)

It turns out Lucinda refuses to be friends with Nancy also. But I saw the other day that Lucinda had friended her on facebook. Lucinda had sent me a Facebook invitation a very long time ago. I saw it in my inbox. I was floored, because I had googled Lucinda in the interim trying to find out what sex her third child was, to see if she ever went back into a profession, if she was truly a housewife. 

She'd always been vastly more ambitious than I was. I couldn't believe she never went to law school or anything.

Nancy patronizingly said that perhaps Lucinda wanted to avoid us because she regretted her choice of giving up a profession for motherhood. Perhaps she did not want to be reminded of women she's known in the profession going on to have children and have their careers as well, Nancy said. 

On the contrary, for many years, I have thought about how very, very smart she was. She has three children. I have one live child and two miscarriages. And that one live child didn't see me for several years while I was trying to get tenure. Our relationship is so unbelievably complex because of that. I have made great inroads and repairs but she must remember for she is mighty touchy and quick to reject me. 

Ah, and there are the people condemning me. Not realizing or maybe not caring that I was supporting the family and her father was the one not making much money at all. 

So see how right Lucinda was?

The 'raise my child' meme that Lucinda repeats and repeats came back to me the other day when I was thinking about how bad her school is, how I wish we could afford karate lessons. I want someone to raise my child. I want other adults to be involved. I want a village. I'd pay that village if I only had the money. 

Comments

[BaltimoreGal]

"...after you talked with Lucinda about a person, it was hard not to feel superior to them. She would dissect them as a sort of pathetic case."

This struck quite a chord with me.

I sometimes think it's better if you don't know people.

[schmutzie]

This weblog is being featured on Five Star Friday!

http://www.fivestarfriday.com/2010/03/five-star-fridays-edition-93.html

[ozma]

Oh shit. I mean, that's great! It's just that I realized I should probably edit my posts in case people read them.

[Laurie]

It took Ebert to get me here. That's sad - but also fairly awesome. I am such a disorganized reader, and that should be so in the cases of people like you.

I've lived with that person, by the way. Nothing is ever as it seems. But you know that.

[Laurie]

Should NOT be so. Should NOT. It's late.

See? This is why I don't read.

(All the sneezing. I blame the sneezing.)

[Writer Vixen]

Wow! What's you've got in Lucinda is your basic narcissist. It can be confusing! They are strangely compelling, yet very damaged, and can leave massive damage in their wake.

You got lucky, I think. Wonderful article. I found you through Roger Ebert, as well. ;)

[Writer Vixen]

P.S. You should put a "Follow Me on Typepad" link on your blog. So we can, you know, follow you on Typepad. ;)

[Laura]

I found this from Mr. Ebert, also. Your writing is excellent - it makes me want more.
I fear I see traits of myself mirrored in Lucinda. I am constantly trying not to be that person.