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October, 1999

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Thoughts...

"I can't help it."

"That project can wait. They won't notice. They don't care."

"You make me feel bad and screw up."

"She doesn't understand. She needs help."

"The hell with it. Nobody recognizes talent any more."

"Guys need regular sex from anywhere. It's genetic"

"My boss is incompetent. Why try?"

"None of my friends follow through. I'm not calling any more."

"One more drink won't hurt. You've had a rough day."

"She understands me. My wife doesn't care any more."

I want to introduce you to the mother complex, the bearer of smother love, the dark mother, the woman inside who always has a ready excuse for her poor boy. I shouldn't have to introduce her to you since she has been around you and me since infancy. But she has a way of keeping you unaware of her. She likes to hide and pull strings behind the scenes. She likes to keep you unconscious of her activities and of a lot of other things that would keep you from growing up and leaving her.

I was shocked, anew, by her presence the other morning even though I have written about her often. She came just after waking up the morning I was to rewrite this chapter. This chapter has been my nemesis for three years now. It has never felt right. The message has kept sliding away, just out of reach, viewed briefly out of the corner of my eye. The feeling has been one of fuzziness instead of clarity. I keep saying good enough and then not believing it. And colleagues have pointed out that the message is ambiguous, that I'm not nailing it.

There I am in bed, drowsy. I'm not exactly excited about tackling this chapter again. I have this overwhelming urge to sleep a little longer, screw the web page for a month or two, forget about the book, and spend the afternoon spacing out on a nature trail or in a book. When I got to thinking it's all not worth it, it struck me. She's here. She has always showed up when I'm ready to write about her. She hates anyone talking about her, exposing her. It's her voice that talks about the cosmic reasonableness of giving up. It's her presence that produces some kind of static so that understanding feels out of reach and hopeless.

This may sound crazy to some, but I finally recognized her fully, in all her guile, in her feigned friendship, in her unholy alliance. She has kept me from doing many important things in the past, and screwing up others. I could just about feel her pressing down, holding my shoulders, sometimes seductively, sometimes forcefully. She can be seductive, you know, especially in bed. Often she uses real, live women to get her message across, her seductive message of procrastination and incoherent passivity.

Why she came so forcefully, or I just recognized her in a lucky epiphany, I have no idea. But the recognition, the consciousness, started to break the spell. It started to piss me off. The anger felt good, more real, more me. Like a fatal attraction finally recognized, I could move away, even with regrets. Like an addiction that never loses its allure, I understood her power. The boy in me somehow felt a loss, like finding out his fifth grade girlfriend liked someone else. Yet the need to expose her, to nail that chapter felt stronger and more compelling. I may or may not have nailed it, clarified thoughts, fully exposed her presence, but I had a small but important victory. I saw her for what she is.