Questions of femininity
I had always thought that mother’s brand of femininity was weak, even disgusting. I had been programmed into thinking this way because I was raised by iron maiden types who were toughened by the various revolutions in China, and these women raised me. They raised me as if in a sorority. But my mother listened, she was and is a woman who listens and does what she’s told. I always bucked against this but I think I must be more alike her than I am willing to admit. I am more like her than I realise, because really deep down inside I also want to admit to not being capable, and to *realise* that I’m not capable, at all, that I’m messy, uneven, not in control, totally vulnerable and a little bit insane. I make mistakes, I let people down, and when I do, I show my underbelly in a way that is soft and vulnerable, and incapable of making any demands. But now I see those qualities as an aesthetic quality, and if not anything, my mother is beautiful. It’s probably why my father fell for her in the first place, during orchestra, when they were playing music.
I have been obsessed with self-portraits lately. And part of that portrait is a portrait of abandonment. It is the face of someone who has been abandoned multiple times, by multiple people, and not least of all by men. When men abandon their children, whether they are men or women, it leaves a deep wound. We look up to men to be the magi of our lives, we want them to be there, and it can be an unbearable loss when they aren’t, and then we can make the wrong choices. I’ve tried my hardest to parent myself, to take away that pain, and I’ve tried to look to men to present. But, it doesn’t often work that way. There is an untetheredness when the first magi of our lives failed to guide us in any way — even if they guided us in the wrong direction. I’ve tried not to let that untetheredness stay with me for long, but it remains. When the masculine presence is missing we can fall into all kinds of difficult ways, I know I did, and still sometimes do, but less. But we don’t have that purpose, that destination, that is often associated with having a father, and the exquisite pain that comes from not having one in your life, as you start to wonder if you’re able to accomplish anything at all.