They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Families, eh Pers!
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22 comments:
Fucking brilliant! Concisely describes the reasons for my past three years of therapy!
If there was a Top of the Pops in poetry for first lines 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad' would be in the top ten
along with 'The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea', and 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'
Great poem.
Squib, I think PSF has featured all three of those poems in the past.
Ramon, what discerning and magnificent people we both are
Quite so, Squib.
Quite so.
I kinda like my parents.
Do you all think less of me?
Not at all Perseus. But that's because you are a good sort, and therefore they must be good sorts too.
The tricky thing though is when siblings are fucked up, and you're not. Or vice versa. Same parents, same environment, different outcomes. Not talking about you specifically, talking about all of us.
Read somewhere as recently as yesterday that there is a memory effect whereby siblings can have completely different memories of their parents and childhoods. One example seems to be the Brett sisters (Lily and Doris?).
The thing I read was about borderline personality disorder, from the paper a few weekends ago.
Not at all, Pers, not at all.
We laugh at you because you're a love gumby.
A love gumby? I think I can sue you as well as Boogeyman under Australian law!
There's that case at the moment where the US games company is suing the English blogger... in Australia. I think it's a great investment opportunity for Australia. Have really stupid defaming laws and let everyone around the world sue people here. It's a growth industry, and I see great potential.
Truth is still a defence in deffo cases.
I kinda like my parents.
You can like your parents (or anyone for that matter) and still think of them as fucked-up. I'm guessing that's not what you were getting at though.
The tricky thing though is when siblings are fucked up, and you're not Forgive me if I've mentioned this before but my parents are both eccentric and I always win "I've got the craziest Mum" contests. Mum smoked a pipe (tobacco) for years - it was quite a sight watching her push around the hoover with it hanging out of her mouth. Later she got into crystals and meditation and Sai Baba and ended up thinking the voices in her head were spirit guides. She is alcoholic, epileptic and schitzophrenic all at once. She ended up going to Kalgoorlie and tried to charter a plane into the desert to rescue stranded aliens. Dad is an obsessive compulsive academic, who thinks John Howard and Pauline Hansen are great and he's also a part time nudist. He once told me that no good music was written in the 20th century. My only sibling got involved with the Jehovas Witnesses 15 years ago and thinks we're all doomed.
The only way I can rebel is to vote labour, be agnostic or atheist, listen to pop music, wear clothes and not drink. Its a bit like being Saffy on Ab Fab.
Patch - what did she do with the aliens?
DHS wouldn't be interested.
Did one of them end up playing for Richmond?
Patchie, I think you've won the prize although I don't know that's a good thing.
Is there anything I can for you, cut of tea, amusing tea towel, anti-depressants?
And Downfall can be summed up thusly;
Berlin, April, 1945 - best avoided.
Pers - she was trying to rescue the aliens as their spaceship had crash landed and the locals were throwing stones at them. She even made the 'stay in touch' column in the newspaper with the heading 'aliens - let them eat fruitcake'. She took 'crazy Mum' to a whole new level.
Where my parents were really good was they hung out with arty academic people and were well travelled and quite cultured. Despite all the craziness I wouldn't swap them because they broadened my perspective enormously.
Read somewhere as recently as yesterday that there is a memory effect whereby siblings can have completely different memories of their parents and childhoods.
Melba, you've just described my sister and I. She seems to think we had an awful childhood and were abused as kids, but my memories are not at all of that. Yes, our parents were strict, and yes, we had absolutely no money and thus not much of anything, but she was the Golden Child who could do no wrong. I don't recall her ever getting into trouble for anything. She would always blame it on me and I'd be the one getting the ruler across the arse. So if either one of us was to say we were abused, it should be me, but I just see it as that we (or I, really) were well disciplined children.
And yeah, my sister is fucked up now. For some reason, she idolises our father who stopped contacting us after I was 8, and hates our stepfather who brought us up since then and is the nicest person around. She's socially inept and heavily into drugs and married to the biggest wanker you'll ever meet who's a controlling bastard, and is completely miserable with him but won't divorce him because she doesn't want to be like mum.
We don't really get along all that well.
You might be interested in the article, Puss. It was in The Age Good Weekend magazine August 15, if it's still online? I have hard copy here, happy to scan and email to you.
Of particular interest:
"... is it also possible, then, that the disorder itself (Borderline Personality Disorder) may influence someone's experience or recollection of their childhood, casting it in a much darker light than it really was? Could people with BPD, who are more given to catastrophic thinking anyway, select certain memories and distort others?
... Meares did allow that there was evidence that people tend to remember their childhoods in terms of their present state of mind.
... One Adelaide mother told me she has had to train herself not to be wounded by her daughter's savage outbursts, the barrage of phone calls charging her with being a dreadful parent.
... 'I can swear on a stack of Bibles that she had the most wonderful childhood,' says the woman, a recollection supported by her other two children. 'She has this sense of a great wrong being done to her. She has it in her romantic relationships as well, very hard on her boyfriends, this sense of being aggrieved. It's as if she has no skin and everything hurts her and wounds her, no matter how careful you try to be, although she shows no mercy back. That's how she sees things, I suppose.' "
I come here to be "normal".
Well you're ahead of me then. I'm still trying to define 'normal'. If anyone sees it please let me know.
Thanks Melba. I couldn't find it online. Do you have a link?
I've always thought my sister had mental issues. That describes her to a T. She is a very harsh and unforgiving person. I mean, I know I can be blunt and a bitch at times, but I do it out of not knowing what I'm saying is going to hurt people. She does it purely to hurt people.
Doesn't seem to be online. Will see if I can scan, might be too big.
"Candles in the Wind" by Fenella Souter. Can't see it on the Age website... Let me know if you really want it, we can work something out.
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