milk and brain cells

So, I handed in a story for class that we discussed today and no one liked it. My professor told me not to even bother revising it - it was that bad. So, ok, bruised ego aside, I can take that - I wasn't really that invested in it and they made very valid points. But what really freaked me out, is the way they described the main character in the piece. They said she was whiny and shallow and self-centered. They also said she had an unearned sense of entitlement that made her completely unsympathetic. Whew!

I am not upset because that's how people saw my character, but because the character was the closest one to me I have ever written. Of course, no one in the class could have known that and, of course, all my characters are me and not me. The story was about a mother whose friend's child gets cancer and dies. The main character feels trapped by her baby and actually feels jealous of her friend, something she can hardly admit to herself. I can say with certainty that I do not feel this way, but, oh boy do I know what it feels like to just want a day off from a job that has not one single day off ever. I was drawing on that feeling to write about a woman who resents that her baby keeps her from following her dream to open a photography studio.

When the class was discussing the main character, I could not help feeling bad about myself. I felt that perhaps I have been silly and shallow and entitled. Perhaps I was the one who has acted like I'm the only woman ever to have borne the burdens and sacrifices of motherhood. Perhaps I am the self-congratulator, the one who thinks everyone else in the world is just as interested as she is in every moment of her baby's life. I mean, of course I think my baby is the cutest - everyone thinks that of their own babies. What kind of mother would I be if I just thought he was fair to middling? I mean, he may be so as an adolescent or an adult, but as a baby? He's got to have some sort of chance in life - he can't even talk yet!

And yet, these are good things to doubt about yourself. Maybe I need to examine the ways in which I have been all of those things at different times. Maybe I have not been supremely right in all arguments with my husband, my mother, my friends. Perhaps, as I felt today, people from the outside have a completely different view of actions, rationality, psychology. Perhaps I have been a less good person/wife/mother/daughter/sister/friend than I believed. Perhaps I am a jerk.

Whenever I think these bad things about myself, I think how good it is for those around me to put up with me. I am embarrassed sometimes to recall all the times I've gone on and on to my husband or my mother or my friends. Why would I think anyone would be interested in these banal details of my life and how dare I present them as special? Why do I feel the need to give other people advice in terms of my own experiences? Can't I ever see them on their own terms? Why would I think that other people care at all? What about the big issues? Why can I not see beyond the narrow confines of my own small life? WIll I ever be able to do anything well or will I be a failure my whole life. Sometimes, I think life would have been easier psychologically as a charwoman. No it wouldn't - there goes my sense of entitlement. Even writing this blog is the essence of pondering my navel. It's not that cute a navel (though Dylan did try to nurse it today - but there I go again with the boring details). Ok, I'm ending before my brain fries.