I stopped in front of the entrance to my apartment, as I had done thousands of times, and then the pain in my head totally disappeared. I had a feeling that saddened me slightly. The strange gave way to the mundane. “Was there even anything there?” I thought. “Or is this some psychological mechanism for coping with the sensory deprivation, caused by staring at monitors all day?”
Pretty soon, I was having dinner with my mother (yes, I still live with my parents—I know, veeeery funny). She asked me how my day went, and I tried to structure the story that I had just experienced in a way that wouldn’t make the story sound made up.
Note: You’re least able to take notes precisely when you most need to.
She responded with a well-executed silence (I don’t know why she always accuses me of not responding to any of the things she says, when it is obvious that she does the exact same thing). I knew that I had to keep talking if I wanted to hear some comment from her and so I kept talking till she stopped me mid-sentence.
“Well, that’s interesting, but you seem tired, dear, try to go to bed early.”
And then my father spoke up:
“Forget that, tell me how work went?”
And with that, I knew that the discussion related to the phenomenon was over, as for some time this was the only topic that he (my father) was interested in. He was obsessed with my work the same way he’d been obsessed with my school when I was a student, an obsession that dated back even before I started school—an obsession which had neither beginning nor end, one that was never fruitful, that only sucked the joy out of both my life and theirs.
Ever since I started school I was a sickly child with no social contacts, except for those with my mother and father, and their statements formed my entire worldview. Their message (even though they never have expressed it) was simple: “If you want us to love you, you have to make us proud of you. And for us to be proud of you, you have to be the best. We went through a lot to raise you. And so far, the only way for you to repay us is to become a respected member of our society. Right now, school is your only concern, so do well.”
I don’t know when this turned to such obsession, but at school, it (their obsession) was at least controlled by the marking system; when I got a good mark (as I most often did) I would be left alone. But with my time in the office, there was no such thing. It seemed that for him there was no “correct” way to act in a given situation. For him there wasn’t even a correct situation to be in, as he didn’t approve of the organization I worked in and was angry with me, even though he knew that I only worked there simply because they were hiring a person with my background.
I knew that he was also angry with me because of my earlier blabbering about the phenomenon, so I tried to fake enthusiasm, saying that it went very well—that was the only way for me to stop this conversation before it derailed to a dark place, as it often did. Or perhaps it’s more appropriate to say that the dark place was the conversation’s usual destination.
“Good, but don’t fall into the trap of being too happy with what you do…” His speeches always started like this—with friendly advice, in which the criticism is toned down artificially, before it starts sprawling from his every word.
“Why is it a trap to be happy?” I provoked him, not so much to anger him, but to change the topic of the conversation. He just ignored my remark and started hammering his usual points, which I won’t describe in detail. The interesting thing is that I had actually learned to respond to everything my father had to say in a way that finalized the conversation. I had the whole thing mapped out. If my father wasn’t a unique individual, if he had twins or clones or something that also had children, I would arm them with some version of this table, which would make their lives a lot easier.
“Work hard and you will see the payoff when you are older”: “What if I die tomorrow?” “You should strive to be a man.”: “I strive to be human.” “Back in my day things were different”: “Then why do you think the old advice applies?” …
At the end of the evening he got drunk again and I felt sorry for him. Imagine if you were in his place: There you are, soon to pass the retirement age, but still working, hoping to retire soon (and to finally get the mythical payoff that you have been dreaming about all your life (although you don’t really know what it is or where it would come from)), there’s your child, who will soon leave your house for good (and who doesn’t look like he’ll be coming over to see you very often), so you are longing to impart the lessons that you recorded throughout your life to him, and all he does is silence each attempt with well-executed comebacks (OK, perhaps not well executed, but still effective enough), slowly destroying your whole world with his stubborn ignorance…
As you probably realize, I didn’t want to do all of this, but at the same time this was all I could do to preserve the little self-respect I had left. And yes, it was painful. I often felt as if I were in the wrong house, the wrong country, the wrong planet, and stuck playing the role of someone who I was not. And I tried to convince everyone that I was not that person. I tried to play his role as badly as I possibly could, I smiled when I was supposed to be serious and cried when I was supposed to be happy; I behaved in a way that was hurtful to other people, all in the secret hope that one day they will understand the underlying reason. All in the secret hope that one day the director would yell “Cut!” and just kick me out. And this would surely have happened if the director were human. But there wasn’t a human there; everything around me was just extensions of the machine.
Just in the middle of one of my father’s speeches I remembered the phenomenon and I got the most freaky idea ever: What if the light I saw was all-encompassing, just sitting there every second of every day, or even not only there but everywhere, literally under my nose, right now. But there was just no one that had eyes to see it. What if the machine just dimmed that light, making it invisible for me. I felt like all this was true and that I was losing the light every second in which I was not seeing it. I felt that I had to start searching for it right now, at that very moment, and that the only thing that I would be able to do later would be dream about that one time I saw it.
When I finished my thought, my mother had already left the room. My father was finishing his drink and making a long drunken speech, pronouncing one word each few seconds.
“I… wanted… to… make you… better than the rest”
This was the beginning of a long speech that I couldn’t stop with my usual tactics, as it was too incoherent for me to know how to respond (plus there was no one listening to me anyway). I think it was meant to address my lack of motivation. I didn’t actually lack motivation; I just wasn’t too inspired to follow the path I was following, which was partly dictated by him and by my mother. So I wanted to scream “Your fault!” and leave, but I didn’t even try to imply all that to him. I didn’t want to prolong the conversation any more, as the pain was almost physical and I was listening only to find a place to stop it. But finding such a place took a lot of effort, as if he knew I wanted to escape and was purposefully closing all doors on me, keeping me confined in the little box that he had built since my birth. But at some point he missed a beat and he asked me a question:
“and now with your position in—wait, what was the name of the company?”
“What? You don’t even know where I work!”—I screamed and rushed away to my room.
“Wait!”—he said, but by the time he caught his breath, I was already off.
I really didn’t care if he knew where I work, but I pretended to take offence, so I could storm out of the situation. This might seem ironic to you, as you probably realize that I could have gone to my room much earlier, and the result wouldn’t be much different from what just happened, but at that time I was really trying to play by the rules. It was important for me to “win” the argument, to the extent that it was possible. Later I realized that this was one of my major mistakes.
“My life is like a prison”
I wrote this on my personal website some months earlier.
I was quite correct in pinpointing the problem—how I, and many other people, felt, but I was off at identifying the cause. I thought that I was kept in this prison by systems of power that I sometimes refer to as “the machine,” like school, parents, bosses etc. and so I set out to fight those.
But after advancing with this fight, I realized that it wasn’t the systems of power per se that limited me (although they were certainly designed to do that, and certainly helped) but rather my engagement with those systems—fighting your parents, bosses etc. would just make you more like them. So, advance to the next stage, cancel them, stop engaging. Don’t break free, just walk away.
The systems of power are only holding your material self, divorce from it and you are free. Moreover, this is the only way to be free, otherwise you are just moving into a bigger cell.
But I realized all this much later. At that moment, as I was lying under my blanket, feeling like shit, for reasons I could not pinpoint (it’s not as if I didn’t know that my father was an asshole), the only thought that I could form in its entirety was this: at least now I had motivation. I was prepared to do everything to escape this place.
I again remembered what had happened to me earlier in the day, and the desire to share it with someone returned. Not tomorrow, not the day after, but now. So I decided to call someone. But as I started browsing my contacts I realized that only one person was awake now. Only one who would be open-minded enough to hear my story.
But unfortunately, this person was now most likely under the influence, and had many other things on his mind.