Revelation

  One of my subs today, had a thread about how some narcissist parents will be so jealous of the child's innate talents that the parent will flat out forbid the child to do the thing it's good at. Then there are the really subtly undermining parents like my mother who instead of flat out forbidding the activity,

   they push you so hard you end up quitting in frustration, unable to ever be perfect -- as perfect as the parent is trying to make you be. And after reading that I was truly gobsmacked. All over that thread we were talking about how our parent pushed us so hard on this or that talent; and I remembered how I was supposed to be absolutely perfect to the point of not having a lick of fun or enjoying anything about any aspect of certain competitive activities. It always depended on if it was something  my mother wanted to be seen as good at or not. Take for instance: bareback riding. My mother cared not a whit about bareback riding so I could be the best at that. The very best! But put that saddle on and start riding English or Western Equitation, now we have to be perfect. All the life sapped out of everything to do with formal horse shows. Fuck that noise. One day after her hounding me to practice again I just threw the saddle down and never put it back on again. From that day forward, I rode only bareback.  Ditto guitar. I always wondered why I quit guitar... then today I remembered. I tried to do it perfectly but my hands were too small and I was always struggling. Why I let Karen send me this huge guitar I'll never know. In fact my hands would lock up, I remember now. I think I was reading something about that on reddit not too long ago: people's hands locking up due to practicing too much.  I seem to have forgotten everything I learned too, put it out of my mind.

   Mother never wanted to play the trumpet so I could get really good at that. When mother could not (would not) afford lessons anymore, I stopped practicing.

  Painting. Mother was on the fence about painting. So my paintings were 'ok'. But my pastels... she loved pastels. My pastel was... not her cup of tea. She didn't like it in fact. And when I made a sculpture... she had to be the one to finish it. It was not 'mine'. She took zero interest in my videos, zero interest in my book. Two things she did not care about: writing and videotape.

  When my mother cast me as 'Anybody's ' in West Side Story... she pretty much did not direct me. I directed myself -- I thought that was odd. She exalted me when my Alto Tenor voice filled in a very large gap in a song during "Bye Bye Birdie" ; it was great that I could play a guy wearing a mechanic's outfit and singing that note none of the young boys could hit yet. But it was not ok if I dressed like at home. It never had been. Not because my mother cared what I wore, but because she cared what others thought.   I was allowed to be the best actor I could be and not get 'rehearsed to death' because I was not playing any roles she cared about: I was doing men's roles. Except for Anybody's, but my mother would never have had any interest in playing a Tomboy. She did however make a killer WITCH. In Hansel & Gretel I played a HENCHMAN. Again, a small side part in which she had no interest and therefore could be magnanimous and praise me to no end. It was a simple, stupid part but I stole the show with an ad lib every night.

  So there were so many things she pushed me to perfection on and that I would quit. I see it now -- a pattern emerges. She finds out how to make me quit asap and then ! More money for her. This is also evidenced by the money she took from me "to buy groceries" when I had saved up 50 bucks to buy a calf for 4-H.

  This was going to be my first calf, my first 4-H event: county fair! But alas, no calf for me, no 4-H. I was so excited about the thought of hanging out with other farm girls or boys, in overalls, raising a calf. When I saw her pocket that 50 bucks...

*****
I found the reddit thread:  Push and Sabotage.  Oh man what a gut punch.  Thinking back to the rides to and from the guitar lessons: why was I dissociating so hard in the back seat? What was going on in the front seat that I had to disassociate entirely the whole way to and from, pretending I was that guy from 'Wild Wild West'... tied up in the back seat of the car about to be eviscerated by a swinging saw pendulum, or the like.
What were they talking about, or doing, or why was the car ride so traumatic that I had to disassociate both ways?  *strokes chin*.   I remember the car rides to the Beckman's for riding lessons, they were not traumatic. Oh...because mother was not around. Someone else drove... and here again, SURELY mother knew about Paper Doll.   Knowing that mother was the one who wanted to be seen as the horse whisperer, it falls into line that she bought me the worst jumper in the history of jumpers. Paper Doll was a pony that was supposedly worth 1500 dollars USd due to her bloodlines. But the pony would NOT jump a jump in a horse show. I could not get her over the jumps. It was HORRIBLY humiliating. I was a very good rider over fences. I still am. But you cannot force a pony over a jump. My show jumping career was dead in the water before it began and my mother KNEW THAT.

  My sister washed my jumping habit -- my habit was something that felt right to me. I wore it with pride, it felt right. It felt good. A nice black wool habit coat and she washed it and it shrank. To this day she says she didn't know you could not wash wool but by that time she was quite the accomplished laundry person. No way that was an accident: same as when she cut my hair. I had a braid down to my ass. My sister cut it all off one day. I had not remembered that since it happened. 

Well it's good I can start remembering some stuff from childhood now. It'll be good to suss it all out.