Fault Lines

Why I’d love it if you read this but mostly why I’d never ask you to.

I’m told that people speak their minds either because they want to get something off their chest, or because they want to effect some change. I don’t see the point of unburdening for its own sake. I need it to mean something to the listener, but to expect change just because you’ve spoken is naive. I can’t believe these are our only choices.

We all end up in conversations with people who aren’t listening or just don’t care. You’re lucky to get a pat on the head. “Thank you,” they say. “Noted. Point taken.” And then they do whatever they were going to do anyway. Which is the same as not having listened at all.

Most of us have people in our lives who truly care about what we have to say, who try to understand us, and may even modify some behavior as a result. But it’s rare. My god, it’s rare.

When I was 16 years old, my family went through some lean times. My dad had started his own graphic design business a few years before, and though he’d had a very successful first year or so, things were now more down than up. Christmas was especially down. Money issues made my mother more snappish than usual, because as an artist she made demands on the finances with only intermittent returns. I don’t hold that against her; she was a brilliant artist, and I believe the investment was well worth it. But her own unacknowledged guilt made her moody and on edge, and she directed those feelings at my sisters and me, especially if she thought we were being frivolous with money.

She also disliked Christmas, for lots of reasons, and that cast a pall over the season no matter how festive we tried to be. We threw whole parties that she spent alone upstairs in her room, “not feeling well.” It was practically gothic, the angry woman upstairs, haunting the house, at odds with everyone else. It wasn’t her holiday to begin with, as she was raised Jewish, and she also had very strong feelings about consumerism and ungrateful children. I think she also resented happy families, and we celebrated with my dad’s warm and loving clan. I can see that it was a lot for her to bear.

On a cold winter’s day during the peak of holiday shopping season, my younger sister Elena, then thirteen, went to the mall with a friend. She took with her fifty dollars my dad had given her to buy gifts. My father and I drove to pick them up and we were almost home when the awful discovery was made. Elena had left her purse at the mall. The purse with the fifty dollars still inside it. Though we knew it was probably pointless, it was decided that the three of them would drive back on the slim chance that the purse might still be there, and that I would go in and tell my mother what had happened.

I approached her lair, the den where she was watching TV. I said, “Um. Just so you know, Elena left her purse behind at the mall. They went back to see if it’s still there.”

“Oh, my GOD,” Mom said. “Was the fifty dollars in there?”

“Uh, yes?”

“Jesus CHRIST.”

“Well,” I said, “It wasn’t her fault ….”

She cut me off. “How can you say it wasn’t her fault?”

I tried to undo the terrible thing I’d done. “Well, yes, it’s her fault, but she didn’t mean to do it, is all I meant.”

“Tell me how this isn’t her fault.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t, I’m just—”

“You just said it’s not her fault.”

“But I added more stuff ….”

Alas, it was in vain. My mother continued to wonder aloud whose fault I could imagine it was, if not Elena’s, the criminal in question. I tried again to say, “No, no, it’s her fault,” just to end the conversation, even though it wasn’t true. Leaving the purse behind may have been careless, or irresponsible. But it was also accidental. She was thirteen.

Things escalated. For roughly forty-five minutes, we had several verbal bouts, separated by my furious stomping up the stairs to my room, where I shored up my reserves and stomped back down for another go. Anthropologically speaking, this has parallels with today’s online comment threads. It was as pointless and enraging in its live-action form.

When my father finally returned, I was screaming, “IT’S HER FAULT, IT’S HER FAULT!” over and over, at capacity volume.

I paused for breath, and my mother turned to my dad and said, “Can you believe it? Jenny doesn’t think it’s her fault.”

I don’t know how I lived to tell this tale, or more to the point, how she did, but something broke in me. Miraculously, not the veins in my neck, or my larynx, but something big. I am still learning how big.

Because everyone needs to be heard, to feel like what they are saying matters. And I think it can drive one to extremes. My mother didn’t get it as a child, and it made her incapable of hearing others. I felt the need so deeply, I was convinced I should pursue a career in acting. I wanted an audience.

Not feeling heard by my own mother was deeply painful and frustrating. She had a colossal amount of shit to shovel, and I feel for her, but that is not my fault. It felt pointless to talk to her, to maintain any sort of relationship. I left the house a year later for college, and I stayed as far away as I could for as long as possible, but I never got anywhere. My relationship with my mother certainly didn’t improve, and my plan to be heard from stages and screens failed.

It shows up everywhere. For example, I don’t submit these written pieces for traditional publication. It’s easy to think it’s the typical rejection from an editor that I’m afraid of — we read it but didn’t like it — but I’m more concerned that they don’t read it at all. How can I be sure you’re giving it your full attention; how can you understand what I’m saying if you can’t hear my voice? A query letter? What, am I supposed to beg? I’m not going to ask. What would be the point of that? No really, I want to know.

Auditions are another example. What a word, audition. The act of hearing. The irony of trying in vain to get people to see and hear you, even though they are talking or texting, or eating lunch, and have probably already cast the part. It’s dehumanizing, and I don’t have it in me.

To say that it’s gotten in my way is an understatement. A coworker once expressed an interest in coming to see me read at a show, and I did what I usually do. I gently and persistently gave her a list of reasons she might not want to: You don’t have to. No pressure! This maybe won’t be the best show for you to see. It’s ten dollars! It’s so hard to find parking. I’ll keep you posted.

Finally, she said, “Stop telling me not to come to your show.”

No one should feel obligated to see me perform, and if by chance someone decides to come anyway, I will test their will to do so.

I once wrote and produced a solo show and I could barely bring myself to tell anyone about it. It took years for that show to get to stage. Each essay is a difficult birth. I feel a sense of triumph when something finally gets said, but the danger is that I feel like I’m owed something for having spoken. People are not required to listen harder, or care, just because something has been torn from me with difficulty. That struggle is my problem, and it comes with no guarantees. It’s the biggest hurdle I face.

My favorite Dr. Suess book was Horton Hears a Who. Why? Because Horton HEARS A WHO. Because a person’s a person no matter how small! In that book, that littlest, most reluctant Who finally speaks in the end, and they are all heard because he does. And what are they yelling? “We are here! We are here! We are here!” The same thing we’re all yelling. But that Who’s little voice is the tipping point. His voice matters.

I loved that story as a child, but I fear I took the wrong message to heart. It matters that you speak, of course, but not to everyone. Seldom will it save the world. The world is mostly yelling its own things.

I write mini rants and post them to what is essentially a secret blog that I don’t tell anyone about. Speaking where virtually no one can hear, into a void. Maybe it’s therapeutic. Maybe I’m building up that muscle. If there’s no expectation on my end, there’s no crushing disappointment. And it’s so nice to be stumbled upon. Found. Heard by a total stranger. Where the words mean something and I as a person am out of the mix entirely. It’s a pure exchange.

It’s fair to say it’s my mother’s fault that I write things the hell down. When the only other person in the room cannot hear you at any decibel, well, you must find another way. It’s also why, when asked for directions, or to describe a sequence of events, I will give the most detailed, blow-by-blow account you have ever heard. If you’re really listening, well then, I’ll reward you with all the details you can stand.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I couldn’t seem to pursue acting, find an agent, or publish my writing. But there are other rewards. I wrote all of this down, for example. I read these essays around town in various settings, and there is nothing that really compares (not surprisingly) to reading something I wrote to people who have elected to hear it. I don’t even know how they heard of the show or why they are there, and I don’t want to. They came, they’re listening, and all I can do is hold up my end of the bargain the best way I know how. It’s a sacred contract for me.

So, thank you, thank you for listening. It means the world.