Hearing the name "Seven of Nine", from Star Trek, always makes me grin. As the ninth of ten children (Did you miss the part where I said I was born of Mormons? Yes, Hello! Welcome to the party.) I was calling myself "Nine of Ten" long before Jeri Ryan ever donned that jaw-dropping spandex skinsuit.
My dad is a Mormon Bishop, retired from the private sector, borderling obsessive-compulsive, and an avid lover of computer flight-simulator games. My mom is a voracious reader of books, an extraordinarily talented artist, a television and radio news addict, and something of a mad creative genius. That two people representing opposite ends of the personality spectrum - his OCD, her ADD (which explains a lot about how I got this way) managed to make a marriage work through 10 children and 45 years (and counting) is something of an anathema to me.
When I stop to consider the sheer magnitude of the task of raising a family of that size, I begin to feel light-headed. The fact that my parents didn't start assigning us barcodes after the first 5 or 6, and the fact that we have all grown up to be reasonably well-adjusted human beings, speaks to their virtues.
The one thing I do understand about them is their reaction to my resignation from the church they have devoted their lives to. How do I begin to reach back out to them when I have nothing to say to soothe their hurt? They believe - they say they know - that they follow the one and only "true path to salvation". The believe that a farm boy named Joseph Smith was a chosen prophet of God.
What do I think? I think he was a very clever fraud, a talented con artist and supreme narcissist who, in the end, probably bought into his own fabrications. That's putting it simply and mildly. That's my own conclusion, after study and consideration. I have no inclination to convince others to believe as I do, but leave it to them to do their own study as they are so inclined.
The point of this little ramble is that, in delving into the past to deal with issues relating to my ADD, I have realized the enormity of the task ahead of me. Every moment in my memory is inextricably linked with the religion that defined my existence. The tentacles of mormonism touched on every moment of my formative years. Every. Single. Moment.
I never had to define the future for myself because it was all laid out for me according to God's plan. I had only to watch out for the signs to know which course to take on the smaller decisions - you know, like what to major in in college or where to live or who to marry.
So how much of my current struggle is wrapped up in ADD and how much comes from the way my mind was shaped? Like the tale of the grasshopper caught and kept in the jar who - upon being set free - never dared jump higher than the lid of the jar had allowed -- how many of my limitations stem from past surrender to never defining for myself how high I could go?
1 comment:
Oh, Mel. What a perfect post this is. Defining oneself while throwing off the casts of our past lives is really... sucky. It's icky. It hurts. But we keep on trying to define it for some reason. We keep trying to say, "Aha! This is why I'm like this!"
For what it's worth, I think you're pretty damn cool and don't see half the limitations you see. You're jumping pretty damn high from where I can see.
Post a Comment