Symbolic Forest

The Mother has always lied, and always denied that she does. She hates being called out for her mistakes, and will flatly claim she didn’t make them. Moreover, she’s always preferred to lie rather than admit any aspect of the past she’s ashamed of. Sometimes these things come out, years later, and I start to doubt my own memory. I’m not saying she consciously gaslights people; but she will say one thing one day, something entirely contradictory a week later, and you start to wonder where the truth, if anything, actually lies. This has reached the point where she has been—possibly deliberately—not taking her heart medication, and not going to the pharmacy or the doctor when she should to get her prescription sorted. So, now and then, I go to the doctor with her, to see what she tells him and what he tells her. This woman, who has been telling me constantly that she doesn’t feel well, that she’s constantly dizzy, will tell the doctor that everything is fine. He asks her why she hasn’t been taking her medication: she tells him she ran out, even though she has plentiful stocks at home. He asks her why she didn’t come back for a repeat: she says she wants to help save the NHS money.

Since my father died I’ve been trying to help her come to terms with her grief; but that, too, has in a way been difficult for both of us. I was always aware that there was something slightly off in the atmosphere of the house when I was growing up, although as a child it was impossible to explain or analyse. My father was extremely, intensely controlling, and since his death more and more has emerged which shows what I have been feeling for a while. That, to my mind, myself and my mother were in an abusive relationship with him. She, of course, does not admit this, does not admit that he stalked her before they got together, does not admit that my traumatised memories of his outbursts of anger ever happened, does not admit that he felt anything for us other than love.

Sometimes, though, there are sudden flashes of new information, things I didn’t know, that just go to prove that she should possibly have walked away years before I was born.

As I said, The Mother has always lied. When I was small, back when smoking was much more common than it is today, she told me earnestly not to smoke, that she had never smoked. The one smoker I regularly saw in my life before I started school was the travelling butcher, who would drive round in his van and knock on the door once a week, and then sit on our kitchen stool trying to sell his cuts to The Mother, chain-smoking as he did. She would get an ashtray out for him; it was the only time the ashtray was ever used. He would leave, and she would tell me how important it was not to smoke, that she had never done it.

Later, then, I was a little puzzled when—and I can’t remember the context—she admitted she had once been a smoker, but had given it up. Another of those lies, of something she was ashamed of. I thought little of it.

Until, at the doctor’s this week, the nurse was reviewing all the personal information on her file. “‘Former smoker’, it says here,” said the nurse. “Is that still true.”

“Non-smoker for a very long time,” I interjected.

“Do you know why I stopped?” said The Mother. “It was my husband that did it, before we were married. He said he could never marry a smoker, so I stopped. He said he couild never marry a smoker, and he grabbed the pack out of my hand and threw it on the fire. And he did that every time he saw me with them. So I stopped.”

It was a strange moment. A strange moment of clarity, as to what my father was actually like, back in his early 20s. A little window. I don’t think it’s a nice one.

Keyword noise: abuse, abusive relationships, The Mother, The Father, smoking.

There are many things I just don’t understand about people, but this is one I’ve been thinking about lately.

A month or more ago now, I wrote about Big Dave’s Dating Life. In particular, about one particular girl from his darts team, who was constantly tempted to go back to her ex-boyfriend even though he tended to beat her up whenever she visited him. Big Dave’s romantic contribution: a few vigilante-style threats to help persuade him to stop.

Anyway, Big Dave’s wooing proceeded according to plan, with a few dates which got more and more serious as time went on. Until last week, when he was cruelly dumped by text message, because she’d decided to go back to the abusive ex, with still no sign that he really was going to stop the beatings.

No sooner had this happened, then one of the worse gossip-mongers at our branch in Another Part Of The Forest starts telling us that one of her underlings – a woman who I’ll call Antivirus – is on a diet, because she wants to look good for her wedding. Which is, well, news.

I don’t know Antivirus very well, but we do chat to each other on the phone every week or so, and the last I’d heard about her relationship really didn’t sound promising. To put it bluntly, a few months ago it had broken down. Not only was she moving out, but she was moving out secretly. She’d planned to wait until she knew the boyfriend was securely at work, then she rushed in with some friends in a van, so that he’d come home to find her, her kids,^* all her possessions gone. Because she was terrified of how he’d react if she told him she was leaving.

If you ask me, that’s not a good relationship to be in. It’s not the sort of relationship you’re going to want to go back to. But, for some reason, she has. Not only that, but she’s agreed to marry him.

Obviously, I don’t know the details of either of these cases. Maybe there’s a good reason for everything here. Maybe both of these men have turned over a completely new leaf, and are going to be perfect partners from now on. That’s what they’ve probably promised, at any rate. If it was me, though, I wouldn’t be convinced. There are lots of aspects of relationships I don’t understand, but there are some people who really baffle me.

* not his, in case you were wondering.

Keyword noise: abuse, abusive relationships, Big Dave, dating, domestic violence, relationships, romance, violence.

Last week, I told you about Big Dave’s Impending Date. This week, I’ve been finding out what happened. This is all retold second-hand from what he told me; but this is pretty much exactly how he said it.

Quick summary of the Story So Far: Big Dave asked a girl from the Darts League out, even though she wasn’t single, because her dad kept pressuring him to do it. On Saturday, they were supposed to be going out for a drink.

Well, she cancelled. Then, on Sunday, she didn’t show up at the darts. So, Dave asks around a bit to see what’s going on. It turns out, she went to visit her ex, who then decided to beat her up.

Dave pops round to visit, and sees the rather nasty bruises all over her face, which explain why she hasn’t been about. “You won’t do anything though, will you?” she said to him, nervously.

“Of course not,” says Big Dave, fingers crossed behind his back. As soon as he leaves her, he goes straight round to the man’s house. As soon as he opens the door, Dave’s hands are round his neck and he’s up against the wall.

Now, there is a reason he’s called Big Dave. And the man in question is, according to Dave, your typical kind of girlfriend-beater: small and skinny himself, and a coward. The sort of bully who will take his anger out on people he knows aren’t going to fight back. With Dave there, he needs to change his trousers. “I don’t have a problem with you, mate,” he kept stammering. “You do now,” Dave replies. He leaves without doing any damage, but with Dire Threats should anything happen in future.

I’m slightly in two minds about all this myself. On the one hand, the scumbag sounds like a nasty piece of work who clearly had it coming. Nevertheless, I’m still a little nervous around vigilante justice. Especially when I share an office with the vigilante in question. And the girl Dave was trying to help isn’t talking to him at the moment. Because she didn’t want anyone to make a fuss about it. She just wanted everyone to ignore her hideous bruises and let it all die down again.

Keyword noise: abuse, relationships, Big Dave, colleagues, darts, dating, domestic violence, gossip, vigilante.

As I drove to work this morning I was listening to Today on the radio, and I heard them play the sound from the video of UK troops abusing Iraqi civilians.

The soundtrack, and the voices of the British soldiers on it, were self-evidently sadistic. Moreover, they weren’t just violent; they sounded as if they were enjoying it. The unseen soldier sounded to be getting a thrill out of humiliating his helpless captives. This was his way to have fun. It sounded to me as if he’d be replaying the scene over and over again in his mind, to get every little bit of pleasure back again. Replaying it over and over, faster and faster, in his own private time.

Or maybe that’s just my own interpretation of it. Getting pleasure from people like that without their own agreement is always wrong, whether you enjoy it or not.

Keyword noise: abuse, Army, captives, Iraq, prisoners, sadism, soldiers.