Plus ça change...

Two years later, two more chances for tshuvah. Turn, turn again. Return to my best self. Who is she? I'm half empty inside. A dusty closet with the same old desiccated life stories rattling around inside.

How much damage could ordinary, imperfect parents do to a person's psyche? They didn't abuse, they didn't hardly discipline. They did their best, which was about 80%. Liberal, educated, culturally intelligent. How could they have wounded me so deeply? And made me as abrasive and insensitive as themselves?  I can't think of one person in our large extended family who modeled empathy, compassion or loving kindness on a regular basis. Every one of them was girding for disaster. Resistance was futile.

Luckily for me, something about school was supremely simple.  I innately understood what was called for and performed on exams.  So long as I didn't have to extrude an original thought. 

I blame Brooklyn College, too, and the city's policy of open enrollment. The "academy" was a playground. First there were the anti-war actions. Me with my broken leg, flapping around in a cape like a teenaged crusader. I didn't have the faintest idea what was going on in THE WORLD. Then there was the enormous class size, the remedial classes for the masses, my broken legs. I never learned to analyze, think, evaluate, plan, act. Just got all A's while playing all the time – then broke out into hives when graduation neared.

I don't think I'm much more sophisticated now. Age 60 and I still feel like a child around people who have children of their own, decorated homes, who take vacations and dine with other couples. And when I think about being in the world I just want to get back under the covers.

Last time I remember having a career goal was when I was a tv major and wanted to be a camera operator on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Mainly I just wanted to hang around with other people who smoked pot. That much remains the same.

I'm only now learning about "working for" an end goal. My parents told me I was so smart I could do anything –and I believed them.  I didn't realize there was learning or working involved. And for a good long while, stuff just dropped in my lap. That news editing gig was a sluggard's dream. Almost three decades of sleeping late, watching tv all night, and getting paid a mighty good wage for working not very hard most of the time.

Now I'm as relevant as a comptometer operator. Lookit, spell check doesn't even know what that is. That was my auntie's profession.

So now there's all these people with ideas and goals and stuff they're trying to achieve. And I can't help wondering why. What's the point? Soon we'll all be dead.

The ones trying to help ask me what I want to do. What is my dream? And all I can think of is relaxing near a beach in a recumbent position near a pile of books, a connection to the internet, and a big TV.

I've had it too easy, it's true. I disdained schoolmates who studied hard. I pitied those who worked jobs on top of homework. I didn't get the brand name dolls but those penurious parents of mine assured I wasn't impoverished in my unemployment if not my old age, not yet anyhow. And if they were any example, I won't outlive my fortune... so long as I only live 10 more years.