'up for anything, just don't tie me down'

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After the crab crawled, or 'doormat-no-more'

‘She needs to grow up. She’s a dissatisfied middle-aged woman who sees herself growing old in an unhappy relationship, with kids taking away her life and she’s jealous of your freedom, although she wouldn’t have had the balls to make the choices you made, but wished she had. Hence the sourness… Rhonda can feel free to pinch my argument if she agrees with it.’ -- a friend about a typical 'crab'.

It seems I have inadvertently managed to put my crab-crawling theory into practice... with spectacular effect.

Having spent the first 30+ years of my life filling a particular niche in the lives of my friends and family, I have reached the point where I not only realise it’s a place I don’t want to be, but I have actively tried to re-define my position, or rather, affirm my identity and establish boundaries around it -- something I failed to do before.

Part of this process has involved looking at the way I have chosen to live my life, and asking if this is what I want for my present and future.

For example, I established my current career not so much by choice as by accident. I grasped at the first grown-up job that came along, and then worked my way up to something I actually liked. But I haven’t explored beyond that, so I’m taking some time to look at where to head next. So far on this front I’ve flown under the radar, but I’m bracing myself for some kick-back when I finally do make the move.

I’ve also decided to relocate. Leave Boganburbia to the nuclear-family-oriented and position myself nearer to the things I value and with more like-minded people. When I first raised this in front of my family, the response was, ‘What would you want to live in that area for? It’s full of hippies and weirdoes.’

Over the years I have thought about having children but have come to the conclusion it’s not for me. This decision has been attacked from more directions than I care to count. The response has ranged from the use of assumptive language, ‘When you have children’ rather than ‘If you have children’, to ‘What if you regret it one day?’ (to which my standard reply became, ‘What if I regret having children? You can’t take them back.’

More recently the approach was to tell me if I didn’t have children I would lose my then partner. ‘You’ll need to have children if you want to keep him,’ they said. I remember thinking, Wow. That’s a healthy basis for a relationship, and an even healthier basis for raising a child. And they didn’t stop there. ‘You only have to have one. You can manage that. It won’t interfere with your life too much.’ Imagine the therapy that kid would eventually need. In the end I was tempted to pretend to be barren, just to get them off my back.

Another choice that has come under fire is my decision to not remarry or even have a quasi-married relationship. I’ve tried the whole miserable-marrieds-with-weekends-at-Bunnings thing, and failed. It just isn’t for me. This decision was affirmed during a subsequent relationship where every time things veered towards domestic-bliss-101 I found my insides screaming. I was miserable. I was lonely. I was trapped. And eventually I left. Crawled out of the basket amid screams of protest. How could I be choosing not to stay with someone who was kind, considerate, loving? My response: ‘If you want all those things, why don’t you marry him?’

I have since moved into a new relationship and ‘failed’ to integrate that relationship into the mould. No going-through-the-motions ‘family’ dinners, no weekends at Bunnings. And an endless barrage of criticism.

All this is before looking at the hostile response I’ve encountered to reforming my slobbing-on-the-couch-eating-takeaway lifestyle. Apparently prioritising diet and exercise and maintaining a healthier weight is cause for all kinds of snide remarks. I finally got one sister to stop by pointing out that I'm not so rude as to tell her she is overweight and should really do something about it, so I don't see why she feels it is okay to discuss my weight.

I can only imagine their hositility is because as crabs who share my mould they are more comfortable with dumpy, tubby me. I have redefined the mould's shape, both physically and metaphorically.

The remoulding process has been slow, and is still underway, but as I make progress the attacks become more intense. Criticism, lectures, guilt trips, the works.

Because I don’t hang out with my sister’s kids at the weekend, my other sister tells my nieces and nephew that she loves them more than me, that she is the better aunty, and they openly discuss my being outside the fold in front of the kids.

Because I’ve changed the way that I use social networking, and part of this involved removing my family, I’ve received hostile messages, vicious phone calls, text messages and emails. ‘Total cow! what the hell???? You just don't do that!’ and, ‘What the hell is wrong with you. Why are you trying so hard to not be part of our family?’

I even received a similarly parroted message from my twelve-year-old niece, who has been dragged into the whole saga by her mother.

I want to stress that I’m not writing this to vilify my family, but to illustrate the consequences of leaving the crawl too long. If I had been comfortable enough in myself to assert my boundaries as a teenager, or even when I first left home, I wouldn’t now be suffering because those who shared my mould are feeling the shift so acutely. Previously my position in the mould was beneath theirs and effectively propped theirs up, which means my shifting makes them feel less secure, less in control.

And in this case it is about control.

Ideally I’d like to have a loving, respectful relationship with my family, where I accept them for who they are and they respect me for who I am, but right now that choice isn’t open to me: ‘When you feel like joining us again as [the person we expect you to be] then I am here with open arms’, was my sister's last text.

Now that I’ve peered over the edge of the basket and seen the possibilities waiting for me on the other side, I have a chance at freedom, but unless me and my fellow crabs can establish a new, flexible mould, it looks like it will mean cutting ties with the crabs trying to claw me back, and leaving the basket for good.

When a crab crawls out of its basket

From a very young age we are each cast into a mould. It shapes us as we shape it. We grow and evolve among like-minded people, or at least, among people who share a part of our mould. But as we grow, that mould solidifies. It shaped us and was shaped by us, but now it holds us in place. We are trapped: crabs in a basket.

Those who share our mould have an interest in its solidity – in their stability. And so each time we maintain our position in the mould, reach each moulded milestone, we are congratulated. Our stability props up theirs, reinforcing the mould and our shared part in it.

If our fellow crabs go to university, get jobs, settle into suburban bliss, maybe get married and pop out a sproglet or three, and we each do the same, we are bolstering the mould’s walls. We can feel safe, secure. By choosing the same path, we reinforce the decisions of others, who see themselves as like us, but also in relation to us.

But what happens if we deviate from the path? Maybe we don’t get married. Don’t have children. Don’t go to university. Our fellow crabs will feel uncomfortable, but in most cases, superior. They will pity us for not filling out the mould, not achieving, but they are not threatened by our perceived failure. We are safely tucked beneath them in the basket.

But if we decide to follow a different path, achieve different goals, it’s another story altogether.

The moment we start to escape, our fellow crabs panic and desperately try to claw us back inside. Like boiling water poured over them they flail and cry, and grab and scrabble. There is no congratulation, but no pity either. Instead we are criticised, reviled, ridiculed. If we climb up and over, we leave them behind to face the boiling water alone.

But it is not only our leaving that weakens the mould. It is also changing our position within the mould in relation to them. We may have grown up being the Quiet One, the Left-Out One, the Sporty One, the Nerdy One, the Fat One or the Thin One. Whatever our role, it is part of the mould, and a part of our group identity. Break away from that, try to get louder, get noticed, gain weight, lose weight, binge drink, have a sex change, however mild or extreme, and the crabs will again claw us back. Because when we shift they have nothing to hold them, shape them, and also nothing to shape.

In some ways this is more threatening to the mould than climbing up and over. It is abandoning the mould – rejecting it, and their part in it. We will cause the mould to buckle and shift, showing others that it is not immutable, but malleable: they might have chosen another path, too.

I'll give you yours if you give me mine

Adventure Girl calls for amnesty on the return of borrowed things

I have a confession to make. I am a serial borrower.

In my study is a shelf bursting with ‘things that don’t belong to me’. Worse, I have a shelf of ‘things that might belong to me’. The problem is I can’t recall what was gifted and was loaned. Books by the same author, one a present, one on loan, and I can’t remember which was which! No tell-tale dog-ears or creases to give it away. These goods belong to people who have cherished and maintained their possessions, forever pristine.

It’s not as though I’ve watched / read / consumed each item and then simply laid it aside. Most times the reason I still have the item is because I haven’t quite gotten around to consuming it. In fact I have a backlog of un-checked-out items that I’m still working my way through. Purchases, gifts, and loans.

Some I’ve had for years and years.

The difficulty now is so much time has passed; it’s like returning that Grade 6 library book you found under your bed having sworn it was returned, the one you fought the crusty librarian over to waive an outrageous $12.93 accumulated fine.

Returning them now is just embarrassing.

But suddenly I find myself as that crusty librarian.

Last night I went looking for my copy of The Emerging Writers’ Festival Reader. I know I have it somewhere; it was a birthday present. In my mind, a niggling memory of someone peering covetously over my shoulder… and me handing it to them. Here, of course you can have a loan of it. Another memory surfaces. Of the Reader sitting on my desk alongside a second hand copy of Sheri S Tepper’s Grass, the one I hunted down for months in dodgy second hand bookshops, and ended up ordering online, just to own a paperback copy at last. You’ll love this, I hear myself say to a friend, Why don’t you borrow it…?

Then I see the empty ‘B’ section of my DVD collection taunting me. The gaps where my copies of Big Love ought to be… Who did I loan them to??? And where did my Presidents of the USA CD vanish to, all those years ago…?

Are all these items perched on someone else’s ‘things that don’t belong to me’ shelf? Are they too embarrassed to fess up and return them to me?

It seems there’s only one thing to be done. I need to hold an amnesty swap-meet.

Not that I can be that candid about it. Instead I’ll host some sort of social gathering out in Boganburbia, and while the blokes are singeing the snags or carbonising onion rings, and the girls are peering at my pitiful stiletto collection, I can subtly point out the ‘things that aren’t mine’ shelf, and veer them past the pile of ‘things that might be mine’, and between rounds of bubbly top-ups and music exchanges, ask ‘where on earth did that Presidents CD go?'

With any luck, by the end of the night, as people step back inside to grab a drink or go to the loo, everybody’s belongings will have returned themselves to their rightful owners, discreetly and anonymously.

And unlike the haunted library book, no one’s things need end up discarded along with that strawberry jam sandwich and mouldy orange you never told your mum about, just for the sake of misplaced pride.

-AG

Not your average party

Rhonda Perky goes under the covers to discover if the end really does justify the means.

I arrived home yesterday to find the house in front of mine tomb-sealed. Blinds drawn, disco soundtrack blaring, but no sign of parked cars to signify a typical suburban party - those were around the corner.

I turned to my friend. 'Suppose they're making a porno?'

Eyebrows quirked. 'Or hosting a sex party.'

A young couple in an ordinary street in central Boganburbia, no kids, working all hours to fend off the bank? It could just be.

'How much do you suppose they charge?'

'A few hundred bucks a pop. Although they'd have to provide a few nibbles and drinks, screen out all the single guys and voyeuristic weirdos...' Then sit back and watch everyone get their kit off.

I step inside my own pad. Not too big, but not too shabby either. Perfect for suburban parties if you don't mind everyone piled on top of each other - or wait, that would be the point :)

I might just pay off those renos sooner than I thought...

-RP