superficial

where do i come from? this seems like a straight forward question... notsomuch. i've spent years trying to figure this thing out; contemplating this question. what are the determining factors? i know money has a lot to do with it but i also know that there is more to it. is it the way i talk? what i talk about? what i care about? who the hell am i? i feel like i'm in limbo. i have an unhealthy obsession with class so i'll start there...

am i lower class? after all i spent 4 years of my middle school & high school years living in a couple different trailers. i'm still not entirely clear why my mother chose that over an apartment. it's not like she didn't know. don't get me wrong, she was an amazing mother and she worked so hard for my sister and i, and i wouldn't change a thing about how she did things. but she knew. and i know she knew because she mentioned it on several occasions. i'm a brat though, she probably didn't have much of a choice.

in any case, am i upper middle? that's a bit of a jump but my father is an engineer and he has his phd. i went to a very expensive school with no eligibility for financial aid, thanks to his credit, and earned a bachelor's degree. my mother has experienced extreme success as well. i stay home with my children, thanks to my husband, and we live very comfortably.

upper? nah, that's too high. i do however have impeccable table manners. now i'm not bragging, i'm just saying.

international? i speak french as do my children and most of the rest of my family. my family is egyptian; my parents came to the states more than 30 years ago. travelling is standard practice, so is being multilingual. once upon a time, in high school, ironically around the time i lived in the trailers, i travelled the world and had stamps in my up-to-date passport. might i add, it has been waaaay too long since i've been out of the country and is soon to be remedied. again, i'm not bragging, i'm just saying.

so then i realized that i'm none of these things... yet. i'm in an entirely different category of people. i am the child of divorced parents. of course that doesn't entirely define me (i have many more layers than that) but it has had a significant impact on me. i grew up as a divorced bitter woman without ever having been divorced. i was defensive when i didn't have anything to be defensive about; constantly offended. not to mention entitled as if someone was supposed to make up for what was taken away from me... "and do it NOW!" i loved my mother and father but i had to take sides. confused?

i wasn't quite sure what the point of my relationship to my father was. my mother took care of me, she was my provider. but my dad? he was the one with the money. he took me shopping and out to eat and to Europe. i'm definitely not complaining but imagine how i am with people who are generous with me. my sister took to insulting him; called him sugar daddy. i just shopped. a disgusting habit i had to break, to learn how not to accept everything people offer me; to learn how not to take advantage of people's generosity. i'm still trying to break off the last few strings of that. don't get me wrong, when i have it i'm generous but i go broke in the process so i rarely have it. i definitely chose the more humiliating take on that experience.

come to find out it's not okay to be bitter, argumentative, side-taking, defensive, and angry. it might make some people interesting, which is what i thought it did for me for the longest time like i was busy or something. notsomuch. it made me repellent. divorce effected what i care about, how i see the world and how i interact with people. i had a pretense and i hadn't even started my own life yet. and it's ubiquitous; it seems like everyone in their 50s has had at least one divorce. it is totally 'normal'. my husband's parents are divorced so he too thought the natural progression of a relationship was to end in bitterness; he just thought that's how things go. it's in movies like The Santa Clause and Something's Gotta Give and one that i just watched recently with the magnificent Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, It's Complicated. there's always the woman in her 50s who has been divorced for 10 or 20 years with children in their 20s or early 30s. that sounds eerily like my family. i was just reading somewhere that 46% of the baby boom generation have experienced divorces. so i guess it is no wonder why there is film after film after film about that very scenario. but why are their children so confident and stable? am i the only one that divorce has effected in this way? it totally displaced me.

so i finally figured it out, i come from divorced parents. too general? after all, i AM an individual...