As the shards of glass scattered around me, I sank to my knees. The wave of emotion that I’d been holding back swelled and then burst out of me. I sat there on the kitchen floor, sobbing and staring at the broken glass like I was broken too. My then-husband was on his computer in the next room, just through the open door. I wished so desperately that he would come in and take me in his arms and say it’s okay, I’m here now, I’ve found you, I love you. But he didn’t. Maybe he was still bitter from the fight we’d just had. More likely he just had headphones on. So I sat there crying and willing him to come to me for maybe an hour or so. Finally, when I was out of tears and my butt was sore from the hardwood floor, I stood up and found the broom.
That evening when I fell apart over a broken glass exemplifies a particular genre of angst: a yearning to understand and be understood. A yearning for care. A yearning to be mothered.
This kind of angst comes up all the time for me. I am constantly expecting other people to read my mind and give me what I want. I have a very hard time articulating my needs, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still expecting you to attend to them. I want you to give me the reaction I wanted, the gift that I wanted, and the right kind of support. Sometimes I’ll accidentally blurt out how miserable I am just to test you.
In a previous post, I laid out my theory that Crastor’s female companions, who I call daisies, are different representations of soul, which for now we’ll define as simply one’s own imagination. Crastor’s mother is our next daisy. If my daisies challenge us to consider how we conceptualize the imagination, then Crastor’s mother challenges us to think about the imagination as an emotionally distant caretaker.
From my earliest fantasies of Crastor’s childhood, his mother was always a little mysterious. In some versions she was an actual witch. Crastor always wished to be closer to her, to understand her. Eventually she became sort of dotty, which made him even more fond of her and even more estranged from her. One day, Crator’s wish to connect with his emotionally distant mother became the image of clinging to her corpse. I remember that day because the image instantly stuck.
Why am I haunted by imagery that suggests mother is taking care of me, yet she can’t see me? Is it lingering trauma from the first time my mother denied me breast milk when I was a baby? Or was my mother emotionally distant throughout my childhood? Maybe. But let’s entertain another possibility.
Imagination is my other mother. All my feelings, dreams, desires, fears and beliefs spring from imagination. Imagination is my creator and she is constantly creating me.
Nevertheless, imagination is a rather odd, mysterious, and sometimes neglectful mother. She seems totally out of touch with reality. She sends very bizarre messages. Sometimes I am embarrassed by her wackiness. Furthermore, she doesn’t listen to me. I want her to be focused on a certain thing, but she goes wandering off in her own direction. I’m like little Crastor trying to get his mother’s attention, saying “Hey, look over here!”
No wonder we are constantly seeking care, validation and connection. We feel starved for it due in part to our estrangement from our own imagination. We are looking for care in the wrong places.
Daydream work teaches me that my inner tensions persist no matter what’s going on in the real world. I have always yearned to understand and to be understood. The idea that another person could abolish that yearning simply by holding me and whispering sweet words is utterly preposterous. At best they might offer me a fleeting distraction from my existential angst. But my angst really has nothing to do with them. It is about my own relationship with my soul. When I accept that, then peoples’ insults, real or perceived, just roll off of me. I understand that people probably won’t give me the validation I want, and even if they do, it won’t relieve my agony.
Like Crastor, I love my “mother” fiercely, even though I can’t control her or understand her. What choice do I have? It is in her nature to be distant, different, indifferent. But I find that, as maddening as it is to hold her close, I cannot bear to push her away. She can’t see me, but, well, I can see her. And that’s some comfort.