Letter Home -- 21-Year-Old Drop-Out Me Tries To Explain Myself to My Parents

I was helping my dad move from his apartment into assisted living, and I found a file with my name on it. There were some miscellaneous photos and documents inside and a few of my handwritten letters, dated in the upper corner in my dad’s handwriting.

I was afraid to read the letters, but I sat down and did it, and I was surprised by how articulately I described my feelings. I had no idea I knew myself as well as I did. Since pretty much everyone around me thought I was lost, I thought that was the case.

I had transferred to Occidental College after a year at Kenyon, ten days at Smith, and a year and a half of working, and, at the time of this letter, after a year and a bit at Oxy, I wanted out, big time. I had an internship at J.P. Tarcher, a publishing company on Sunset Blvd, and I refer to that in this letter. I think when I refer to the coming weekend, I must have been flying home to my parents in Binghamton, N..Y., to explain to them why I was dropping out. I’d gone to a therapist at Oxy when I couldn’t pull myself together and cried so hard in her office I thought I was going to go insane. The therapist had told me to put my body in my body, and that brought me back to myself, back to me trying to explain myself to my parents.

Monday, October 26, 1987

Hi.

I just finished the third of three exams today. Phew. Can you say “brain dead”?

After talking with you yesterday, I felt sad and discouraged. The worst is when you ask, yet again, what my plans are and then when I tell you, all I hear is silence. Ouch. I’m sure things are the same from your point of view. More “ouch” when I tell you my ideas.

I was lying on my floor last night trying to think things out. I tried to think in terms of my possible college degree in relation to the type of people I associate with or want to associate with as well as the type of job and lifestyle I want to achieve. I can only look so far ahead without trying to pre-guess myself. At this point, I don’t see me being at Occidental as a “growing experience'“. I feel that education-wise, I have a terrific base, one that I can go in my own direction with and use to learn more. It’s not the whole theory of education that I’m opposed to—I fully expect to take classes and get my B.A. sometime, but not just isn’t the time. Since I am in turmoil over the whole thing, I will just ramble and let you pick out the pieces you consider important or valid.

Hmm…what is my ideal life? It involves writing. I want to write a book more than anything. That involves a lot of self-discipline. I would love to become a facet in the publishing world. Hopefully, this internship will prove as fruitful as it appears, and I will develop contacts and experience. I imagine trying to get into a publishing house will be a lot easier with past experience than with just four years of school.

It is this constant feeling that I am not “really living” yet that I am trying to overcome. The way I am traveling, I don’t see any change. If I don’t dive in, face reality, and decide to work with what I have now, I feel like I will shrivel up or explode.

School just isn’t something I can sit through and it isn't something I can get all wrapped up in—with something major like this, if I don’t feel committed, I feel rotten.

I really believe school is an integral part of life—however, I also think that the traditional schooling system just isn’t right for me. I imagine in a year or two, after I have tried to write, participated more with the internship, there will be certain things I will by DYING to learn—and thereby excited by the potential of knowledge to enrich the life I have rather than the stifling feeling I am faced with now. I feel like I am choking on the future—it all seems so wrong that a panic button went off in me. It’s too bad that I’m just not more normal and could take advantage, without kicking and screaming, of what you are giving me. However, it’s not really bad—because actually I feel that I am heading for something better than normal—and if that turns out to be that I merely find some lifestyle that makes me happy—that is fine. That’s all I want.

What do I want at the end of this weekend? I want to feel a sense of freedom, liberation. I need to tell you about the all-consuming guilt I have to live with and deal with. I am so afraid of disappointing you that disappointment is unavoidable. I need to judge my actions and thoughts by my own standards, for yours are not definite and not exactly the same as mine. The glow of satisfaction and happiness is squelched when, even if I am pleased by something, I feel that you would not feel the same pleasure. I need to ask you and tell myself that what is important is that you get pleasure from MY pleasure—not the specific actions.

I was trying to figure out why I feared your disapproval so much and just what I thought would happen if I really, really did something horrible. I didn’t think you would reject me or throw me out—I thought you would die. Nice fear to be carrying around, eh? Once I faced this and discovered this feeling, I was able to realize the ridiculousness of it.

I guess what I want you to know most is that I love you very, very much—without condition—but I desperately need to feel “on my own” and that seems to involve some sort of rejection. If I could let go of my tremendous feeling of obligation, I would feel so much less inhibited and constricted. Your opinions are terribly important to me, but I wish we could learn to have our opinions without fearing them or the reaction to them. When I imagine this weekend, I wish we could sit at the kitchen table, take our opinions our, put them on the table, and examine them with interest and not fear.

I feel it is usually more like a confrontation. You seeing me as a wall and me seeing you as two people who have built a wall, neither person free to give me his/her gut reaction but rather a forced to synthesis is later to be “produced”. I realize that you need to work together in a marriage, but when we discuss “issues”, the whole process tends to get so cerebral and artificial feeling that I end up feeling like games are being played.

I also imagined us talking over drinks. I realized that I do not feel free to drink in front of you because you might see me with my guard down. Weird, huh? I imagine you two together later, commenting on my behavior. Even if this doesn’t happen, it is something I carry around. When I gain weight, one of my biggest concerns is your opinion. I realize that these fears and inhibitions are probably groundless, and that is one of the primary reasons I am coming home. I need to tell you (and thereby myself) that these judgements are going to find a deaf ear. Out and out criticism is something I can deal with and confront. This haunting sense of disapproval and obligation has to be overcome. What I need for you to do is tell me that I am free and that you will love me, and respect me, for doing what I feel is right and appropriate for me.

You have always told me how beautiful I am and how lucky you were to get me. I think I was (am) afraid by this seemingly boundless potential that was handed me—was I a princess who deserved everything? Sensibility told me no. So did that mean I was basically nothing? Sensibility was speechless. This total lack of confidence is reflected in the way I treated (and still treat, more or less) money—I needed things in order to define myself. I may be nothing, but my new thing, boy, was something to talk about and think about.

Mom, when you told me how you had to sort of make up rules in order to have something for me to follow, that really struck home. So many of your rules I have felt weren’t concrete—that a little rebellion on my part could make them crack. I need a sense of solidity.

What is bad? I know what you think is bad (drinking, staying out late, uh, watching too much TV, not studying—this is harder to list than I thought…) but I don’t know exactly what will happen if I do these things—hence a feeling of constant repression when I’m living a life I don’t think would match your standards.

I have to stop now due to thinker’s burn out.

It is weird to think of how hot I am sitting in the sun here and that in less than 24 hours I will probably be freezing.

I hope this weekend works out. I get so excited thinking about living out here, trying to do “my thing” with your blessing. God, I really hope I can make things clear for you, and in the process, open up even more doors to understanding for me.

Well, I’ve pretty much exhausted my store of writing energy for now. You can breathe a sigh of relief, get comfortable, think awhile, and write your thoughts and ideas to me.

Not knowing how to express anger or to ask for something is something, as you know, I have to work on.

I think I am the Rocky Mountains personified—all extremes of mountains and valleys. All I should be striving for is to be like Hale Reservation. Haha. Brown and dirty. Just kidding. Naw, I’d be the Rocky Mountains but instead of the great unchartered land, I’d like to have a map.

O.K., O.K., I’ll shut up now. Get me talking about myself, and I will NEVER shut up.

Janet and I are going to get a pumpkin tonight. Weee!!

Love,

Anne