Blame mom. Blame dad. Blame brother. Blame yourself. Say what you have to say, hear what has to be said, and then offer some genuine pity and forgiveness.You might as well because you’re going to be overwhelmed by the fog of your own limitations as well as the circumstances that are not of your making.
You’re a tragic hero in a modern drama making that journey courtesy of Eugene O’Neill called Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
If mom is a drug addict who can’t go over her addiction, why should she? Morphine brings her back to a place where she is young and pleasing to others, a place where she experiences some hope and beauty. And you’re not there, you with your expectations and longings.
Besides, you’re no better as you bend the elbow at every opportunity. In your own anesthetized state, you are free from the truth of the present: that you have done little with your life. If you are the son of a morphine-addict, you’re not always a kind and helpful one.
And you, father, have sold out on yourself in favor of some hollow illusion of being a landowner. You’re a has-been actor, a cheapskate who does as little as possible for the members of your family, a hollow little man who used to create illusions that entertained people. Your family can see through your threadbare soul.
Ah yes, family life in the 20th century. God help us because we can’t seem to help ourselves or each other.
Ah yes, life in the 21st century, the failure to grasp the existentialist nettle and take responsibility for your life in favor of others’ expectations. Where masks once created personae to say more about the rich interior world of the human mind than mere words or actions ever could, now masks cover a vast emptiness, they delineate the void of the human soul.
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