Notes to John

by Joan Didion

You grew up, for whatever reason, expecting the worst to happen. You don’t expect good things to happen. You somehow grew up without the gene for denial.”

How, I asked, do most children do this? “They grow up.” At what point, I asked. How? “Trust. They come to trust that their parents trust them.”

“He was angry because he felt guilty. That’s a useful thing to remember. Parents of children in emotional trouble tend to feel guilty, hopeless – what did they do wrong, what could they have done differently, where did it all fall apart – and they sometimes show it by getting angry. When people get angry, fly off the handle, they’re usually feeling guilty, mad at themselves, they should have known better and so forth.”

Children who sense that a parent is always worried feel insecure, from a very young age. They have no idea what the parent is worried about, so they anticipate the worst outcome they can imagine. They’re afraid the parent may lose control of the situation, may not be able to take care of them. They carry that fear into adult life. That’s what she’s working on with Dr. Kass. But she needs to feel that you’ll be all right.”

Shyness is a form of paranoia. You assume you’re the center of attention.”

Sure, you may have made mistakes as a mother. Every parent alive makes mistakes with their children, and their children – most of them – live through it. What Quintana is going through is something you didn’t cause. And you can’t fix it. All you can hope for – all we’re working toward here – is for the two of you to develop a closer relationship in the hope that this will ease the internal pressure she feels to drink, or escape.”

You wanted to keep her in the kitchen with you, safe from the terrifying world outside. Where people might kidnap her, might hurt her, might take her away from you. Which would effectively end your life. That’s what you transmitted to her, that’s the burden she feels. That’s why she feels that you and her father are always watching her, always trying to take care of her. She knows it’s because you love her, she got that message. But she associates love with worry. She doesn’t know that it’s possible to love someone without constantly worrying about him or her. She thinks she has to worry about you, because she loves you. She thinks she’s a burden on you. She thinks that only she can relieve that burden.

“It would be very unusual if some of this sense – if you want a pool, dig it, if you want money, earn it – didn’t color this question of giving money to Quintana. I think you have to think of it as a gift to yourself. You’re giving yourself the comfort of saying that you trust her values. And if you don’t trust her values, don’t give it to her.” I said I did trust her values. I just didn’t trust her common sense. “Common sense is something people learn by doing. Not by having their parents do it for them.”

it had finally come home to me that I could maintain a certain distance without abandoning her – that in any case my attempts to “solve” or manage Q’s life were futile, that all I could do was try to live my own life.