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2001-07-09 | 3:11 p.m.

I just turned in my report on transaction processing services to Birgit. One month and four days after I officially took on the project. Pretty pathetic. At least when you're a volunteer, they can't fire you. I know that's not the best attitude for a volunteer to have, but I'm afraid it's how I feel.

I'm so selfish. I hate working on anything that isn't my own personal project. At first I get excited, revved up, certain I can change the world, but soon enough---sometimes within minutes---I come back to feeling resentful and wanting to throw off the project forever, and also wanting to leave town, rent a little room somewhere, and never do anything for anybody else again. I hate other people's expectations. I much prefer to have everyone think the worst of me and then, when I come through unexpectedly, to be loved and admired. That's the way I like it.

I hate giving up my time to curry favor or good feelings. I don't want anybody's good feelings! I just want my time back. Even for a good cause, like the publishing house, or volunteering in the kindergarten, or visiting feeble old people, I consider it an ENORMOUS sacrifice. I get huffy about it. I do end up doing the stuff, at least some of the time, but I despise it so much I must be an asshole anyway. But boy, if anybody were to suggest that I don't pull my weight, that I don't do anything, you'd better believe my blue ribbons are coming out. I takes my credit where credit is due. Yes, you see it, don't you? I am a supreme asshole.

I fantasized about that little room again last night. I think about a room, few belongings, and a part-time job. My kids could come see me now and then and spend the night, then resent me all through high school and make me cry. I'm confident that some other woman would latch onto Duff like a lamprey. Maybe a motherly stepmother would be better for the kids than a stepmotherly mother like me.

My mother left a child behind. It happened many years before I was born. Maybe that's why I think about doing it myself. Actually, when she left him behind, she disappeared forever. I don't want to do that. It's supposed to be a big secret, but my mother knows that we know---my sister and I. My sister asked her one time, during a long late-night conversation, "How could you do that? How could you leave your child behind?" According to Diane, Mom just said, "I made a mistake." So I've never asked her about it myself, though I would like to know what happened. I want to know exactly what happened.

My mother puts such an effort into being or seeming moral and upright that I forget about it for long stretches, and then once in a while when she is getting a little overbearing, riding around on her high horse, I remember it all and think, Where does she get off? Diane has broken the law many times but thinks giving up your children is about the worst thing a woman could do. She has no tolerance for it. Same with Bambi. I am starting to question whether I believe that as much as they do, though I don't tell them that. I understand that there can be good reasons for it, but I also agree with them. Right now I am reading Paula Fox's childhood memoir in The New Yorker and just despising her horrible self-absorbed parents for leaving her behind and never explaining a damn thing.

So it's a difficult subject. I waffle.

Wow. When I started this entry, I intended to go in a completely different direction. Never meant to tell you about my mother and her long-ago son. Funny how memory goes astray.

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