Science tells us with the latest epigenetic studies that transgenerational trauma lives inside our biology, in our very DNA. We shared fathers we loved, who turned out to be doubles.Ĭycles, patterns, are repeated. My daughter and I shared more than our addictions and our respective recoveries. Labels like good and evil, right or wrong, sane or crazy, divide humanity in two. A fire Frankenstein’s monster never found. Like Shelley’s strangely endearing monster, we had been out in the cold and could not find our way back to the fire, a fire that had never really wanted us around it, as we were, to begin with. And underneath, hadn’t we always somehow felt outside, misfit, not good enough, freaks of nature for our difference? A drunken woman drinks from inside a cage that cannot hold her but does not let her go. For qualities that turned out, in the end, to be our passion and strength. We felt like monsters, loathed ourselves for what society called weakness, for selves we perceived as inadequate, not good enough, selves it turned out we had repressed, that had been oppressed. We both experienced the shame that drunken women know, thrown from the tribe for imbibing alcohol like men. In the grip of addiction and the stigma of being alcoholic women, we lost ourselves.
Our obsessions had robbed our sensibilities, had taken everything good and whole from us in a moment. My daughter and I both experienced moments in our addictions that put us outside the pale. Having fallen into the abyss ourselves, we could understand what Frankenstein’s monster must have felt, looking into that window at the warmth and belonging that he, a freak of nature, a monster, would never experience. We both knew something about shadow, having faced addictions both together and apart. We draw lines in the sand and put each other on opposite sides. If we don’t learn to hold steady, we become one-dimensional, stuck, never fully human. In the dilemma duality represents, we tip toward either/or we split the world in two. Not gratitude that disaster didn’t befall us, but the recognition of our own fallibility. Maybe that’s what the saying “There but for the grace of God…” is all about. Some say we are all capable of evil we are all culpable. Some people, I told my daughter, say the monsters are within. Although the monster was not to blame for his plight, wasn’t he accountable for his response, his need for revenge, and his all-consuming rage? Why do some of us accept our circumstances, turn toward the good, while others choose to wreak havoc on the world? And don’t we all make a mess of it don't we all have demons not so easily banished? He could not connect with others and seemed innocent, for he was created out of one man's desire for greatness, out of hubris. And we began to, if not love him, have compassion for his plight. We watched him stare in the window of the cottage belonging to a poor family, saw his gradual realization of what he was missing: companionship, love, the company of others. Who created him?Īs we read Shelley’s novel, we noticed how isolated the monster was. A monster had entered the consciousness of a country, had seized our government’s highest office. Our rapists, our predators, and for some of us, our fathers, our brothers, our husbands, had betrayed us and now, with the election of a predator, the entire country had said it didn’t matter. The “pussy-grabber,” chief abandoner, betrayer, and liar had been given the keys to the White House, to a house we’d seen as sacrosanct, as a light, as safe. That November 9th, for both my daughter and I, and many other women, it was as though the monsters in our lives had triumphed once and for all. “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear,” Shelley’s monster said. I happened to be helping my daughter with a college essay about Frankenstein. In the Fall of 2016, all the monsters converged with the election of Donald Trump. I hoped for closure, but I still sometimes see in her eyes what I saw when she was nine: the far-off look, the wistful light, the same unmet love I have in mine. Death certificate in hand, we went to Brooklyn Bridge, where we burned it and scattered it to the wind. When I heard the news, I looked up his death certificate on the internet and sent for a copy, which I took with me to visit my daughter, who was living in New York City at the time. He died some time ago, at age forty-two of kidney disease related to alcoholism. He took her cash, and the last of her hope he took her belief, and her love, and he left. I know of a great place, and I'll rent it, he said. Her father said, give me the money for a deposit. She needed a new place to live, was looking for an apartment for her baby and herself. When she was seventeen and a mother herself, he came back into her life.
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