Writes Like A Girl

This is so long that it isn’t even about yesterday any more because it took so long to write.   It’s more an essay than a blog post but the events brought up so much emotion it took a while to write it all down.

I began my account of the notable events of the day in the paragraph that follows but having read D’s account I have decided to approach it in a different manner.

 It was easier to get up this morning than I had anticipated. D was still in bed when I made my way down the hall to the kitchen to make coffee and feed the cats.  Since I had to wash all the espresso parts and to go cups D was up by the time I reentered the bedroom with coffee in hand.  Having skipped the shower D was already dressed.  Reaching for the shower knob I told her I would get ready as quickly as possible. With no wardrobe quandary the biggest hold ups were  getting my computer together and …

That was as far as I made it last night because I could not stay awake.  D was still typing busily when I gave up and instead focused what little energy I had on making myself ready for bed.  As I sat down and made all my many adjustments in an absurd attempt to make myself comfortable so that I could write this, I could hear D in the kitchen putting the dishes away.  She spends so much of her time and energy taking care of me, protecting me.  It is in her nature to protect me, as it is with any one she loves, even when it is not possible.  There are things that no one can save me from.  The very idea of that wounds her deeply I think.

 Last week I spoke to my mom and she told me that the house, my childhood home, the one that I had lived in from the age of four until I moved away to college, the one that I returned to for holidays and family gatherings, the one that burned and took with it in that fire so many of those things that held memories of my life and my family, things that had been in my family for years, the house that in my adult life I returned frequently to so I could play with my nieces and nephew and to participate in their lives, that house was being foreclosed on in just a short time.   I knew it was coming but now I know exactly when.   Many of my memories from that house are painful.  Awful.  Horrid.  Many are happy, funny, pleasant reminders of the days when I felt love and hope for the future.  In the past three years all of those people, my family, that shared in those memories, have for one reason or many become distant from me.  Either by their own choosing or mine or by circumstances neither of us could control.  My family has been shattered.  Broken into many pieces and scattered all around.  Over these past years each of those people, that now are distant, have hurt me in large and small ways, intentionally and inadvertently.  Now the place that we had in common, some of us for more than thirty years, will be shortly removed from our future and relegated to our history.  In our here and now it has become a battleground. 

 A year ago I lived with my sister and when that came to a horrid and ugly end she moved in with my parents, two miles away.  Frankly I was shocked that Mom would allow her to live under the same roof as they have never really gotten along well.  Tthe longer they have known each other the greater the enmity between them.  When my sister, Kelli, and I ceased to share space she attacked me verbally with fantastic energy and wretched words.  Since that time I had seen her only once, at the memorial service for Daddy’s mother.  Some of my things from the house Kelli and I had lived in had been taken by Mom to her house, the subject of the previous paragraph.  Between Kelli’s presence and my health issues I had not retrieved the things.  During the months that followed my abrupt departure from cohabitation with my sister I had been moving things from there to my new place of residence in bits and pieces.  When I was in the area I would stop by and load as many things as would either fit in my car or I could manage before becoming exhausted.  A couple of trips included D or Daddy helping me by carrying and driving their vehicles which had much more space.  There were several boxes left when the house was cleaned out and Mom grabbed up some things she thought I might be attached to.  I don’t really know when that happened but Mom mentioned it to me a while back but at the time I was experiencing great difficulty driving, and remembering things, and with all the turmoil going on at my own house at the time it didn’t seem that high on the priority list.

 Not many months after Kelli moved into the house Mom took Julia (my youngest niece, whom my mother has reared since she was five months old) and moved out.  This is a long enough story without my explaining why my mother, a very accomplished system’s analyst is now broke and working at Wal Mart, but suffice it to say she is and has been in grave need of money.  From the time she left she knew that it was but a matter of time until the house was foreclosed on, therefore she planned to have a substantial yard sale before the bank took the house.  To that end she had been discussing what needed to happen before the sale with Daddy asking him to remove whatever things he wanted so that the sale could be successful.  Months went by.  When Mom left the house,  my parents finally decided that it was time to end their 32 year marriage.  They have not even liked each other for well over a decade.  During their marriage one of the things Daddy did to piss Mom off was to procrastinate.  Partly because he just does and partly because it drove her ape shit crazy kind of nuts.  So true to form Dad has put off making ready for the sale.  Mom really needs the money.  Dad knows this.  Mom gets psycho about money.  Dad knows this.  I lacked some crucial knowledge when I was thinking about what to do about my things that were at the war zone house.

My main thought process had to do with my sister and did not take my parents into account at all.  What I was thinking was that there were things there, not but a few boxes, that were meaningful to me.  Over the years I have lost much.  Over the past three years the losses have been immense and I did not want to add these things to the absurdly long list  just because Kelli was there.  That felt like letting her win.  Many of the things I have endured including many of the capacious and painful losses have been a result of my sister’s doing.  Frankly, I would be damned if I was going to lose anything else at her hand.  During the short drive to the house from where D and I had been I spoke to both of my parents about Kelli’s presence there.  Daddy explained that he had made her promise not to be rude or start anything with me, or D, while we were there.  And, by the way, he expected the same of me.  As if.  When have I been the instigator?  Uh, almost never in all my years and why in the hell would I start now, stiff and in pain often needing assistance to walk.  How absurd.  It was a demonstration of his understanding of my nature and current health.

 My intention was to give the things a quick sort, grab the items I wanted and get the hell out of there.  Mom showed me to the cache of mementos and I began to sort.  Dad went to retrieve a box and I think D went with him.  The house was a wreck.  The sale was supposed to begin on Thursday,  I think (it was Monday) and Mom was standing there complaining to me about the condition of the house and reported a comment Daddy had made that they should begin the sale that day.  The place was in no condition to have a sale.  I kept sorting.  By the time D returned I was about done.  It occurred to me later how totally fucked up my family culture was, and my up bringing because while there was yelling between my family members I had not really notice and was not terribly disturbed by it until my Dad raised his voice to a thunderous volume and ‘told’ my mother to get the fuck out.  Since I was not in the room I am not certain of the order of events but I heard someone slap someone.  D informed me that Mom hit my Dad in the face.  I was already moving toward the door when she came in and informed me we needed to get the hell out of there this instant and she scooped up both boxes, though I offered to carry one – the light one of course.  Following her to the front door I did not even glance around.  Backing out of the drive way I watched as my mother kept going even though D had paused to check for oncoming cars.  Being familiar with Mom’s rages I told D she needed to move quickly, Mom was not concerned with oncoming traffic, or us for that matter.

 As we put distance between ourselves and the insanity I was amazingly calm.  More accustomed to such scenes I suppose.  Anger and anxiety come later for me.  Probably a self defense mechanism I learned over the years.   At some point later that afternoon D got quiet and said, “I want to ask you a question.”  Her manner and tone gave me pause.  “Okay,” I replied tentatively.   “Did your Mom ever hit you like that?”  “No,”  I said, “she only did it verbally.”  The fact that Mom’s abuse was not physical made it take me much longer to realize I was being abused.  No one ever saw my scars and asked, “How did that happen?”  My best friend’s dad would ‘spank’ her, ( too hard, too long and for too many things) or smack her across the face, even this was at the time difficult for me to recognize.  It was a time when parents were rarely questioned about how, or how much, they disciplined their children.  I was an adult before I began to question the way my mother reared me.  I had been an adult for a long time before I judged her ways to be abusive.  It did not take me nearly as long to figure out that I’d had a fucked up difficult childhood but my home life seemed fairly normal to me, as normal as a child’s life could be who was being reared by their dad and stepmom, in 1977. 

 Growing up I found it difficult to cope with not knowing what I would get into trouble for each day when Mom came home from work. There might be no trouble at all she could, in fact, be happy and kind, but we never knew.  How was I to know that the things my mom said to me were not normal?  Everyone yelled once in while, right?  Besides  it could have been much worse, that was for certain, because that was something Mom was very clear about.

Being in that house with Mom, Dad and Kelli (and D), reminded me of my childhood because that’s who was there everyday when I was growing up.  When I was a kid my parents did not yell at each other.  Not in front of us at least.  Mostly they yelled at Kelli.  Not that I did not hear my share of chastising and admonitions whether deserved or not but I never heard as  much of it as Kelli did, not by a long shot.  Yesterday Mom did yell at Kelli and at Daddy.  She did not yell at me but it wasn’t long after the incident that Julia called and insisted that I needed to call Mom.  Hesitating I said I was in a store, that I was not doing so well my self and that I would “see what I could do”.  For some reason she latched onto that phrase and flung it back at me with heat and venom, with volume and tone to match.  I told her that Mom had nearly hit us with her van. “Well that should tell you that she needs comforting,” she shot back.  At some point she hung up on me, which was fine as far as I was concerned.  I get that she is 17 and Mom has been her strongest influence but it struck me as completely fucked up that her response to Mom’s complete disregard for D and me,  was that I should regard it without focus on myself and my well being (D’s too) and instead be concerned only about Mom.  Uh, sweetheart you must not have received the memo, I quit that song and dance three years ago and have taken all the verbal (written or otherwise) abuse I was ever going to take on that account.

 Just a few days ago I had a tentative relationship with my mom, one that had been utterly destroyed and then slowly and therefore only partially rebuilt with extreme hesitancy on my part.  Until that call  I still had a decent relationship with Julia who is as much a sister as a niece to me, having had the same mom.  While I have not had a major blow out with Daddy I have decided that my policy about one sided relationships does in fact apply to him and therefore if he was not willing to take some responsibility by initiating contact in some way at least some of the time that I would not see very much of him because I refused to be the only one calling.  He does not call me except on the rare occasion he is returning my call and I don’t call much at all.  Taking into account the situation with Kelli and Amariah, my eldest niece, and the fact the Seth, Kelli’s eldest son, never would allow me to get close to him, my family is gone.  They are the family of my past.  Aubrey, though I did not know it at the time, was the first of my ‘chosen’ family.  Of course he is blood and did not choose me, but he seems to like me well enough. 

On Sunday nights D and I get together with some friends of ours and have dinner at each other’s houses.  On occasion we move this gathering to a different night of the week, which is fine, as long as we get together.  These women, our home girlz, they are our family.  All my life I have wanted a family that had traditions, a family whose members stood by each other, who gave to each other, who loved each other without selfishness or condition.  I know it is asking a lot.  I was beginning to think it was asking too much.  Our little group doesn’t have much history, yet, but I am hopeful again.  I have people to cook for again, to be there for again but this time it is different.  This time, they are there for me.