Note: I started this post back in June!!
I have to say I was surprised this morning to see a comment from anyone other than Shari and Tammy! I do completely appreciate the feedback and it was funny, last night I was thinking about how I really needed to clarify some things because I do make DP out to be the most horrible person. And I do have some responsibility and fault for how bad things have gotten. This is my private blog so of course all my venting is going to be slanted in my favor and of course my side only!
Let me first say that I grew up in a very dysfunctional environment. On the outside we looked like your typical middle class, two parents working, go to church on Sunday family. Behind those walls was something totally different. And as I've gotten older and more family secrets have come out, we were even more dysfunctional than I realized as a child.
Here's what I knew as a kid:
My dad was an only child and quite spoiled, although middle class. His mother had 7 miscarriages before he was born. My grandparents were born in the USA right after their parents came over from Quebec and the
Azore Islands. They were poor and my
grandfather had to go to work after 8
th grade. My grandmother did complete high school. They worked in the textile mills. My grandmother died of cancer when I was 5. I remember her like it was yesterday. She will remain the only person in my life who has ever loved me unconditionally. My grandfather died when I was 15. I was told that my dad was often unkind and disrespectful to his parents. He was ashamed of them. Other relatives have always told me what good people they were and I remember that about them. My dad goofed off in high school, had to go to prep school to get into college and then did not do that well and never got a degree. He did go on to have a successful career with the same company for over 25 years.
My mom came from a pretty broken up family. My grandmother's parents divorced and the girls stayed with the mom and the boys went with the dad who remarried. He did quite well for himself but the mom remained poor and bitter. My grandmother did not grow up seeing her brothers or her dad even though they lived in the next town. My great grandmother was drunk and crazy and when my grandmother was 10 great grandmother tried to kill her with the butcher knife. My grandmother grew up and married an alcoholic and had
a lot of kids and turned into an alcoholic herself. My mom grew up very poor. She met my dad when she was very young and they got married and had 2 kids - me and my brother. My mom did go to college and she was a teacher. She stayed home when we were born and eventually went back to work when my brother went to school.
My parents were never happy together and I always knew that. I remember the fighting and the tension. My mom was a
perfectionist and very regimented. Nothing was ever good enough for her. She was very strict. We were middle class, nothing fancy, but the bills were paid, we had food and clothing. But on the inside we were living with someone scarred by her own childhood - she was the classic "adult child of an alcoholic" syndrome - if you know anything about that. She was the caretaker in her family. I never had a good
relationship with my parents. I never understood my mom and why she was so strict with me. I was a good kid. But my mom controlled everything about my life from my clothes to my hairstyle to what I could and could not do. I did not date or go to parties or participate in any school activities because I had to take care of my little brother after school when she went back to work. If I got a B it was why didn't I get an A. I could go on and on but it is enough to say that it was an extremely emotionally abusive environment.
As an adult I learned:
When I was very small my dad did some bad things and my mom, grandmother and 2 aunts knew about it. Nothing was really ever done about it. My dad blamed my mom and on the advice of a priest my father was "
forgiven" and life went on. Many, many years later my dad left my mom for a while and one aunt decided to tell the whole family about the bad things my dad did. This is when I found out that my dad was a pedophile and some memories of what he may have tried to do to me came back. There was
a lot of ugliness at that time. I also found out that my mom's dad had done some bad things too. I found out during a heart to heart with my mom and Verna (we met with my mom to try to resolve some of the issues). I found out that my grandfather forced himself on my mom when she was younger because my grandmother had kicked him out of the bedroom after the 6
th baby and refused to ever have sex with him again. I learned more too about the effects abuse as a child can have on people and although it doesn't make the bad stuff go away, it helps me to understand everyone in my family. I learned that I should have been protected as a child and that some bad stuff may have happened to me as well. I've been though years of therapy and have
a lot of anger and distrust for the family that did not protect me. I am very much like my mother. In fact years ago I became friends with someone who is a therapist and when I told her my life story about 2 years after we met - she said to me "I always wondered who the alcoholic was in your family". She was very surprised it was my grandparents and not my parents for I too have the classic symptoms like my mom. It just goes to show the very profound effect my mom had on me.
As an adult: I've never had
a lot of friends, never been good at
relationships with people. Just like my mom. Growing up I never had to share a room, clothes, anything at all. I spent a lot of time in my room with the door closed. I always liked girls but was
embarrassed by it. I did not have any good gay role models and I tried very hard to fit in and be normal. I went to an all girls high school and college where people were very into boys. In college I dated a bit when friends set me up and at 19 was the victim of date rape. Every guy I ever dated only wanted sex. I never dated anyone who was interested in me so that just added to my insecurities and feelings of worthlessness from childhood. I still had no good gay role models and refused to personally acknowledge my attraction to women. When I was 23 I met a guy who actually liked me enough to not try and have sex with me right away. He seemed safe and I thought he would protect me so I married him. It was what was expected of me and I just wanted to be like everyone else in the world and I wanted to have kids. Well he was not a bad person but he was lazy and immature and eventually, although we lived together and were married, we lived separate lives, had separate bedrooms, etc. We each did what we wanted to do and sometimes did things together. It was like being married to your best friend. It wasn't awful, but I wanted more. Through therapy for other issues I began to open up about my other feelings and was eventually able to accept and embrace the fact that I was gay. I have only been in 2 long term relationships with a woman, DP being the second one.
Written today: So fast forward to the present and I'm left with a mom I do feel sorry for yet am filled with so much anger that she left me at the risk of suffering the same horrible abuse she suffered. I'm left with a father I hate, who has Alzheimer's now and who I never had the strength to confront and now it's too late. The same will be true of my mom because all she wants now is to say poor me. She'll never own the fact that she subjected her children to extreme danger never mind all the other kids my father ever got near. I hate my whole family, yet feel some pity for them because they are sick. It's so funny, from the outside we are normal. But when you look deep, we are the stuff of Jerry Springer shows. I'm so
embarrassed by it. I'm not my parents, yet I feel I wear the scarlet letter of my family. I feel used and damaged and broken. And so long as my family stays in my life, I will be held
captive by the sins of the past. I really feel that the only way to truly live and heal and be happy is to break free. And guilt, some sick, twisted, Catholic school girl, honor thy father and thy mother, crap that was force fed into my head for a lifetime (3rd grade through college and Sunday school during the 3 years I was not in Catholic school) keeps me from truly being free.
And the sad thing is that it is also going to kill my relationship with DP because if I could just let go and live some of our problems would become non-issues. Of course other problems would still be there. I'm not so stupid as to think that life would be perfect "if I could only change this one thing". But it would allow me to finally live and breath free and unchained and that would help me to be a better partner. Because believe me when I say that so much of my life force is sucked up by this past that haunts me.
So wow, there, I did it. I've been saying for a long time that I want my blog to be an honest place. That I don't want to care if people read it and know my horror. I learned in therapy that I will never get better if I am not honest with myself. And this is what this blog is. If it shocks you or makes you think I am a bad person, I can't worry about that. I'm not writing to an audience. I'm writing to myself. In my dreams this would be a happy blog, one that anyone could read. But maybe that blog will come later. The one where I post the happy family pictures and updates with funny little stories. But this blog, this is my heart and soul. This is where I hurt and heal.
