I’ve gotten myself into a state right now and I don’t think I’m going to be able to let it go unless I write about it.
I have already gone about lashing out in a completely inappropriate way. Who me? Which included a tantrum where I threw a spoon, did some yelling stormed out of the apartment and laid on my back in the storage locker for over an hour in my boots, toque and winter jacket because I had no real destination. That was yesterday, today I thought I felt better but found myself overwhelmed by Twitter and FLLLLLIPPED! Problem is, yes, I have a temper and yes I over react easily but I’m obviously hurtin’ pretty bad to lash out over what I did, and I’ll leave that at that.
I spend more time than you’d probably think, analyzing the stuff I’ve written on here about my family life over the years. I rarely delete posts, because I stand by my feelings even in anger. But every now and then I’ll read a personal post complaining about someone’s family but they feel bad complaining they don’t want to embarrass their family, or hurt them. And my first thought is always holy fuck that is nice of them; I literally drag my parents over the coals maybe I should take some posts down. But then I’ll give it a second thought, and my second thought is generally something to the affect of wishing I genuinely felt bad, wishing the stuff I write about my parents wasn’t true, that it isn’t so intertwined in every part of my being that if I wasn’t honest and open about how the things they do and don’t do affect me then I wouldn’t be being honest with myself.
Since they left and I wrote about the fabulous send off my father gave me things are not getting better, they are in fact getting worse. The funny thing to me is that I know my dad thinks he can hang this paid once a year trip to Bali bullshit over my head and I’ll shut up. Too bad I don’t give a fuck about going to Bali. Adam and I both agree we aren’t missing anything we never had; it isn’t like we’ve been there. I don’t write things about them to be mean on purpose, this is my life, this is the shit they do and what I’m left with. It doesn’t make me feel good exposing my family this way, but it’s my life and yet again I’m letting my asshole father get to me and it’s spilling out into the life I’m working really hard at building where I don’t live up to every bad thing he says and thinks of me every time I get mad at something.
Once they arrived in Bali they did what they always do, told me what I wanted to hear but I’ve kinda had it with that approach and so I made it clear I wanted space I said at least five months. But I yearn so badly for the idealized relationship I convince myself I can have with them that I caved and emailed them during the Best of 604 because I needed their votes, but I left it until the end. Initially because we aren’t technically speaking I left them off the email that went out to friends to vote for me but then my nemesis popped up, one of those people who will never ever go away and that is fine but I’m human and it gets to me sometimes and Adam wasn’t around and it isn’t something that I talk about openly very often and so I emailed my mom.
Now, I understand that they are feeling like I’m being all ME ME ME ME ME ME ME right now, and I am, because THEY are the ones who left. They pulled this bullshit when they moved us from Ontario to British Columbia too, always bitching about the family in the east, like seriously WHY should they talk to you first when you left. And this time, when they left me, they couldn’t just say they had decided to retire to Bali, they threw in a farce of an excuse saying “if you and Adam were going to have children we wouldn’t be going so far away”. Right and I control the weather by holding my tits.
My mother did vote for me and did leave a comment on the post, I thought they were going to be at a computer sooner than they were, and I know it is a stretch to think they’d be proud of me having won an award for a personal blog that has been largely about them and about them in a negative light, but there was no further correspondence just the comment no email.
And I guess because of that, it reminded me that I had received the generic Christmas letter in the mail that they didn’t even sign, they simply typed mom and dad, that and other things about the letter had my spidey senses tingling but I decided not to deal with it and tossed the letter across the room and onto the table where it landed under the sewing machine and out of sight. When I finally showed it to Adam he got to the bottom of the first page and burst out laughing, hard laughing, I was puzzled and asked why, he asked if I had read the letter and read out the following:
Since arriving we have found out about an orphanage and Karen and I have fallen in love with the most wonderful children we have ever met. We go there one afternoon a week and teach them songs, English and do crafts with them. It is very rewarding for us and the children just love our visits.
When he finished reading he said the most WONDERFUL children we have EVER met, not you, some Indonesian orphans they just met – love at first sight.
Adam didn’t know it at the time, but those few moments really hurt me. And I held it in until yesterday. Yesterday I let it flow that I felt like he was laughing at me, and that I knew he didn’t mean to hurt me but it did, because I’m obviously not their favourite only child any more. All I remember about being taught how to read is being yelled at by both of them because I had a very hard time memorizing the word ARE. And both of my parents were involved in Scouting, so they did their crafts there. I didn’t want to think about how much it hurts they sent that letter to the entire family. I’ve asked my mother a million times now why she was never a Brownie leader or a Girl Guide leader or a Pathfinder leader, she was ALWAYS in Scouting. She has no answer for me, she apparently doesn’t know, I ask now just for fun because I know she’ll never just say because I wanted to be with your father and not you. I know it is partly a shot because we aren’t having kids but aside from that, who fucking writes something like that, I’m happy that they are helping out kids that is fantastic, but how dare they tell the entire family how fucking wonderful they are when they spent five minutes with me growing up and are STILL mentally abusing me.
I know now more than ever, that this book by John Bowlby called Attachment that my shrink gave me to read is what I need right now. He is right, I am not going to learn the lessons I need to learn about my attachment issues from my parents, I’m beating a dead horse. I understand that birth families are important, I spend a lot of time feeling guilty because I have two parents, still married when almost every single person in my inner circle has lost a parent, fuck it kills me to be surrounded by people who would give anything for one more day with their loved one and each day I draw further and further away from my parents and even though I know I should continue to work on it, it isn’t up to me anymore, this is taking me down a path I do not want to go back down and started to head down yesterday and I’m not going to let them do this to me. I can’t do it anymore.
