I used to be very close to my extended family growing up. There were a lot of us 'cousins' running around, getting into trouble, laughing, playing, swapping clothes, having sleep overs, shopping, making hideouts and camps together, and generally growing up together.
But over the years as our lives have gone in different directions...we've grown apart and the occasions in which we get together or talk have become restricted to marriages, christenings and unfortunately funerals. it happens to us all and its something I repeatedly berate myself for and often vow to change with good intention but...life somehow gets in the way and yet another year passes by.
That said I finally got my act together and called my cousin D - I am Godmother to her daughter J - to catch up. We happily filled each other in on what's going on in our lives for the better part of nearly 45 minutes before she passed on some incredibly distressing ... I don't know what to call it...a bit of gossip, information, a rumour... about my father.
I don't talk to him and nor do I have any contact with his side of the family; they are not people that I care about or love and I don't have any interest in their lives, so there is a part of me that questions whether this topic is even worthy of blogging about...BUT I am sickened by what she's told me and I have to talk to someone. I want if off my chest, out of head before I sleep and banished to somewhere where I never have to face it or deal with it again. I want it gone.
I am not going to repeat what she told me, I can't bring myself to say it out loud out of a mixture of horror and shame. I know only bad things and have bad memories of my father so I have nothing good or complimentary to say about him. To be brutally honest - and this isn't my anger, or hurt, or even my hatred of him talking but a plain fact - I don't know of a single soul who has anything nice or good to say about him. I do not know of a single person who would or could utter a word in his defence.
Regardless, what she told me reeks of 'he said - she said' and there hasn't been any mention of proof. I'm inclined toward impassioned disinterest which makes me scoff in contempt and disbelief at the drama of it. On the outside. On the inside its a great deal more complicated than just a reaction of mocking contempt. I really don't want to believe that someone that sick, that disgusting, that twisted is my father. I don't want to be related, to have been fathered by someone ... that repulsive, that degenerate, that odious, that ...wrong on so many levels. I feel tainted and sullied by my genes.
I've spent years attempting to distance myself from my childhood. From him. Yet at moments like this I feel like there is no escape. No matter how hard I try to cut him, to cauterise him and anything associated with him from my life I discover its impossible.
I don't know what is worse...that I have heard spoken out loud - true or not - yet another of his ... I really don't know that to call it, I am totally at a loss ...or that I am not in any way surprised and can quite easily believe it of him.
Hearing her tell me has raised so many questions...can he really be that sick and twisted?...why would someone lie about it?...what does it say that so many are said to believe he is guilty?
I wish I'd never heard and I wish it didn't matter to me either which way.
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Starting with the Last First
I had a conversation with my older sister L at the weekend that has been haunting me ever since.
I keep turning it over and over in mind; recalling the expression she wore, listening to her tone, paying attention to her choice of words and being mindful of what she chose not to say - the subtext.
We were driving - either to or from Lakeside to shop for my birthday present - and I recounted a conversation that I'd had with our sister T concerning mum and Christmas day. T had told me mum didn't talk for about 4 hours after I had called from the States to wish them all a Happy Christmas. She jokingly told me I'd ruined Christmas. T's words stung.
L told me mum was worried that I wasn't having a good time in the States with L's family - knowing the mother-in-law can be...prickly toward me - and was worried that I didn't want to be there.
My response was defensive - when am I not? - I told her about how the mother-in-law can and during our last visit in August very much had - been insulting, sniping, nasty, vindictive, humiliating and manipulative. I gave her an example of J's publicly humiliating me.
L's response was to listen and pause...and then tell me that if she was sensitive over everything that her partner's mother said or did to her she would be permanently sensitive. She then went on to tell me about the universal problem between mothers-sons-and their partners.
Her words stung too.
I heard all she had to say but the one word that leaped out at me was sensitive and I took it to be negative.
She could have said J was wrong to humiliate me in front of everyone or murmured something equally supportive but she didn't; she chose to label it and me as sensitive. The word by itself isn't necessarily negative but to categorise the incident and my perspective on in as sensitive is reductive. My emotions, my response to something being hurtful L has weighed, analysed and reduced down to sensitive. Oh and to a lecture that all women the world over know about the nature of the relationship between mothers and their sons and their daughter-in-laws.
So I've been thinking and dwelling on it all ...
I can appreciate that T may well have been embellishing the event - if you do the Maths LA is 8 hours behind the states and I called around lunch time LA time so it would have been 8 in the evening in the UK. So if mum, like T said, didn't talk for 4 hours it would have meant that they were up until midnight and there is no way that my family would still have been up at midnight. That however is neither here or there.
It is true that I wasn't particularly looking forward to spending Christmas in the States with his family and I did confess as much to mum. My confession was double edged; firstly it was the truth and secondly I have always felt torn between my family and my husband L, the happiness of one always seems to come at the cost of the others. Therefore I may have unintentionally got the point of my reluctance across too well.
Even if I didn't have the propensity to over-analyse everything I'm an English Literature grad student, taking things about and applying a magnifying glass to minute details and paying attention to the ripple affect surrounding relationships is what I've been trained to do.
Now all I have apparently have to learn is the ability to stop trying to please everyone, to stop being sensitive and to exercise a little censorship.
I'm going to start with the last first.
I keep turning it over and over in mind; recalling the expression she wore, listening to her tone, paying attention to her choice of words and being mindful of what she chose not to say - the subtext.
We were driving - either to or from Lakeside to shop for my birthday present - and I recounted a conversation that I'd had with our sister T concerning mum and Christmas day. T had told me mum didn't talk for about 4 hours after I had called from the States to wish them all a Happy Christmas. She jokingly told me I'd ruined Christmas. T's words stung.
L told me mum was worried that I wasn't having a good time in the States with L's family - knowing the mother-in-law can be...prickly toward me - and was worried that I didn't want to be there.
My response was defensive - when am I not? - I told her about how the mother-in-law can and during our last visit in August very much had - been insulting, sniping, nasty, vindictive, humiliating and manipulative. I gave her an example of J's publicly humiliating me.
L's response was to listen and pause...and then tell me that if she was sensitive over everything that her partner's mother said or did to her she would be permanently sensitive. She then went on to tell me about the universal problem between mothers-sons-and their partners.
Her words stung too.
I heard all she had to say but the one word that leaped out at me was sensitive and I took it to be negative.
She could have said J was wrong to humiliate me in front of everyone or murmured something equally supportive but she didn't; she chose to label it and me as sensitive. The word by itself isn't necessarily negative but to categorise the incident and my perspective on in as sensitive is reductive. My emotions, my response to something being hurtful L has weighed, analysed and reduced down to sensitive. Oh and to a lecture that all women the world over know about the nature of the relationship between mothers and their sons and their daughter-in-laws.
So I've been thinking and dwelling on it all ...
I can appreciate that T may well have been embellishing the event - if you do the Maths LA is 8 hours behind the states and I called around lunch time LA time so it would have been 8 in the evening in the UK. So if mum, like T said, didn't talk for 4 hours it would have meant that they were up until midnight and there is no way that my family would still have been up at midnight. That however is neither here or there.
It is true that I wasn't particularly looking forward to spending Christmas in the States with his family and I did confess as much to mum. My confession was double edged; firstly it was the truth and secondly I have always felt torn between my family and my husband L, the happiness of one always seems to come at the cost of the others. Therefore I may have unintentionally got the point of my reluctance across too well.
Even if I didn't have the propensity to over-analyse everything I'm an English Literature grad student, taking things about and applying a magnifying glass to minute details and paying attention to the ripple affect surrounding relationships is what I've been trained to do.
Now all I have apparently have to learn is the ability to stop trying to please everyone, to stop being sensitive and to exercise a little censorship.
I'm going to start with the last first.
Friday, 7 January 2011
Faking It
I don't know if its the jet lag - I've had a grand total of 4 hours sleep - or L going away so soon or even a combination of both (quite likely) but I'm well and truly in a funk.
I'm anxious. I'm withdrawn. My chest and back are tight with tension. I'm binge eating rubbish food. I have zero motivation or energy and I have absolutely no desire to visit my mum - for her birthday - or see my sisters to receive my Christmas and birthday presents.
I don't even want to have to go through the rigmarole of faking happiness and pleasure. The thing that strikes me most, saddens me most I suppose, is how wrong that is. How wrong all of it is; feeling this way, hiding it and wanting to hide it, not wanting to see family.
I want all of the above to be nothing more than the fault of exhaustion, my ability to over analyse, and being upset that L is gone but...I don't believe that it really is.
When you cut yourself the cut hurts, it bleeds, it scabs and begins to heal and sometimes you're left with a scar but that's about it.
Why isn't it that easy when the hurt is emotional?
Why does the body, the heart, remember emotions that the mind wants to forget?
I'm anxious. I'm withdrawn. My chest and back are tight with tension. I'm binge eating rubbish food. I have zero motivation or energy and I have absolutely no desire to visit my mum - for her birthday - or see my sisters to receive my Christmas and birthday presents.
I don't even want to have to go through the rigmarole of faking happiness and pleasure. The thing that strikes me most, saddens me most I suppose, is how wrong that is. How wrong all of it is; feeling this way, hiding it and wanting to hide it, not wanting to see family.
I want all of the above to be nothing more than the fault of exhaustion, my ability to over analyse, and being upset that L is gone but...I don't believe that it really is.
When you cut yourself the cut hurts, it bleeds, it scabs and begins to heal and sometimes you're left with a scar but that's about it.
Why isn't it that easy when the hurt is emotional?
Why does the body, the heart, remember emotions that the mind wants to forget?
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
To Summarise...
So...its been a while since I was last here...blogging away, thinking out loud, musing to myself, trying to set my world straight etc
Somehow this feels like my first meeting with my therapist after we've both been away on holiday. I feel strangely awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassed, exposed and vulnerable. Like I'm unable to make eye contact.
But curbing my issues (for a while) so I can summarise...
I had a great holiday. It was fantastic to relax with L and to see him relaxing without his work head on. For 2 and a half weeks I got to see the old L; the one who let go of being organised, driven, preoccupied, controlling and exacting. The more he relaxed the taller he stood and more he smiled. Yes it is bitter sweet to know that I alone can't do that for him and that its spending time with his whole family - parents, sister and myself - that gives rise to this change but at least it happens and for that, regardless of who takes the credit, I'm thankful. My pity that it can't last far out weighs my desire to be the cause.
So much seems to have happened, to have changed while we were away yet when I try to list exactly what...its impossible to pin point precise details. Perhaps the changes are internal rather than external.
Truth be told we didn't really do much. We usually go on a little mini trip while we're there - San Francisco, San Diego... but this time we stayed around the house and just hung out. We lived in the moment and winged things, taking each day at a time.
Each day brought its own challenges and rewards like Ann's memorial service, meeting Olly the rescued puppy and new addition to the family, being hired as a editor for John and Barbara's book and being taken to Disney Land as a birthday surprise (be sure I'll blog about these separately).
New Year's Eve saw the whole family tucked up in bed and asleep by 22:30 undeniably laughable but I wouldn't change it for the world.
So, to summarise I've been gone a while and now I'm back, changed (outwardly and inwardly), with some trepidation and with a great deal of catching up to do in the blogging worlds that I follow.
Somehow this feels like my first meeting with my therapist after we've both been away on holiday. I feel strangely awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassed, exposed and vulnerable. Like I'm unable to make eye contact.
But curbing my issues (for a while) so I can summarise...
I had a great holiday. It was fantastic to relax with L and to see him relaxing without his work head on. For 2 and a half weeks I got to see the old L; the one who let go of being organised, driven, preoccupied, controlling and exacting. The more he relaxed the taller he stood and more he smiled. Yes it is bitter sweet to know that I alone can't do that for him and that its spending time with his whole family - parents, sister and myself - that gives rise to this change but at least it happens and for that, regardless of who takes the credit, I'm thankful. My pity that it can't last far out weighs my desire to be the cause.
So much seems to have happened, to have changed while we were away yet when I try to list exactly what...its impossible to pin point precise details. Perhaps the changes are internal rather than external.
Truth be told we didn't really do much. We usually go on a little mini trip while we're there - San Francisco, San Diego... but this time we stayed around the house and just hung out. We lived in the moment and winged things, taking each day at a time.
Each day brought its own challenges and rewards like Ann's memorial service, meeting Olly the rescued puppy and new addition to the family, being hired as a editor for John and Barbara's book and being taken to Disney Land as a birthday surprise (be sure I'll blog about these separately).
New Year's Eve saw the whole family tucked up in bed and asleep by 22:30 undeniably laughable but I wouldn't change it for the world.
So, to summarise I've been gone a while and now I'm back, changed (outwardly and inwardly), with some trepidation and with a great deal of catching up to do in the blogging worlds that I follow.
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