Dear Dreams: Shut the Fuck Up.
I had a dream Sunday night. I was chilling in my apartment fairly late in the evening and the doorbell rant. I opened the door, and my dad was standing there with three women. The three women were my ex-step mother, my ex-step-mother's mother (whom I met literally once), and my ex-step-mother's grandmother (whom I never met). My dad was basically acting like we were all old friends, even though my step-mother and I... weren't, to put it mildly. I grudging let them all in, and we had an incredibly tense but civil visit. Nothing really worth mentioning happened until they were all leaving. I was waving them out the door and got polite enough goodbyes from my ex-step-mother and her mother, but as her grandmother was walking out, she turned and grabbed me and shook my hand and said "It was nice meeting you, even if you are the reason Mary left Brad."
I burst into tears on the spot and completely flipped a shit. My ex-step-mother and her mom looked horrified but didn't really do or say anything (It was more of a "I can't believe she said that!" look than a "I can't believe she thinks that!" look.) and my dad immediately started making excuses, saying that wasn't true, but I knew he was lying and told them all to get the fuck out of my apartment and leave me alone. My ex-step-mother's grandmother just couldn't believe I was that upset and wanted to know why. I turned and said "You told me that I was the reason why my paren-why my dad and Mary got divorced and you don't know why I'm upset?! Just get out!" And then finally they all did go away, and I woke up.
And it's still fucking eating me.
So, full disclosure: I am the reason why Mary left my dad. And no, I'm not saying that out of childish, stereotypical suspicion that all children are supposed to have (more on this later) that they are the reason why their parents' marriages didn't work out. I'm saying this because my dad told me that she'd said I was the reason she was leaving him. Well, actually, I was told she said that my dad's "kids" were the reason she was leaving him, but 1. It was not exactly a fucking secret four years earlier when they first started dating that my dad had kids, and 2. My little brother was an angel. We all knew she meant me. I was the manipulative bitch (true story-she called me that to my mother) who didn't understand that it was my duty to the family to dig her a moat in 100 degree Colorado weather (also true story) and play full-time, unpaid babysitter to the three younger children in the house because being a parent is hard. I was so very ungrateful for the love-seat in the library that I was allowed to sleep on, hiding beneath a pile of blankets because every time someone wanted to go outside they had to go through my "room," and they always turned on every fucking light along the way.
By the way, her defense for telling my mother that I was a manipulative bitch was that I would often ask my father for a ride to the library after we fought. To recap: My father and I fought almost daily over petty shit like whether or not it was my job to dig his girlfriend a fucking moat in the middle of a southern Colorado summer, and sometimes I would later ask him to take me to the library. That made me, the twelve-year-old daughter of the man she was asking for favors, a manipulative bitch.
So, if you haven't caught on by now, I don't particularly like this woman. I've never particularly liked this woman. The weekend she left my father, I (thirteen-years-old) spent two days in our new two-bedroom rental cradling my crying father, and I felt guilty as shit because even though he was clearly devastated, I felt relieved, and even though I hadn't exactly planned for her to leave him, I still knew I'd gotten what I wanted at my father's expense, and... well, actually, that was kind of the beginning of my self-injuring. (But I don't want to make it sound like that was the one and only reason why I was self-injuring. It's not. My life was not that great at thirteen-years-old. Let's... let's not go down that road right now, though.) So... uh... I feel like I was planning to end this on a much more "Not a single fuck was given," note, but I feel like I just kind of proved the opposite. Moving on...
That weird little slip I made where I almost said "parents"-I have no idea where that came from. I don't remember ever blaming myself for my parents' divorce. I do remember my dad accusing me (nine-years-old) of being happy about the divorce, which was either completely untrue or, if slightly true, only the result of seeing my mother happier. My little brother and I were both deeply upset by the divorce, like most children are, and since I'd been raised, and at that time still was, evangelical, and after the divorce was finalized I remember spending a great deal of time trying to find "loopholes" in the "no divorce" rule so that my parents wouldn't go to Hell. But... no, I don't think it ever occurred to me that my parents wouldn't have gotten divorced if I or my brother had done something differently. I mean, even though I was shocked to actually hear it (It's hard to even imagine that divorce is a "thing" at eight-years-old if you've been raised in evangelical subculture. I think I just knew that it was bad, and somehow I was under the impression that I wouldn't be allowed to see my father anymore after my mom divorced him.) I'd been aware for years that my parents didn't really get along. It was hard to miss. One of my earliest memories is my mom almost leaving my dad when we lived in North Dakota! And I still remember being eight-years-old and lying in bed at night, listening to them yell. And sometimes my mom would try to end the argument by running into my room and trying to lock my dad out. She punched my light-switch once and broke it. (That was, thankfully, about as "physical" as their fighting ever got.)
So. Yeah. Um. This entry doesn't really have any closure.
I really don't feel any better for writing this. Funny. It's probably the lack of closure.
I burst into tears on the spot and completely flipped a shit. My ex-step-mother and her mom looked horrified but didn't really do or say anything (It was more of a "I can't believe she said that!" look than a "I can't believe she thinks that!" look.) and my dad immediately started making excuses, saying that wasn't true, but I knew he was lying and told them all to get the fuck out of my apartment and leave me alone. My ex-step-mother's grandmother just couldn't believe I was that upset and wanted to know why. I turned and said "You told me that I was the reason why my paren-why my dad and Mary got divorced and you don't know why I'm upset?! Just get out!" And then finally they all did go away, and I woke up.
And it's still fucking eating me.
So, full disclosure: I am the reason why Mary left my dad. And no, I'm not saying that out of childish, stereotypical suspicion that all children are supposed to have (more on this later) that they are the reason why their parents' marriages didn't work out. I'm saying this because my dad told me that she'd said I was the reason she was leaving him. Well, actually, I was told she said that my dad's "kids" were the reason she was leaving him, but 1. It was not exactly a fucking secret four years earlier when they first started dating that my dad had kids, and 2. My little brother was an angel. We all knew she meant me. I was the manipulative bitch (true story-she called me that to my mother) who didn't understand that it was my duty to the family to dig her a moat in 100 degree Colorado weather (also true story) and play full-time, unpaid babysitter to the three younger children in the house because being a parent is hard. I was so very ungrateful for the love-seat in the library that I was allowed to sleep on, hiding beneath a pile of blankets because every time someone wanted to go outside they had to go through my "room," and they always turned on every fucking light along the way.
By the way, her defense for telling my mother that I was a manipulative bitch was that I would often ask my father for a ride to the library after we fought. To recap: My father and I fought almost daily over petty shit like whether or not it was my job to dig his girlfriend a fucking moat in the middle of a southern Colorado summer, and sometimes I would later ask him to take me to the library. That made me, the twelve-year-old daughter of the man she was asking for favors, a manipulative bitch.
So, if you haven't caught on by now, I don't particularly like this woman. I've never particularly liked this woman. The weekend she left my father, I (thirteen-years-old) spent two days in our new two-bedroom rental cradling my crying father, and I felt guilty as shit because even though he was clearly devastated, I felt relieved, and even though I hadn't exactly planned for her to leave him, I still knew I'd gotten what I wanted at my father's expense, and... well, actually, that was kind of the beginning of my self-injuring. (But I don't want to make it sound like that was the one and only reason why I was self-injuring. It's not. My life was not that great at thirteen-years-old. Let's... let's not go down that road right now, though.) So... uh... I feel like I was planning to end this on a much more "Not a single fuck was given," note, but I feel like I just kind of proved the opposite. Moving on...
That weird little slip I made where I almost said "parents"-I have no idea where that came from. I don't remember ever blaming myself for my parents' divorce. I do remember my dad accusing me (nine-years-old) of being happy about the divorce, which was either completely untrue or, if slightly true, only the result of seeing my mother happier. My little brother and I were both deeply upset by the divorce, like most children are, and since I'd been raised, and at that time still was, evangelical, and after the divorce was finalized I remember spending a great deal of time trying to find "loopholes" in the "no divorce" rule so that my parents wouldn't go to Hell. But... no, I don't think it ever occurred to me that my parents wouldn't have gotten divorced if I or my brother had done something differently. I mean, even though I was shocked to actually hear it (It's hard to even imagine that divorce is a "thing" at eight-years-old if you've been raised in evangelical subculture. I think I just knew that it was bad, and somehow I was under the impression that I wouldn't be allowed to see my father anymore after my mom divorced him.) I'd been aware for years that my parents didn't really get along. It was hard to miss. One of my earliest memories is my mom almost leaving my dad when we lived in North Dakota! And I still remember being eight-years-old and lying in bed at night, listening to them yell. And sometimes my mom would try to end the argument by running into my room and trying to lock my dad out. She punched my light-switch once and broke it. (That was, thankfully, about as "physical" as their fighting ever got.)
So. Yeah. Um. This entry doesn't really have any closure.
I really don't feel any better for writing this. Funny. It's probably the lack of closure.