If I could go back in time, there are not many things I'd change. Mostly because you can't know how little changes might affect you, and in making changes to my past, I'd be killing myself. Which is all nonsense, as every time I see sci-fi shows where someone is faced with helping the heroes put back the past, they struggle with the knowledge that they will kill themselves in the process, and I think, "Well that's dumb. Don't they know it's better this way?" But that's not the point. Better or not, at the end, you become a new person, and whoever you would have become down that alternate timeline, whether they liked themselves or not, whether they were a good person or not, they are dead. Chances are, it was not so straightforward - everyone is a mix of good and bad, everyone likes and dislikes themselves or part of themselves at times. Maybe weathering this battle made them better and stronger, and although the whole world is better because the battle never happened, something will be missing from this version of that one person. They are dead.
If I could go back in time, I've said before that there were things about my wedding I would change. Certain things that I had fixed in my head that were unnecessary, because at the time, I was a staunch traditionalist. I still am, in my way. I debated for a long time whether to have my mom or my step-dad walk me down the aisle. My mom has been there for me forever. She's always been my primary parent. At the same time, my step-dad and I had formed a close bond, and he had been my dad for 20 years. I chose him, in my own way symbolically adopting him. I chose him.
When he walked me down the aisle, he was already cheating on my mom. He was already in the process of ruining everything. When it all came out, the world fell down around my ears - the narratives I'd built up about second chances, about religious conversion, about all kinds of things. For those reasons, I would go back and not choose him. For a while, I thought I should have chosen my mom. Now, I think, I would choose no one.
No one walks a man down the aisle. No one says, "Here, I am passing you out of my protection and into the protection of your wife. I am passing you out of my control and into the control of another." The man just stands there and someone hands him a woman. Maybe that seems like overthinking it, but traditions are built up over the course of history, over centuries of habit and necessity until only symbolism is left, and people don't think about what it means anymore, don't think beyond the triteness of the accepted narrative.
After the divorce, my mom tried to kill herself, my brother started smoking pot in secret, I started being afraid - more afraid - of Husband. And it's all better now - mom is happy now, going through a traditionally expansive and unwise, but normal, midlife crisis. My brother probably doesn't smoke pot anymore, but to be honest, I don't really care, as long as he's not doing it because family drama is just too much for him. And I'm not as frightened of Husband as I was.
I was never afraid he'd hurt me, not really. He made me wait 3 fucking years, until we were married, before he'd give up his virginity. If he ever cheated on me, I feel that would be sufficient cause for murder, but it's not something I worry about. I wasn't afraid of who he is, I was afraid of what he is - a husband. I was afraid of what he might be - a father. When my happy narrative - of losing one dad and gaining another, of not having to fall victim to traditional oedipal issues because I had a replacement role-model - fell through, suddenly the idea that I had married before my eyes were opened became very frightening. Now, there was no guarantee that I had any idea how to choose a mate. The "truth" that had somehow always been burned into me - that a man marries a woman like his mother and that a woman marries a man like her father - became the curse I had always feared it would be. That curse was part of the reason I chose my step-dad to walk me. I rejected one dad to claim another, in the hopes that the curse would pass me by, that I could somehow choose my neurosis - he was my charm against the evil eye.
Being in love makes you so vulnerable. Being married makes it worse. After 2 years, that's getting easier. Yet despite how well our relationship is going, how much I love him, how much I would marry him again in a heartbeat, the concept of marriage still terrifies me sometimes. Here I am, willingly having given one person the power to destroy me, power over me that no one else has, and I just have to trust him, that he won't do it. Given my relationship with my dads, my family background that includes only 1 lasting marriage (and that the second as well), it all seems a laughable folly. (Then again, isn't that what everyone found so sexy about Twilight - that he could destroy her and chose not to? More reasons that book is messed up.)
Anyway, on to the hard part. I've been wanting to write about this for a while, because it's gotten tied up with a number of other issues for me that I also want to talk about, but I am, at the same time, aware that it is deeply personal and uncomfortable. I suspect myself of making it public for the purpose of making it less personal, if that makes sense, but I have always been the sort of person who shares everything, so that no revelation "too personal" becomes a secret. I clothe myself in my secrets and flaws so that they can never be used to hurt me. It's not something I necessarily do consciously, but I find myself with a need to express shit, and when I think about it, this is probably the reason.
I'd appreciate it if no one who knows me personally would make a big deal of it - it's not something I'm ready to talk about with real humans, really, and if that seems odd, considering the blog post, remember that making something public makes it less private, and I don't want to have private conversations about this right now. And again, I find that too much pity or whatever starts to feel negatory - don't wish to change my past because doing so, you wish to kill me. Idk if that's weird, but I felt the need for a disclaimer.
At the same time, this blog is about me struggling, and about me growing up, and about me overthinking things. I don't necessarily think that anyone should be interested in the details of my life, but I always find it helpful to read about people who are going through this kind of rumination. Even if they come to no conclusions themselves, their musings often set off musings of my own, and their problems make me feel less alone in the world. So I try to give that back.
My parents' divorce brought up a lot of subconscious garbage for me. Things that I had tucked away to ignore or because they seemed no longer relevant began spewing up, and with them came a memory, dredged up amongst the rest of the sewage. It came in the night, as I drifted off to sleep, and kept me up for hours afterward.
In it, I am in middle school, maybe 6th or 7th grade. I am in the shower. I glance over to the wall, and see a shadow. Carefully, I turn, and there, peeking up above the curtain, is my step-dad's head. He ducks, I call his name as I hear receding footsteps. I keep calling until he decides that an appropriate pause has ensued, and he comes back in, wondering why I am calling. I ask if there's anyone in the house. He says, "no." I ask why he was in the bathroom, he says he wasn't. I ask why he took so long to come when I called, he says he didn't hear me. I finish my shower.
I don't tell anyone, although I know what I saw. He and I don't get along at this time in history. Instead of telling someone right away, I recognize that this knowledge is power. When we fight, I take a walk. I think about my power. I tell myself that if he really pisses me off, if I really want to get rid of him, I have that power. The only problem is that it will destroy my mother, so I have to wait until I am sure and certain that that is what I want. In the meantime, my power protects me, and makes me feel better when I am angry.
Once this memory comes back, things in my life that never made sense before start to make sense.
I asked for a lock on my bedroom, or at least bathroom, when I was in high school. He said, "what are you hiding?" and refused. I remember now that I had asked for the lock because he kept walking in on me naked, in either place. He always claimed it was because he grew up in a house where doors were never closed (and I have been in his mother's house, and it is true - there are odd little metal figurines holding every door back. She seems vexed that I have to move them when I sleep over, since I have trouble sleeping with a door open). He never knocks, he never developed the habit. He makes no effort to develop the habit. When he does walk in, he just stands there, looking at me. I do the same. He says he's frozen in shock, because as a child, walking in on his mother caused an ear-piercing shriek, and he's waiting for that to come, but it never does. I stand there, naked, and I don't cover myself. I tell him to get out. Sometimes I yell it, sometimes I don't. After a while, it becomes normal. Just an irritation from a clumsy, stupid man.
Occasionally, when he would hug me - always too enthusiastic, often kissing my neck in "exuberance," no matter how often I told him not to, always accompanied by his smell that I never managed to find comforting - I would feel a sudden and deep sense of danger. I would push away, frightened and revolted, and I didn't know why. I would feel so guilty, that this man who loved me, who took care of me like a daughter for 20 years, would make me feel that way. Why?
I had dreams where he would rape me. I awoke from those even more guilty, confused, angry, and revolted. I didn't know where they were coming from. I soothed myself with the knowledge that sex dreams often mean something entirely different than they seem to.
I don't wake up well. My mother couldn't stand the tears involved in getting me out of bed, so she left to job to my step-dad. I had to wake up just shortly after him, and he would come in in his underwear, which he slept in, and just sort of flop onto my bed, lying there until his mere presence annoyed me into agreeing to get out of bed. The whole process was annoying and often uncomfortable, but it became normal, just irritating, that he always managed to accidentally grab or uncover my boob during the process. I didn't start to set my own alarm, and I didn't stop sleeping naked. I don't know why. It was just...normal.
He also managed to accidentally grab my boobs at random points during the day. I'd turn away, and he'd go to grab my arm to pull me back, and, oops! He'd give me a hug, from behind, and, oops! A myriad of opportunities meant that this was every day, multiple times a day, and it was normal. Annoyingly clumsy. Until I got a boyfriend and realized that for someone who touched me as much as he did, at no point in our interactions did he ever manage to grab me accidentally. No one did except my step-dad. Suddenly, I realized it wasn't normal, but he always always claimed it was an accident, and his naturally exuberant attitude convinced me that he really was just clumsy and got carried away with himself.
This was the man who ironed my shirts every morning, who brought me a cup of coffee in the morning (though he usually brought it to me in the shower, holding it through the curtain so we couldn't see each other), who bought me my first car. The man who helped me find my second car, and went through it with a tiny-nosed steamer so that it smelled brand-new when I sat in it the first time, though it had been covered in grime before that.
After I moved out, we got closer. We had begun brewing beer together when I was in High School, and we continued the habit of drinking together afterward. When I lost my virginity, and afterward, I couldn't talk to my mom or any of my friends about the new things I was learning and experiencing. He never judged. He just listened, and talked, and he was the only person I could talk to about that stuff.
He got a motorcycle and asked if we could take a father-daughter weekend trip. I resist for so long, because it makes me uncomfortable, although I don't know exactly why. I relent eventually, and 2 weeks before my wedding, we go. It is so much fun. We tour little dive bars in rural Wisconsin, half of them staffed or owned by people he knew growing up in small towns. He buys me drinks, although he himself has given up drinking (along with smoking, and he's on a diet - I wonder if ridding himself of vices made him more vulnerable to cheating, like a replacement sin for the ones he'd given up). We eventually end at a Potawatomi casino and hotel north of the Nicolet forest, where we gamble for a while, both bored to tears by the end, then have steak and go to bed. The beds are separate. We head home the next day, and get caught in a rainstorm and eat amazing burgers in shady rural stops and have adventures. It isn't weird. It's just fun, and I feel so bad that I had been so wary of it. Except it was a bit weird, because he asked me to wear my corset the first day out, and because he still slept in his underwear, and because we talked about sex too much on the ride.
But this is the man who rescued my favorite stuffed animal from punitory death when I was a child, jumping into the dumpster after my mom left, and keeping it for years until my graduation day, when he gave it back to me as a present. He helped me move. He helped me plan my wedding. He walked me down the aisle. He did dad stuff and helped me and loved me. But. But everything.
Then he ruined everything, and this memory comes back in the night, and it connects all the dots. The sudden feelings of fear and revulsion, the dreams, the guilt, they all make some kind of sense now.
Another memory - I tell my mother. I don't know how long it's been since he looked at me in the shower, but it must be only months. He and I had been fighting, and in a burst of anger, I tell my mother. I knew instantly that it was a mistake. It came out of a fight, and it had to come from a place of cold information. I had given away my power, and I knew how it would end already. She cried, so hard, and begged me to take it back. She said that I shouldn't say things because we were fighting. I took it back. I took it all back and felt so awful for hurting her. I buried it, and I buried it deep. It is gone.
Another - I had told a friend of mine what happened before I told my mom. Too long after, I get a visit at school from the social services people. They ask me about my life, create a rapport, and eventually lead into asking about my step-dad. I deny everything. They say they now have to tell my parents, and I panic, because I know that my mom will cry. But I let them, because the only way to stop them is to tell them a truth that I have forgotten, one I don't know. I don't understand who told them these things, I don't understand what they're talking about. I deny it all. They talk to my mom, and she cries for a few days. Nothing else happens. We all move on with our lives.
I have found out since that it's not uncommon to make yourself forget these things. Maybe it wasn't so weird. Maybe I don't have to feel bad about that, too.
Today, my therapist asks me, "Where was your mother?" I am so angry. She was right there, but you don't understand. It was so small, so normal, so oops! annoying, that you wouldn't think. It took me one solid, coherent memory, one thing that couldn't be an accident to make me realize how weird it all was, but before that, I had no idea.
A friend says, "It's hard to find out that your parents are human." That makes me angry too. My mom is human. She is deeply flawed, and confused, and she does the best she can, but sometimes it's not good enough, and sometimes it has reverberations through my life. Everyone fucks up their kids, it's just a matter of how much. But she's always been honest with me, and that, HONESTY, is just so goddamn important that I can't even express the difference it makes.
Even if your parents hid from you forever that they had done drugs, or that there were problems in their marriage, or that they were so deep in debt they'd never get out, that's not the same. I mean, my mom is emotionally driven before all else. Her methods of self-protection make her selfish at times (mine do, too). I think, sometimes, that she punished lying in me so severely not only because honesty is one of the most important things to have in this life, but because she was afraid I would be like my father. Those are the things humans do, these and a myriad other awful things.
I didn't find out my parent was a human, I found out he was a monster. A monster mixed with a human in a confusing melange that I just can't wrap my head around. My relationship with my mom strains, it causes some stress. My relationship with my step-dad is panic-inducing.
Another friend doubts me because the trauma of the divorce might make me remember things that aren't there. Memories are like dreams in that way - they don't always mean what you think they mean, and sometimes your brain interprets things so that they make sense, but that doesn't make it so. I've thought about that for a while, and I don't think he's right. These memories, they seem to match up, and they explain so much. The rape dreams, yes, those were my brain expressing its feelings the only way it knew how, but the truth, I think, as much as I feel I can know, is in the little things. The truth is between harassment and assault, between weirdness and abuse. Bad-but-not-that-bad, like everything else.
Like my bipolar, for which I am on a very low dose of very effective medicine, which is under control, which never made me spend all my money or hallucinate or sleep around or lose a job, even if it did make me drop out of school. Bad-but-not-that-bad.
My bio-dad went to prison when I was young. He also ruined everything. He was a youth pastor, and touched one of his charges inappropriately. My mom was destroyed, and spent time in the mental hospital in the aftermath of it all. But that meant that he didn't raise me. It happened when I was 3, so I don't remember most of it. Bad-but-not-that-bad. Because of this, I have a relationship, though an odd one, with my father.
It's hard, you know, to have 2 dads with this problem. It's hard to carry on a relationship of sorts with the one that didn't hurt you, though he did hurt someone, while the man who hurt you, you no longer speak to. It feels hypocritical. Then again, my dad's misdeeds were all 20 years gone. Then again, I don't think he's really changed that much - he might not be acting on every impulse, but he's still a sociopath, just a functioning, non-felony-committing one. Then again, what my step-dad did wasn't even half as bad. But he ruined everything.
After the divorce I didn't hear from him for 6 months. Then he called to wish me happy birthday, and I had a panic attack at work. I miss him so much, and it was so good to hear his voice - him, my real dad if not my bio-dad. But he ruined everything. I don't know how I feel or how I should feel. I miss him and love him and hate him, and I've really just decided to put him out of my life. For 20 years, I had a dad. Now I don't. Maybe I never did. And maybe cutting him off is the easy way out, but that's all I can handle right now, and knowing him, by the time I think I'm ready to handle him again, he'll have moved on. We'll be strangers. He'll have another step-daughter, and I will hate her to my irrational core.
The weird thing about this is, the more I learn about Christian purity culture, about rape culture, about patriarchal institutions and ways of thinking, the more my experiences seem...inevitable. That's the word I think over and over again. Inevitable. And I suddenly realize that I believe that statistic that I never quite believed - that 1 in 5 women experiences some kind of sexual abuse in her lifetime. None of this - weirdness - goes back before puberty. I feel like I became a woman, of sorts, and in so doing, became something to be possessed, to be used. He had my mom, he had me, he had whoever he was screwing behind my mom's back, and it feels so acquisitional. Hence my thoughts on weddings - I belonged to him, now I belong to this other man - but I don't belong to anyone! Not even myself.
My bio-dad gave me a purity ring at my confirmation. I honestly just took it off when I was fooling around, though I didn't actually lose my virginity until after I had gotten rid of the thing. I got rid of it when he divorced his wife, the hypocritical bastard. He cheated on her. He's cheated on everyone. I worry about his daughters, the ones he is raising, and I worry that they will get caught up in Christian purity culture in a way I managed to avoid. That shit is skeevy, especially in the way they link the concepts of God, father, and husband into one confusing bundle. I hope not. Their mom is, in her way, actually pretty sex-positive, so I hope. I love those girls, and their brother. They're my siblings. But I don't see them, because I am afraid. Afraid to watch them grow up in a world that treats women as possessions and tells them that their purity is more important that any other aspect of their relationship with God or their husband.
It's strange to me that I don't have more sexual hang-ups than I do, but perhaps ignorance was bliss. What I do have, is a fear of having children - what if my son carries on the legacy of my fathers? What if my daughter goes through the things I did? But it's no stronger than my other fears about having children, all of which are as strong, and valid in their way. Then again, everyone fucks up their kids, it's just a matter of how much. I hope to give my children something better than bad-but-not-that-bad. I'll settle for good-but-not-that-good. And they will be raised in a world that is starting to come to terms with itself and to see and understand the patriarchy. They'll be raised by 2 people who have healthy attitudes about sex and God. They'll develop a whole host of other problems that don't have anything to do with our problems, because that's what children do - whatever you least expect.
My mom tells me that a man at church has been paying attention to her. Another church friend warns her to look him up. He's on the registry. He's a pedophile. She cries when she tells me. It's a curse. Not the same curse.
For me, my best friends are all on the Autism spectrum, or else INFPs. That's not a curse at all. It just makes me wonder how we all find each other, how that attraction forms before you even know something you can't know. Why?
Here I come to the end and again find that I have nothing. No answers, no clarity. For 20 years, I had a dad. Now I don't. I don't know what a dad is. It feels empty. It makes me angry. I can't put together the man who was my dad with the man who destroyed my family. I miss and hate him by turns.
I come to the end and wonder if there is an end, if there ever will be. There are days, most days, when I feel completely normal, totally fine. There are days when the hopeless absurdity of it all seeps through the cracks and I wonder if I can ever aspire to a happy, healthy family life. I just hope against hope that I can make something better for my children. Just like my mom did. Just like every parent does.
What happened before is a part of my mental landscape, the background radiation that is my life. There is no curse. There is no tomorrow. There is only today, this moment, and what I choose to do with it.
<3
ReplyDeleteThanks. I think that's exactly what I needed :)
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