part 81

When I was growing up there would be times when I felt like I was filled with lead and couldn't move. There have been a lot of times since then, too, but I don't think I was really aware of how I was feeling when I was still growing up.

It is a deep, deep ache - very deep in my heart and soul.

I may have already written about the incident on the boat in Florida, but I have been thinking about it a lot again.

When I was a teenager ("One" by U2 was constantly on the radio at the time) my family took a trip to Port St. Joe in Florida. We drove down there in the van and pulled our boat on a trailer behind us.

It was spring break, and it was really remote where we were staying, so there wasn’t a whole lot to do - it sucked. One afternoon, my dad and I were out in the Gulf on the boat. It was close to sunset and dolphins were jumping around us - it was very magical to see that.

But then my dad started to try and mess with me, and I yelled at him. Not long after that, another boat came up by ours and there was a man driving and when he got close to us, he shouted, "Is everything alright over here?"

My dad answered him that we were fine, but the boat had continued to get closer and I looked at the man and he was looking at me waiting for me to answer the question for myself.

I was really mad at my dad and thought about telling the man on the other boat that, no, nothing was alright, then tell him my dad hurt me.

The words were pressing against the back my teeth just waiting for my mouth to open and let them out, but I looked back toward the shore. In my memory, I was looking at the building we were staying in, but it could have been something else - regardless, I was looking back at where my mom and sister and brother were.

I thought that if I let those words out of my mouth that I would never see them again. The man would take me away from my dad and our whole family would be torn apart and my mom would be mad at me and devastated by it all, and my brother and sister and everyone else would think I was lying.

But telling on my dad was a real possibility - I knew that the things he did to me were really, really bad, and that he would be investigated and I would have a chance to tell the cops about him.

But looking back at the shore toward my family, feeling the utter finality of never seeing them again, was so overwhelmingly sad that I looked at the man on the other boar and nodded my head that everything was alright.

There was some chit-chat about the dolphins and how beautiful the sun set was and blah blah blah, then we parted ways.

When I got back to the condo, I went out the front door (on the street side) and sat down and smoked a cigarette. This trip was during a time that I smoked, but told my parents that I didn't. At that time, though, after my dad tried to mess with me on the boat and I didn't tell on him, I stopped giving a shit if I would get in trouble for smoking.

By that evening, I was set up on the balcony looking at the ocean smoking away right in full view of everyone.

What was anyone going to do to me? My dad wasn't going to say shit about it, and if my dad wasn't backing her up, my mom didn't bother to even threaten to punish me.

I suppose she and my brother and sister may have been viewing me as someone who did not regard the rules as things that applied to me, and perhaps were even shocked by my bold defiance. I think they were more likely initially surprised that I suddenly started smoking in front of everyone, but quickly shifted their minds to what they had always been told about me: that I was bad, that I only cared about myself, that I would do whatever I wanted no matter who it hurt.

I always felt like this is what my brother and sister thought of me, and until a few years ago, I still believed it. But after I first went into the hospital and stopped drinking and everything, we have been able to have this sibling-type relationship that I'd never experienced before.

My mom and I went to visit my brother for a weekend last spring and had a really nice time. My mom and my sister and I all went out to see a movie this past summer, and it was just really fun to be with them doing that.

I really loved having a brother and a sister, and I told them that.

I really, truly believed that they saw me in a different light, as a real person who had been badly hurt for most of my life. I thought they thought I was a good person.

I really tried to hold on to that for as long as possible, but after my sister tried to convince me that I was in the midst of a psychotic break and my brother tried to convince me AND my husband that I was malicious and manipulative like my dad, and that my mom had done none of the things I said she had done, it hit me really hard.

Their view of me never changed. They had only been placating me and rewarding my good behavior by allowing me to be a part of the family. I was acting like they thought I should, and so was deserving of their love.

But once I stepped outside of that - specifically by telling them about my mom - I was no longer behaving well. My brother, for some reason, tried to keep in touch with me, and I appreciated it very much. But I was still under the impression that he actually saw me as the person I am, and not the person my parents taught him I was.

It was really a hard hit when I heard him telling me I reminded him of our dad, and it hit me even harder when I heard him explaining to my husband about my certain characteristics that were the same as my dad's, and that the reason my husband believed me and not my mom was because I was just manipulating him, too.

On more than one occasion when I have told someone what my dad did, the response was "I believe you believe it happened." What the fuck is that? Its saying that the person does not believe what I am telling them, but they don't want me to think they are saying that I'm lying, so they just say that I am crazy instead.

That's what my brother especially has been doing for the past few months. Who does that benefit? Him? He doesn't have to act like a total douche by calling me a liar, but he can still try to make me believe that he supports me without having to believe the things he doesn't want to believe?

Yeah, that is pretty much how I see it. My brother truly believes that he is simultaneously all-knowing and open-minded at the same time. He can definitively know the "real truth" while simultaneously believing that he is open to any possibility that what he knows definitively he might not really know definitively.

I have felt bad about being critical of my brother - it has been much easier to be critical about my sister and my mom - they are both so cold and condescending. But my brother, I thought, at least tried to be caring.

Whatever.

After this past weekend, after seeing what I have been trying so hard not to see, I feel like I did at that moment when I was out on that boat with my piece-of-shit bastard of a father, looking back at the shore and hurting so badly at the possibility of losing my entire family that I once again did not take an excellent opportunity to escape from him.

That is what I was most afraid of - losing my whole family.

But now I've gone and told anyway. And now I've lost my whole family.

Except that I have a new family - a real one, where we do actually all love each other and want what is the best for each other, and we are not playing an eternal game of mind-fucking.

It does hurt very much to not have a dad or a mom or a sister or a brother - and to acknowledge that I never really had those people in my life in the first place - but it helps tremendously having my husband and kids and friends - all very real people, all very sincerely a positive part of my life - around me every day.

That is more than enough to get by on <3.