Family

I think for many people, FAMILY is a mixed bag. No family is perfect and all family have issues, some more than others. I have always found it difficult to talk about my family precisely because it is so mind-numbingly sick in so many many ways that to discuss it all either shocks others, causes disbelief ("there's no way that's true; she must be lying"), or the opposite, it comes across negating the experiences of others or causes them to relate when few could really relate. When I say the last part, that "few could relate" I know how that sounds, like that twisted sense of pride some victims get from their wounds. I hate how it sounds. I have searched my whole life looking for ways to honor my truth AND honor everyone else's. I know suffering is a part of the human condition; I know suffering is often a part of being in a family. Even the best families make mistakes or create psychological shadows, passed on down the generational lines. I know all this, and yet, struggle with feeling like I don't have permission to be who I am and come from all the wreckage I come from. It's like owning it makes me weak and whine-y and....

Owning it makes me a weak victim.

The truth is, I don't need anyone's permission. And the past is the past, it did happen with or without permission or validation or anyone's general audience other than my own. The past is also in the past and can not be made over. However, my Mother and Father both still exist in the present and have the ability to suck me back into old ways of being that I have fought too hard to shake.

I want to write that I am not a product of my past but that would be untrue. I am. And in some ways that I have chosen. I am a product of critical child trauma. Knowing what that feels like and all the ramifications that echo into adulthood created a dream that I am chasing, to be that knowing adult that works to protect and help children going through similar experiences, because, while I often find myself alone in my PTSD and all the other lovely lingering twists to my psyche, I am not, essentially alone. There are many children also growing up, every day, in neglect, poverty, psychological/physical/sexual abuse. There needs to be a voice who survived and healed, who can contribute to the conversation of child welfare.

I still struggle. While I haven't had to wrestle with the relationship with my mother, who is infinitely more mentally ill, since I walked away from her (for the last time) about a year ago, my biological father has been showing up this last year. He had custody of me for two years of my life, during which I lived without plumbing and endured extreme neglect. He sold drugs and partied and I, much like the two dogs that died under his care, were along for the ride. Otherwise, my relationship with him was largely an absent one, filled instead by the presence of his parents. He had visitation rights and his parents came and picked my sister and me up every summer, returning us in time for school to start. He rarely made an appearance.

While he had bonding time with my older sister during the early years, my mother hid me from him and his family during nearly the first four-five years of my life, out of state. I received the early message, hostage taken to my mother's incomprehensible mental condition and physical and psychological abuse,  that I was in the way and not wanted. This message has followed me to this very day and I fight with myself to overcome it.

I have a memory of my father. Standing against his truck in the driveway of his apartment he had with his girlfriend (and mother of his future and completely ignored third child), drinking beer with buddies. I was hanging on his arm and he was lifting me up. He smelled like beer and that foam they use to make beer cooler/cozies. He didn't pay me attention for long.

There is a video my Grandma took of me sitting on Grandpa's lap around age eight. They were getting me to talk about a McDonald's Happy Meal that my father bought me. He was not present and they were making such a big deal about the cardboard box. They had to berate him into spending anytime at all with me. My relationship with my father felt like this anguished need to be loved and somehow feeling unworthy of being loved. Or even noticed or concerned about in anyway, even when facing very real danger, like when I was in his care. No one spoke up on my behalf who saw it. Not his mother, his sisters, my mother, no one. My grandfather might have, but he was down for the count, having undergone a series of strokes. Finally, my school teacher reported him and he was investigated by a social worker. It didn't accomplish too much and soon, my mother took me back and began some serious psychological abuse, which perhaps has been the hardest to shake.

By the time my sister started having children he had slowed down a bit, but remained a large, loud, impossibly selfish and stubborn man. Very childish. The upside to that was that my older sister has always been his favorite and he spent all his inheritance on taking her and her four children to Disneyworld and Disneyland every 6 months. He had a whole tribe of amusement park playmates, now. He never did have a penny for me and my college struggles, or living struggles, or for anything for that matter. I was the only one going to school and living on my own, self-supporting, trying my damnedest to lift myself up out of the condition I was born to and into and he couldn't be bothered. I had to withdraw from school, faced homelessness several times, and a few precious times, before a damn broke, I reached out and asked for help. Nothing big, a hundred here for books, or even a twenty to eat. No, all the insurance was due on all his new cars and new Harley. And there was that last trip to Disneyland and the one coming up in two months. No, there was no extra money. And now it's gone. All gone. He gets by on his disability checks, which go quick, a good portion to my sister's kids, or her "borrowing".

 Receiving a diagnosis of cirrhosis of the liver and Hep C brought the real possibility of death and his general mortality into focus. He began trying to spend even more time with his grandchildren. This did not extend to me, even after I gave birth. He was there for all four of my sister's deliveries, didn't see my daughter until she was eight or nine months old.

I've said it before, that, because my daughter has no family, when my father wanted to see her, I agreed. As long I was supervising, it seemed ok. They both enjoyed each others company, even if on his side sometimes lacked a comprehension of the needs and realities of caring for a baby/toddler. I have had a hard time navigating the family relationship with my father since being wholey present for my child sometimes/often causes conflict. Simple things, like putting her down for a nap, not feeding her a ton of junk food, needing to step away to change her diaper.

I have enjoyed watching my daughter bonding with him. And getting to know him a little better. The fact that he loves my sister more has not been in my face-until he went into the hospital this last week. She is part of the reason he was in there. While he is his own man, capable of making his own decisions, he has taken over parenting duties of her four children in many ways, well, my father and her second, unofficial boyfriend, all the while she is off with her new boyfriend.

Still, I let him back in and watched him play with my daughter. He often had two or more of sister's children, which allowed me a very belated opportunity to spend time with them as well. Family is the most important thing for me and that's a hard pill to swallow when those relationships are so painful that I have to turn away. Some might say I was too sensitive. Those would be the ones who haven't walked in my shoes. I am admittedly, emotional, even sensitive, but for good reason. Even now, I find myself getting dragged back into the old dynamics with my father and my sister, where I bend over backwards trying to support and assist him and am seen as some invisible source to take and demand from and never say thank you, never see. I can never do enough and my sister never has to do anything, she takes and takes and is favored. I give and give and am invisible.

And now that role extends to my daughter. It doesn't matter if she is tired, needs a diaper change, to nurse, to go play, it's a fight to keep her entertaining my father against her best interest and I'm wrong for doing otherwise.

The last night I went to see him, my daughter was crying, fussy, and needed to be changed. She bracketed my face in her tiny hands and peered into my eyes, calling me. Like she was bringing me into the present to give me what I needed to do what I needed to do. Its hard. Navigating family. Mine is so intense it takes people out at the knees. How many times have I seen that desperate, exhausted, pleading look that came from those nurses that night? The nurse kept whispering "I'm sorry" to me. So many stories. Needless to say, they are f*%#ing done with him being there. I've watched him make waitress quit on the spot. He is just that draining, that demanding.

Funny, it's similar to the look I get from people who have been around my mother long enough to see behind her mask and have glimpsed the crazy beneath. I have had people say "I'm so sorry" to me there too. Every. Single. Time. I just wait. In that way, my mother taught me to trust time and to persevere and do your own thing, take care of your own. People usually figure shit out. They make assumptions at first but truth always reveals itself. I have learned to be a steady, silent force that is redeemed in hindsight. But, that's more my mother and sister than my father.

He had been showing signs of potential relapse of his Hep C/liver problems. After a year of time being around him, there has been a small measure of healing that has taken place in our relationship. My daughter and I waited with him at the hospital until he was admitted and then visited him every day. It was his heart, not his liver. He will need a transplant, and even though no one is saying as much, he is not a good candidate, with his liver gone like it is. He stayed almost a weak while they diagnosed him and drained him, including his lung that was filling up.

 That is where I was reminded again that things are still as they are. And I need to be very aware of what I choose to sign up for. I need to protect my daughter and myself from those dynamics and not extend myself or my child beyond what is reasonable and fair. I need to not jeopardize my life and home for anyone. I have another little being to fight for now, and she deserves every opportunity, every loving embrace, every conscious hands-on-deck parenting that I deserved, and, frankly, all humans deserve. I am not my father's mother. I am only mother to one little girl, my own, teeny little family. May her family shadows be small ones!

I know she will have her own. I know we will have to come to terms with "daddy-issues" eventually, which will hurt twice over because she was rejected by not just him, but his whole family. But, that bridge is not now. And the best way I can give her is the resilience to face those demons by being present for her now and to not turn away from my own demons but process them. To realize my power, to not give it away, and walk phenomenally, as best I can. To model how to walk with our shadows, not being overtaken by them but living with them, leading in the dance we all do with our shadows, learning to let the light heal us, if we let it.