Things have finally settled down in the new place in the new town. Now that I have left behind Huntington and the memories there life is easier and on my terms. The new neighbors are friendly and welcoming, we live on a dead end street on top of a high hill and that suits me just fine. Nobody screaming and arguing in the parking lot below my bedroom at 3 AM. No loud cars coming through to deliver or purchase drugs. Just other couples who seem to be happy and a few college kids.
Essentially we kind of do what we want. My partner and I have moved in together, we live comfortably and we plan for the future while enjoying what we can of today. I can enjoy more and more the further I move from sad memories and hurtful people. Having the big depression means that once immediate issues like food and shelter are handled I’ve got to queue up something hurtful to think about. Some things are easy to dismiss as fabrication but one has stuck as true. It has been torture and new medication has only now offered me small reprieve.
There’s not much to say except I am a 37 year old person who is estranged from all but one of their relatives. I truly don’t know if I will ever see my mother, father or sister again and only the third one is not by choice. One ignores my existence completely, one has no problem telling me what an awful person they think I am and one is apparently leaving the country or might have already. If I hadn’t asked specifically I would not have been told that last fact.
My sister cut me off unexpectedly (“and everyone else”) because I asked to borrow and then immediately repaid $25 to her last year and that one is on me. I should have known that it would have been easier to just not have $25. I wish I had never asked her or my mother for anything but I’m glad I did because I finally found out what would happen when it was on them to step up for once.
I begged my mom to help convince her to let me borrow more money to pay for rent and food and that I guess is where I fucked up. I was told that there would be no discussion. They didn’t even ask me how much I needed. It was just not an option. Helping me think of ways to not lose my mind or apartment also wasn’t an option I guess as it was more important to my mother to tone police my emotional breakdown. I was told she could move in with me or vice versa and that’s all she could do to help.
Some weeks the only reason I had anything to eat is because Tabbie brought me food from her own home.
I soon realized that the time and energy it was taking to deal with the emotional backlash I was getting for needing financial support would be better spent looking for a job and doing gig work. Wouldn’t you know it – I was absolutely correct. Quite quickly after I gave my ultimatum to get therapy or get out of my life (to which she said essentially nothing in response) I was able to achieve exactly what I needed to to bounce back.
Let’s be clear here – I was abandoned five weeks after moving to ground zero of the heroin epidemic where I knew absolutely nobody, was fired from the job I got there two months later and did not become homeless. I went thousands of dollars into credit card debt but I didn’t lose my lease. I know now I can pretty much do anything. Nobody should expect to be able to talk to me any kind of way and continue to receive my time and attention.
My mental wellness is not compatible with the toxic relationships I am being offered and I will not accept them at my own expense anymore. I am realizing finally that my parents are cruel and selfish people who shouldn’t have had children and most certainly shouldn’t have had them with each other. The joy I find is in taking a life that was supposed to be a shrine to their cleverness, the ultimate science fair project, and rocking it like I stole it. Because I did.
Maybe someday I’ll get told what exactly I did wrong to go from being the glue that held everything together, no matter how much your parents tried to tear your family apart, to a boogeyman who will do anything to get what they want. A depraved creature who will ask to borrow money when they can’t pay rent and pay it back immediately. Truly I throw myself at the mercy of the court for having a bad thing happen to me.
Or maybe it’s more like someday they’ll accept that what I really did was stop parroting their narrative and they chose their own comfort over any chance at being in my life.
It’s just funny to me how I needed someone besides my dad to bail me out of something shitty happening to me and would have needed help for a month, maybe two tops. My mom ruined 18 years of the Guilt Gravy Train because she couldn’t give a shit about my basic needs for two months. That’s gotta suck for her. It rules for me! Those two months have been priceless in what they taught me I am allowed to keep and that is everything I can get my hands on.
People who think I am a bad person deep down, who have told me that multiple times throughout my life, who have told lies about me, who treat me like a football to argue over, told me they never wanted me, who have lied to me to try and get what they want out of me, who have used me over and over – they don’t have any place in my life anymore. Nobody who makes me feel like “they’re the only ones who know how evil I am” has any place in my life.
I tell myself that I should reach out to them. Again. After they fucked up. Again. That I don’t have time to be distant. That something horrible could happen and I will lose the chance to “make it right.” The nightmares that my mother has died started a long time ago. Now I have to take so many medications to go to sleep I have lost count, the melatonin makes me groggy all day. Laying down brings hands choking my throat, whispers ripping open my heart. But the sadness in my waking hours has a bottom now.
Because I realize I have done absolutely everything I could have done to “make it right” when it wasn’t mine to right to begin with. If I was in control of this situation every member of my family would have been in therapy decades ago. Back when I couldn’t tell how bad the night was going to get until my dad came home. Before they spent 17 years dragging out a divorce. Time after time I asked them to get the family some help as a group but all that meant was pathologizing their children’s very normal reaction to living in a home chock full of psychological torture. We got sent to therapy to learn how to deal with their abuse while they never got help or changed themselves.
Children cannot repair their relationships with their parents by their own will alone. All we can do is heal ourselves. I did most of the work already and you can tell because I fucking survived. There’s still a Me around left to choose. I’m ready to move on to my reward.
What I will not lose is the chance to have the life I have always dreamed of. I don’t have time to waste having panic attack number three of the day when I could be having Chinese food with the coolest person I know for the third time this week. Why would I want to sit around obsessing over people who don’t even like me? Who make me feel so shitty and unloved? I had a therapist named Betty who was so patient and one day she said “You can go to a hole in the ground every day for the rest of your life but you can’t turn it into a well.” I don’t own the land. I didn’t form the earth. All I can do is move on somewhere with water.
People who aren’t compatible with that life, whose pettiness and cruelty stick out like a sore thumb, get left behind. In a way I am emulating your selfishness because I see how far it has gotten you. It’s not clear what they expect will happen next. When you have left affection and positive concept of someone so far in the past where do you go? It seems what’s left are painful reminders nobody wants. It seems like I am just a painful reminder nobody wants. The fucked up thing is that if that truly would heal them, if my absence would fix that pain I would gladly give it. I would give to them what I am trying to find for myself – peace.
But the price of admission to a relationship with them isn’t worth it to me anymore. It’s obvious to everybody else the kind of person I am and I’m proud of that person. Who I am is the loving soul I have protected, not the bad things others have done to try and destroy it. Being someone’s family is motivation to love, not an excuse to hurt. You save your best self for the ones closest to you, not the worst.
Queer Pandemic 