The joke I always make before delving into the past is that by treating me, more than one therapist has gotten a Caribbean vacation out of our time together. People you pay to be your friend are the luckiest people in the world, aren't they?
Over the weekend, Kitty, McHeaty and I talked about how birth order and family dynamics can reverberate throughout a person's life. Or as my former therapist once said, "It always goes back to the little red wagon." My parents lived together for twenty-five years but never married. They each were divorced and while I don't call them 'half' siblings, I am the youngest of six, but was raised as an only child.
Before me, my dad had two daughters and two sons - it doesn't matter that the oldest was his stepson - he was his, and they are my brothers and sisters. Full stop. They were raised by the most lovely, spunky woman who treated me as though I was one of her own. Oh, did I mention I didn't know about them until I was 11 years old? Therapists love me for reasons.
My mom had a daughter four years older than me. Her father abused our mother throughout their short marriage, nearly killing her several times. Society still struggles to provide adequate prevention, education and punishment for domestic violence perpetrators. Resources for the women and their children who are the victims are more readily available today, but the reality of starting over, often with nothing, and providing for children is daunting at best and remains a reason many women stay in abusive relationships long after they want to leave. As does the reality that abusers will use children to continue to exert control and punish their victims. Lest you think our laws promote justice and don't allow lives to be ruined by someone with malicious intent, may I direct you to a family court? My lawyer once told me, "If you're looking for fairness, don't look for it in family court." He also quit family law after my case and I hope he's enjoyed the peaceful career in contract law that he deserves. Merv and the wife probably have a tropical timeshare with a wing named after me.
My mother was an 18 year old immigrant with a new baby, a controlling and violent husband, no support system, funds or agency, and during a time when domestic violence was rarely even mentioned, she ran for her life. Literally. My sister was the pawn used to punish her and my mother was only permitted visitation for two weeks each summer. The cruelty wasn't just felt by the mother and child. As an adult, it horrifies me to imagine how difficult it must have been for my dad to support the woman he loved and the littlest daughter. Vivid memories are seared in my brain: me sitting behind my mom on the stairs as she made the difficult phone call to arrange the pick-up, the unbearably long lead-up to the day, vibrating with excitement on the drive, being kept waiting hours in the car until my sister finished 'chores' and was released for two precious weeks. There was never any rivalry or feeling of being put out of place when she was with us. I absolutely adored her. Everything felt right when my sister was finally home.
There are times a flash of what it felt like when she had to leave will pierce through me out of nowhere. In my big sister's arms, I would sob the whole way until once again, far too quickly, I was alone in the back seat feeling like a vital part of my soul had been ripped away. Alone again for another year.
We lived an hour away. How my parents could bear their own pain while listening to my inconsolable weeping is beyond me. No amount of counselling can rewire my brain but it helps to understand the undeniable root of my separation anxiety and why I find partings so emotional and physically painful. Everyone knows I'll cry and years later her son would crack a joke as we sent his cousin off to Europe that has become the running response to ease the tension: "I don't think my mother loves me. She never cries when she drops me off." He'll never understand what a gift that was and how it always helps ground me but there's an ugly kernel of truth about the emotional damage done to children buried in the different ways we react.
She wasn't allowed to cry when she returned to her father; there's no way anyone could have stopped my physical reaction to the pain and my parents held space for my emotions to run their course. We're both pretty tough women but I can see how our childhood plays out in our stress reactions as adults: at a certain point, she turns off and I shut down. They sound the same but they're completely different. Trying to re-learn healthier ways of coping has been a fight we've both waged over the years.
When she turned sixteen she left her father's home and moved in with us. As we grew into young women, wives, mothers, and then single parents, our bond only strengthened and for most of my adult life I would have bet my life it was unbreakable. Her relationships with her father and our mother remained complex and can be best described as years of passive-aggressive congeniality. Though I don't doubt she tried, she never forgave our mom, and I was always the conduit trying desperately to hold them together. As an adult, I thought if I just tried hard enough, was empathetic enough, conciliatory enough, loved them enough, we could all move away from the ghosts of the past and be a 'normal' family. My childhood was peppered with dark nights waking up to my mom's bloodcurdling nightmare screams and my dad's hushed voice trying to calm her. Normalcy is subjective.
Understanding that how we experienced the same events caused different wounds in all of us, and that informed our individual choices, was easy for me to see years ago - but accepting that all the emotional damage was never mine to repair has taken a very long time. Before she died, my mother had made her peace with the entirety of their relationship as best she could. It's my sincere hope that my sister has been able to as well.
My father's fight with cancer was brutally short and for a long time I believed his death was my introduction to grief...but those therapists earned their time on the beach. When he died in 1999, my brother's wife, my mom and my sister were a great support to me and my other siblings. Labels like ex-husband and step-father didn't apply. We were family grieving the loss of the gentle man we loved. Together.
The young woman with the dark hair in the picture below would never have believed that when her mom would pass away in 2020, there would already have been so much loss, or that she would have coped without the type of support she had then. The image of my family had crumbled. Cousins and friends had died and cancer had taken my brother's cherished wife, my father's first wife, and my beloved oldest sister; the breakup of my relationship broke me in ways I didn't think possible and shattered the foundation I'd spent my life building. As people died or just disappeared from my life, I struggled to find solid ground. For years, all I could feel was profound sorrow, anger, sympathy and regret - for not making more of the time while they were alive, for not being supportive enough, for not being enough. Unworthy. Alone.
But lives can be rebuilt, and even if what it has become would once have been unrecognizable, there's joy and gratitude for each new day. My grandson brings astounding delight and hope to my life. My children have grown into adults of strong character who are there for me and it's my greatest wish that they'll continue to be there for each other no matter what life brings. Perhaps the writing was always on the wall, but it was still shocking that the sister I'd shared my mom and so much of my life with wouldn't be there going through losing her with me. I guess that's what happens when the conduit is sliced in half.
Throwback to the Daddy Side
