An Email I Sent to Describe This Past Week

[caitri]

Buckle up, sunshine, this is gonna be A RIDE.

(NB I know you don't drink but maybe consider putting something aside for all this.)

Okay, SO. One of the things that prompted this particular missive is that two of my sisters apologized for leaving me with Mom while I was growing up, and wishing they had done more. Which is very nice, but also, I wonder what the heck prompted that. The other thing that really struck me is how one sister also said that when she heard Dad died her first thought was "Oh good, we never have to fight again," which, daaaaaaamn. Apparently when they were young they had our grandparents as mediators which I had never had since they died before I was born. They also assumed that somehow mom would magically be better behaved without Dad, somehow.

I think for one sister some of this was prompted by fury at how her now-adult daughter, my niece, was treated. Apparently when the kid was eight mom was going to spend the day with her, and the daughter called my sister crying to ask to come home. Apparently my sister expected mom to take the kid to the pool, or to the movies, or shopping, but instead mom drove around to take pictures of doors, and when the kid complained called her a brat. (My internal reaction was: This is so not as bad as anything I was imagining.)

Look, we all love Mom, but a textbook narcissist is gonna narcissist, and she was always very cruel when she wanted. One of the moments that lives rent-free in my head forever was her comment upon hearing my ex and I broke up was to say, "Oh well, I always wondered if he really cared for you and I guess now we know." (This after a five-year relationship, thanks.)

My sister now taking care of Mom especially has issues with her and has always said she was the black sheep of the family. She said amongst other things that she doesn't remember Mom ever hugging her as a kid and that she wondered repeatedly if she had actually been adopted. One thing she has mentioned before that she's never forgiven Mom for was saying when she was 16, "Well you're not pretty, so you'll have to develop a personality." Apparently Mom and her evil friends were also deadset against my sister running track in high school because it wasn't ladylike, but the grandparents intervened. And then she said that while cleaning she found a card Mom had sent her parents that was signed as being from Mom, Dad, and my brother--who was a baby at that point--but not mentioning the two daughters. Sister asked Mom about that one and my Mom denied it, then sister pointed out she could show her the card.

One of the annoying things Mom does is just blatantly lie when she feels like it, so she keeps telling everyone the house is a disaster because of my sister moving in--this when said sister has been performing minor miracles cleaning the place up and making it accessible for someone with mobility issues. I pointed out that if it was just me I'd pick a nice assisted living facility and have done, and her response was to go "Damn," but I regret nothing.

Anyway, all of these conversations briefly tempted me to vulnerability and telling stories of my own, but one of my issues coming out of this household was I get very anxious about admitting vulnerability because I know ("know") it will be used against me at some point. (And honestly this belief informs the insecurity I have in telling you things, sometimes, even though logic asserts itself eventually and says both 1) "Todd would be deeply unlikely to do that on purpose" and 2) "But also what is he going to do, actually? Say "[intentionally hurtful thing that was painful to hear as a youth but is strikingly dumb as an adult]?

I thought about telling my sister about what mom said Jane Christian said when I got out of the hospital (I was in the hospital for a period of time due to suicidal ideation), which was, "Well Catherine always says she's wanted to write something, now she finally has something to write about." In retrospect I'm really not sure if Jane Christian said that or if Mom said she said it. But after it (the hospital) happened I really never trusted her again because she didn't visit, which I thought was rather cruel. Luckily I had friends to check on me and stuff. Anyway, I'm not sure my sister even knows about that episode, and I didn't really want to dredge up that whole thing, so I stayed quiet.

(And I could really do with some emotional support over dealing with the whole infertility thing, but again, I really don't trust them.)

Okay, so let me tell you about my other emotional bullshit, some of which you already know.

So the thing that freaked me out the other week--which is so stupid AND YET--is I saw on FB that my ex is dating someone and had set the FB thing to "in a relationship." (I told you this was stupid.) We've been over for 20 years, he had a terrible marriage, he's been alone for a long time, and there's a part of me that genuinely wants him to be happy and loved because he is a good guy and he deserves happiness. The part of me that has never gotten over it feels very raw, and yet recognizes the inherent selfishness of my feelings. So finding the little cache of old letters and cards was bittersweet, as I said. Today I made what I hope wasn't too too stupid a thing and took a photo of them and send them to him, essentially saying what I just told you but, I hope, better and more gently. Then I started worrying over the ethics of that, then finally decided that if he could send me a very nice birthday note with a little Supernatural pin (because he is still a friend he still knows me well), maybe it wasn't out of the bounds of all propriety.

I'm trying for the better part of valor here. One of the toughest things is when we broke up he begged me to still be friends with him, and again when he got married to his abusive ex-wife. (Which, if you ever want to be tortured, watch someone you love knowingly choose to be with someone they hate instead of you, you will lose sleep for months, literally.) I sometimes wonder if I would be emotionally healthier if we had made a clean break of it, if I could have burned everything (which I didn't, I have a cache of letters and things he gave me still) (even though I begged him to burn my letters, who knows if he did, I kinda hope he did), maybe even pretend it never happened, etc. And so we still talk and now and then send one another presents and maybe who knows, to him I'm still a good friend while I, personally, am a hot mess desperately pretending to be normal and well-adjusted.

Do you have this problem? It would make me feel better, if so.

To bring this full circle-ish, one of the notes was a card from Christmas 1999 wishing we could see each other. We had aborted plans to go to NYC for New Year's Eve, but my mom didn't want me to do it and my entire family made fun of me for wanting to. In retrospect: What was so absurd about this? I was 18, I was in undergrad, I had a little bit of money I could have used. But I caved under the pressure and didn't--which is actually one of my big life regrets, to be honest. Part of it was I was just so stupid and worn down, it didn't occur to me--yet--that I could do something my entire family mocked me for. In retrospect I should have asked for his help in figuring out how to line up bus tickets and so on. But I was a dumb kid, and it is what it is. And so as luck would have it, that Christmas Eve I watched a Whose Line marathon on tv, while he did the exact same thing in NYC because he got food poisoning.

TL:DR Wouldn't you rather I get therapy than send you long-ass emails like this?

Joke's on you,
Cait