Standing on the Edge of Me

I am profoundly sad today. As I write this I realize that other people will read it and that I'm letting them in on a secret that follows me around like the stink of death on a corpse.  Being raised by a narcissist and a child molester has skewed my ability to trust my own mind when I get like this.  I really want to spill my guts to someone. Anyone. But what if I'm just being dramatic, or what if it makes people realize how nuts I really am (say the voices)??  Then again, they say we're only as sick as our secrets.  Here goes.


The reunion.  What can I say.  It was a good time.  Sort of.  The party was for graduates of the public school I attended through the 8th grade.  My narcissist mother decided her children were too good for the public school from which she graduated so in a proxy do-over, she sent me to a private Catholic girls school in another town.  So I really didn't graduate with these kids.  All my memories are from grade school.  Hadn't see a single one since I left in the 8th grade.


It's a bit strange to see people you haven't see for 34 years. Some look so different there's no way to recognize them until they say their names.  Even then all you really see is that face from like 3rd grade or something.  I suppose worse yet is the ones who look well . . . . exactly the same. But that wasn't the hardest part. 


The hardest part was answering the same question over and over: how's your mom and dad?  How exactly do you explain to people why you have not a damn thing to do with either one and that the reason is because THEY are the evil ones, not me.  I mean c'mon what are the odds that both parents were supremely effed up sufficient to justify a child banishing them from her life??  


I'm always torn.  I have toyed with saying things like, "Oh I guess you didn't hear, we lost mother last year."  Or *shocked, quavering voice* "I thought everyone knew, he was killed in a horrible train accident."  I suppose I could just say "fine" and be done with it.  But there's some part of me that just won't allow that, because it means letting them off the hook for what they did.  Shouldn't people know that there are monsters lurking behind the mask of wonderful parent?  Some of the girls I hung out with back then knew my mother's secret side. Apparently she didn't think they mattered enough to hide her viciousness from them.  The truth is always the easiest, or so they say.  


But the thing with my dad.  Why the hell doesn't everyone already know about that one??  It would make it so much easier.  Maybe it was the isolated character of the small town I came from.  You know, where they don't read the "city" papers, just the local weekly rag.  That would explain it I guess.  By the time it hit the city papers, only my mother still lived in the city. I figured it served her right.  After all, if she'd been doing her job he might have been arrested in time to save us.  Of course she called to tell me all about it in her sickly gleeful narcissist way, full of fake horror and thrilled at having something salacious to share.  How long ago was that anyway?  Fifteen years or more?  Seems like yesterday.


But no one at the reunion knew about my father. One by one they kept asking. By mid-event I had a stock response ready.  I have no idea.  Apparently you haven't heard.  He's a convicted sex offender and I no longer have anything to do with him and haven't for nearly 20 years.  Thank god no one asked anything further after that.  I mean what the hell would you say??  Gee I'm really sorry to hear that, how fucked up are you from that??  Yeah.  Several days post-reunion I am feeling the wave of emotional pain that comes from speaking that awful truth once again.  Oh I spent a lot of years working on this one, believe me - and I consider myself in recovery.  It was still rough.  


The other strand of woe weaving its way through my head is the grief of having recently lost my lover.  It was 12 weeks ago that I filed for divorce from my lover of 39 years: food.  It dawns on me that the saying I've heard on YT and FB is so true - they banded my stomach not my brain.  In my twisted little addict mind, this game has been really fun but I'm done now and I'd like some cheese fries please.  And bring me some Ben & Jerry's while you're at it.  A couple as a matter of fact . . . Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia please.    And could we please put Kettle Chips back on the grocery list instead of Greek yogurt?  


Welcome to grief 101, where I get to come face to face with old demons in an epic battle of wills.  Will I move forward and make the right choices or cave and repeat the pattern for yet another year despite having spent $17,000 for a fix??


Stick around, it's gonna get interesting.