OK, let's start over.
It's happened more than once, this psycho-babble thought has crept into my head:
Are we really made from the experience of the relationship between our mother and our father??
If so,.... for lack of better words, "I'm screwed"
What I remember, the only memory I really have of them is a lifetime of fighting.
- Fighting over me
- Fighting over the house
- Fighting over my mother's infidelity
- Fighting, Fighting, Fighting
As a matter of fact, I can only remember ONE time ever seeing them "intimate". They had been divorced (one of many times) and gotten remarried, and when they told me, I remember thinking and telling them the only way I would believe it was if they kissed (you know like in cartoons, because that meant people were married ;) )
I never remember seeing them actually love each other, feel compassionate for each other. I feel like my dad was always catering to my mother's wants or threats. I think he loved her very much. I think for her, he was someone who could support her and her children, to be honest, I am not sure if my mother ever truly loved my father. I know my daddy loved me so much, that he would endure a lifetime of unhappiness, just so that I would grow up in an "unbroken" home. Little did they know, that the home I did grow up in, most times, I think, was actually more toxic to me, than growing up in a real broken home would have been.
My mother always spat toxic remarks about my dad, when they were fighting. My dad never said anything bad about my mom that I can remember, unless they were playing tug-of-war with me. Even then while she was trying to hurt him, by keeping me from him....the person she hurt the most, was me.
My dad didn't start talking negatively about my mother until recently. And it drives me crazy. And it always boils down to one topic: How she always used him. *sigh* daddy ... you knew it then, griping about it everyday now, isn't going to make it better.
To this day, I remember every single moment of the evening my mom was busted, cheating on my dad, after all, I was the one who answered the phone call from "him", and he asked to speak to daddy. I remember the cursing, and yelling, me running to my room to hide under my blanket and cry, sob actually. My mother bursting into the room asking, "what the hell are you crying about." Yes, I remember every vivid detail of that night.
That was the night, my idea of my mother, and my relationship with her changed forever. I no longer respected her. I talked back to her, I stood up to her, I became defiant to her. Who was she to tell me to obey rules and morals? That is also when ( noticed) I became less important to her, after all, I had a daddy who was always there.
I think it is things, and experiences like these, that form who we are emotionally. I never had a serious boyfriend in junior high, or high school. My reason was simple: I didn't want to end up like her. I didn't want to end up young, married to someone from my hometown, living the same life I grew up in. That wasn't how she met my dad, but it was a fear all the same.
Naturally, somehow, my first "real" relationship was with Andy, who was as emotionally, and physically committed to me, as my mom was to my dad.
And because of what I had grown up with, what I knew of relationships: was to be suspicious, jealous, be heartbroken, but give my daddy's all, and damn it keep trying.
Larry was really no different.
Boyfriend now is. He is emotionally committed to me. He wants to marry me. I don't in a million years believe he would ever cheat on me.
And maybe that is why I don't know how to handle him.
Sometimes, I think, I am like a walking grenade. That any little bump, pushes my pin out, and I over explode. I tried to explain to a friend, that I truly, because of all the experiences in my life, feel as though I am walking around with every single nerve fiber in my body is exposed, all the time. That any confrontation, and emotional upset, any comment, touches me, rakes me in every way, but unlike most other people, it isn't a soft touch. Everything hurts. Everything is painful. Because I have learned to expect the end product to hurt.
I am the woman Venus.
Something can be said to me in one fashion, and I hear it through my overstimulated, over experienced ears, and my mind races to the quickest route of knowledge, which is:
- things are only said in a negative manner
- things are only said to hurt you, or prepare you for something that is going to hurt you
- when people give you advice, or concerns, it is to criticize you, in a negative way, not constructive way.
- Can you see where I am going with this????
As the good Dr. Phil would say, you can not change something, if you can not acknowledge it.
I am well aware, of my insane hard wiring.
I see my friends who grew up with a loving family, and they themselves have a beautiful, wonderful, loving family, .... and I can't help but relate it to, of course...it is what THEY know.
I grew up in a yelling, screaming, tumultuous family, and that is what I KNOW.
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