I feel that today I have reached some kind of breakthrough. I received an email from my dad this evening and while writing back to him, I started crying uncontrollably. I was on the verge of hysteria. I couldn't stop crying. It was then I realized how much I have bottled up inside.
Dad told me that the last year with me being home had been a gift from God. He said that the times he has felt lowest, somehow, I have always managed to call him or go see him just when he's needed it most. He said he wanted to come home. That's the second time this week he has said it. It is killing me to think that he can't come home. Mom doesn't want him home any more.
The more I wrote, the more I sobbed. I couldn't breathe. I was screaming, I was shaking, I was yelling. I scared the dogs. *Laugh*
When I calmed down a little bit, I called Mom in Buffalo and sobbed into the phone for a few minutes. She says we will talk tomorrow. She says Dad can't come home. She says things have gone too far.
I tried to go to sleep, figuring that after a crying jag like that, I would be exhausted. The tears just won't stop. Every time I lie down, I start crying. I can't stop. I can't breathe.
I thought a lot about our house. I realized why it is hurting so much. So much of the past is/was abstract and has been ripped to shreds. It doesn't exist any more, my childhood has died, my family is gone, and there is nothing concrete left to cling to. Nothing except 7 River Rd. I never knew that it could hurt so much to lose a place. But the last concrete evidence that I was part of something that was for a time (20 years) was good and strong and loving has to be gotten rid of, as if it means nothing. It is one more death to endure.
I hope I am alright at work tomorrow. I can't spend the whole day crying. I have too much work to do. They need me. So I tell myself. Everyone needs me. That's how I got to the point I'm at now, the point where my feelings are emerging. Finally I am moving past whining and complaining about things, little things, and just letting the emotion out. It feels so much healthier this way. I think I'm going to be a more likeable person and I think I'm going to be healthier in the end.
I have successfully moved into Michael's apartment now. I'll be here for 2 short weeks and then will return home to organize "the garage sale from hell."
So far, I have successfully avoided having to deal with the sale, with packing up my old things and deciding which things are no longer worthy of being called my own. As I was packing up Friday, I began to wonder why on earth I had ever bothered keeping 50 zillion back issues of Cosmo and Glamour. Of People and Premiere.
I have to pack up the Princess Diana collection. It's only been up a year, and I have to leave the special shelf behind. The one my dad made.
Our home is a patchwork quilt of memories. Every nook and cranny has a memory. Still nailed onto a beam in the basement is PopPop's work identification, which he posted there about 5 years before he died. The railing he installed in the cellar stairway so Judy and I wouldn't fall down the stairs and get hurt. The bushes he planted in the yard, the deck he built out back, even the clothesline he scaled 10 feet up a tree with hardware to install. We are losing the last remnants of my grandfather, my hero when we lose our home.
I brought the rug from the living room down here to Boston. I thought about how many times the dogs had run through the living room and messed it up. I think about how that will never happen again.
It seems as if my whole life, people have had my life planned out for me. I don't want to be trapped in someone else's fantasy of the perfect life. I have to remember to be true to my ideals. I have to remember to be who I am, to do what I want, and not hurt anyone directly by my actions. I will not go through this experience again. I find some comfort in that thought. I will not put my own children through this experience. I have met people here who seem to find this a normal chain of events. It's not normal. It should not be normal.
I am back home. The time at Michael's seemed to fly by, though I was sick so much of the time. My time back at home seems to be trudging by, like the seconds have to be waded through, like walking through a mud bog.
We are selling so many things. My dresser was the first thing to go. 15 dollars to some drunk, sick old lady who has been dying for 3 years, by accounts of our neighbors. I had that dresser for 21 years. Why did I sell it? What choice did I have?
With each visitor, we invariably run into someone who doesn't know my parents are divorced, or where my mom is moving to. She launches into this song and dance about HER house, and how she has no prospects, but isn't she brave to march onwards? I am tired of people saying how wonderful it is to start a whole new life. It IS NOT WONDERFUL! IT SUCKS!!!!!!
Tomorrow is the last day of grinning and bearing it. She goes to Jim's Wednesday and Tuesday we have theatre tickets, which means we get to spend the day doing something other than chit chatting about how wonderful this all is.
Well, being home alone has had its advantages yet again! I have managed to clean the place up after it being a total disaster. It's funny how little stress I am under right now.
Dad told me last night that mom has decided that people are still too reliant on her for things. She has decided not to help me move to Boston because I am some how intruding on her independence. I am not quite sure how that works out exactly, but I suppose it makes sense to someone. Apparently in this world, being manipulative gets you something for nothing, as it has my mother this time, me giving her 3 plus weeks of my life and not even being given 2 days of hers.
It is one more betrayal and one more assurance that I have been a burden in her life, that she would have gone on to fulfill some great and glorious destiny had my father, my sister, and I not come along.
And yet, I feel partly responsible. Perhaps my example gave her eyes to a new way of life. She and Dad settled down very young, right after college. I moved several times, taking catch-as-catch-can jobs and hopping around the country trying new things. Even now, with a wonderful boyfriend and great prospects, I am not settling down, just randomly jumping to a new state where again I know no one.
Perhaps to the casual observer, perhaps to my mother even, this freedom has seemed dizzying and thrilling. It was, but it was not without its prices, including living on the financial edge for much of the last 2 years. I have enjoyed some amazing things, but it isn't as easy as it may have looked.
So, Mom, I'm sorry for holding you down. Sorry for asking for anything. Just don't ask me either.
Another breakthrough night. Why do they always happen when I have to work in the morning? The tears are coming fast and furious, so fast that my throat hurts from the choked out sobs.
Had a nice evening with Dad. He said that he had enjoyed the last year with an adult me and that he was really going to miss me when I was in Arkansas. I started crying in his apartment when he said that. I have not considered my father as a vulnerable human being until this past year. It is an interesting concept. I am going to miss him too...
Called Mom when I got home, despite repeatedly telling myself that I wouldn't call Montana. Spent the entire conversation listening to her talk to Jim and direct him how to use the computer to help Fred in his job search. I felt so second or even third place then. Like there isn't even time to talk to me when I am 2000 miles away. It hurts, it hurts terribly to think that I do not rate an uninterrupted phone conversation.
Watched Pleasantville tonight at Dad's. Full of themes of divorce and infidelity, and seeing the world and people in your life in new ways. Choked back the tears several times. No wonder I am a mess now. Afraid I will have another night when my eyes won't quit "leaking."
Tomorrow is another day.
Boy, things have changed! Mom is out of the house, I'm out of the house, and Dad is back in the house... I'm so glad, he says he missed it there... I hope that means we may not have to sell the house...
I'm so much more relieved now that I'm not home. The stress of school is a stress I know how to deal with. I wasn't used to that kind of familial stress and I hated it. It's nice to be living on my own. The newsletter is coming along great, school is awesome, and I don't have much to report at this juncture! Hopefully things stay on an even keel till the holidays. At that point, I may become crazy again!
Insomnia is returning. I feel fortunate to have gotten 5 hours of sleep last night. The cat took off. I tell myself that today is the day she'll return. I hope I'm right. It's so sad that she's gone.
Mom is in Montana. I hate that. I hate that she calls me up, and I feel like she's throwing it in my face, or worse that she thinks I accept the fact, and that I can deal with the fact that she and "him" share a hotel room. She doesn't get it. But if I ask her not to talk about it...I'm the insensitive one.
So much is going on in my mind, I don't know where to start. Sometimes I'm afraid to post things here. Who knows who's watching, reading? I found a counselor. I'm going to call her tomorrow. Maybe we can set something up for next week...
I am afraid. Mom read the England article and asked what I was talking about. Tired of hiding all that I knew, I told the truth. I haven't heard from her in almost 2 days. She is not on ICQ, not on email, I doubt she would even answer the phone. It felt good after 2 1/2 years to get the things I had known since that summer off my chest. That I knew about her and Fred and that Daddy knew something. But now I feel worse, like I hurt her feelings. I know, instinctively, theoretically, emotionally, intellectually, mentally, that I didn't do anything wrong. She asked for the truth, and I told it. Perhaps she has really deluded herself this whole time thinking that none of us knew anything.
Judy joined our Yahoo club a couple days ago and nothing could have made me happier. But when she read my posts, she wanted to know what was going on. I told her, and she had shared an experience she had as well along the same lines. She said she wished I had told her when I first found out, but everyone I spoke to said it wasn't the right thing to do. Maybe Mom thinks I told Daddy. I don't know. I just know that never again am I going to tell anyone anything like that, truth or no. I know that seems rather a broad statement, but right now it feels like I did the wrong thing. I was honest in telling her I didn't know who the letter was from that Dad had found. I think that if she didn't want to be found out, she should not have been doing such things. Or she should have been prepared for the consequences of those actions.
I don't know. My family is such a mess. I wonder where things went wrong. Was it when I told my parents to get a modem? Was it before that? HELP!!! I'm starting to lose my mind. The guilt of it all is starting to crush me, and I have nothing to be guilty of. God forgive me.
For anyone who was following my journal, the cat came home and the counselor was a big waste of time!
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