That’s how I feel and it’s getting worse by the minute. I have two bad days a year: April 1 and June 24. April 1 was my youngest sister’s birthday. June 24 was the anniversary of her death. Melanoma killed her. She was 35.
I’ve been plagued by memories – none of them happy. My mother went into labor on a Sunday morning. When we got home from church, The Drunk told us we had a sister. My brother, a few months shy of 5, burst into tears. “You promised me a brother!” Way to go Drunk!
When I was 11 and Tina, my youngest sister, was 13 months old, she played with oven cleaner. My mother watcher her do it. After cleaning my sister off, she put the oven cleaner soaked sneakers back on my sister. My sister spent the next four hours crying. My mother spent the next four hours yelling, literally, at my sister telling her to stop crying. Eventually, Tina’s diaper needed changing. That’s when my mother noticed Tina had second and third degree chemical burns from the waist down. Off they went to the emergency room. Because they were Caucasian and had enough income to afford health insurance, no one at the hospital bothered to call child protective services.
Many years ago, the Olympic event featuring skiers doing tricks and turns was called hot dogging. Tina and her friends went skiing. It was a miserable day with freezing rain. Tina said the weather was so bad she did the last run with her eyes closed. When she got to the bottom of the hill, her friends asked her where she learned to do all that hot dogging. Tina responded that she didn’t know how to ski. That may sound like resilience, but it wasn’t. It was the legacy of child abuse. You didn’t ask for help in my house. You figured out how to do it yourself or face the wrath of two drunks.
When my sister had her first period. She didn’t tell anyone. She knew there was always an assortment of feminine hygiene products under the bathroom sink, so she grabbed a pad, pinned it in her pants, and went to school. That wasn’t resilience either. When I had my first period, I didn’t want to say anything to my mother because I was sure she would bitch at me. The next morning, there was more blood in my panties and I was stuck telling my mother. To my shock, she didn’t bitch at me.
The last week, I’ve had a cascade of miserable memories. Tina died in 1997. A friend saw the death notice and called to ask how I was. That’s when my friend discovered I had no idea my sister died. I didn’t even know she was ill. After I hung up the phone, I heard keening for the first time. It’s the most blood curdling sound you can imagine, and it came out of me.
My mother had decreed I wasn’t to know Tina was sick or that she had died. To tell me meant getting cut out of the will. My surviving sister, hereinafter The Fruitcake, told me the reason no one told me Tina was sick was because I’m a horrible person. I never asked my mother and The Drunk for money, I put myself through college, I put myself through law school, I’ve only been married once, and I’ve never had an abortion. Clearly I’m every mother’s worst nightmare.
The universe gave me revenge. My mother spent the last years of her life in a nursing home and there was nothing left for my greedy siblings to inherit. Even so, they refused to tell me our mother had died. I only knew because I got a notice from Legacy.com. I had to crash the funeral. My remaining siblings were shocked to see me.
All these years later, I still can’t get past April 1 without major depression. I’ll do something special for me tomorrow. I might take Brady and go on an adventure. I’m considering going to Mesilla (where Billy The Kid hung out) and doing some photography. I’d like to have lunch someplace, but I’m not sure where I want to go. I’d suggest going to Albuquerque, but there’s nothing much I want to do there and the Albuquerque Fiber Arts Fiesta is in two weeks. I don’t feel like making two major trips that close together.
Listening to Roger Daltry sing Behind Blue Eyes isn’t helping although it does explain how I feel. Sort of.
I hate my mother. I don’t apologize for that. She was a violent, drunken narcissist who had four kids she didn’t want and made very sure we knew she never wanted us.
Please make it stop hurting.
No one can make it stop hurting.
This is how it felt from my fourth birthday in 1956 until the day I got married in 1972. It never stopped hurting. It was never happy.
Deb's Art 