as a child i looked to you… i always felt loved and protected… I was your “tiger” I felt like I was the favorite… i spent many hours hanging with you in the bar you drinking coors beer and me drinking coke and eating jerky… i remember sitting at the Y and the singer singing and she sat with us and gave you a gladys knight album with a song on it that she had been singing … looking back over the years I think you were having an affair with her… and you just had me there.. i think over the years i spent time with quite a few women that you slept with while being married to my mom… you told me that I was always being watched … i think you meant it to keep me feeling safe, but it burrowed a path for when I was married to Equis… he had me convinced that I was watched to… many of the ways he was able to keep me off balance and afraid were paths that your voice created first …. you lied to me and made me feel like you would protect and take care of me, but it left me open to believe the lies of other men… You only cared about yourself and what worked for you… which created holes in me to find men who do the same with me…. you cheated and I find cheaters, you lied and I find liars, you emotionally abandoned me and I find emotionally unavailable men…. you walk out on me and I find men who walk out on me… you didn’t stay and they don’t stay… you hurt my mom and degraded her and i find men who treat me with disrespect… i am responsible for my choices but my inner dialogue of unworthy and unwanted run deep in my soul…. your drinking made me feel off kilter, i never knew who was coming home, someone fun or someone upset …. i remember one night when i was crying outside your bedroom door and then throwing up and crying you came out and picked me up over your head and looked and me and yelled… i don’t remember what you said, but I remember being so scared I peed and you quickly put me down apologizing and feeling like an ass…. i remember that look in Equis’ eyes as he sat on me choking me and the realization sweeping over him just the same as he watched my face swell quickly from the contact of his hand….
i never saw you and mom fight …. maybe that was over by the time i came along and was able to realize… but i think that the most detrimental part was that although i never saw fighting although I heard you yell maybe it was just that mom didn’t fight back so there was no fighting..., i also never saw love, i saw you kiss one time that i can recall… in doorway of the green bathroom
How I felt about it then…
as a child I was naive and wanted to believe what was easier…. you made sure we had fun christmas’s and things… all to the stress and pain of my mom… but I didn’t know that then, I didn’t know the struggle for her or the stress she was under … just that you were fun and she was less so… i thought you were so great… even though i also had friends who would hide in my toy box because you were home and loudly telling them to go home….
i felt embarrassed to smell like the smoke of your cigarettes… of being the only child i knew who’s father drank beer and didn’t go to church…. of being the only latch key kid that i knew in my neighborhood… i always felt different… odd … some of it was just who I came here to this planet, and I was more fine with that… but the feeling I was different because of your choices was harder….
I feel like my daughters feel the same now at times… where I’m not like their friends moms and they don’t have the perfect mormon family like their friends… she raises herself way more than they will ever have to…..
this is how it affected me….
some of it was mentioned above…. about the men i choose, the way I feel about myself…. the way i feel like Im not worthy of better…. the way i feel like no one stays, no one can love me completely or stay through the tough times… like no one can hold the space for me… hold my kite string as i fly… how i always dream of a beautiful life with a partner, but how i don’t see how to make that come true… how I mess up every relationship i’m in … how the minute things look like they are going bad in a relationship, i don’t leave but i reach for someone else to make sure i have back up… how when I’m triggered I panic and reach out, how my flight flight or freeze becomes reaching and grabbing and holding on… how i can’t figure out my shit to save my damn life… how I feel different and crazy and how i stuff everything down while at the same time i throw it all up… i bury things and overshare, I don’t make sense… I’m selfish and feel crazy… like I can’t trust anyone with my heart yet i give it away too easily…. how i reach and reach and reach like a pathetic loser… just wanting/begging from someone to get me, to love me, to see me! yet i don’t even know how to get, love and see myself… I want someone to know me, but I’m too afraid to know myself…
this is what i want from you now…
this is a hard question for me…. because i don’t know what i want… i don’t know if i want anything… i feel like I can’t let myself expect anything from you…. like I let you do things for us financially when its your idea but I refuse to ask for anything… how you always attach strings to what you give but I don’t let them hold me… I don’t feel guilty for taking from you because a part of me feels you owe me… but I don’t ever expect it …. how my sister wants you to do for her like you do for me, how she does what she can to be the “good daughter” how she does whatever you want and feels so resentful but does it anyway… and then you do for me and I barely call you or try just enough to not be a total bitch of a daughter… but not enough to actually be a good one… how maybe instead of reaching for you I reach for men to love me or complete me… how I don’t want to ask for anything… I know you will never change your hurtful words… you will always say racist bullshit no matter how many times I correct you or tell you its wrong… so i’m at the point where i just expect your gonna say something assholey … and i tense up when you start on your rants… and i either let you go or get assholey back…
I wanted the dad who loved me and one I could measure every man to so that I found but I guess i actually got that in the negative instead of the positive ….
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