Please Listen; Don't Devour Me ...
My answering machine (yes, I am that old) has three messages blinking on it. They've been there for a while (the oldest is from September of 2010 or 2011) and I have yet to listen to at least two of them. I may have listened to the third but I don't want to listen to any of them so they are just there at all times reminding me that I need to get around to dealing with them. The main reason they are there is that I am not entirely sure I am ready to hear the first message and one of the others is just my Aunt telling me to listen to the first one. The first one is from my father and they really all boil down to "Call your Dad!" While this may seem pretty straightforward to most of you, my family life is very complicated.
My father married my mom to keep from being sent to Vietnam. I was also conceived for the same reason. They honestly did try to make things work but Mom was very sexually repressed. He kept having affairs and we moved around a lot because of them. They were divorced in 1972. Even without Mom's strong Catholic background, throughout all my school years very few other kids had divorced parents so this was just another thing that they picked on me for.
About a year after the divorce, dad married Agnes. She brought along two athletic teens that he could be proud of. He finally had the family he had been wanting all along. I was forced to visit them periodically and always had a horrible time. The only good memories I have are when I first ate duck and getting to sleep in a canopy bed (which I had always wanted but never got) and wearing two of my stepsister's old tutus together to make one for me. I loved that because I had always begged for dance lessons and was always told we couldn't afford them. Also, Mom never allowed me to wear skirts for any reason. I had one dress which was made for my Baptism and then became a Halloween costume and that was the only time I was allowed to wear it. These visits were mostly horrible as Agnes felt I was beneath her station and my stepsister & stepbrother lived to torment me at every turn. That, however, is a story for another time.
After missing a Junior High science class trip which I really wanted to go on because I had to suffer through another visit, they finally told me they wanted nothing more to do with me. I was not sorry about that. I was pretty darn happy to not have to be reminded constantly what a fucking disappointment of a child I was. This was the last contact I had with my father until I saw him at my Grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. I hadn't set eyes on him for almost a decade by then. We didn't speak much but that was OK with me. He mostly told me how wonderful the lives of his family members were. Again, I was fine with that.
Maybe he was still mad about the fact that I never sent him an invitation to my High School Graduation. The reason for this wasn't spite or anything, it just never occurred to me to send one to him. I didn't even realize the oversight for more than a month after the fact.
I do know that it hit him very hard that when Mom died nobody called him to let him know. He found out by reading her obituary in the paper. I know this may seem cold on my part but I hadn't planned on it being this way. I told my Aunt & Uncle to call him and tell him but we forgot in all the planning and such. Also, Mom's best friend's father died the day after mom did so that also threw things in a tizzy. Still, when he came to the house after reading about her death, I honestly didn't have any idea who he was until right before I opened the glass door to let him in.
Over the next year, he showed up on my doorstep three more times. Never calling or anything to let me know he was coming, just appearing there and being very annoyed that I was either leaving or so busy with whatever I was doing to allow him to stay for more than a minute or two. Then, nothing more for several years.
The last time I saw him was the summer of 1992. I was pregnant, homeless and had $2.78 to my name. I asked for help and advice. He told me to either abort it or get rid of it some other way. He didn't have any time for me. He had to go home to his perfect little family and his little Grandson.
At that moment I, basically, considered myself to be an orphan. I had no more family that cared about me and that was that.
Anyway, back to the calls. When I first came home and heard that the message was from him, I just left it. My first thought was, "I ain't giving him a kidney!" I figured I'd listen to it in a day or two and deal with it then. At first I didn't want to listen to it by myself but whenever beldar was home, it never seemed to be the right time and then my life went straight to Hell and I was in no shape to deal with one more thing in my broken mental state.
Hence, the constantly blinking notice of his message. With as much time as has gone by, it's very likely that he is now dead. Of course, since my Grandparents' will left their farm to be split amongst the grandchildren and the laws of Arkansas require that all person's named in an inheritance must sign off on any disposal of the property, that might have also been part of why he called. Still, since I am only just now beginning to be able to deal with so many things in my life, I realize that I'm going to eventually have to listen to the message. I'm just still not ready to do so.
I know that I should just break down and play the damn thing but I just still haven't. I realize that it's irresponsible and infantile to ignore the issue but I just have a hard time bringing myself to find out what sort of shit he was trying to bring into my life. Of course, I could always just erase the damn thing but I am honestly curious as to what caused him to lower himself to find and contact me. Plus, the fact that it's been so long since it came, whatever urgent issue it involves is moot but I still don't want to have to listen to what I'm sure is a relentless guilt trip from a man who told me that I wasn't worth his time when I really needed him.
So, that is my story. It is also my constant burden and reminder of how horrible my past really was. I suppose that I will listen to it sometime soon but not quite yet. I'm still not ready to revisit those ghosts of my past.
I know this was quite a long winding story and a lot less positive than most of my usual ones but it's also one of the most brutally honest things I've ever written. I hope you weren't too turned off by it's gloom and negativity but it's honestly something I've been meaning to post about for quite a while now and this week's therealljidol topic of Hair shirt couldn't have been a more apt time to purge myself of this specter. Thanks for reading. I expect to hear a lot of commentary from this one and I'm really looking forward to it all.
TTFN!
My father married my mom to keep from being sent to Vietnam. I was also conceived for the same reason. They honestly did try to make things work but Mom was very sexually repressed. He kept having affairs and we moved around a lot because of them. They were divorced in 1972. Even without Mom's strong Catholic background, throughout all my school years very few other kids had divorced parents so this was just another thing that they picked on me for.
About a year after the divorce, dad married Agnes. She brought along two athletic teens that he could be proud of. He finally had the family he had been wanting all along. I was forced to visit them periodically and always had a horrible time. The only good memories I have are when I first ate duck and getting to sleep in a canopy bed (which I had always wanted but never got) and wearing two of my stepsister's old tutus together to make one for me. I loved that because I had always begged for dance lessons and was always told we couldn't afford them. Also, Mom never allowed me to wear skirts for any reason. I had one dress which was made for my Baptism and then became a Halloween costume and that was the only time I was allowed to wear it. These visits were mostly horrible as Agnes felt I was beneath her station and my stepsister & stepbrother lived to torment me at every turn. That, however, is a story for another time.
After missing a Junior High science class trip which I really wanted to go on because I had to suffer through another visit, they finally told me they wanted nothing more to do with me. I was not sorry about that. I was pretty darn happy to not have to be reminded constantly what a fucking disappointment of a child I was. This was the last contact I had with my father until I saw him at my Grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. I hadn't set eyes on him for almost a decade by then. We didn't speak much but that was OK with me. He mostly told me how wonderful the lives of his family members were. Again, I was fine with that.
Maybe he was still mad about the fact that I never sent him an invitation to my High School Graduation. The reason for this wasn't spite or anything, it just never occurred to me to send one to him. I didn't even realize the oversight for more than a month after the fact.
I do know that it hit him very hard that when Mom died nobody called him to let him know. He found out by reading her obituary in the paper. I know this may seem cold on my part but I hadn't planned on it being this way. I told my Aunt & Uncle to call him and tell him but we forgot in all the planning and such. Also, Mom's best friend's father died the day after mom did so that also threw things in a tizzy. Still, when he came to the house after reading about her death, I honestly didn't have any idea who he was until right before I opened the glass door to let him in.
Over the next year, he showed up on my doorstep three more times. Never calling or anything to let me know he was coming, just appearing there and being very annoyed that I was either leaving or so busy with whatever I was doing to allow him to stay for more than a minute or two. Then, nothing more for several years.
The last time I saw him was the summer of 1992. I was pregnant, homeless and had $2.78 to my name. I asked for help and advice. He told me to either abort it or get rid of it some other way. He didn't have any time for me. He had to go home to his perfect little family and his little Grandson.
At that moment I, basically, considered myself to be an orphan. I had no more family that cared about me and that was that.
Anyway, back to the calls. When I first came home and heard that the message was from him, I just left it. My first thought was, "I ain't giving him a kidney!" I figured I'd listen to it in a day or two and deal with it then. At first I didn't want to listen to it by myself but whenever beldar was home, it never seemed to be the right time and then my life went straight to Hell and I was in no shape to deal with one more thing in my broken mental state.
Hence, the constantly blinking notice of his message. With as much time as has gone by, it's very likely that he is now dead. Of course, since my Grandparents' will left their farm to be split amongst the grandchildren and the laws of Arkansas require that all person's named in an inheritance must sign off on any disposal of the property, that might have also been part of why he called. Still, since I am only just now beginning to be able to deal with so many things in my life, I realize that I'm going to eventually have to listen to the message. I'm just still not ready to do so.
I know that I should just break down and play the damn thing but I just still haven't. I realize that it's irresponsible and infantile to ignore the issue but I just have a hard time bringing myself to find out what sort of shit he was trying to bring into my life. Of course, I could always just erase the damn thing but I am honestly curious as to what caused him to lower himself to find and contact me. Plus, the fact that it's been so long since it came, whatever urgent issue it involves is moot but I still don't want to have to listen to what I'm sure is a relentless guilt trip from a man who told me that I wasn't worth his time when I really needed him.
So, that is my story. It is also my constant burden and reminder of how horrible my past really was. I suppose that I will listen to it sometime soon but not quite yet. I'm still not ready to revisit those ghosts of my past.
I know this was quite a long winding story and a lot less positive than most of my usual ones but it's also one of the most brutally honest things I've ever written. I hope you weren't too turned off by it's gloom and negativity but it's honestly something I've been meaning to post about for quite a while now and this week's therealljidol topic of Hair shirt couldn't have been a more apt time to purge myself of this specter. Thanks for reading. I expect to hear a lot of commentary from this one and I'm really looking forward to it all.
TTFN!