empty
Sitting alone in my apartment I can't help but feel this emptiness that completely consumes me. It's as if I've been neglected and stashed in a place where people can close their eyes and pretend everything is okay. And why isn't it? I've got a nice job, nice friends, a boyfriend, hobbies and volunteer activities. What's there to be empty about?
I think there was a type of aloneness and sadness that rippled through my family. I didn't know it wasn't normal until I was much older, but looking back I just want to save the past. To make things better. And what wasn't okay back then? My sisters loved each other and hated each other. They'd tease one another, put eggs in their hair for protein, talked on the phone for hours. My Dad bought Mom a diamond wrist watch and a white volvo station wagon. Mom played tennis at the country club and walked with the neighbors every morning before sunrise. I went on vacations every summer to a place that didn't have electricity but had a giant lake where I would swim for hours until I got tired and then ate brownies in the sunlight.
But there was something not right. Dad had a personality disorder and we walked around him silently. It was those pockets of silence that saturated the rest of the house until it spread into hours when he wasn't there. Into the quiet of the house Mom was sad and didn't recognize it. I wished I could have saved her in the same way I know she wished she could have saved me.
When I was fourteen I went to live with my Dad a few years after the divorce. The walls were white, the rooms were bare and it was empty of personality. There was no puttering around. There were no conversations into the phone with my cousins or aunt. He isolated me. Told me my family were mentally ill and couldn't love me. Later when I wanted to go back to my family, he said it would be hard from all the damage I had done and that Mom might not want to take me back. I had screwed up and there was no one left but my Dad. I wanted to go home, but for so many reasons I was at Dad's for life.
Now that I'm no longer physically there - I still feel like I'm there and I don't know how to get out of those white walls.
I think there was a type of aloneness and sadness that rippled through my family. I didn't know it wasn't normal until I was much older, but looking back I just want to save the past. To make things better. And what wasn't okay back then? My sisters loved each other and hated each other. They'd tease one another, put eggs in their hair for protein, talked on the phone for hours. My Dad bought Mom a diamond wrist watch and a white volvo station wagon. Mom played tennis at the country club and walked with the neighbors every morning before sunrise. I went on vacations every summer to a place that didn't have electricity but had a giant lake where I would swim for hours until I got tired and then ate brownies in the sunlight.
But there was something not right. Dad had a personality disorder and we walked around him silently. It was those pockets of silence that saturated the rest of the house until it spread into hours when he wasn't there. Into the quiet of the house Mom was sad and didn't recognize it. I wished I could have saved her in the same way I know she wished she could have saved me.
When I was fourteen I went to live with my Dad a few years after the divorce. The walls were white, the rooms were bare and it was empty of personality. There was no puttering around. There were no conversations into the phone with my cousins or aunt. He isolated me. Told me my family were mentally ill and couldn't love me. Later when I wanted to go back to my family, he said it would be hard from all the damage I had done and that Mom might not want to take me back. I had screwed up and there was no one left but my Dad. I wanted to go home, but for so many reasons I was at Dad's for life.
Now that I'm no longer physically there - I still feel like I'm there and I don't know how to get out of those white walls.