30 Days - Day 03 - Your Parents, in great detail
hmm.
OK. This is gonna be long and fractured. I'm dredging up some serious scars here...
My parents met through my father's brother (D). D and Mum were mates, as they're the same age.
They got married when my mother was 18 and my father was 21. My father, being Water Resources Commissioner for western QLD, had to move around a lot. Took mum with him. I was born less than a month before mum's 19th birthday, in Rockhampton, as previously stated. My sister and brother followed, in Bundaberg and Charleville respectively. We moved a LOT.
Mum and dad divorced when I was four and she took us back to Brisbane.
Dad was a responsible father. he lived on potatos and offcuts, in a shed in Charleville so that he could afford to send as much money to us as possible. Every second weekend without fail, he'd finish work (which usually involved him spending up to a week out on farms building aqueducts and artesian wells etc), drive home, pick up some stuff and drive to Brisbane, an 800km drive. he'd stay at his brother's place and he'd do stuff with us all weekend long, then drive back Sunday night to start again Monday morning. He was devoted, active and determined to be a part of our lives.
Mum hated dad with a passion. She would take any steps she could to stop him seeing us - not actually doing so, but putting as many obstacles in his way as possible. This may have had an effect on his later behaviour - but that's for later.
My dad remarried. A dutch woman from Charters Towers. I'll call her C (ironically, her name is the same as my mother's, although she goes by a pet name). They eventually moved to Brisbane when dad got a management position with Main Roads. They bought a house in Wynnum. C never liked us...well maybe that's not fair. She didn't like the IDEA of us. We were a link to dad's past - to mum, and C wanted dad all to herself. Things started to change.
At first it was subtle. Access went from every second weekend to every second Sunday. Instead of hanging around their house, dad would take us on historic walks or out for picnics. Anything that didn't cost money and didn't involve C. I was old enough by this point to recognise what was going on, and I hated it.
Then they had their first child together.
Things went from bad to worse. It was now one sunday ever THREE weeks, and we had to make our own way part way. He wouldn't even buy us an icecream. My dad has always been careful with money, but it was getting ridiculous. Mum had to take him to court twice to keep up his child support payments.
C wanted us out, and my father was too much of a coward to stand up to her. Apparently this was pretty normal for dad - mum wore the pants in that marriage too. My sister and brother, too young to have remembered dad in the good times, took it in stride and joined mum in hating his guts. My brother even threatened to take dad to court himself. I refused to give up. Dad had been pretty much emotionally and (as much as C could get it) physically absent for years by this point, but I was brought up to respect family. That was about to change.
The point at which I stopped speaking to my father came a few years after his second son was born to C. Things had deteriorated to pretty much nothing - if I wanted to talk to him, I had to contact him. I was in uni by this point, and his kids were about 7 and 5. C was not even trying to disguise her dislike of me anymore. She'd retreat to her sewing room when I was around, or take the kids and go out. Didn't help that I hated her right back. She had no personality whatsoever and was your stereotypical dutch woman - my way or the highway. A stay-at-home-mum who dictated what my father could and could not do with the money he earned. My 18th birthday present was a dubbed cassette. Any gift given to us had to be under $10. By contrast, C's 2 kids got whatever they wanted, up to and including top of the range musical instruments.
I was supposed to go to a friend's birthday party in Manly. I asked my father for one thing - if I could crash on his couch after the party so I could go (I couldn't get home that late). He said yes, but then C interjected, and all of a sudden it was too much hassle. Between that, his miserliness with us, C's hatred of us and dad's lack of a spine, I'd had enough. I never said it to him. I wrote him a letter, but never sent it. I just stopped contacting him. Stopped going to his place for xmas. Stopped caring.
Yeah that probably scarred me. I don't trust males really. You can count my male friends on one hand. I don't care. I'm glad he's out of my life. Mum wants me to go after his estate when he dies (he's a millionaire now). I don't want his money, his time, or him. He is - and has been for a while - The Sperm Donor.
*sigh*. Now my mother.
She left school at 14 to join the bank. Married dad, divorced, and all of a sudden had 3 kids to bring up on her own. I have to give her this - she was a fuckin machine. She managed to raise us on her wage plus the pittance my father paid her. She sent us to private schools, we all got orthodontics done, and we never wanted for anything. We were beyond poor, but she made it work. She's still paying off our school fees.
So yeah. She worked hard. Problem is, her and I never got along. She's an Aries, I'm a Pisces. She's a feminist, I'm a male. I was treated like a second class citizen because I was born with a dick. I was also the eldest, so copped it all. It's how I learned to deal with pain. When I stopped reacting to her hitting me, she'd get a rolling pin or a belt and try again. I learned to wall it all off. Wait for it to end. Then I'd go to my room, listen to Pantera and read. I learned how to shut off emotion - how to not care. Music quite literally saved my life, as things just got worse as I got older and became a man. If it sounds odd that I was getting beat by a woman (someone my size???) remember two things - first, I don't hit women, so I never retaliated. Second, she's 5'10 and strong.
Sometimes she'd try. She'd be a good mum. Take me to my friend's places, buy us things, try to be there. But other times...most times...the stress got to her and I was the easiest target. didn't help that I look a bit like my father.
So between school and mum, I learned a lot about pain and closing down. I was a walking ball of rage for most of my life, and as I said in an earlier post, some kids took the brunt of that. They deserved every bit of it, but yeah. I could just...unleash. It felt good. But I'm getting off track.
Mum was adamant that we'd do well at school. It was her obsession. If I came home with less than straight A's, there'd be serious trouble. I wanted to do music and history. I was told I was doing physics and chem. Academic subjects. REAL subjects. I was going to do a real degree, not some artsy-fartsy arts degree. I WOULD go to university and MAKE HER PROUD.
When I told her I'd dropped out of uni, she was utterly livid. It was also the point I stopped caring what she thought of me. Yes, through all this I just wanted her to be proud of me. I wanted to do the right thing by her, because she'd worked so hard...tried so hard to give us every opportunity.
I didn't care anymore. I'd moved out a year earlier. Got a girlfriend. Discovered booze and sex. Hated my degree. Got out. Decided to live my own life.
I didn't speak to mum for several years after Rex and I broke up due to her comments on the situation. (I'm male. It must have been my fault. Get over it.). I think that gave her a bit of a shock.
We started talking again in my mid-20s. I didn't say anything to her about why I'd stopped. She didn't ask. I knew she was incapable of apologising, and careful probes have shown me that she's blocked a lot of it out. She doesn't remember beating me. She doesn't remember me breaking my arm when I was 13. She doesn't remember me dislocating my knee when I was 16. She doesn't remember a lot of things, so to her, she's always been good to us, and I just badmouth her to look cool.
Mum and I became friends, as adults, in my mid to late 20s. We skirt certain subjects. She still tries to bait me, but I know her ways and just ignore it now. She moved to Canberra a few years ago, and that helped a lot. Mum and I get on a lot better over the phone than in person. When I visit her, I want to see her and her new husband. This is a good thing, and it's great to have a relationship with my mother again.
I think it's also why I'm attracted to dominant, strong, independant women. I respected those qualities in her and always tried to live up to them.
I could say a LOT more, but I have things to do, and some shit is just too painful to bring up again. Let sleeping dogs lie. My father's family - his parents and brothers - are the closest family I have, and I'd die without them, but my father can fuck right off.
And Mum gets told in no uncertain terms what subjects are off limits now. It works for us.
I love my mum.
T
OK. This is gonna be long and fractured. I'm dredging up some serious scars here...
My parents met through my father's brother (D). D and Mum were mates, as they're the same age.
They got married when my mother was 18 and my father was 21. My father, being Water Resources Commissioner for western QLD, had to move around a lot. Took mum with him. I was born less than a month before mum's 19th birthday, in Rockhampton, as previously stated. My sister and brother followed, in Bundaberg and Charleville respectively. We moved a LOT.
Mum and dad divorced when I was four and she took us back to Brisbane.
Dad was a responsible father. he lived on potatos and offcuts, in a shed in Charleville so that he could afford to send as much money to us as possible. Every second weekend without fail, he'd finish work (which usually involved him spending up to a week out on farms building aqueducts and artesian wells etc), drive home, pick up some stuff and drive to Brisbane, an 800km drive. he'd stay at his brother's place and he'd do stuff with us all weekend long, then drive back Sunday night to start again Monday morning. He was devoted, active and determined to be a part of our lives.
Mum hated dad with a passion. She would take any steps she could to stop him seeing us - not actually doing so, but putting as many obstacles in his way as possible. This may have had an effect on his later behaviour - but that's for later.
My dad remarried. A dutch woman from Charters Towers. I'll call her C (ironically, her name is the same as my mother's, although she goes by a pet name). They eventually moved to Brisbane when dad got a management position with Main Roads. They bought a house in Wynnum. C never liked us...well maybe that's not fair. She didn't like the IDEA of us. We were a link to dad's past - to mum, and C wanted dad all to herself. Things started to change.
At first it was subtle. Access went from every second weekend to every second Sunday. Instead of hanging around their house, dad would take us on historic walks or out for picnics. Anything that didn't cost money and didn't involve C. I was old enough by this point to recognise what was going on, and I hated it.
Then they had their first child together.
Things went from bad to worse. It was now one sunday ever THREE weeks, and we had to make our own way part way. He wouldn't even buy us an icecream. My dad has always been careful with money, but it was getting ridiculous. Mum had to take him to court twice to keep up his child support payments.
C wanted us out, and my father was too much of a coward to stand up to her. Apparently this was pretty normal for dad - mum wore the pants in that marriage too. My sister and brother, too young to have remembered dad in the good times, took it in stride and joined mum in hating his guts. My brother even threatened to take dad to court himself. I refused to give up. Dad had been pretty much emotionally and (as much as C could get it) physically absent for years by this point, but I was brought up to respect family. That was about to change.
The point at which I stopped speaking to my father came a few years after his second son was born to C. Things had deteriorated to pretty much nothing - if I wanted to talk to him, I had to contact him. I was in uni by this point, and his kids were about 7 and 5. C was not even trying to disguise her dislike of me anymore. She'd retreat to her sewing room when I was around, or take the kids and go out. Didn't help that I hated her right back. She had no personality whatsoever and was your stereotypical dutch woman - my way or the highway. A stay-at-home-mum who dictated what my father could and could not do with the money he earned. My 18th birthday present was a dubbed cassette. Any gift given to us had to be under $10. By contrast, C's 2 kids got whatever they wanted, up to and including top of the range musical instruments.
I was supposed to go to a friend's birthday party in Manly. I asked my father for one thing - if I could crash on his couch after the party so I could go (I couldn't get home that late). He said yes, but then C interjected, and all of a sudden it was too much hassle. Between that, his miserliness with us, C's hatred of us and dad's lack of a spine, I'd had enough. I never said it to him. I wrote him a letter, but never sent it. I just stopped contacting him. Stopped going to his place for xmas. Stopped caring.
Yeah that probably scarred me. I don't trust males really. You can count my male friends on one hand. I don't care. I'm glad he's out of my life. Mum wants me to go after his estate when he dies (he's a millionaire now). I don't want his money, his time, or him. He is - and has been for a while - The Sperm Donor.
*sigh*. Now my mother.
She left school at 14 to join the bank. Married dad, divorced, and all of a sudden had 3 kids to bring up on her own. I have to give her this - she was a fuckin machine. She managed to raise us on her wage plus the pittance my father paid her. She sent us to private schools, we all got orthodontics done, and we never wanted for anything. We were beyond poor, but she made it work. She's still paying off our school fees.
So yeah. She worked hard. Problem is, her and I never got along. She's an Aries, I'm a Pisces. She's a feminist, I'm a male. I was treated like a second class citizen because I was born with a dick. I was also the eldest, so copped it all. It's how I learned to deal with pain. When I stopped reacting to her hitting me, she'd get a rolling pin or a belt and try again. I learned to wall it all off. Wait for it to end. Then I'd go to my room, listen to Pantera and read. I learned how to shut off emotion - how to not care. Music quite literally saved my life, as things just got worse as I got older and became a man. If it sounds odd that I was getting beat by a woman (someone my size???) remember two things - first, I don't hit women, so I never retaliated. Second, she's 5'10 and strong.
Sometimes she'd try. She'd be a good mum. Take me to my friend's places, buy us things, try to be there. But other times...most times...the stress got to her and I was the easiest target. didn't help that I look a bit like my father.
So between school and mum, I learned a lot about pain and closing down. I was a walking ball of rage for most of my life, and as I said in an earlier post, some kids took the brunt of that. They deserved every bit of it, but yeah. I could just...unleash. It felt good. But I'm getting off track.
Mum was adamant that we'd do well at school. It was her obsession. If I came home with less than straight A's, there'd be serious trouble. I wanted to do music and history. I was told I was doing physics and chem. Academic subjects. REAL subjects. I was going to do a real degree, not some artsy-fartsy arts degree. I WOULD go to university and MAKE HER PROUD.
When I told her I'd dropped out of uni, she was utterly livid. It was also the point I stopped caring what she thought of me. Yes, through all this I just wanted her to be proud of me. I wanted to do the right thing by her, because she'd worked so hard...tried so hard to give us every opportunity.
I didn't care anymore. I'd moved out a year earlier. Got a girlfriend. Discovered booze and sex. Hated my degree. Got out. Decided to live my own life.
I didn't speak to mum for several years after Rex and I broke up due to her comments on the situation. (I'm male. It must have been my fault. Get over it.). I think that gave her a bit of a shock.
We started talking again in my mid-20s. I didn't say anything to her about why I'd stopped. She didn't ask. I knew she was incapable of apologising, and careful probes have shown me that she's blocked a lot of it out. She doesn't remember beating me. She doesn't remember me breaking my arm when I was 13. She doesn't remember me dislocating my knee when I was 16. She doesn't remember a lot of things, so to her, she's always been good to us, and I just badmouth her to look cool.
Mum and I became friends, as adults, in my mid to late 20s. We skirt certain subjects. She still tries to bait me, but I know her ways and just ignore it now. She moved to Canberra a few years ago, and that helped a lot. Mum and I get on a lot better over the phone than in person. When I visit her, I want to see her and her new husband. This is a good thing, and it's great to have a relationship with my mother again.
I think it's also why I'm attracted to dominant, strong, independant women. I respected those qualities in her and always tried to live up to them.
I could say a LOT more, but I have things to do, and some shit is just too painful to bring up again. Let sleeping dogs lie. My father's family - his parents and brothers - are the closest family I have, and I'd die without them, but my father can fuck right off.
And Mum gets told in no uncertain terms what subjects are off limits now. It works for us.
I love my mum.
T