Define Family

 "The worst crime is being expected not to tell."

~Darrell Hammond~

Having been raised in a close-knit (enmeshed) home with my family always surrounding me and my mother’s voice always crowding out my own thoughts I actually believed that what I had seen was normal. That the stories I grew up with were the same as the people around me. That everyone had tasted the hot drunk breath of their own mother as she spewed venom and hate in their face. That everyone’s father had a cupboard full of pills that were untouchable and that his moods and lack of presence, even when he never left the house, was common place. The feeling of never being alone but always being lonely. 

My home was not a haven; it was a war zone.

We had firmly established roles in my family. I was the scapegoat and the caretaker. I was the one who took the brunt of the abuse. I spent most of my childhood grounded to my room. For months on end I was allowed nothing and no one. Silence filled my life. I look back on those times and “solitary confinement” seems an apt description. I escaped in my mind. I lashed out at my mother. I lashed out at myself. The first time I ran away from home I was only seven years old. As a child I never could understand how every problem in my mother’s life was my fault. I tried desperately hard to assess every moment of every day so that I would know the moods of my parents and how I should act. I picked up on the cues of my mother and father. Trying to please them. Trying to be good enough.Trying to be supportive as they came to me to talk about their problems with the other one. But by the time I was fourteen years old I had given up on being good enough. I had given up on everything. Nothing interested me and I saw no future for myself other than moving away with my boyfriend the second we graduated. My dreams were so small that the only plan I had was to get a job at a grocery store so that I could support my boyfriend while he went to college and got a degree.

My brother, who was eight years younger than me, was the family jewel. My parents adored him, as did I.  I never felt resentful of the love and attention that was lavished on him by my parents. I was thankful. Grateful. I never wanted him to be hit by my mother and he never was. I never wanted him to be ignored by my father and he never was. In my mind, watching them with him, I felt as though we had different parents. And that made me extremely happy. My brother was one of the kindest and most sensitive people I knew. He deserved all of the love that he was given and more. Sometimes I wonder if I would have made it through my childhood if it weren't for him. Not because he reciprocated my adoration but simply because my love for him distracted me from the pain of being alive. I distinctly remember the many times I thought about ending my life but I could not do that to myself because I could not do that to him. I knew how badly it would hurt him. I knew the cut would be too deep to ever fully heal. I am thankful that I loved him that much.  

My mother was the anger and the fire in the house. She resented being a mother and a wife. I was a burden, that is not hyperbole, that is truth because she told me. And when she said the words “my family” we all knew she was talking about her mom, dad and siblings. She was not talking about us. Her fury was hot and swift. And would be fueled by the sight of me or my father. Especially if one of us looked happy. The only thing that could set her off more than our laughter was her tequila (or whiskey or wine depending on which decade of my life I am remembering). The tequila pump was located on the top of the kitchen cabinets which was where she kept the memorabilia plates and fancy decorations. She was short, nimble and young. She was a mere 17 years old when she had me. I can still hear the sound of her jumping up on the kitchen counter then the sound of the of clanking glass as she pumped the tequila and then she would jump back down. Some nights she would jump up there so many times that the only thing that stopped her drinking even more was the inability to get back up there. The only thing that hurt me worse than her blows were her words. But nothing hurt me more than her silence. She used to leave us. She would take off and not tell anyone where she was going. Dad never discussed it with us while she was gone. We would just get up in the morning and she would be gone and she would stay gone for a few days. The point of these disappearances was to teach us a lesson for taking her for granted. To show us everything that she did for us that we now had to do for ourselves. I remember wondering where she was, wondering if she would come home, wondering if she was ok, wondering if she loved me and why she didn’t say good-bye. Especially though I remember wondering and fearing that she would kill herself. But I also remember the quiet reprieve in the house. There was no longer anything to argue about. No one was shouting. It was simply breakfast, school, dinner, homework, television, then bed.

My father was the silent time bomb. Quiet and detached, he wouldn’t get involved in anything. He would sit there in the midst of every whirlwind and play dead. That was how he coped with the unending barrage of putdowns from my mother. That was how he coped with his inability to stop the pain that he watched me endure from the unending attacks. It is how he still copes. High and in his chair either watching tv or with his headphones on. Now it's his phone. He was (is) an addict. Heroine, pain meds, sleeping pills it really didn’t matter as long as it took him down. He would take anything he could get his hands on. Except he didn’t like to drink. His silence always had a breaking point though and eventually he would blow up. Knock down a door, break all of my toys, throw the contents of his wallet at me, scream in my face or in Mom’s face. Then it was like he had finally let the steam out and he would walk away from it all like nothing had happened. He never hit me but he was complicit in the abuse. I never took the hitting from my mother lightly. I always ran or tried to get away or screamed for help. And sometimes he would catch me for her and hold me while she hit me.