Growing up, again

I've been hesitant to post on here for some time now. One of my earlier posts, The Beginning, took me weeks of courage to actually put on this thing. It sat in a word document on my laptop for weeks, because halfway through writing it, I felt like I was eight years old again and couldn't stop crying. Not the good part of being eight, complete with dollies and coloring books and cartoons, but the bad kind, rife with guilt, feeling like a 'bad' girl, afraid of getting spanked for sneaking food, which I now realize, with a modicum of recently gained retrospect, was my one way to exert control over my life. Some girls do this by not eating anything, I did it by eating everything. Between you and me, I've always been jealous and fascinated by the willpower of anorexics.

Dean and I traveled to Florida to see my family over the holidays. I am always excited to see my mom, grandmother and brothers, but always have (and for all I know, probably always will) approach my father (stepfather technically, but he essentially raised me so I refer to him to everyone as my Dad), with caution. This is not to say that I'm not happy to see him, but I'm he reminds me of a ticking time bomb that could go off without notice. The usual culprit is alcohol, which, despite his rather substantial frame, he cannot handle. I couldn't count on my fingers and toes the number of times he's quit drinking. It's to a point now where if I know he'll be having more than one or two drinks, I'll either lay low and avoid speaking to him, or just leave the room altogether.

Some of his other triggers are stranger things, like watching the Sopranos. I don't believe I've ever witnessed this one, but according to my mother and brothers, when he's done watching the Sopranos he starts acting like Tony Soprano, who is, well, a dickhead.

There are other things too, like when he thinks the conversation is inappropriate, or he doesn't like what everyone else is watching on television, or he sees one of his kids smoking a cigarette, or any time he's not the center of attention. There is an absolute need to control and be noticed, which frankly, disgusts me.

He tries to do good things, like taking the family on nice vacations, opening his house to family members in need (i.e. Dean and I after a plan to by a house in Florida went horribly wrong), or I think his favorite, 'saving' people (not in the religious sense but the physical sense). What ruins and cheapens these experiences though, is his need to show the world all the wonderful, amazing things he's done. He'll gather an audience, tell his story, and then bask in the compliments he's just gone deep-sea fishing for. In short, my father is a narcissist, and a big one at that.

This narcissism, coupled with alcoholism and the abuse he's inflicted on all of his children, is something that for about twenty years I've been trying to shove down.

When I was about five, my mother married J., my stepfather. Right around this time, I had my first binge. I took a platter of candy into my closet and ate the entire thing. Three years later, after being tested and placed in gifted classes, I got my first bad grade, a D. I got into trouble. I got called lazy, manipulative, a liar. I got grounded. I got lecture after lecture. When I would cry, J. would ridicule me, make fun of me, make fun of the words I said, or my voice. Sometimes he wouldn't let me speak, just call me a liar, or his favorite, a manipulator. I was seven years old and didn't have a clue what manipulating even meant. And then there was the constant fear that if I talked back, I'd get a spanking, which really weren't spankings at all, but beatings. This same cycle would repeat itself if I ate something I wasn't supposed to, or snuck food. Food was something that always made me feel better, but it was yet another thing I wasn't supposed to have. I was a fat, lazy, manipulative, sneaky lying little girl. The cycle of binging and abuse was vicious and uncontrollable.

This cycle more or less repeated itself until I was 15, and literally couldn't take living in that house any longer. I went to live with my natural father and stepmother. They thought, for some reason, that it was going to be easy street with me because I was 15. I feel terrible for they way I acted. I was an asshole. I did drugs, threw parties, did horribly in school, stole money from my dad and makeup from my stepmom, ran with a bad crowd, lied, ditched school constantly, and was just a real shithead. They tried putting me in counseling a few times, but I wasn't ready and I think they, especially my stepmom, were too angry. I can't blame them. They were trying to do the right thing but I was fully out of control by then.

I've been numbing out the way I feel ever since I was five. With food, drugs, alcohol, and for a brief period in my early twenties, with men. I've managed to quit the drugs, control the alcohol and married a man that understands what I've been through and is not only able to sympathize, but has also helped me intellectualize and see patterns in my behavior, taking some of the emotion out of it. He has also never, not once, judged me or made me feel unloved.

So what does this leave me with? Food. And a lot of hurt, anger, rage, sadness, betrayal and a sick want for revenge. In my sickest, darkest fantasies I wish for bad things to happen to J. I wish for humiliation, violence, separation, uneasiness. I want him to feel every single thing he made me feel as a child. And I'm tired of feeling sorry for the way I feel. This is my truth right now. I hope, with therapy, talking, writing, and whatever else it will take, these feelings will resolve themselves. Because the strange part is, I know, that even with all the hatred and as J put it, 'torment' I'm going through right now, having J go through the same thing won't fix the problem. He and in the passive sense, my mother may have put me here, but the problem is now mine to deal with. Getting angry at them isn't solving anything for me, nor is stuffing my face with food, smoking cigarettes or drinking bottle after bottle of red wine. It's just putting a poison-soaked band aid over the problem. I'm still angry, but I'm also ready to start growing up and moving on.