It's really hard to be honest about who your parents really are when you're a kid. Mostly because you don't see it. You don't see them as people, with personalities and shortcomings. Instead, they are these towering statues of legs and arms and mouths and booming voices. I don't know when they become people. Now that I am an adult with a child of my own, I know - because I remember - how Dylan sees me and I try so hard to keep face. Now that I am grown with a child of my own, so many of the things my parents did that I didn't understand are making more sense. So many of the things about my childhood that seemed normal I know, now, weren't.
It's difficult to accurately reflect upon your childhood sometimes without bringing light to the things your parents did or didn't do. It is even more difficult to keep from hurting their feelings when they are already hyper-sensitive and defensive about their parenting and your upbringing. That is the situation I find myself in now. Who am I honest to? The grown up version of myself says 'to thine own self be true'. The mousy little girl with nickels in her pocket says to keep it shut.
I've always heard that we are what the past has made us, a product of our upbringing, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree....But I have always been the naysayer, standing firm in the idea that you can shed your past, climb out of your childhood like an exoskeleton, and march - onward and upward - as if it never happened.
I know now, that I was lying. I can't walk away from it. I can't pretend my childhood never took place or turn a blind eye. Not while still remaining honest with myself, and that is all I want. Honesty. Within myself. Peace.
So many people have had such awful, earth-shattering experiences as children. Periods of time that meant they would never be the same again. You can see emptiness in their eyes or a flat tone in their voice and you know they are damaged. Beyond repair. I don't feel that I am one of those people. I like to maintain a little perspective on things and say that I turned out okay.
But, I don't think that it was because of my upbringing, rather in spite of it.
My family consists of 5 kids. We all have such tremendously different stories it's hard to understand how any of them intertwine, but we all find some commonality in distance from our parents. My two older sisters often get clumped together because their ages are very close. So close that they were in the same year in school. People mistook them for twins. But they are very different.
One is married with three daughters. She lives in the same town as my parents and I, but my parents have never met the 2 younger children and wouldn't recognize the oldest if they saw her. They have no relationship whatsoever and haven't for several, several years.
The other sister is also married with one daughter. She lives about an hour away with her family. She talks to my parents on an as-needed basis about holidays or upcoming events, but does not go out of her way - in any way - to have a relationship with them.
Then there is me. Our relationship is complicated and tumultuous and not beneficial to either party in any way. I speak to my mom almost every day. I am the only adult child in the family who does. And I believe I do it because I am a masochist. A majority of the things my mother says to me don't make sense. She expresses concern when things are falling apart for me, but only from a distance. She is insincere. She is generally cold and lacks empathy. Our relationship is not a mother-daughter relationship. It is very forced for me. I work very, very hard at this relationship. I know that it is more important to me than it is to her. My mother hurts my feelings almost every time I have a conversation with her, and I have given up on trying to prevent it from happening.
My little brother was adopted. He is 21 now, and speaks to my parents once every few months. Generally, my mom will track him down and talk to him long enough to gain a little peace of mind and then ignore him for a few months until the whole cycle starts again. He has been homeless, hospitalized, harassed. He has been medicated, institutionalized, and searched for. Poor kid. He has a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome, as well as a whole array of other mental disorders. His biological mother was on drugs and was a schizophrenic. He isn't far behind. And he is completely alone.
My little sister was also adopted. She is 16 and lives at home. She has lived there the longest, I believe, of all the children. The rest of us had moved out around her age, or soon after.
Throughout my childhood, my parents were foster parents. They took in children whose parents could not care for them properly. The children lived in our house and my parents took care of them. I spent a lot of time alone, invisible. I have very few childhood memories that I can look back upon. I just can't remember things anymore. I don't know that they are worth remembering anyway.
I went to school with these kids. They rode the bus with me and some were even in my class, like real life brothers and sisters. But they weren't. They were total strangers to me, sharing my parents. Only they needed my parents more than I did because their parents were bad people. The state payed for these kids clothes because sometimes they had none and so, the household was a constant cycle of shopping trips and doctor's appointments and various adults visiting our house while I sat quietly because they weren't there to see me.
I would come home and some of the children would be gone with new ones taking their place. Sometimes babies, sometimes three babies or two babies and a teenager and a six year old. Two are related but they don't know each other. Her and her have the same dad but we don't know what that little girl's name is. We would give them nicknames. I would give them my tee shirts. This one is sharing your room, but she pees on the floor so you have to come get us if she does.
One tried to light our house on fire.
One kept food under her pillow (hot dogs).
One stole everything that wasn't tied down.
One climbed on the roof when no one was watching. twice.
We got to pick our favorite babies and sometimes they would stay longer. Sometimes the kids would leave in a van and I was so happy because they were so mean, but it was so they could visit their bad parents and then come back to mine. That weren't really mine. Rather, ours.
And this is how it was. For years of my life. As high school wound down for me, my parents weren't taking foster kids any longer, but it was too late. No one really knew my favorite color or my favorite books. No one knew the things I was passionate about or what I wanted to study. They didn't know what I was good at. What I cared about. What my fears were. They just didn't. Because I was invisible.
And, I guess, in a way I still am.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
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