Part of me feels guilty for writing this, putting these words out into the virtual world forever. But then part of me hopes that sharing some of this pain will release it and I can let it go. I have long ago forgiven my parents for the wrong doings in my childhood and beyond. I believe in my heart that they were only doing what they believed was right. Someone I worked with a few years ago told me that some people need more help than others and although I felt as though I was left to wither in the shadows in actual fact they knew I would survive with less nurturing and that he just needed more of them than I did. Like a plant that lives in shade. I don’t know really, I just believe that there is no point in holding the grudge.

When I was 27, I picked up my life and moved West, as far as I could go at the time. I felt some sadness from my Mom, but it was more like she felt I was leaving her than chasing my own life. When I was about 15 I met a woman who was extremely mom like and nurturing who had always wanted a daughter but was blessed with a son instead. We met through a co-ed sports team her son and I were on and we became fast friends. My Mom was jealous. She made me feel like I was spending too much time with this woman. I remember my dog Sam playing with a tennis ball and completely ignoring his raw hide bone. When I picked up the raw hide he followed me and whimpered for it back. I gave it to him and he ran and hid it away and went back to the ball. He didn’t want the raw hide, he just didn’t want me to have it. That was a bit like this situation. My Mother was always hard on me and I am sure a lot of girls would say the same – the mother daughter dynamic is never easy. She had a hard time with her own mother and probably never learned how to be nice to a daughter. I do remember going back to visit in my later 30’s and having relatives and neighbors seem surprised I came back to visit. They would ask why I was still in contact with my parents and that is when it hit me. This was not something I imagined, but it was real and not something I made up in my head. My parents came out West to visit me once in the 17 years give or take that I have lived here. The weekend they spent (a whole three days) was completely overshadowed by the fact that my brother got his diagnosis that previous Thursday and they were anxious to get back to him to take care of him. So they were here but they were not really here. They told my then boyfriend and now husband that they were proud of me, that I had moxie and were glad I was doing so well. But they never told me that.

About year 8 into my brother’s cancer I received a frantic phone call from my Mother while I was at work that said I needed to get on a plane and come back East as soon as possible. My brother needed a transplant and I was going to give it to him. Immediately I thought about all the Christmas and Birthday gifts I had bought over the years that he had sneered at and tossed into the trash unopened. I thought about my parents watching those exchanges and never saying anything to him about it. All the while reeling from what I had to do to save him now. Give his this gift he could not refuse – not if he wanted to live. I called my spouse and he was pretty upset, as was my best friend here who knew my life story. Both would not tell me not to do it as it had to be my decision (something my parents seemingly never considered). I pondered it for a long time. I pondered it while I had my blood tested, while I waited to find out if I could be his donor, while I read up on what complications lay ahead for me as donor, what outcomes he faced and the chances it gave him. My friends cried and my spouse yelled at the situation while I waited. I found out that I had about a 75% chance of not being a match for him only to discover my blood was a 100% match. I agonized over what to do. Do I help this person who will likely die without my blood? Do I risk my own health for someone who I knew didn’t care for me or like me or whom may not have done the same for me? Do I treat him like a stranger that I could fix with my blood? No one around me could understand why I would consider it. When I was 21 I was walking my Golden Retriever and we were attacked by a pit bull. After everything was said and done and I knew I was okay and my dog was okay, I worried for the pit bull. I am a creature that accepts the flaws and takes them in, I have seen anger and rage first hand so I know that it comes from pain in a lot of cases. When I spoke to my Dad on the phone about donating my blood to my brother he said that I could do it, or I could choose to no longer be a part of the family. It was my blood or no relationship. He never asked me what it would mean for my health, he was only focused on saving his son. Rightly so? I felt like a used part and terrified at the odds that I read that said my blood could kill him just as soon as save him. I knew if that happened I would be forever blamed and if I didn’t help him I would be cast out. Agonizing time passed until a decision would need to be made. Every time the phone rang I dreaded it would be the call. In the end that call never came and he died before I would have to make that decision. Never well enough to try that path. Years later Dad and I spoke honestly, or at least I did about what that decision would have meant to my life. Three weeks out East, pumped full of chemicals to increase my stem cells, 8 to 12 hrs of dialysis to donate and then another week of recovery. Long term effects of this treatment are still not known for donors, it is still a relatively new process. He seemed stunned and a bit shaken at the words, that I was possibly putting my own health at risk. But still nothing was ever said to appease my sadness in this situation. We just carried on like it was all just water under the bridge. And perhaps that is what this should remain. But since my father’s death so much has been in my head that I need to share and say aloud. Perhaps now is the time.

So yes, Dad passed away in the middle of July this year. I had somehow convinced him after years of nonsensical badgering to spit into a cup and partake of 23andme the site that can tell you about your ancestry and your DNA. Over the last four years of getting to know the man I called my father I learned a few truths about him and who he was that I didn’t know. We are a lot alike I found. We were/are both fixers in that we see someone in trouble and our instinct is to save them or we find a friend in need and want to fix them. When he found out his best friend of 50+ years had Cancer his first instinct was to jump into his car and drive two or three hours to be with him. When my “niece” who is technically not related to me but important just the same told me her dog needed immediate surgery my first instinct was to take out a loan for her and fix it all. In both of these cases what both of us wanted didn’t happen, due to circumstances beyond our control. And our hearts both sank, both feeling as if we had let that fixable person down. Not grasping the enormity of the situation or what part we really played. It hurts not to be able to fix and help. Both my Dad and I share a stress rash in the form of a welty skin condition that itches beyond belief and both he and I only responded to one type of medication for it. Both Dad and I have/had short fuses that once lit made for entertaining and dangerous outcomes. My Dad was a good man. He tried to do right by his son, spending thousands of dollars on treatments for my brother’s Cancer that my Mom would continue to pay after his death. He tried to do right by his wife and take care of her in her times of need that grew like weeds once my brother died. He got to know me, even for a few short years after my brother died and while my Mom struggled. We knew each other as people a little bit more and I like to think that was a blessing. He was adopted and knew about abandonment. He was funny and witty and flirty. All things I got from my father. He was smart and he was strong.

When I was growing up my truth is that I was in the shadows. My Mother tells me that my birth was hard and almost killed her. Her own mother was cruel to her and treated her poorly her whole life. She at 78 still carries a tremendous amount of bitterness for her own mother and I think as I write this now that this is a way for me to work through it, however partially so that I can eventually let it go. There are many forms of abuse and just because I seldom had bruises does not mean that I did not suffer as a lonely person in my childhood. There is nothing quite like being bullied in your own house but I was and this is my truth. I was not a great kid. I was a little shit sometimes and I lied, was bossy and pushy. But I was lonely and begging for acceptance at every turn. When I wrote my first poem at the age of 7 my mother asked me where I copied it from and told me that lying was wrong. I wrote it, it came from my brain to my hand to my pen to my paper. Why at 7 did I have to say that? When I was singing I had to prove to her that the teacher liked my voice. Behind my back she told everyone how proud she was of me, but she never told me. Not once. Ours was such a difficult relationship was it any wonder I married the first person who asked me despite his vicious hands and words? I married into abuse because it was what I knew and what I felt I was worth. She knew the whole time how he was treating me and often would ask me what I had done to deserve it? Where was the blame to be placed? Perhaps if I behaved better it wouldn’t have. She wouldn’t help me leave. She said it was not her place. She swore me to secrecy from my father as his reaction would have been decidedly different. I remember being a teenager in their house and being shoved up against a wall by my brother as my father passed behind him. My brother held a X-acto knife to my throat and laughed. I escaped and asked my father why he hadn’t helped me and he simply said “You must have done something, and you shouldnt have been in that hallway”.