Toxic

“What do you want me to do about your family?”*

“What?”

“I don’t like the way she talks to you, and I know that when I’m down there, someone is going to say something, and I’m going to get upset. So how do you want me to react?” My partner is coming to meet my family for the first time this summer. I’ve just come out to them within the last 6 months.

“Um… I’m not sure. Let me think about it,” I say with a grin, thinking of how much I love Alpha and her protectiveness.

She’s referring, of course, to the fact that I woke up my step mother the one time I’ve actually made food for myself in the middle of the night. I’m on the night shift. It was my day off, and midnight is lunch time. Life is decidedly dull when you have no friends within an hour drive and you’re in the middle of nowhere. So, I’m Skyping with my girlfriend on a Friday night, making tomato soup.

Predictably, me being in the kitchen on Skype with the lights on, “cooking,” is the most inconvenient thing and I’ve woken the entire neighborhood, putting everyone out.

Alpha still doesn’t like the way she pushes me around and talks down to me.

*This is a simulation of a conversation we had a few nights ago. Due to my imperfect memory, it’s not exact.

Flash back to age 12:

“I hate it when you come here. It’s a huge burden on me. Do you realize that?”

“You know that [your step-dad] doesn’t love you, right? Nobody could love a child that’s not their own, and if your mother dies he’s not going to want anything to do with you. I know I wouldn’t if something happened to your dad.”

I grew up with comments like this. It’s no wonder my mother’s threat to send me to my father’s house when I was acting up straightened me right out. Who would want to live in a house where it was clear they were unwanted? When I brought things like this up to my dad, he always defended her, making it clear where I stood: in a less important place than her. Hell, they even got married on my birthday. If that’s not a sign that someone was trying to push me aside, I don’t know what is.

***

“Why do I let people treat me this way? I need to figure out what it is that I’m doing that’s causing this. Where is the pattern? Clearly, not everyone is treated like this, so it must be something about me.”

I’ve had that conversation so many times, and I’ve been on both sides. Regardless of which side you’re on – that of the trauma survivor or the comforter – you feel helpless.

I have a theory about why I don’t defend myself as well as I defend others. Alpha believes that I was not given the space to assert myself. I’m sure it’s something like that, but my theory is that with a chronically ill mother, my “petty” desires didn’t hold a candle to her literal life-and-death struggle. If me repressing my desires and emotions could forestall another 2-5 week hospital stay, I wouldn’t ask to be enrolled in dance classes, or try out for after-school volleyball. Her health, her life was infinitely more important than anything short of illness or injury on my part.

Which, I suppose, is why I’ve felt like this so much in my recent life.

***

I’m so tired of feeling like I’m unwanted, or that my feelings don’t matter. I dread the thought of coming to my dad’s house after work, because I can feel those hateful waves of unwanted burden permeating the very foundations. I’m so ready for this self-imposed exile to be done. Luckily, I only have 79 days to go until my time here is done and I’ll have saved the money I need to save to live where I want to live. To be in a place surrounded by like-minded people. To be in a place with people who love me and try to understand what I’ve gone through, and my issues with rape and PTSD and abuse.

I miss my mom so hard right now, and with my birthday in just a few days, it makes it that much harder. I can’t wait to get back to the same place as my girlfriend. I haven’t felt so loved as I do with her – not since my mom died, anyway. I need to be physically near her.

I need to remove myself from this toxic environment. 79 days can’t pass soon enough for me.