provindipity

for non-believers, miracles can be tough to explain. especially when they happen to you. thrilling, nonetheless. but the alignment of the stars and the happenings that just had to happen, oh please, makes you stop, lean against the wall, gaze in wonderment, and be humbled. amen for being humbled.

letters of sorts

mom.
you made me feel like a blithering idiot, a weak and indolent, useless child, to be tested and failed again and again. i was criticized until i reacted and then criticized for reacting. no crying, no yelling, no silence, no nothing was acceptable because i simply had to be wrong. you made me cry and then yelled at a child for crying because her mother made her feel bad. you gave me no voice, let me have no outlet for my fears and angers and sadness, justified or appropriate or not. i walked on eggshells for years and years terrified of making the slightest wrong move, and inevitably coming up short in my efforts at doing things the "right" way. the spilled milk was not a good excuse. you used the power you wielded as the parent and controlling agent in a natural relationship to make me suffer, and you were, at least outwardly, indifferent to my suffering, even angered by it. it's not my fault if you were treated that way. it's not a child's fault that her parent has his or her own issues. you abandoned me emotionally and sometimes physically, expressing your love on the rarest of occasions and, to this day, awkwardly. i believe it was the constant, harping criticism and emotional control that made me the emotionally untethered, unsure person i am today. this latest relationship in which i find myself completely emotionally lost at sea only makes it clearer to me the damaging and lasting effects of your constant insistence that whatever i was feeling was wrong. simply and stupidly wrong. i feel pity for and immense anger on behalf of the child that you hurt so seriously, but my rage cannot be expressed, because it could never be expressed, and i turn it inwards on myself and i live in a perpetual state of anxiety about what i'm feeling and what's to come. i live my life bracing for impact. i live my life waiting to be reprimanded for being myself. so i hide from myself, and now i'm here not knowing who i am, still trying to be whatever it is that you wanted me to be. but there is no answer to that question, so i am left grasping deperately at the wind.
in any case, i love you.

dad.
thank you for being the opposite of mom when i needed it. by sheer circumstance, you were the person i clinged to in the storm, as the only person in the world who could come close to understanding the horrible things i was going through in my home. i thank you for not being her, for offering me what you could, for being of even temperament and for commiserating with your pre-teen daughter about the emotional terror of home. nevertheless, the child in me is betrayed by your departure, even knowing that you had to leave to survive. but to leave a child in the hands of someone so unable to control her emotional impulses, in the wake of an emotional storm nonetheless, was heartbreaking to me. you were available to me on a superficial basis, but i was inevitably so torn up by the goings-on of homelife that when i was with you, all i wanted to do was escape, not discuss. until the evening hours at the end of the weekend when i was shuttled back home, and the unbearabe stomach aches of dread would bring the tears to my eyes and the complaints to my lips, and you would acknowledge and comfort, but keep driving. i should not have been left in my mother's house, i should have been offered further support, someone should have intervened. and you were the only one that was aware of the gravity of the circumstances, and you were afraid too, i presume. although i know i played down the intensity only to avoid an even more intense emotional breakdown, to avoid additional drama and further trauma. and i find myself striving to do that now - going great lengths psychologically, physically, emotionally, to avoid pain or suffering because i'm afraid it may kill me. i'm afriad, honestly afraid, of being honest, because i might not make it out the other side in one piece. and i was a CHILD for god's sake, how could i know what was the best and healthiest thing for me? why did no one take action? WHAT HAPPENED?!? why did no one see what was going on? is it my fault for hiding it? why was i left to deal with all this? and the emotional depth i received was riding on the wings of alcoholism, and petrified me even further. so there you go, now i'm terrified of emotional honesty and intensity, because it means someone was probably drinking and will say something hurtful and/or stupid and/or inappropriate. you offered me a huge amount of comfort in your personality alone, as the kind of person who carries themself with confidence and assurance. and i crave that now, hoping that there will be more depth to more recent incarnations. unfortunately, my grasping for that sense of protection and comfort left me vulnerable to the controlling behavior of abusers.
in any case, i love you.