Surviving My Family, Part Five

It wasn’t long after that I had a weird ass dream. I’d passed out on the sofa watching horror movies the night before. Mom had taken to sleeping in her own little room upstairs and letting Joe have the master so I could stay up and watch late night movies in the den if I wanted. Cable was new then and I was enjoying it. I was huddled up under my blanket and I had a dream that I went up to wake Joe up for some reason. I get up there and there’s this log in the bed. I shake the log, at first saying, “Dad, wake up! It’s time to get up!” Nothing. Then I tilt my head, grin slowly and loudly say, “Hey, asshole! Get your lazy ass up!” Nothing. I’m outright giggling by then and I start slapping where his face would be going “Dead-ass motherfucker! Get up!” I start chanting it in a sing-song, slapping and slapping the log where it rests on the pillow.

That was about the time I started waking. I could hear Mom on the phone in the kitchen. She was on with emergency services telling them to send someone because she thought her husband had passed away in his sleep and didn’t seem to be breathing. She sounded… numb, like part of her wanted to cry and she wanted to kick her own ass for it at the same time. I just listened for a while to try and figure out if it was still the same bizarro dream I was having or if it was real. It wasn’t until I’d actually started to drift back off thinking I was still dreaming, that she came into the den. I guess she’d been trying to figure out how to act considering how he’d treated both of us all that time. In the end, she chose matter-of-fact and told me she wanted me to go next door to the neighbor’s house so I wouldn’t have to see a dead body getting wheeled out. Being around corpses had always weirded me out a little because of the way adults acted around them. Since I wasn’t afraid to die, I couldn’t get why it freaked them out so much. So the whole vibe creeped me out a little. This one, though…. Oh, I wanted to see that dead body. I wanted immediate, undeniable verification that that son of a bitch was never coming back. 

But I went next door to make things easier on Mom. I think she would have been far more worried for me if I had gleefully watched them wheeling him out. I knew she was already pretty worried after I threatened to kill him. The neighbors were going to Astroworld that day and they told Mom not to worry. Their mom went to the house and got some clothes for me and they said they’d keep me for the rest of the weekend to give her time to “deal with things”.  It was kind of irritating because they all were tiptoeing around, nervous that I might suddenly break down and bawl. Then they were confused and concerned when I didn’t and, in fact, had a blast at Astroworld. As far as I was concerned I had just begun the greatest fucking vacation ever called “The Rest of My Life Without That Evil Fucker Tormenting Me”. But being around them and seeing their reaction, I knew I had to at least be quiet and not dance a gavotte and a jig in sheer joy at new-found freedom. 

I watched Mom and I realized that what made her cry wasn’t that he was gone. It was the fact the asshole hadn’t gotten any insurance because he didn’t want to go to the doctor. While that made us lose the house, it was probably better for us since the heart problem he wasn’t even aware of was what killed him. Congestive heart failure thy name in my book is justice. So Mom was worried about what would happen to us since there would be no money and only more debt from his death. In time, when our home and food situation was seen to, she started to relax and be a real person again. She never even dated after that. I think all of that time married to such a horrible person pretty much turned her off on the idea. Men were always hitting on her because she had an awesome personality when she wasn’t under some jerky’s thumb. She was smart, funny, creative and independent in her recovery.  She just ignored the men and went along her merry way. I was always grateful for that because I sure as hell didn’t want another daddy after the disaster I started out with, not even as an adult. No.. thank.. you.

I managed to get sober. That was probably a good thing since not long after I had what they call a complicated migraine. It makes all the blood vessels in your head swell. Left untreated for a week as it was in me, it can also make your brain swell. Brain swelling causes damage no matter how you look at it.  So my once eidetic memory became more like a sieve. I couldn’t drive for months. It took me a long time to get my scattered remaining memory back into somewhat correct chronological order (kind of like defragging a hard drive). Some things, like my work history, I have to keep written down or I can’t remember which job came after which too well.  But I still remember a whole lot of what hit me that horrid summer day. Still, there are some areas that never filled in even before the brain damage. As bad as what I CAN remember is, maybe it’s better that way.

Years later, after I had put up with all of that ridicule about lying about the abuse from my family and having NO ONE stand up for me, I had pretty much written the whole lot of them off. Mom was gone. I only ever went to family events because it made her happy and I got to at least TRY to give the kids something educational or useful when I could afford it. With her gone and no longer acting as a buffer and most of them still being heavy drinkers and/or drug abusers, I realized I just really couldn’t have them in my life even if I wanted to. I can’t be around people like that and stay sober for long. I’ve been sober for about 20 years now. If I find myself slipping, I just stop. I watch myself closely for the signs. I can have 2 drinks and stop. I don’t get drunk. I don’t even take my prescribed pain pills and muscle relaxers unless I am in so much agony I can’t even move. My doctors bitch at me about that. They say “You need them. Take them.” And I basically flip them off and tell them I’m mean and ornery and will take them when I damned well please. :-p

So I’m chugging along in life  trying to figure out just where I want and need to be. It’s weird… when you figure out why you’re so fucked up and start dealing with it, what you thought was a clear path in life suddenly reverts back to jungle you have to hack down with a machete again.  Funny how that works. Anyway, chugging along and I run into one of the nieces El Pervo had been abusing.  It turns out that she and one other BOTH decided it was time to deal instead of trying to cover it up.  My half sister also came forward and admitted he’d done it to her, too. The young nieces both apologized for not coming forward when my brothers were digging at me and calling me a crazy liar. I don’t know how most of the family took that version of things coming out. I still don’t communicate with most of them at all. I’ve talked to some of the nieces and nephews because it’s really not their fault their parents are total hose-heads. But by and large, I think we’re happier out of each other’s hair. They can’t annoy me or beg for money I don’t have and I don’t browbeat them for STILL being drunks/addicts and setting shitty examples for their multitudes of kids.