Inner battle
Grappling with
myself. Photo by my husband, taken from the
vast Santa collection of my father and
stepmother.
The things I am supposed to
be doing and don't want to do, the shoulds,
they sometimes control me. They become
obligations body-checked by anger. Or maybe
it’s the should nots, the tamping down of
what rises up naturally: I should not be
feeling angry. I have no right to be upset.
This is not supposed to be a blog about
current angst (except for the mundane, piles
of laundry, sick kid, dog-walking variety).
Most of the anger I carry around is the
nostalgic sort, dealing with that stuff that
happened when I was a kid, the things I can’t
change and must make right in my mind in
order to live a full life. It’s been working,
for the most part. I’m letting go.
Yes, I have complained about my current
relationships with my parents, have brought
up marital discord from the not-so-distant
past, but most of this has been in the
context of grappling with painful memories,
revealing old scars to healing light.
But I haven’t talked about my stepmother.
Part of the reason I don’t talk about my
stepmother is that she is practically a
saint. She is my father’s total champion, and
if anyone needs a champion, it’s him. My
father has treatment-resistant depression, a
condition he has been grappling with from the
time he entered college. It was because of
depression that he stopped working in his
early 40s. The man has been on many different
varieties of medication; he’s been through
research studies; he’s done electroconvulsive
therapy (ECT) and lost a chunk of his memory
in the process. Eventually the drugs lose
effectiveness, the troughs get deeper, he
stops functioning.
There are physical problems, too. Diabetes.
Obesity. Arthritis. Within the last two years
my father has developed debilitating back
pain and can barely get out the door. At the
age of 57, he is practically housebound, a
predicament he and his wife have taken on
with characteristic stoicism. Throughout it
all, my stepmother has been a rock, always
supportive, never complaining, a breadwinner,
maker of meals, and vacuumer of a four
bedroom house.
Why am I angry with this woman? Why am I
carrying around this stupid useless feeling?
Because I am invisible to her. Because when I
was pregnant with my second son, she talked
about it being my first baby (perhaps a
teenage stillbirth doesn't count). Because –
stupidly, since I really should let go of
this one, but couldn't they have waited a
week? – she got married to my father two days
before my fourteenth birthday. Because she
never even so much as e-mails on my birthday.
She has no idea why I might be feeling pain
and apparently doesn’t want to know. Perhaps
she feels she might be implicated in some
way. I don’t know.
My father loves me, but he has not been a
very good father. It's just the truth. Four
years of every other weekend visits does not
a good father make. Financial support for
one's child – which I do appreciate – doesn't
make one a good father either, though
certainly there are many absentee fathers out
there who don't even do that. He laid the
foundation for distrust early. A little
recognition of this past and his part in it
would make a huge difference. After he
read the blog, he acknowledged it in a
general way, though we've never talked about
it. But what about her?
I know she thinks I'm a bad daughter and in
many ways, I am. Phone calls sometimes go
unreturned for days. I'm late with birthday
and father's day greetings or send a lame
e-card. I put off making our travel plans to
see them and have been absent for multiple
surgeries. I avoid discussions of Christmas,
a holiday that is an obsession for them. The
guilt floods over me, paralyzing and cold,
and I feel a surge of preemptive, protective,
useless anger.
What am I supposed to do with this anger?
What do you do when you can’t talk to someone
about your feelings? How do I do the right
thing while honoring how I feel?
So many questions. Does anyone have answers?
(And when this particular angst is out of the
way, I have many awards and other kindnesses
to acknowledge. That's the next
post.)