'It didn't start with you'

No, unfortunately, it didn't So is it my story to tell?

‘Something that isn't your fault can't be your shame ... that was the very first thing we used to teach at rehab. It didn't start with you.’

Skye Sclera

I got a good slug in the face of ‘it not starting with me’ during my first therapy session yesterday.

I was asked about mother. My response was something along the lines of:

‘My mother? Yeah, she had it bad. Her own mother was in and out of institutions for her ‘hysteria’. She once tried to knock her eldest daughter into the fire - with a hammer. She died when my mum was 12 by setting herself on fire - in front of her. Her sister tried to look after her but married her dominating husband very young. as a means of escape Their deaf/mute father was too busy bringing home new wives to notice his daughter was being groomed by a paedophile gang. She ended up in a remand centre for running away. Went from there to an institution where she was bound, experimented on - chemically and psychologically - , raped and abused. There are books about it written by other people but she has it all locked away - mostly. She’d rather it that way. Remembering is cataclysmic. The day she left that place, still only sweet 16, she met my father - who happily took over the mantle of abusing her in every way he could think of. ‘

I said this and more. Mostly scattered and disjointed. Guilty and shameful.

Because, of course, all this was always, and is still is, a ‘secret’ - our private business to never be acknowledged. Hidden behind clean socks and ‘making an effort’, smiles and glowing school reports. Mum wrapped me in love so tight I suffocated. She rocked me gently and hushed me into silence. Screamed me into submission for days on end. Told me how much she’d suffered for us - how much better she wanted my life to be than hers. Insisted that every accidental mis-step on this egg-shell carpet was an intentional effort to hurt her - to make her suffer more than she already had. It didn’t stop when my stepdad came along but at least it spread the load somehow.

My dad is not a man of many words but all a lifeboat has to do is float.

Me and my dad don’t get to talk much - rare snatched conversations that aren’t dominated or orchestrated by my mum - usually only when something…someone… is falling apart.

A few years ago I asked him why he didn’t leave her. He looked at me as though I was daft and said, ‘For you kids.I couldn’t leave you with that.’ He followed it up with, ‘

And I love her.’
I get that. It was right there in a nutshell.

Sometime later, during another momma meltdown, I reminded him that we were grown up now and would totally understand if he left. He didn’t say it in so many words but his answer was the same. If she didn’t have him, she would need us more. And that really, his only grandchild needed me most of all.

Once, he joked that I could have warned him how crazy she was. ‘Erm, yeah dad, but I was 8 and you couldn’t have believed me even if I knew the words.’ Being Dad, he ceded this point quickly. But I’m not sure he truly understands that my mum was knocked-up and married to him before I even really understood he might be sticking around for a bit - never mind permanent. I was still at an age where I still didn’t know whether to believe him when he claimed to be 100+ years old because even though it didn’t match what I thought I knew - little else did either. And I couldn’t fathom a need to lie about it. Didn’t quite catch on to his brand of playful.

Now, as an adult I recognise his sharp splice of reality and humour. For instance, my mum can’t go past a shop without going inside, examining and commenting on every single thing. Once, after one too many, ‘Oh Jani, look at this!’ moments - over something I’d already seen and wasn’t in the slightest bit amused by or interested in the first time - I joined my dad outside. He was doing his thing of stoically standing and smoking to pass the time that was promised to be spent doing something nicer,

I expected the usual exchange of ‘Alright Dad?’, ‘I’m alright duck, are you alright?’, I’m alright, ta dad.’ but he instead he flicked a glance at me before going to back to trying to roll his fag in the rain and said, ‘Do you know what I call these days, Jani?’ He paused, inspecting his wonky, wet rolly. ‘ I call ‘em ‘dead days’’.

But he stays. With my mum. Who is afraid of everything, fearless of nothing - and is still the bravest woman I know.

He floats and she floats with him.

And I feel disloyal. For telling my therapist that - and you even more.

Skye was right. It didn’t start with me.

But my mum would never recover, or forgive me, if she knew I’d told you. On the internet.

I don’t know how to make sense of things I can’t say.

Sky also said that ‘something that isn't your fault can't be your shame’ - but is it my story to tell?