The Little Hurts that Linger

I keep thinking that it must be strange to read Tiny Cat Pants and get the feeling that all is not well in the extended family of your dear Aunt B., but not be able to put your finger on what just exactly the problem is, since all my posts about them seem to be about what charming eccentrics they all are. Here's something that sucks about them, that I should be over by now, since it's been almost half my life ago, but I'm not. When I was 16, we moved to another little town in central Illinois. This one came equipped with a boy who was a good six foot three, a good two hundred and fifty pounds, a moody, creative, sensitive, boy a year older than me, who dated one of my best friends. And who stalked me for three years. Just for starters, he broke into my house to leave things, stood at the end of my street, just staring at the house, threw me into a locker when I talked to some boy he didn't approve of, screamed at my mom about what a whore she'd raised, kidnapped the Butcher, and made my life a kind of hell I would not wish on anyone. To say it fucked me up is probably putting it mildly. I still don't think I know how to quite trust that men who like me aren't insane. I don't think I have any idea how to let my guard down enough around men I actually like, and I've been unnecessarily mean to men I don't. In fact, I think one of the good things that feminism has done for me (and, by extension, for the men I know) is to make me sure of my own competence and worth, which has gone a long way towards making me less of a pain in the butt towards you, dear men, and by extension, to myself. I hope, anyway. But, while all this was going on, my parents did next to nothing. I say "next to nothing," because they did do something--they blamed me. When this asshole befriended the Butcher--seven years his junior--and I begged them to forbid him from coming over to play ball with the Butcher in our front yard, they told the Butcher that I wouldn't let this asshole come over. When the Butcher didn't come home from school, because that asshole had picked him up and took him out for a drive to grill him about me, I got in trouble. When he broke into the house to leave things, it was cute. And he was regularly invited over so that we could smooth things out. I guess I was supposed to find some way to appease him and I was to blame for never being able to. It's funny how you can so clearly understand why something is how it is. I can know why it is that my parents cave to people who are bullies. And I can see that this was just the first time I noticed that. I can see how they carved for themselves a little life that is very insulated from most of the world and I can understand how important it was for them to keep us so near them, safe, and how terrible it must be to want to desperately to keep your children near you and safe while at the same time you are unable to stand up to bullies. How terrible to not be able to do the very thing you need most to be able to do in order to feel okay in a world you are afraid of. I have so much compassion for them, but I'm still fucked up about it. I was telling the Professor that there are just a couple of things I really need. I need for the 13-17 year old me to hear often that I am beautiful and brilliant. And I need for the 16-19 year old me to have my parents tell me they understand what's going on and that I'm not bringing it on myself. I don't need that now. I don't need to hear that now. It'd be terrible. It'd be so uncomfortable and weird and I would hate it. God, I would rather do just about anything than to have to have some kind of Resolution, where they weep and gnash their teeth and tell me I'm wonderful and how sorry they are. God, the last thing I want is for my old-fart sixty-something parents to be apologizing for shit that happened half my life ago. I hope you get that, and that it makes sense. What really devastates me about the whole thing is that it's shaped who I am in a way I really don't like and that there's no way to really fix it. I need for things to have gone completely different and there isn't any way for that to ever happen. And that's what still makes me sad about it.