28. Rule 15: You can't hide forever.

 

24/07/2014

 

I feel like I’m dancing.

I used to walk, at a steady pace that may have seemed slow at times but was always on a set path, a direction.

Now I feel like I’m dancing. I move but never really go anywhere, moving my feet in consecutive circles that meet but never really touch.

But I think; people dance when they’re happy, people dance when they’re free. But am I happy? Am I free?

I have, but I lack.

I keep thinking of people in my family that I don’t want to be like; I watch my every word, my every behaviour. They are me, the made me, but they scare me and part of me has this hate for them that’s fast over shadowing any love. I have a family that make me feel completely alone. But I have my mum, and I have my sister. It’s just difficult to know that my family is so big and they are the only two I really have.

But I know it’s me.

There’s a reason why I fail at pretty much everything.

I think sometimes I was evil in a past life or that I will be in a next, it’s not so much that I’m being punished, it’s more like, it’s the reason I am always wanting, the reason I always find myself alone, the reason I can’t connect with people, the reason my own family don’t think much of me at all. I’m just not really worth anything. And that’s where my stupid desire to be a published author stemmed from. It was something I could hold over them and say: ‘Look, I did something. I’m worth something.’

It was stupid. I have to accept who I am and how people see me.

I have to stop fighting it and just simply be it, I can’t seem to be anything else, and I have nothing left in me that can still try.

The problem is I love my family, when not loving them will set me free. No attachments. I love my family, and I want them to love me, to be proud of me, to notice me. But it still comes down to the solid fact that I don’t want to be like any of them.

My grandfather is a contradiction. He moved to England to get a job to support his girlfriend and her two kids. He’d give her his pay check and only ask for a couple of pounds here and there to buy his drinks, because he believed that she was running the household, she was raising the children, so she should be in control of the money she needed. He treated her children like his own even after they had their own; he’s loving to his grandchildren, generous, hard-working and loyal. But he’s also an alcoholic, beats his wife, loses his temper at the drop of a hat, he’s controlling, abusive and scary. The two solid memories of him from my childhood are of me playing some card game with him, him laughing and letting me win, and of me hiding in an upstairs bedroom because I said something that made him angry.

It was from him that I learnt the virtue of silence; I think I must have been six. Now I’m twenty-eight and all I get now is: “You shouldn’t be so quiet, you should speak up for yourself.”

Whatever.

I was never quiet when I wrote, I could say anything… but… I’ve given all that up haven’t I. Apart from this. My journal of ill-fated ideas.

I’ve recently discovered first hand that my one of my aunties is just like my grandfather. It scared me to death and suddenly I was six again. It was the last thing I needed especially as it came only a day after my decision to quit. Her anger, her screams, it broke me. She’s apologised to me twice now, said she was having a bad day, tried to explain it all away. This may seem selfish, but she never asked about me, it didn’t even occur to her that my break down on the kitchen floor was a bit of an overreaction to her screaming and shouting at me because I didn’t realise she was coming over.

But it was good; it proved to me that I don’t matter. It’s good, it’s helping me let go. No attachments.

My grandmother and mother are the same. They love me and I love them but they are the same. Whenever my granddad loses it, they take it, they don’t fight and they don’t shield. In the memory from when I was six, my mother hid me upstairs, she told me to be careful what I say from now on. Then she went back down and I could hear him yelling at her, saying how terrible I was and how she should do better.

And she just said: “Yes dad.” Over and over again, agreeing with every word.

I even remember what I said that started the whole thing:

“Granddad, why are you always shouting?”

My grandparents are staying with us for a while, he hasn’t changed. My mum told him today that he only had two pies left so she’d have to go out and get some more tomorrow, and he lost it. And she took it.

So, I made me and my sister smoothies, peach, mango and vanilla ice-cream, just enough for the two of us. My mum was a little hurt that I didn’t make her some, but I think that was the point. I never really felt protected from him because she could never really protect herself, but I can protect my sister. When something bad happens I can give her something good. She can slurp down her smoothie with a purple straw and for a minute or two everything will be alright.

I wish I could leave this house. It isn’t a sanctuary with him in it. But then I think, it’ only for a little while longer, then I feel guilty, because I shouldn’t feel that way about family.