Revelations

Ahh, family time, its so educational, don't you think?

I've been reading baggage reclaim and examining my own past lately. Not because I think there's anything wrong with me, but because I haven't been getting the results I want with my relationships. I'm not talking strictly romantic, all of them.

I have friends who are my "good" friends who I don't see but once every few months. I tolerate my brothers in a way that in more reminiscent of business relationships than sibling like. I am purposely not close to my aunts and uncles and cousins on my mom's side and because my dad's side cut him off when I was barely done being a baby, I was never close to them.

I am an orphan in a lot of ways. But I think that there is a part of me that keeps it that way. I guess I keep this wall up between myself and the world. The world sees me being polite or being bitchy or being smart, but its not allowed to actually touch me.

Which gets me back to the baggage reclaim.

I did not have a happy childhood. My earliest memories are 1) falling down the stairs, 2) my dad throwing a dining room chair across the room at my mother and 3) my parents both telling me to switch my shoe to the other foot as they were packing my dad's stuff up, he was moving out.

The adults in my life, when I was a child, were like children themselves. They left when things were hard. They threw temper tantrums when they didn't get their way. They hurt people when they were upset.

Part of me wants to go into a blow by blow, but that would side track me.

The point is, I never had one single example of an adult relationship in which the adults acted like adults to look to. And now I am an adult.

In many ways my life is coming together. I have a career that's coming along. I have a nice house and a contract for a great job. I have three wonderful, rotten, interesting, infuriating, joy-bringing kids.

In many other ways my life is a mess. I am drawn to men who are wrong for me, I know them to be wrong, but I am drawn anyway. The all either have substance problems, meanness problems, honestly problems, mental health problems or general looser-ish problems. I don't know if I get drawn in to these types because I somehow feel that is all I diserve or if its because I have a messed up compass. Maybe a little bit of both.

I love my dad. I do. But I also hate some of the choices he made when we were kids and hate that the woman he married seems to hate me. Again, I could go into blow by blow accounts, but the bottom line is I never FEEL welcomed by her, especially when he isn't looking. I always feel like I will forever be the daughter that got pregnant in high school, married the wrong man, and didn't join the NAvy. HOw can I compete with her daughter, thin, short, cute, bubbley, not knocked up and in the Navy? The answer is that I can't.

In the small term, I'm not going to stay in dad's house again. I'll rent a hotel room or a cabin up in the hills or camp, but I'm not going to serve time in this house with all its baggage anymore.

In the long term? I don't know what to do. Knowing why I'm weird doesn't tell me how to not be weird. I don't think taking antidepressants will do any good other than shutting down my sexual desire and drive. I hate councilors because they are the reason my mother went to the nut hatch.

I don't know what to do other than admit it.

I don't let people in.

I'm drawn to men who are bad for me or treat me badly or are just not a match for me.

I put up this shield that nothing much gets through.

I put up with a lot of crap because I think its best for my kids if I do.

I want a life that is normal, and calm, and low drama, and safe and loving.

I have a life that is mostly stressful and harried, and I long for different.

I don't know how to join my reality with my longing.

What I've been doing, relationships wise, hasn't been working.

I need to try something different, but I don't know how.