It's a bright sunny day outside (finally!) and Melissa's curled up on the couch, watching the end of Braveheart. Angus is upstairs doing some work, but my email is being uncooperative and the VPN isn't letting me log in for long.

And I am not feeling very well at all today.

Something else has been eating me up inside as well, and I haven't really found a good way of saying what it is, so I'm just going to blurt it all out in a Ramona the Pest kind of way and let what happens happen.

For a long, long time I've had problems with secrets. I've made no secret here that, surprisingly, I'm a very private person in my real life. People in my real life have no idea about any of my past, really, and very little insight into any details of who I am. I like it like that. I've never been fond of people getting too close to me, of people learning the ins and outs of what makes me tick. It's too personal, it's too near. I wallow in my secrets.

As time (and therapy) have progressed, I stripped myself of one of my former pasttimes, which was lying to people. I'd make something up before I'd let someone get to know me, I was always conscious of the act at the time but I was never able to stop myself. These days I don't lie to people. I don't volunteer information, but I'm happy to listen to people talk about themselves, my colleagues. My "real life" friends and acquaintances and Angus' family would probably tell you I'm a good listener, but if pressed they'd maybe admit they don't know so much about me.

And I'm ok with that.

One thing I've learned about myself is that I had no boundaries. None at all. The every detail and splash of my life was something I had to reveal to my family. And by family, I mean mother and sister. My sister is someone I don't think twice about anymore, she's not a part of my life at all now and never, ever will be again. My mother, on the other hand, is a presence I'm trying to reckon with.

In my family secrets were not ok. The details had to be attended to. My mother had to know, she had to know everything. Once I moved out if I didn't speak to her on the phone every few days the angry phone calls would start. Opinions were issued on everything. If I did not listen to opinions, it would be bad.

And it never occurred to me to be any different, that people had to have space. My mother, she was a good mother in many areas, she raised us and sacrificed and did the best she could and above all, she loved us. But she also made a lot of mistakes, as mothers do, as people do. I made mistakes, too, I know that, but some part of me tugs and whispers that I was the kid in this. I couldn't have known better.

I never had any secrets.

I was never allowed to have any secrets but the family's. You never talked about what was going on with the family, not with anyone, not ever. I still remember when I kicked off seeing a therapist, my mother admonishing me that I was never to talk about her. That all of the things that I was so fucked up about had to do with my adult life, nothing came from my childhood. That it didn't matter how profoundly broken I felt I was, every crack and split came from me alone, and in talking about me I was never, ever to talk about her or the family.

I was so screwed up that after attempting suicide, I wouldn't talk about my past unless my therapist could prove to me that he wasn't tape recording our conversations and sending them to my mother. I made him swear to me that he wasn't emailing her every single thing I said. Once I even checked behind pictures hung on the wall. I fell way on the other side of the batshit crazy fence, I took paranoia to a whole new level.

But I had a reason, see.

I was never allowed to have any secrets from my mother in my life.

I had to tell her everything.

My diary was read.

On at least one occasion, a letter I was posting to a friend was opened and read. In it, I talked about the family. I got some things in it wrong, but it didn't matter-I had broken the code of silence. I got the shit knocked out of me for that one.

I learned my lesson though.

I became a vault, a walled garden, something welded shut so tightly you couldn't have pried things out of me if you tried. Things went in and never went out again. I became a habitual liar, all the while hoping someone would call me on my shit, hoping someone would see through it all and make me sit down and try to string a sequence of anything remotely coherent out of me. My 8mm memory flapped and hid behind moldy walls and my soul stunk of mildew. If I didn't make any secrets I wouldn't have to know that I couldn't have any. I never talked about my feelings because it would come back to haunt me, my thoughts were mistakes I would pay for again and again and again.

You can't keep things from her.

It's not ok.

And it's all just the way it was, you see. This is how life was. I had no secrets and I had no voice and I got everything wrong all the time.

But once I started having secrets and not telling her everything, it all blew up. Someone told me that I didn't need her approval on everything. I told someone that she shouted at me on the phone and told me how disappointed she was in me not telling her everything. This person replied, "Why didn't you tell her how disappointed you are in her?" And it was a shock-I couldn't talk like that. It would be bad. I would pay. I couldn't say that...could I? Well...why couldn't I?

And so I did.

We don't talk now, but she's out there. She's still circling my life, reading it, trying to manage the ticking bomb that is me. I love her very much and I always will, but she can't know everything about me always, that's not how life works. I can't run my every option by her for her say, I can't be an open book when I've had to be one all my life. I don't want to make her out to be an ogre but right now I feel so hugely, incredibly angry that it's spilling over into my real life. Combine my anger with my hormones and my incredible, huge fears that I will make the same mistakes raising my children as mothers before me made, and it's spilling out the seams.

When I started a new blog to write about my infertility, I tried to be anonymous. I tried to hide. I naively thought I'd be able to be free, although a part of me always knew she'd find me.

And she did.

She and my sister both did. They had to know, you see. They had to keep tabs, they had to judge. They had to be included, even when I was clear that absolutely no one in my real life, apart from Angus, would have access to that site. They couldn't let me have my diary to myself, they couldn't let me write an unopened letter. I'm now hyper-conscious of the fact that they're reading, I want to write everything out but I can't because they're here. It's even affecting how I write about my pregnancy and what happens afterwards-I may want to post baby pictures, but it makes me angry to know that they get included in the baby pictures when I don't feel comfortable with it.

And the ridiculous thing is, I write anonymously. No one knows my family. No one knows who they are or what they look like or where they live. They could be anyone. I am no one. But still I am bound and gagged.

Quiet words from quiet people have told me more about some things that have transpired in the background, things which outrage me so severely that my anger is becoming too great a ball for me to handle. These things are so massive and monstrous I can't even believe they're real, but they are. These sins are bigger than childhood diaries being read and sealed letters being opeend. They took the lines you crossed and made whole earthquakes out of the latest.

And now I do have a secret, which I am blowing out of the water today.

I'm not a good person. I'm really not. If you knew how I currently feel you'd think I was a bad person, too. Because I'm so violently, viciously angry with the latest invasion of privacy that I want to make my mother cry. Good, decent people don't want to make their mother cry. I want to hurt her feelings like she's hurt mine. I want her to know that I think I'm owed an apology this time. For all the times before, for all the invasions and fuck-ups and mistakes, I don't care about those, I'll deal with that myself. But now, finally, I've had enough. I've made mistakes and I get reminded of them but I apologized for them again and again, to the point where Angus tells me I'm the most apologetic person he knows.

But not this time.

She went too far.

The site being found and the things I have learnt since then...it's too much for me.

I love you very much, mom and I always will. You're not a bad person. But I'm not either. And I can let you in my life but I need to have a say in how far you get to go. I have to have boundaries. I have to have privacy.

I don't forgive you, which is ironic since you're not asking forgiveness and for as long as I've known you, you've never once said you're sorry to me, not once. I'm sure there's plenty you don't forgive me about. I'm the bad child. I always was and always will be.

This is in the public space because it's too big for me to hold inside anymore, and since we're not talking anyway and I know you're reading here, this should find you. Not like it will make any difference. It's all my fault you think, and maybe it is. Maybe everything is all my fault. I'm the perennial bad guy and it fits and it's ok, but I'm sick of it all, so sick it makes my heart bleed.

Enough.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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