Okay so now you know what was going on at school. Let's talk again about home and then, then we will be done! I don't think I will fully wrap up until tomorrow though so don't get your hopes up too high that we are finishing today! ;-)
I have talked about coming to the conclusion that I was leaving the church during this time period (here)and that was part of the distancing myself from my family that I went through. Though it really had nothing to do with them, it still put another space between me and everyone else and that becomes important later in this story. The part that will probably hit tomorrow.
I want to finish up with what happened as I was leaving New Mexico and why I thought I might never come back when I did. As I mentioned earlier in this series my relationship with my sister had vastly improved to the point where we were really good friends. We went to dinner, the movies and basically hung out quite a bit. Then she started dating the man (boy really, he was only 19 at the time) that would become her husband. She was working at The Car Wash at the time cashiering and he worked the line. Now you know when you meet someone and you instantly think, jerk? He was that guy. For everyone in my family except my sister. For some reason there was something about this just out of prison, missing part of his ear where he had an earring yanked out in a bar fight, scruffy looking piece of work that appealed to her. To this day I have no idea why or what it was.
Anyway you know those moments that stick with you and you don't know why? Then later you look back and they end up being really significant? I had one of those with my sister when she first started dating him. We were sitting in Schlotzsky's eating dinner and she was telling me about a conversation she had with him. She told him that he could never come between her and her sister. I told her, of course not, we are sisters no guy can do that! And she said, "If anyone could then he could." I replayed this conversation in my head a year later and was amazed. Because he had and she had to know at that point that he would.
Let me be very upfront. I believed then, I believe now and I will believe until my dying day that her first husband was a true sociopath. I always describe it this way; if a normal person sees something behind you that they want then they alter their path and go around you to get it, a sociopath doesn't see you, just the thing they want and goes right through you like you weren't even there. He was abusive on a grand scale, tore her apart from the ground up personality-wise and the put her back together all wrong. He isolated her from friends and family and then made her feel like it was completely her fault. And why did he do all of this? Because he could.
When they first started dating everyone told her how wrong he was for her. How she shouldn't date him. Basically let her know what a bad idea this was. Big mistake. If you tell someone over and over how awful someone is that they "love" you just end up losing the person and they feel like they can't come to you when things do go wrong. So once she decided to marry this guy we all resigned ourselves to the fact. No, we didn't all start liking him, but he was going to be part of the family and that was that.
Through their dating and the early part of their marriage he did a really good job of driving a wedge between she and I. I honestly think her telling him how close the two of us were put a target on my back for him. I was the first one that needed cut out of the equation. He found every way he could to alienate us from each other. Sex, drugs, money, theft. He covered it all. I had a collection of steel pennies and silver dollars and one day came home to find a few dollars shoved in the jar where I had them. As a "favor" to me he had taken the money and gone to Blake's to spend the change leaving me the dollars. I ended up at Blake's going through the tills with the cashiers trying to get back as many as I could. Ended up with about half of what I started with. My sister had no idea why I was so upset, after all wasn't it a nice thing that he had done? Gotten rid of my change and leaving me dollars?
He was inappropriate with the level of sexual contact they would have around me. I won't go into details, but it was enough that I spent more than a few nights sick to my stomach with anger out on the living room couch. After they were already married my senior year for Halloween I dressed up a Vampire. Now, it was a sexy costume and it was meant to be (I was chasing Brent until he caught me at that point in time) and he hit on me. With my sister sitting there. I looked at her like did you just hear what he said to me?? And she told me I should probably cover up a little more so I didn't look like such a slut. Ummm...okay...so your husband just hit on your sister IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE and I am the one in the wrong? Are you kidding me? There were more things but basically my relationship with her was coming to an end.
The final straw came when I realized that he was abusing her physically. I was so mad at her for putting up with it. I couldn't understand how a grown woman would tolerate that behavior. Ironic right? I was still mad at her (deep inside at this point) for abusing me and now I was mad at her for being abused. Remember the story I told you about the last time she was physical towards me? Here is part two. Her husband, she and I are sitting at the kitchen table talking about something and she smarted off a joke. He reached over and slapped her. Right in front of me. I was stunned! I told him if she was stupid enough to put up with that shit that was her business but he was never to do it in front of me again. He looked me in the eye and slowly lifted his hand and then slapped her again. I was out of my chair and launched at him in a shot. I know he wasn't expecting it and I got in a few good shots before my dad walked in the front door from work. We took a step away from each other as Dad came in the kitchen to break it up. He asked what was going on and my sister told him that we were just messing around. I snapped around and looked at her and the panic in her eyes let me know that if I said anything she was going to face much worse when they got home, so I said nothing to my father. Dad left the room and her husband told me I was lucky cause he would have hurt me. I told him that was fine but I wouldn't have stopped until I killed him so he might want to rethink that position. I told him "I am not my sister and you should remember that." Remember what I told you about true potential for violence being apparent? He never hit her in front of me again and he never raised a hand towards me. Did it stop the abuse she was receiving at home? No, but that was something only she could put an end to.
But that was effectively the end of our friendship at that point. I couldn't stand that she let herself be the victim. I know now how he broke her spirit first then started abusing her in other ways. I know he had her using again and that the drugs clouded her brain to the point where she felt stuck. I know he was a master manipulator and did it to many others. I know all of that now. But at the time I was just so angry I couldn't stand to be in the same room with them for any length of time.
And the anger kept compounding. The walls I had built to hold back that piece of me weren't holding anymore. My parents were helping support my sister and her husband and I knew it, and it made me furious. Now I am a parent and I understand that you can't watch your child fail without trying to help, but at the time I was just furious. But I was still trying to hold it all in and down. I had bright spots. Theater at school was a group of fun kids who were all just marking time until graduation. Brent and I had started dating and that moved very quickly to deciding to get married after graduation. That for me was the light at the end of the tunnel and I think the piece that kept me held together. I was getting out. It ended up being the piece that almost sealed me off from New Mexico and my family for good as well.
I started working full time the week after graduation. I had worked part time at The Car Wash for a few years but this was the first job I had gotten completely on my own and I was very proud of it. And almost every dime I made went into a bank account so Brent and I would have enough money the first year of our marriage to get settled. By this time Brent was living with us (long story, another blog, but it one of the ways my parents showed their love and support of me) and my sister and her husband and their first born ended up moving in as well after they lost their apartment in an ill conceived venture to California. Anyway...picture a 14'x70' three bedroom trailer. My brother and Brent shared a room, I had a room, my parents had their room and now my sister and her family were in the living room. Obviously this wasn't going to work. Brent and I were getting ready to go out one night when were were ambushed by the whole group sitting in the living room.
They had found a bigger place to rent but didn't have the money for the first and last month's rent they would need to secure it. Dad could cash in part of his retirement fund to get the money but it would take awhile. Since I had the money then I could just give it to them and they would pay me back. I didn't rush right to grab my check book. I really didn't want to do it. It was 6 months of paychecks by that point and it would take almost all of them to cover it. That along with the wedding expenses I was having to pick up because my parents couldn't afford to cover everything any more and I was looking at starting our marriage broke. Just what I had been working to avoid. Then my sister told me, "Stop being so selfish, it's not like you won't get the money back!" Anyone who has ever lent money to a family member knows that's exactly what it's like. Treat it as a gift because it's not coming back. And to have my sister (who I blamed for the mess in the first place) tell me to stop being selfish was the last straw. Brent and I went out to dinner to talk about it, I told him that I was giving them the money, I loved and respected my parents too much not to do this for them, but then I was done. After we were married we would move in to his parent's house and I would stay with Jack and Ann until I left for Florida to join him.
So flash forward just a bit and see my last few months living with my family. We have moved into the new place, Mom and Dad in a room, my brother and Brent sharing a room, my sister and her husband in a room, her son in a room and me on the couch. Resentment much? For the house I paid for I was sleeping on the couch? Yeah, I was not happy. And I directed all of that anger at my sister. I felt it was all her fault. And there was a lot of anger, much greater anger in proportion to the actual offense and that's what I had to work through to get past the raging bitch I was to the person I became.
And that is a blog for another day...
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