Scars

"The scars of others should teach us caution." ~ St. Jerome

Sometimes I can be so clueless.  In my last post, I was puzzling over why it was critical for me that I never be anyone's second choice.  My father.  It all always comes back to him.  Throughout my life, my mother was my father's second choice, through 3 affairs and 2 marriages.  She hung around--and made me hang around--for them all.  In the end, she ended up with the prize, assuming you could call my dad a prize in any way whatsoever.  But as recently as five years before he killed himself, he went to visit his son from a different marriage and stayed with his son's mother.  My mother was relegated to my aunt's house.  

In a way, I was always second best in his eyes, too.  I could never live up to his expectations and he constantly compared me unfavorably to other girls.  In a way, when he forced me to serve as bait for the 13 year old he eventually married, he was choosing her over me.  He told me that she looked like she was lonely.  I can't remember the other reasons why he told me I should get to know her.  It didn't really matter because when my father wanted something, he was relentless.  I just gave in.  Even though she wasn't in the least bit interesting to me as a friend.  After a while, things became clearer to me when they began a sexual relationship.  He wasn't actually choosing her over me in the way I originally thought about it, but he certainly sacrificed me in order to have her.  Writing about this always gets me in touch with my rage.

As for my competition issues, I think they arose from the fact that my father was always thrilled when he could make himself seem smarter than my mom.  He was competitive with me, too, to some extent.  As I got older, he wasn't able to keep up intellectually, but I continued to let him win in some arenas.  In others, I just didn't let him see exactly how good I was. 

It's so simple to backtrack.  I guess the answers I get from looking back don't make me very happy, so I manage to confuse myself sometimes.  As a matter of fact, my parents have been a source of infinite confusion.  I think that as a child, things were too awful to bear.  Being confused was a critical survival mechanism.  I survived, but there are a lot of scars, both physical and psychological.  Unfortunately, many of my ex-lovers had to pay a heavy price because of them.  I did, too.  I still do. 

America held hostage day 1665

Bushism of the day:

"They've seen me make decisions, they've seen me under trying times, they've seen me weep, they've seen me laugh, they've seen me hug. And they know who I am, and I believe they're comfortable with the fact that they know I'm not going to shift principles or shift positions based upon polls and focus groups." - Interview with USA Today, Aug. 27, 2004