three steps forward...

I'm having to face some uncomfortable things about myself and I want to document them, BUT I don't want anyone that knows me to see these things, so I set out to create a new blog, but I couldn't think of a name for it that wasn't already taken. Then I felt pressure to be cute or clever or original, and began to feel anxious about even writing a blog. Then I realized that although I started this blog some 3+ years ago, it has only had 4 hits, so the odds of ANYONE I even remotely know stumbling across this are so infinitesimal as to be ludicrous, so I decided finally to throw caution to the wind, and simply post here.

I am fat. I am right at 200 lbs. And I have been this way for awhile, a few years, now. I never dreamed I would get this fat. Pleasantly plump, sure. A roll here & there, OK. But this? No. And the weird thing is it isn't until I see pictures of myself that I even recognize how big I am. Which brings me to another struggle: denial.

Denial is easy when reality is avoided or escaped entirely. Which has indeed been the case for me for several years, due in large part to the prescription medications I've been on for the last several years. It really started when I caught mono during my tortuous, acrimonious divorce. It was the most bewildering time of my life. One day I'm teaching a Sunday School class on how to be an excellent wife, and within 9 months, I'm divorcing an abusive, drug- and porn- addicted raging, out of control being that I had never known before. And we had a 3 yr old boy to boot. The boy is actually the main reason I had to get out of that marriage, because although I was willing to take the abuse of living with an active poly-addict, I was absolutely not ever going to allow my precious son to grow up living like that and thinking it was normal. It's like I could see the future and how twisted our home was and would become, and I knew too much to continue to pretend that it was normal or acceptable. Not for my own sake, because I'd written my own life off long ago. But for my boy, I had to get the hell out of there and away from that man. Which proved way harder than I ever dreamed was possible, due to his sociopathic nature mixed with heavy drug use. He was NOT going to let me go, not because he loved me, mind you, but because I couldn't have "his" son. He was pathological in his torment of me, and though he never hit me, he did make my life hell.

I'd moved with him to a small town that he was from shortly after we married. I knew no one. His grown son was on the local police force. Oh yeah, he has a grown son. He's 12 yrs older than I and had been married three times prior. Oh, and he was in prison a few times, for drug charges, DWIs, assaults, etc. I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. He was so funny, could be the most charming man, made me feel like I was special because he chose to give me attention. And he was quite handsome. Great features. And he could make me laugh like no other human being has ever made me laugh. He was a little broken, basically a good guy who got mixed up with bad things due to an extremely physically and mentally abusive father. He was part little boy needing love and part grown man demanding attention, and eventually, obedience.

We met at an outpatient drug treatment facility. We were both clean 3 or 4 years I think, when we met. His road there and my road there were very different, yet shared common incidents and accidents, much like all addicts do. I am an "only" child, born to a mother who was married to a man, it turns out, was not my biological father. It was the mid-1960s, and Mom was running with a fast crowd of the intellectual writer sort. Think Hunter S. Thompson lite. By the time she married the man I called Dad, she was on her third marriage, and she was just 27, I think. What dhappened was, she was dating Dad, an Annapolis grad turned Dallas Morning News writer, but had had a crush for awhile on another writer, who I'll call W2-- writer 2-- who ran in the same crowd, and one night, love, liquor, & lust I guess, took over and after what I assume was a drunken roll in the hay, I was conceived. From what I gather, Mom & W2 discussed what was to be done, and they seemed to agree to let Dad think I was his, since that relationship had legs, while W2 was no where near love and marriage where that was concerned. Dad loved Mom. Adored her. Even though she was, from all accounts, a pathetic drunk, she was still quite lovely, well-bred and well-educated, a writer herself, she would later spend endless hours banging away at the Smith-Corona, cigarette in hand, endeavoring to write the Great American Novel. How cliché, I know. But it's the truth. And before anyone starts thinking I'm culling material from Augusten Burroughs, let me assure you, I was as startled to read & watch the similarities of our lives played out in pages or on the screen as anyone. I feel for Augusten deeply, though I don't know him at all, I do know some of what having a crazy, drunk and/or overmedicated mother is like and how it feels to feel responsible for making said mother--what? sane? happy? normal?

Anyway, my earliest memories of my mother were of her asleep on the couch. This is of particular significance to me because of ways my own mothering would eventually play out. So Mom slept a lot. Now I can infer that she was often passed out or hung over. By this time, we were living in Silver Spring, MD and Dad had a great job in the political machine on Capitol Hill. He was a heavy drinker, but an equally hard worker, and was instrumental in getting several politicians elected to national office. I still have a copy of the Congressional Record where he was eulogized by members of Congress and everyone remembered him as a good, honest man who worked hard. By all accounts these assessments are accurate and true. In fact, at some point in my infancy, apparently my Mom somehow let it "slip" that I wasn't Dad's, but W2's. And at that point they still all socialized together, part of a larger group. And by socialized, I mean got drunk, smoked weed, did whatever recreational drugs were around, stopping short of any "hard" drugs, of course. I guess. It was really all very DC cocktail-party respectable most of the time, but occasionally, depending on the guest list, would devolve into some flat out getting hammered. W2 was especially notorious for his appetite for booze and drugs, however, he did manage to get & keep a job at Sports Illustrated, wrote for Texas Monthly, wrote a few screenplays, one which would star Steve McQueen. He also went on years later to write a smash best-seller on the subject of golf. His true passion, though, was the Western, specifically the Texas Western. He did well for himself, had himself a good wife or two, along with some legitimate children, whom I have yet to meet, but do keep up with on Facebook. How very 21st century of us.

Anyhoo, legend has it W2 stopped by Mom & Dad's & they took him up to my room where I was asleep in my crib, where Mom stage-whispered to W2, "She's YOURS, you know." Dad must have been so proud. I guess it wasn't too long after that that the marriage fell apart, not that it was much of a partnership to begin with. Dad went to work each day in DC, Mom mostly slept on the couch, and obviously she managed more because I'm still alive, I just don't really remember much interaction with her. I do remember lots of TV and loving Sesame Street. Around that time, Mom realized she could not drink like a normal person, and she joined AA. And she got sober! So that was great. But she also got acquainted with a man who would become husband #4, a 70s-era cool dude who wore lots of denim, had a long ponytail, and smoked a lot of marijuana. Oh, Mom did too; that's how they stayed sober! They quit drinking by staying perpetually stoned. And Ben could not have been more different from Dad. Ben was a smooth talker, dirty walker, LOL! no, he was pretty much a straight-up hippie, while Dad was pretty straight-laced. I mean, dad had his moments, but for the most part was conservative and pretty straight-laced. Respectable. More the kind of man you would want your daughter to marry. Ben was more the type you would have to kick out of your daughter's bed.

I guess I was probably about 5 when Mom left Dad to move into a tiny, roach infested apartment with Ben and me. This was the point I was introduced to preschool, daycare, post-school, and lots of babysitters. But it was all okay with me. I didn't know what normal was, so this was just my life. I wasn't abused or horribly neglected, I just sort of went with the flow.