I must have grown up in the lamest family ever (sarcasm). We never lived close to any relatives and our immediate family was just my parents, my younger brother and I. My folks weren’t the social type, either. Oh, we saw family, my dad’s family is in the Four Corner’s area, Colorado and NM (Durango, Cortez, Farmington) and I actually have an Aunt in SLC…but her strong devotion to her religion and my dad’s total refusal of any of it kept the visits to an extreme minimum. Once and more commonly, every other year was the obligatory get together, although they did call each other frequently. My mother’s family is in England, and although we saw them during the summers, they are a small family and pretty low key as far as socializing.
So we had a quiet childhood as far as being exposed to a lot of drama and gossip to do with friends and family. Sure, I there were a few silly ‘family secrets’ that everybody knew but still whispered and winked about…guess it was more exciting that way…but they were never anything life shattering or horrifying. The older I got, I of course learned more about family dynamics other than my own, and that a lot of them seemed to have at least one Big Secret that had been exposed or found out in some way, and the possibilities of more were now more likely and much talk was about theories and coincidences and clues about what else was hidden among the smiling portraits. I know families that just live for all this drama, and over 20 years, it has done nothing but multiply itself.
Now, I came to be friends with a girl in High School who was a grade higher than me. That was 1984. I even let her take my boyfriend (he was older, didn’t go to our school) to the Harvest Dance, which was girls’ choice and casual, but u wore matching shirts. I had no desire to go, and she, being overweight and in the ’stoner’ crowd, and not so popular, (not saying I was popular by any means, although I did attain a degree of ‘infamy’) kind of had limited choices.
Her family was also small, and not local, in fact they were Air Force too. We both had a brother and wanted a sister… we had much in common, so of course we spent more and more time together. Even after I got married, (at 17) had my oldest daughter and soon after got divorced, then became re-involved with an ex and he moved in, she and I still spent quite a lot of time together, usually with other friends. After living the almost hermit lifestyle as a kid, I became completely the opposite on my own. She and I and my latest live-in-boyfriend/soon to be husband then ex-husband, moved into a three bedroom house. We have actually lived with or in the same apartment complex or right next to each other a good slice of the 22 years. She ended up having a son three years after I had my first. From the get go, the kid just wasn’t right. I’ll leave that at that. As for her, she was, in some distinctive ways, like assertiveness or tact, the opposite of me. She would also live and die whatever guy she was seeing at the time, and their were only a few, not like she had a different one to obsess over and stalk weekly… but she would put him before anyone else, including her son. (Who clearly needed much more attention and some kind of help from an early age) She ended up losing custody of him. She would believe desperately anything her boyfriends would tell her, even when her friends she’d had longer than me would tell her they saw ‘him’ with another woman in his car…etc, etc. she would become hostile and upset claiming we just wanted to ruin her life….???!
So it was obvious she wasn’t sewn together too tight, but we all chalked it up as she was just dramatic and moody and took things more like she was acting in a bad soap opera. We even teased her about it and she would agree and laugh with us, re-telling events.
She always resembled her mother quite a bit, mostly from their build and mannerism. She didn’t look a whole lot like her brother, he was rather lightly built and smaller framed, but they did have similar coloring. And I could never really see any of her fathers looks in her.
As years went on, we had our share of emotional drama, tragedy, fun & excitement; we both dealt with depression, were put on meds for it & saw therapists. We also both had our issues with addictions, of more than one kind.
She did one or 2 things in the early years I was taken aback at, hell, we all did shit that was out of character, that’s the nature of being under the influence of something. But there were things that even that excuse didn’t fit with, considering we were more weekend users at the time, and still at small amounts. It seemed drastic. Like when she pawned her car with her boyfriend at the time, just so he could buy a large amount of stuff to sell and ‘make the money back plus some…’ she took the bus and walked home from Ogden then lied to me saying the car had broke down but it was being taken care of. Lied to me so I wouldn’t a: be upset she pawned her car (this is back when they kept your car, not just your title) and b: not know they ‘had’ anything.
Several years later, she’s with a guy who actually marries her, he’s like 8 years younger than her, also an addict, illiterate and ‘unstable’ in the head… they have a kid. We had a brief period of time we all were comfortable with, hanging out, doing our thing, living our addiction. We all became all week-ers. Even in my own altered states, I could see and sense something changing in her, I denied most of the obvious, passed it off as ‘the drugs’. But the real her, when we were sober, was still acting different.
Finally it was costing me more than it was worth, and I kept trying to break away, I picked fights, I was mean & rude, I insulted her and her husband, I got unsocial, secretive. I tried convincing her to stop too. Her husband would have none of that, and of course, she went with whatever he wanted. She was convinced she had to keep him ‘happy’ so he would be good to her and their son and be able to function herself. It didn’t work too well.
Sometime near the end of all this, her husband confided in me that his mother had been told at his and her wedding that she was adopted, and was in fact, a child of her mothers ‘crazy aunt’. More people, I have come to find out, knew about this than I would think. My own ex (oldest daughter’s family) father-in-law even knew! But SHE didn’t!
I finally did what I had to do to end our friendship completely, totally, irreparably. And yes, she does know…now. .
Her husband had a child with an ex, they lost custody of the little girl and she was adopted by his parents. How well that worked out…no. His parents are raising her as THEIR daughter, calling him her ‘uncle’, and her half-brother her ‘cousin’. Wonder how long this’ll go on, what damage it’ll do, and most of all, why he and my ex-friend agreed to and continued to support this lie, even though they were against it. And what will she (the daughter) do after all these years of spending time with these people who all turn out to be nobody they say they are?
My ex-friend, her husband and youngest son went back to KY a couple of months ago to live with her ‘parents’. At last it seems finally done, since before I would see them around town occasionally and hear odds & ends about them, such as them asking another mutual friend where I lived now, and rehashing our past.
But I also have wondered over the last couple of years about the whole ‘crazy aunt’ thing and her personality. It seems obvious to me she had inherited some kind of mental illness, as did I… but why didn’t her parents prepare for this? And what about her bringing children into the world and being unaware they could (and are) be afflicted? And just how crazy IS crazy and what else is in her history nobody spoke of? Then we come to the drug addiction. Aside from all the self medicating, psycho-blah it’s a symptom of the disorders she has, stuff, I am convinced that her drug use triggered some more severe problems that she was already predisposed to. She no doubt would have been considered psychotic to some extent. I know at the end, she was no where near the person I had known so well for 20 years.
I wonder to whose benefit these kind of ‘Family Secrets’ are. I will agree there are a FEW extreme situations that probably should be better left to darkness, but mostly, they are better dealt with. Are they worth it? When does someone have to be responsible and if they’re going to play this lie through, then at least do what you need to do to prepare for, maybe prevent and deal with whatever ’side effects’ will pop up in the persons life, since your not giving them a choice or the information to be able to do this themselves. As for me, I think it’s selfish, destructive and convenient for the moment. If you want to play God that badly, go squish cockroaches, don’t play with peoples lives.
I wondered for a while if she hadn’t of turned into a monster what we’d be doing…
I got over it. Then is then, now is now. It is what it is.
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