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i am: 40...a capricorn / moon in pisces / libra rising...an old soul with a young spirit...older than i look...contemplating my 3rd tattoo...NOT a web designer...a lesbian...working things out with the g.f....a native iowan...a graduate of cornell college and ohio state...a critical reader and thinker...really rather shy...agnostic...an ardent feminist...a bleeding-heart liberal...a pacifist...and so not your average white grrl...
e-mail me
feeling generous? *grin*
Who Links Here
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November 08, 2001
the motherfucking coward... so anyway...
my younger sister called me monday night and...after the requisite chit chat about our work, loves, and lives...she asked me if i was sitting down.
my first thoughts were...is she pregnant? is she engaged (she's gone thru a rocky period with her beau, but things seem to be improving)? and (goddess forbid) was she abused as a child by our (wicked...okay, he was really just stupid) stepfather?
i had absolutely no idea that she would say what she said. which was...
she is the child resulting from an affair that our mother had while married to our (errr, my) father. my mother didn't reveal this fact to her until 4 years ago, when she was 28. she has spent the last 4 years in therapy, sorting it all out, and working up the nerve to tell ME.
now...it could have been worse. much worse. i know this. but still...
i'm angry. mostly at my mother. for:
* cheating on my father.
* cheating on my father with his co-worker and friend.
* cheating on my father with the kind of (cowardly) man who would deny his own child, (supposedly) for the sake of his existing marriage and family.
* accepting (after my parents' divorce about 5 years later) child support payments FROM my father for a child that was not and is not his.
* keeping this a secret.
* keeping this a secret for almost 30 years.
* when she finally decided to reveal the secret, for making my sister promise not to tell anyone.
* feeling the need to "protect" my sister to a greater extent than she felt the need to "protect" ME (protect from WHAT, i don't really know...other than from, obviously, the truth).
* preventing my sister from developing a healthy relationship with my father, who is the only father SHE has ever known (on sundays, our designated day with dad after the separation and ensuing divorce, she urged my sister to stay home with her instead...at times, so that they could be visited in secret by my sister's biological father.)
* witnessing bitter arguments between my sister and me, well into our adulthood...arguments centered around my failure to understand how and why she made little effort to sustain a relationship with our (my) father...and not saying anything...thereby jeopardizing my relationship with my sister.
of course, i'm also angry at "this man" for denying his daughter's existence and treating her like his dirty little secret. i have a fantasy of sending him an anonymous note that says:
"YOU MOTHERFUCKING COWARD."
and i only realized afterward just HOW appropriate that would be.
i'm a little angry with my father...for keeping this secret, and witnessing the same arguments between my sister and me and not saying anything about what he knew. but...this is the man who stepped up to raise (at least for awhile, until the divorce) a child that was not his...who paid child support for her and contributed to the funding of her (higher) education...who took great pains to make sure that he treated us equally. but if my feelings for him have changed, it's in the sense that i have a greater respect for him, because of what he did, and how he was the "bigger man".
my feelings for my sister haven't changed...except that maybe i respect her even more for how she has handled this revelation, and how she hasn't allowed it to destroy her life.
what i'm most worried about are my feelings for my mother. i don't know how i can forgive her. it all seems like too much. i know i have to talk to her...she left a message last night saying that she wanted to talk, but understood if i wasn't ready. i wasn't...and i'm still not.
5:17 PM
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