10/23/97
Therapy. And I was there. That’s what he said. “Wait a minute, I don’t like to interupt, but I have to get this in. You were there. You do have your own past.” Was I invisible? Is that it? Is that what I’ve been feeling this whole time? None of this is mine. That’s what I’ve been telling myself. Over and over, why do I translate for them? Why am I the one who tries to find the medium in which we can all partake? It isn’t as if we can restore what we were. In my memory, in my lifetime, I don’t remember having a family, well barely. It isn’t as though my mother and my father are ever going to speak, for all that my father offered, I think it would be a bad idea. Do I want some kind of family? Am I clinging to a role?
But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here. The fact is I was there. And I do have a past. And the fact is that I did hide under the piano at Theora and Pete’s wedding. Was it to be bratty? Or was it because hiding was what I did best? I’ve spent so much time trying to put myself in other people’s shoes to understand what went on. To try and reconcile all the different views and sides and accusations. But when Robin says “Come on, I’ve been back in your life for ten years! Get over it!” I want to hit her. I make so much effort to see
everyone elses view. to empathize with them. why? so much effort, was it selfless? What was my intention in understanding everyone else?
I know I didn’t want to feel everything then and there. I know I consciously put it off to another time and place, primarily where it wouldn’t affect or harm my mother in any way. As though she were fragile, and any additional emotion from me or from herself, would bring about some kind of dire consequence. So how did I not feel? And how, over time did I keep those feelings from creeping up on me? The only way I could have handled it, was to see all the events and feelings bound to them as something that happened to the others, my sister, my mother, my father. It didn’t happen to me. I wasn’t there.
But I can feel now. I was there. I am allowed to remember now. Because I was there. I did exist as the person I was, for the most part as the person I am today. In continuum. I was there. I have feelings from being there. I did indeed feel a certain way, I did indeed feel the loss of father of sister, and for that matter, mother. Mother as I had known her before. And I did feel the terror of being left. Of trying to hold onto the one that still remained and trying to ensure that she and I would come out the other side together. Because we were what was left. We were there together.