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LJ Idol Week 9: Counterintuitive
Jan. 9th, 2012 02:32 pm"They're saying you tried to kidnap our brother."
"..Wait, what?"
"When you took Charlie and me out to lunch and left a note saying we were with you and you'd bring us back later? Charlie was grounded. He didn't tell us. So now the family story is that you tried to kidnap him."
There was more to the conversation, I'm sure. But these are the only words I remember. These, and the words that echoed in my head.
I don't deserve to eat.
If the people that had raised me could create this sort of fiction surrounding my actions...well, my god. My god. What kind of person must I be?
None of it was, of course, logical. Welcome to the workings of a dysfunctional family, where logic is a mythical beast, and personal accountability is non-existent. I grew up apologizing for everything, anything, longing for approval, and ended up here, in a life those I raised could never relate to, still being blamed for things I had never, would never, have done.
I don't deserve to eat led to my starving myself - not to the point of anorexia, but definitely to the point of needing help to start to eat correctly again. And sometimes the feeling of being hungry is a sensation I still find oddly addictive, still find oddly deserving.
I can't say that, even now, well over a decade after the above phone call occurred, that there is not still a part of me which longs for my family's approval. Family is still my holy grail. But when I look over my familial history, this is the point that I know I made a decision that saved my life...because it was at this point that I realized I had to stop trying to be a part of my father's dysfunctional world.
"..Wait, what?"
"When you took Charlie and me out to lunch and left a note saying we were with you and you'd bring us back later? Charlie was grounded. He didn't tell us. So now the family story is that you tried to kidnap him."
There was more to the conversation, I'm sure. But these are the only words I remember. These, and the words that echoed in my head.
I don't deserve to eat.
If the people that had raised me could create this sort of fiction surrounding my actions...well, my god. My god. What kind of person must I be?
None of it was, of course, logical. Welcome to the workings of a dysfunctional family, where logic is a mythical beast, and personal accountability is non-existent. I grew up apologizing for everything, anything, longing for approval, and ended up here, in a life those I raised could never relate to, still being blamed for things I had never, would never, have done.
I don't deserve to eat led to my starving myself - not to the point of anorexia, but definitely to the point of needing help to start to eat correctly again. And sometimes the feeling of being hungry is a sensation I still find oddly addictive, still find oddly deserving.
I can't say that, even now, well over a decade after the above phone call occurred, that there is not still a part of me which longs for my family's approval. Family is still my holy grail. But when I look over my familial history, this is the point that I know I made a decision that saved my life...because it was at this point that I realized I had to stop trying to be a part of my father's dysfunctional world.