I was five when the first time I remember giving all of my gravity to an apology. My parents had just had a dramatic blowout threat to divorce. I wrote a letter to my mom saying that if they divorced it was all my fault. I remember handing her the letter in the garage. It's weird to love the things that are not your parents along the way. Like I loved the smell and the imprint of the oil leak onto the cement floor of the garage, who doesn't love that rainbowy patina that oil makes? It was also such a weirdly smooth floor for concrete. It was just me and my mom, and her white Jeep Cherokee that served witness to my apology.

She reacted with an "Ohhhh, it's not your fault." Her tone was flattered. Seriously, fuck that bitch. 

They repeated their dramatic blowouts at least 3-5 times a year for the next eleven years. After that things were falling apart in other ways.

I remember how much it directly affected me in when I was eleven or twelve. I went to every camp imaginable, correction, every sport camp possible during the summers. So fucking privileged abuse*. My parents had one of their blowout seeming breakups as they quickly forced me to go to camp to play lacrosse* at a college a couple of hours away. It was for a full week at least. I remember crying in the car to not break up, to not divorce the whole ride. I rarely cry like that anymore; you know, where you get a headache afterwards and you feel dehydrated. ALSO I HAD NEVER PLAYED THIS SPORT IN MY LIFE! I grew up in California. I didn't want to go but I had no choice. I was so terrified that my parents were going to be divorced when I got home. I was able to call once or twice and there was no definite answer. The whole time I was forced to learn a dumb sport I apologized. I apologized for dropping the ball. Imagine how often that was?!? Everybody at that camp commented how I was always apologizing. It was almost seen as a bad thing, definitely annoying to everyone involved. When my parents picked me up they did what they always did and acted like nothing happened. God I feel so bad for that girl. It was so cruel. 

I remember being in seventh grade and my parents had had one of their blowout breakups and depression hit me hard. I remember looking out the window during class at school so despondent; enough so that my teacher kicked my desk and told me to pay attention. It was Catholic school so you could do that. I was in myself. The next couple of years I tried cutting myself - didn't do that right! It just hurt. I started to journal on a clunky laptop my dad had once used for work. I journaled about wanting to die. So much suicide and probably no quirky musings. They would still have their divorce blowouts but starting high school it was as often. My mom also seemed more depressed - she liked the corner of the couch where the sectional met and ate red vines and watched Fox News into the wee hours and then would drive me to school with no lid on her coffee travel mug. It spilled. 

I got very sick when I was sixteen. I also had a car accident at the same time and it was the perfect storm to unleash that lame beast of an auto-immune disease known as fibromyalgia. I also have celiacs - which to be honest is a larger health risk. The weather can be bad and I'll be achy but the slightest bit of gluten and I can have a flu for two weeks. 

Sixteen on were really traumatic. 

I had these undiagnosed illnesses and was at a tough college prep high school. That's when the physical abuse began from my mother. I think she was just plain mad that she had to do some "parenting" which was taking me to doctors and dealing with my school. Crazy awful people love chaos and my mom decided to open a dress shop. I helped run it and was sick and in high school and getting physically assaulted by my mother. She would wake me up or come into my just as I was going to bed and start fights with me that ended with her hitting me. I still had anxiety dreams till about twenty-six that she would come into my room and hit me. I didn't live at home or have much contact with her it just was shitty trauma. She did one of those fights before the SATs for me. I didn't do so well on it despite having high PSAT scores. Hmmm. 

My brother also began to take his anger out on me physically around the same period, maybe a little before too. It was ok to do that to me. I remember one time we were fighting about something and he took my head by my hair and began banging it on the hardwood floor. A neighborhood kid was over and he was just yelling "stop it!" One time my brother smacked me across the face and my dad said "you don't hit a girl." I was the punching bag for my mom and brother and my dad was ambivalent. 

As a kid I prayed that my parents would get divorced because what you see of kids when you're young, or at least the financially ok families that I knew was that you got two of everything and things had a schedule. That sounded great. They were never going to divorce just feed each others selfish needs for chaos. Mom obvi bi-polar narcissist, and Dad grew up in an old-school alcoholic abusive house and left with his mom when he was eight or ten. My dad was also twenty-one years older than my mother. 

The crazy thing is that I got new information that my mom and dad had broken up when they were dating. My mom started to date someone new, found out she was pregnant, went back to my dad who had had never followed up to see if his vasectomy took and didn't believe my mom. They got married. My dad did adore my mom so that makes sense why he also just wanted to be with here, but he didn't believe I was his kid for a good chunk of time - maybe 9 months, plus a year or two? Who knows. But the thing that I'm struggling right now with is that distance he had for me from the start maintained and now I have an idea why. They are both petty but in different ways and to feel obligated to start a new family at 49 he probably resented me for that. Well he should have had his follow up appointment, dumbass.