I recently engaged in a conversation with the local Fed Ex guy that made me feel somehow finally understood. Has there ever been a more absurd sentence? But years of slowly opening up to close friends has never had quite the impact this brief conversation did.
I forget exactly how it started, but something about working all the time and how he had been working and paying rent since he was 16 because his step dad made him pay rent to live in the garage.
To which I responded, "I thought I had a shitty step-dad."
Which of course spawned further dialogue about our respective shitty drug addict step dads. Which to me is sort of a revelation. I mean, I obviously know others exist, I've just never had a conversation with anyone who has also experienced this. My close friends who have step dads mostly feel as if they got an upgrade. This frank discussion about being yelled at for no reason, wondering which version of him will walk through the door each day...I almost wanted to cry with relief that I was not alone.
Because if you haven't been through it, you can still understand it. But you can't really understand the impact it has on your psyche. You can't actually feel it. The underlying dread of each day. What nonexistent facial expression will I be punished for today? What tiny chore left undone will be treated like the end of the world? What terrible things will he say today, and will they make me cry? That constant apprehension.
I have a friend who experienced emotional abuse during her marriage. She sort of understands. She felt and withstood the insidious nature of it from 17 to 27. Terrible as that is, and terrible as I am to distinguish, I'm still going to say that it is vastly different when it occurs to an adult rather than a child. I was a child, literally molded by this man I had not chosen in any way to have around me.
I wonder if there are support groups for the children of addicts? Probably, there should be anyway based on how cathartic it was for me to have one small conversation about a shared hell.
I forget exactly how it started, but something about working all the time and how he had been working and paying rent since he was 16 because his step dad made him pay rent to live in the garage.
To which I responded, "I thought I had a shitty step-dad."
Which of course spawned further dialogue about our respective shitty drug addict step dads. Which to me is sort of a revelation. I mean, I obviously know others exist, I've just never had a conversation with anyone who has also experienced this. My close friends who have step dads mostly feel as if they got an upgrade. This frank discussion about being yelled at for no reason, wondering which version of him will walk through the door each day...I almost wanted to cry with relief that I was not alone.
Because if you haven't been through it, you can still understand it. But you can't really understand the impact it has on your psyche. You can't actually feel it. The underlying dread of each day. What nonexistent facial expression will I be punished for today? What tiny chore left undone will be treated like the end of the world? What terrible things will he say today, and will they make me cry? That constant apprehension.
I have a friend who experienced emotional abuse during her marriage. She sort of understands. She felt and withstood the insidious nature of it from 17 to 27. Terrible as that is, and terrible as I am to distinguish, I'm still going to say that it is vastly different when it occurs to an adult rather than a child. I was a child, literally molded by this man I had not chosen in any way to have around me.
I wonder if there are support groups for the children of addicts? Probably, there should be anyway based on how cathartic it was for me to have one small conversation about a shared hell.
