Dark Family Secrets

Amazing Dream

2008-03-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

I have these epic bouts with migraine headaches. However toward the end, I often get these ideas or epiphanies that lead me on to the next stage of life. It's a strange balance, because there is nothing I would rather avoid than another migraine. Ideas however, are something I long for, especially good ideas, important life changing ideas.

The past couple weeks I've had a headache, that eventually lead to a massive migraine that put me in bed the last couple days. I haven't eaten, barely able to drink water. I lay in bed, and periodically take a hot shower, only to return to bed until there is more hot water to take another shower. The hot shower is the only relief I get, I know of nothing else that will ease the pressure in my head, and as soon as I'm out of the shower, the pain returns.

After a couple days of this, I fell asleep and had a vivid dream. A beautiful angel came to me, joined me in my bed. She was beautiful, in fact, one of my many ideals of beauty. She seemed about 17, slightly plump with baby fat. When she lay beside me, her white gown revealed a perfect breast. The kind of breast that was once the mold for the first champagne glass, supposedly molded from the breast of Aphrodite as the ancient tale goes.

There was a feeling of passion, and sexual desire between us, although we only embraced. It felt so good to be beside her, to feel the excitement of someone new next to me. To cup her breast in my hand and hold her close. The room and bed became ethereal. White light and billowing white linens filled the space until I was somewhere else, almost heaven.

She asked me why I live in fear. I told her that I did not know what she meant. She asked me why I was here in Maine, and I told her that I wanted to be close to my aging grandfather. She told me to let go, to live, not live in fear. She asked me about my family, and my motivations. I explained that I wanted the best for my wife and daughter. I wanted to protect them from the evils of the world. She told me to let go, stop living in fear, and to live.

She asked me this, besides death, illness, or injury, what do you fear?

I said I fear disappointing those I love. She told me to let go, to stop living in fear, and to live. I told her that I feared that the world will hurt my child, abuse her, use her, fool her. I told the angel that I didn't want the things that happened to me to happen to her. The angel told me there is nothing I can do about that. Life is in motion, and we all must fall down or we never learn to get back up.

I wept in her arms.

She asked me, in a perfect world what do you want to be? I told her that I like to teach art, and be an artist. I long to create all the time, and I long for a community that supports that. She asked me why is it that I am not doing these things?

I realized that everything I am is in direct response to those I love most. I want to be exactly what my family wants me to be, and even though none of them have asked anything from me, I have somehow come up with what I think they want me to be, and I've tried to be it. I"ve somehow put immense pressure on myself, with no stimuli from others.

She said, let go, stop living in fear, and live.

I weep now just thinking about it. She told me that every fear I have besides the universal fears of death, illness, and injury, are all things that I must face, and do in order to truly live. That every fear is simply the things I want to do, but think that all others would not want me to do.

I told her that once I was so naive, so pure. In fact I grew to quite an old age before I became corrupted. Before I knew to fear. I used to be myself, no apologies. Now in middle age, I have become a burden to myself. I fear everything. I'm a conspiracist, I trust nothing. Governments, the medical world, disease, horror, violence. All my fears have created what I am today. A recluse inside my own home with no contact to others. All I see is traps and lies.

I told her that I never got a license to drive a car because I was afraid I might hurt someone. I told her that I created an Internet empire so that I didn't have to leave the house and go outside anymore. I succeeded at building my own guilded cage. Trapped safe inside with my fears.

The angel was right. I desire passion, the excitement of the new and unknown. I want a feeling of freedom instead of this weight of the world I've put on my own shoulders. I want to leave it all behind. I fear starting over.

Deep down I know what I want, but somehow always find a way to talk myself out of it, and disguise it all as responsibility. I must provide for my family, I must be a good son, good husband, good father. I have swept many dreams away doing this. I use money as an excuse, when there is plenty. All of this is because I fear the first step, I fear failure, I fear rejection. I fear upsetting those that I want to please. I fear upsetting those I love. I've grown lazy, grumpy, and sad. The angel was right. I live in fear.

She kissed me. We cuddled and rolled around. I haven't felt so young and free like this for so long. It made me realize that I need that. Everyone needs that feeling. Vitality. I heard footsteps, and felt like two young teenagers being caught by her parents, although no one entered. I joked, is this OK? She just shook her head, and I say, I know, I know, don't live in fear, just live.

Snow Angel

2007-12-28T11:24:00.000-08:00

Maine winters are brutal, especially when I was a kid in the 60's - 70's, the snow would pile up. Each year after the first storm, I get excited to go out and play. Now I have my own wee one to hop around the yard, pull around in a sled and make snow angels with.

Possibly the most horrendous thing that ever happened to my family while growing up involved a snow angel. It's a terrible terrible sad story. Horrible really.

Our neighbor about 5 houses away from us had a young boy that had learning problems. He was the local retard. His family put him to work on their farm. He was big and strong, and although not the smartest person, he pulled his weight on the farm. I can only guess his age around 13 or 15... maybe older, but not by much.

One early dark winter morning while his family was still sleeping, he woke up, looked outside, and saw heaps of untouched snow. Early in the winter the first big snow is really exciting to kids, and so he put on some boots and a snorkel jacket (and nothing else), and went out in the field to play.

He was plopping down making snow angels. The snow angels lined up across the field, one after another. When everything is covered by snow, it's hard to tell where you are. The poor boy had no idea that he was in the middle of the road when my father, returning home from work in the early morning, ran right over him. He was not visable at all, laying deep in the snow. A huge clunk made my father stop his vehicle, and the streak of red down the road made it evedent that something had died under his wheels.

The cops came quick, assessed the situation and that was that. We never talked about it much. The police did not hold my father accountable, for there was no way to see the boy. The family had no idea he had gone out so early all alone. It was a sad thing, and I think about it any time I see a snow angel.

My Big Fat Lie

2007-11-05T13:43:00.000-08:00

I've lived the same lie for 38 years. Here it is:

My mother has been married three times. At 17 she got pregnant with me in September of 1963 and married a young local boy named Elliott. He went off to military service to send a little money back, and I only have one memory of him other than his military photo that once sat on a table at my grandfather's farm house I grew up in. My only memory of my biological father would be 'The Tent Story' but that's far too long to go into and carry on properly from here. I'll get to it, one story at a time. Grampy still to this day says that Elliott was a good man, and thinks highly of him. I guess they all see each other in church now and then.

A couple years later on Mom remarried a fella named Reggie. His brother Lowell worked the summer fairs, and I spent a lot of time with him, helping run the mouse game. It's a big round table with lots of numbered holes around the outer edge. Players bet on the numbers. The mouse keeper spins the table, sets a mouse in the center of the wheel, and when the mouse walks into one of the numbered holes, it declares the winner. The Mouse Game is no longer found at the fairs, but when I was growing up there was at least two going on at every fair. I don't know why it's gone. Mice seem to enjoy it, so do the people. I miss those days... anyway...

Ultimately mom remarried again when she found Hal. Hal is the hero of this story. He's my dad, and he's a great guy. Lord knows how my mom and he met. I bet he was just going by in his 18 wheeler, and saw mom out on Grampy's lawn. Just strolling about, and stopped talk. All I knew was she started getting into his sleeper cab and heading out on week long trips all over the US of A. It was exciting, they'd bring me trinkets from some of the cities they'd visit. He's one of the most patient loving people ever to walk the earth. He's never in a hurry, so calm, supportive, and all the while funny or down right goofy. I love my dad. He saved my life in so many ways. He's always been a beacon of hope because he's such a dreamer, and the rest of my family are earthy farmer work real hard people, but are not crazy enough to believe some of the stuff that my dad and I support in one another. There's a bit of magic shared between us, and it's so great. He has three kids from his first marriage. There's Brenda, Ron, and Cindy. All older than I am, and I love them all. Somehow I feel like my dad's side of the family accepts me more than my side. They are all so good to me, even when we were kids and our parents were merging in and out of our lives. I always felt bad because I didn't mean to take their daddy away. It wasn't my fault, I was 5. I really love him though, and I'm so glad he came along. In the long run all he did was bring me three older siblings and a whole lot of love.

Mom and dad decided to have a kid. Mother took me outside onto the lawn, with only the trees listening in, and had a talk with me. It was 1970. I was almost 6 years old. She told me now that my little brother was born I was to never talk about my father Elliott, or my mother's early husbands. She wanted it to be like it had been forever with Hal, with no mention of the past. I remember promising to never mention the names of those men again. Just the mention of the name Elliott brings some kind of shame to me. I've never seen E.T. ever in my life... I have some kind of block.

Hey I was a kid, this is cool, a secret between mom and I. She goes on to explain that she always wanted me to be known as first born. That to speak about being born by a different man, my brother could be construed as first born. She wanted to protect my future she told me. I would be given my new father's last name, pretend to be his natural born son, and tell no one.

At 5 years old this was easy. At 43 I'm amazed at how many people don't know. In my adulthood I have come to fear how my brother is going to feel at 37 that the entire family has been lying to him since birth about his and my origins. The irony is that my brother and I work for an Internet business together. We live in different cities and work virtually, but we are in contact with one another at least three times a week. And still he does not know that his big brother is really a step brother. He still says things like, "Dude I'm looking more and more like Dad everyday, I'm getting bald... you must have gotten all of Mom's genes..." I always go "uhuh."

At 18 I left my mom and dad's house, headed to college in Baltimore, and never came back for more than a week visit. I've pretty much kept my distance the last 30 years other than phone calls. If I don't see any family members, I don't have to lie about myself in any way. It's really weird, although no one speaks about it.

I kinda think it's amazing that if everyone just lives a lie, it becomes as solid as any truth. It's what people say, and what they think, and what they do that matters. All this just opened my mind to how Truth evolves over time. We can all look back on history and see the blunders of the past. Things that people once held as true, often change over time. Now if something as solid as Truth can evolve, imagine how a Big Fat Lie can evolve over time.

Here is where I'm stuck:

Do I go against my mother's wishes?

or

Do I lie to my little brother forever about our origins?

Then there's: do I wait until the end of my mother's life to tell my brother, or is that worse and then she'll just haunt me? When do I tell him? Does he ever get told? At his death bed to finish him off good? I really don't know. None of these sound good to me. For some reason I believe that he needs to be told, that truth need prevail and all that stuff. But how... and it's been so long, he's all grown up and I think it will really freak him out. The biology he won't care about. It's the conspiracy. He's pretty much the only one young enough not to know. The whole family has kept him blind to me having a different father than he.

I've been stuck at this point for 38 years...

Little Tim's Three Way Sex

2007-11-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

Here's more bizarre stuff about my Aunt Faye and Uncle Tim's family. Faye has two sons, Little Tim and Roland. Little Tim was born just a couple years after me, and we grew up together in Maine on my grandfather's farm. Roland is the baby of the family, and is a drugged out junkie in jail, whose two girls, Megan and Kara are now in Aunt Faye's custody.

Uncle Tim has a younger brother named Bubba. Bubba is married to a woman named Carolyn. The whole family is freaking out because it has come to light that Little Tim drives up to Maine each weekend to join Bubba and Carolyn in their bed.

When I arrived in Maine it was all the gossip. My grandfather and mother would talk and talk about it. Saying that Little Tim was trying to steal his aunt Carolyn away from his uncle Bubba. However when I finally see Little Tim myself, he confided in me that he's not trying to steal her away, she was simply interested in sleeping with two men at once. There is nothing going on behind Bubba's back. No lies, no deceit.

He has since explained this to everyone that asks. He's very open about it. He wants to talk about it, even to people that don't want to hear about it. Hey, I just got here from 20 plus years in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, nothing shocks me. As long as everyone is consenting adults, and no one is deceiving the other, I figure, it must be OK. But the older folk here are really up in arms about it.

My Uncle Tim is so offended, he has broken off all communication with Bubba, his brother. My mom is so freaked out, she never has a good word to say about Little Tim. The truth is, I feel sorry for Little Tim, his life has been tough... and for once he's having fun, so let him have it.

You see, Little Tim was married to a woman for 10 years that openly had other lovers. She would tell him that she was going out, and that she'd be home in a couple days. One of her boyfriends would pick her up and off she'd go. He often would phone me up and ask me what to do. I could not offer any other advice other than leave if you can't handle it, or stay if he could. It was up to him. For nearly a decade he was a cuckold. He went to work making money, while his cheating wife stayed at home without a job. He provided for her while she broke his heart bit by bit. Now that he's having wild dirty sex with his hot blond aunt (that's only a few years older than him) it must be good for his damaged ego. He's left his cheating woman, and is making up for lost time with Bubba's. For once he seems happy, high spirited, and is spending all his cash on gas money driving from Massachusetts to Maine each weekend.

The Crack Babies

2007-10-31T20:16:00.000-07:00

I am brooding over an incident that occurred recently between Aunt Faye and I. It's been over 20 years since I've spent more than a week in Maine, and now that I have a beautiful daughter, I wanted my wife and I to spend a year or more here so that my wee one could get to know my side of the family, especially my aging grandfather. We got a rental near by, but spend a lot of time at Grampy's. My kid loves him, and it's lots of fun to see them laugh and play together.

Everything was fine until my aunt and uncle came up from Northboro, Massachusetts. They have two granddaughters, Megan and Kara that now live with them due to their parents being drug addicts. Their father is in jail as of this writing for repeated petty crimes to get drug money, and their mother doesn't want the kids. However, my Aunt Faye is not too happy to be "stuck" with these two skiddish messed up kids. Not to mention that she raised a junkie, so why the courts made her legal guardian is beyond me.

Megan is 10 and demands a lot of attention. Very overweight and depressed, this kid has seen it all, and fears everything. Kara age 4, is not potty trained, and is very violent and unpredictable. The two kids are often found beating one another senseless, and need to be watched all the time. Aunt Faye is a total stress case. Having just fought off breast cancer, lost her boy to drugs and prison, most of her time is spent working and worrying. Her husband, Uncle Tim is a burned out alcoholic. I've never been in a vehicle with the man without a Budweiser between his legs. He's a medical mess with colostomy bag, and bad temper. They also have a little dog that they never house broke. The whole time they are visiting, the dog just pees and craps all over the floor, and they just clean it up like it's normal. What the heck? Can you say, white trash?

At any sign of trouble, one can hear from miles away Aunt Faye's shouting. She seems stuck in this mode, and is ferocious. All day during her visit, at any provocation from one of her two girls, she can be heard shouting, "Shut the fuck up!" "Get the fuck outta the way!" "You are such a fucking bitch" and anything else with the word "fuck" in the sentence. Remember, these are young girls she's yelling at...

Once when I asked Megan about school she told me her best friend was also named Megan. Aunt Faye interrupts and says, "I hate your name because it's your slut mother's name, I wish you were named anything else but Megan!" ...which pretty much stopped our little conversation. Faye really seems to hate this kids, but acts like it's her duty to care for them.

OK. My wife and I are very granola California types. We are both work at home computer geeks, educated, and rather meek in disposition. After 8 years of marriage we decided to have a baby, got a midwife, and had the child at home all natural. Three years later my wife is still breast feeding our beautiful daughter. We have never had a baby sitter, and have been with our child every day since her birth. We do get a bit worn out at times, but we love our child. My Aunt Faye is by far the worst human being we have ever exposed our daughter to, and it's difficult to be at my grandfather's home when she visits.

One day when Aunt Faye was microwaving some instant French toast for her girls, she made some for my 2 year old, and I asked her for about the millionth time to not give my kid any instant crap foods. We feed her organic foods, things like real French toast, you know, bread dipped in an egg and cooked on a griddle... so of course Aunt Faye explodes into a "Fuck you" fest directed at me while my 2 year old daughter is in my arms. I then ask her to please stop screaming the "F word" around my child, which in reply, she walks up to my face and shouts, "FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!!!"

My daughter squirms out of my arms and races out of the house, across the field, down the path to the lake where her mother is to get away from this mad lady. I am in awe that my aunt would have such disregard for my kid. I hurry off to follow my crying daughter down to the lake so that she is not alone along the wooded path. I tell my wife what happened, and we just decide to stay the day down by the lake in the small family cabin, and avoid my grandfather's house at the top of the hill.

Suppertime comes and we go up the hill to join the family for our meal. Hamburgers are being made outside on the grill. The kids are playing, everything seems OK until Kara finds two pairs of sharp scissors in her box of toys, and gives a pair to my 2 year old. Being the only adult that is watching the kids (everyone else is inside the house doing dishes cleaning up) I go over and say, "Hey you guys cannot run around outside with scissors", and ask for the scissors. Kara gives me the scissors, but says that she is allowed to play with scissors. I say I doubt that she is allowed to run around with scissors, and regardless, as long as I am around no one is running around the yard with scissors, end of story.

She runs in screaming to Aunt Faye, who laughs and says, "Oh I forgot those in the toy box, I want those scissors, you cannot run around outside with scissors, they are for sitting at the table only." So far so good, we agree on something for once. She tells Kara to go get the scissors and bring them to her. I give Kara the scissors but instead of doing as she is told, she runs off, hands a pair back to my 2 year old.

I am quite annoyed at this point. I take the scissors away from both kids, and ask Kara why she didn't do as she was told. She screams "you're not the boss of me" running back to Aunt Faye, I follow her, as I want her to understand endangering herself and my wee one is unacceptable. Aunt Faye scoops Kara up, stopping me inside saying, "You are frightening her!" I say, "I intend to have a talk with her about what she just did." Aunt Faye, says, "I'll deal with it." I tell her, "Deal with what, you were not there." Faye goes, "you don't know what these girls have been through, I'll deal with it." I tell her, "You're not part of this, this is between Kara and I." Aunt Faye says, "These are my girls, and I'll deal with it." I don't let up, I say, "If you were to deal with it, you'd have been there. I'm not going to hurt her, and if I'm left alone to watch your kids, they will hear what I have to say."

Aunt Faye is trying to walk away from me all this time, Kara is clutching to her, looking at me over Faye's shoulder, pretending to cry, while sticking her tongue out at me. I say directly to Kara, "I'm smarter than these people you have fooled, you can't fool me. You did wrong, endangered my kid, and you're going to hear it from me." And that's when Aunt Faye whips around and screams, "You think you're smarter than me?" I say, "well, yes I do, now that you mention it. A lot smarter in fact." That's when she lets go a whole string of "fuck yous" and other aggressive talk. Then I simply say, "and it's just that sort of thing that makes me believe so."

I continue to fan the fire making Aunt Faye more and more angry. I just can't let it go. I go on to explain that all her kid's troubles are her fault, that her boy did not know how to find love because his concept of love is someone telling him to "shut the fuck up" so of course he ends up with a woman that tells him to "shut the fuck up" along with low self esteem, bad relationships, and drug problems. I tell her that she is a monster and is now destroying those two girl's lives, their low self esteem and all of the dysfunction starts with her. Every time she says the word "fuck" I ask her to stop saying the "F" word in front of the preschoolers. I ask her to just start there, stop screaming "fuck".

She tells me that she wishes I was dead and that she hopes to never see me again. I tell her that I will do my best to grant her one of her wishes, because I really don't want to expose my child to her bad behavior. That night they all crawled back into their truck and returned to Mass. The end of another delightful vacation.

A couple months later my mother throws a nice little birthday party for my kid. Three years old. My mom went all out, this being her only grandchild, and a beautiful brilliant one at that. My mom loves her. My kid was wheeling the new mini stroller with a blue teddy bear around the yard, and my mom tells me that she got the stroller for my wee one because she liked the stroller toy that Kara stored in the basement to play with when they visited. Before my aunt and uncle returned to Mass, they hid all the toys way back in the potato bin on a shelf, and covered them with paper bags. I had thought they simply took the toys with them. My mom says for years, they simply put them down in the basement. She thought it was very petty that they went to such effort to make sure my kid could not play with their toys. Then she goes, they will be here for Thanksgiving, what are you going to do?

My head was spinning from the fact that two adults, angry at me, decided to hide toys from my daughter. They were making her a victim or our disagreement. I could not believe how defensive my aunt is, when her stance is that it's her right to scream "fuck" at preschoolers. How could anyone believe that it's OK to do such a thing? And then to go on to hide toys they knew my kid enjoyed... I just looked at my mom and said, "I guess it's just you and the crack babies, we will have Thanksgiving alone at our place".

My mom instantly broke into tears. I followed her inside. I go, "I'm sorry to say it so harshly, I'm just so angry that they are trying to get at me through my little one, how can I risk bringing her around them?" My mom goes, "I dread it when they come here, but she is now taking away what I love from me, and separating the family." I go, "I know, I came back to Maine from California to share the holidays with Grampy and the family, I had no idea what insanity things had gotten to." Mom says, "what can I do, they come every Thanksgiving. Grampy was looking forward to having the whole family together."

I ask her why she or Grampy did not say a word when I was arguing with Faye? I just wanted one other person to say, "Faye, it's wrong to scream 'fuck' in the face of preschoolers", but instead you all kept telling me to drop it and let it go. If you do not put your foot down and let her know that those kinds of antics are not allowed in your home, then you are all just as much to blame. I just wanted one person to help me protect my child from this kind of atmosphere." I tell her we all have to fight for what we want in this life. And until she does so, she'll be having Thanksgiving with the crack babies.