12.10.01 | 3:09 pm
my life story
I just finished watching Good Will Hunting. Wow. That's a movie and a half. I love Matt Damon as it is... to me he's not only a talented actor, he also seems like a genuine person. I don't like Ben Affleck, because of the whole "Hollywood badboy" image that he's set up for himself. It's so superficial, and disappointing really. But it was a very powerful movie. Made me cry lots, I think because.. well, I cry lots in movies anyway, but a lot of it hit close to home if you know what I mean.
My life hasn't been as fucked up as Will's was in the movie. I never suffered physical abuse, and if I did it wouldn't exactly call it abuse. Although I wouldn't call it parental discipline either. I did live with a lot of verbal and mental abuse. Most people don't think this is as serious as physical abuse, probably because abuse has been stereotyped. Whenever someone says, "I was abused as a child" they think immediately of physical abuse. Mental or verbal has never been seen as serious. And I think for a long time neither did I. There aren't very many memories I have of my childhood. Some memories that I thought would never fade have, and those that I wanted to forget have stuck. My life could have been better. But it could have been worse. No matter how much deep shit you think you're in, there is always, always, always someone worse off than you. A cruel and unusual theory.
I used to see a psychologist. I saw the same one my mother did. We both went there because my Dad has issues. He has what they call PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My Dad left home at 15. He was in the Army, in the Navy, British and Australian. That's were he met my mother. He's seen a lot of his best mates die in his arms, he's killed a lot of men (I'd assume so anyway being in wars and shit). And thus, he has issues. And a large part of my life has been disrupted because of his issues. I've always been an agressive person, just part of my nature I guess. I never take shit, I'm strong, I'm hard. This is what life has made me. And other times I'm not so strong. But in the last couple of years especially, I've begun to understand the depth of Dad's, Mum's and even my own "issues".
I fight, a lot. I used to hate my mother when I was younger. Absolute hate. She was such a bitch to me and I hated her so much I wanted to run away. I blamed her issues on her parents. I've never met my mother's parents. She hasn't spoken to them for decades. I don't even know if they're still alive. I don't know their names, I've never seen a picture of them... to my mum they simply do not exist. And I don't know why. I've asked probably about a thousand times. Each time, it's the same answer. "You wouldn't understand." I remember I used to ask Mum every year on my birthday, because I was older and more mature now that I'd just had my birthday. And it was still the same thing. But the older I got, the more I understood, funnily enough. The closer she would come to telling me. The last time I asked, she said, "I guess I'm just afraid that you'll tell someone." I must have analysed this sentence a thousand times. Eventually I said, "Yes I probably would. I'd probably tell Justin, because I love him and I have no secrets from him. He is a part of me." And I said, "That's a part of life Mum. The human soul is too fragile to keep secrets. It would be impossible to hold something to yourself and only yourself for your entire life. That's not the way life works." But she still didn't tell me. And I can only guess at what she would have said.
Then when I started growing up, and got past the whole "angry teenage daughter" phase, my mum and I became a lot closer. She was nicer to me, but probably because I was less difficult and more understanding. Then the issues with my Dad really began to rear their heads.
I'd like to say it's their fault that I'm the angry person that I am. But I suppose it's not a fault really, because I love the person I am and I would never change it. But not of all me was genetically programmed into my DNA. I would say 85% of who I am today comes from the way I was brought up as a child. So it's not a fault, but it comes from my parents. When I was about 15 I think, I had grown up a lot. I've always been mature and smart for my age, but no one saw that as much as my family, the people I lived with. And it was when I realised that I could yell back without getting the shit beat out of me that the problems began.
My Dad and I are like repelling magnets I think. To a degree, we're both as bad as each other. Angry, stubborn, oh God stubborn, childish, bitter, immature. Dad pushes my buttons and I push his. I can't sit there and take his shit and he can't take mine. And we're like angry rams, buttressing their horns against each other, each fighting the other with equal force. So really, they're going nowhere. And I can see that now. That my father and I were like that. But I'll start from the beginning.
Like I said, I think most of it started when I was around 15. Dad would yell at me for something. And one day I just started yelling back because I was so angry that I had to yell, and I didn't care how hard he hit me after. Except that he didn't hit me. And gradually, I was able to test my boundaries, and set my guidelines. What I could and couldn't get away with. From then on, it was easy. This problem I have about having to speak my mind hasn't just been with my parents. It's with anyone. My boyfriend, my best friend, a stranger on the bus. If someone pisses me off, like really pisses me off, then I tell them and I tell them straight, and exactly like it is. I just cannot sit there and take people's shit. I can't, I just can't do it. So if Dad yelled at me about something I didn't agree with, I'd yell back. We'd argue, we'd call each other names, we'd yell and scream and waves our hands until we went red in the face. Literally. I'd break things, I'd slam doors, anything to get my point across - the point being that I was fucking mad and that I was right. Stubborness is one of my nastier traits. And it's not a pleasant thing to live with either, ask Justin. But anyway. In the couple of years that proceeded my 15th birthday, the fights became more frequent. More wounding. More painful. The fights we had would usually leave me bawling in tears after I'd yelled so hard my throat hurt. When I get angry I cry for some reason as well... something I unfortunately have no control over. And I would sit in my bedroom with my face twisted and contorted with anger and sadness, and I would scream into my pillow until my head hurt. And the hate was there. If only for an hour or two. The hate was there. Distinct. Clean cut. Sharp and bitter.
And then when it started happening to Mum, that was enough. We sought professional help.
I think the main turning point to the beginning of the end was when my best friend, Elodie, came to live with us in the summer of 2000. Ell, like me, has had a tough life. I think that's what brought us so close together. We were strong people, strong for ourselves, for our friends and for each other. Ell needed my help and my family's support, so she came to stay with us. I think it lasted about a week.
After living with my father for 17 years, I know his pressure points and I can read the signs. I could see each day, the cracks grow wider and deeper, the strain becoming more apparent. I could see it in his face, hear it in his words, feel it from his actions. I knew the ice was growing dangerously thin and I could all but dread the time when my world would cave in, the ice snapping, sending sharp splinters flying in all directions. And then it came and it was worse than I had expected. My Dad has always been a coward. Never liked confrontation. He's a weak person, which I dislike immensely. And so when the time came for Ell to leave, of course my father didn't have the guts to do it and he asked my mum to. My world collapsed because Ell's world has collapsed. She came to us for help, support and love and the door had been slammed in her face. I didn't want that for her, not now. And I hated Dad for it. It was distinct hate. She left that night, bawling, full of anger and pain. I don't think I spoke to Dad for a while after, and if I did it was yelling. In the few weeks that proceeded Ell's leave, it was almost unbearable. I couldn't stand to be near him. If I was I wanted to hit him and yell at him. He had sunk into his own world again, even Mum was out this time. This was the first collapse we faced as a family. Mum and Dad had faced a divorce before, there had been tough times, but it never involved me. It was all very hush hush, we children we not supposed to know about it so all we could do was eavesdrop and play guessing games.
Dad had become bitter. Cold. And angry, always angry. Mum was copping it big time as well. From Dad and from me. Because I blamed her weakness. Mum has always been a quiet person. Recessive. Submissive. Non confrontational. Weak. She's lived in Dad's shadow her whole life, never able to stand up to him. To fight him. And I blamed her for that weakness. And I will never forget the day I saw her, sitting on the kitchen floor, crumpled in a heap against the cupboard. Hardly able to breath because she was crying so hard. I walked in to see what the noise was and my heart just broke. Dad came in and got her a box of tissues and sat with her and comforted her. And I watched with disbelief, wondering how he could try and comfort her when it was him that made her that way.
After that Mum and I started seeing our counsellor. Because Dad has PTSD, we were offered a free counselling service through DVA (the Department of Veteran's Affairs). So Mother and I went to VVCS once every week, and sat and poured our thoughts and emotions out to a woman we didn't know, but clung to like our saviour. Denise was her name. She was wonderful. She would just sit there and listen to me talk, hand me tissues when I needed them. She wasn't the way I thought a counsellor was. And I think we shared a mutual understanding that I didn't really need help, I just needed someone to listen to me. Someone to agree with me. Someone to reassure me that I was right, and that I was doing okay.
The sessions with Denise helped a little. I stopped seeing her after a while because things at home began to settle. And then last year when Mum decided to quit her job, quite a few things came out in the open.
Mum had been working at St John of God Pathology for probably a year or two. It was a great job, she loved it and she'd worked so hard to earn the credentials she held. But when Dad asked her to give it up, she agreed. They both tell me that it was Mum's choice, which it was. But had Dad not put the idea into her head it wouldn't have occured to her at the time that it did. Mum felt that Dad needed looking after. He needed someone to watch his diet, make him exercise, keep him in a good mood. A carer. Mum was even going to get a Carer's allowance from DVA. And I just couldn't believe it. I remember when Mum came into the study and told me, I sat there with tears in my eyes. I was so angry. I talked to Mum for a while before Dad came in. The most I can remember saying was "It's not good enough." I've often seen Dad as a weak person. He's had a weakness for alchohol, a weakness for things like chocolate. Not to mention his mental and emotional weaknesses. And I was so angry because he could do all these things by himself. I saw it as "we all have to suffer just because you've got issues". And it was never good enough for me. I told him "try harder. It's not good enough." But Mum and Dad, they both kept coming back at me with "It's not your Dad's fault. It's not that simple." But it was. He wasn't trying hard enough, and Mum had to give up her job that she loved just to take care of him. And the bitter taste of hate had crept back into my mouth.
Since then, the fights have been steady, a few exceptional ones but nothing remarkable. When I had a boyfriend I was out as much as I could. And when I met Justin, that put a spin on everything. When I realised that Justin was different and that I was in love with him, I was afraid of how he would be accepted into the family. And it lasted for almost a year which I must congratulate Dad on because a year is a tremendous effort. It's only been recently, that the effort has disappeared. Something happened along the lines somewhere. And I'm not sure when, why or how.
As you would have already read, Justin was first banned from sleeping over, then banned completely, and then I was told to find somewhere else to live. I haven't completely recapped on those events because for some reason I've found it difficult to write when it came to those things, but thought are flowing freely now and I'm hardly about to give up yet.
For a while... I blamed myself. I thought it was my fault, and I felt like a failure. That is something which I have picked up from Justin. But it's not an entirely bad thing. When I first met him, I found it difficult to be with him at times because he had such a low self esteem. He had been hurt in the past, severely, and it had changed the person he was. When you experience heart break like he did, on certain people, it can affect self esteem as it evidently did in Justin. When I realised what Justin was like, I took it upon myself to change him. I wanted to make him a better person, I wanted him to be like the strong, confident person that I was. Don't get me wrong though. When I first met Justin, he was bright and bubbly, with a big smile and an enthusiastic attitude. I inspired him. And unlike Kelly Boyd, the inspiration grew to respect which turned to affection which developed into love. I am different, because I am who I am, I'm not like Kelly even though she feels she also inspired him. I'm better. Because he loves me. And he would die for me. That is something that she will never have from him. I know it sounds immature, and yes it is petty but that's the way she makes me feel. She's just one of those people on Earth that makes me tick. Hopefully most of you will have already read the entries about her in this diary, Justin's diary and our shared one. And if you haven't, I recommend you do. [Links will follow]
But getting back on track. Many of the ups and downs Justin and I had early in our relationship was due to someone feeling bad about something and then feeling bad for making the other person feel bad, and it got out of control and simply ridiculous. And I tried to explain to Justin so many times that he cannot be blamed for things he isn't responsible for. I wanted to open his eyes the way I did when I first met him. And it didn't happen overnight, but it did happen. *mel vomits at Pantene ad*
Justin's softened my character. I used to say that he weakened me, when in actual fact he just rubbed off onto me. I have become a more compassionate person, more feeling and more considerate. Which is something I needed. And something I wouldn't have readily accepted had it been handed to me and force fed. But Justin's done it subtly, over time without even knowing or trying. And it's helped me to grow up. So when I say, "I thought it was my fault, and I felt like a failure. That is something which I picked up from Justin" its not meant to sound resentful. Because it's part of life, it's just something I needed as part of my character. At first I wasn't ready to accept it, but like I said, I've grown up a lot.
But that's upon reflection. When Dad first told me that he thought Justin uses me for my money, I immediately thought back to the triggering event and blamed myself for his mis-comprehension. I was lying in bed on a Sunday morning, Justin had just got up and dressed and was in bathrooom. Dad came in to say good morning and sat on the side of my bed. Justin and I had issues of our own recently and Dad was concerned about me. I would say he was concerned about relationship, but I don't really think he was worried about Justin at all in light of recent events. I told Dad that things were fine. We were picking up the pieces and starting to get back on track. Then I told Dad about the pair of Arnettes I had laybyed for Justin for Christmas. I told him how much they cost ($150) and that was about it. Dad asked if Justin bought me nice things, and I told him that he always bought me flowers when he could, and he got presents he could afford that he knew I'd like. And then I really put my foot in it. I'm stupid for not seeing where the conversation was headed. I told Dad that I was slightly disappointed in my birthday present. I didn't actually get my present on March 21 (my birthday), although I did get a really beautiful cake a couple of days before. There was a lot of effort in that and it was very sweet. Dad asked what Justin bought me and I told him a pair of cat slippers from Big W and 2 packs of gummi bears. And it probably sounded worse than it was. I really did like the slippers, they were absolutely adorable and I love them. In truth, I was disappointed not because the gifts were inexpensive, but because so little thought had gone into them. I saw the slippers, said I liked them and that was it. Justin said he'd get them as my birthday present. It wasn't planned, it wasn't thought about, and I was the one who suggested them. But that's besides the point. Again. The point is that I did and do blame myself because of a stupid comment which was really quite meaningless and was taken completely the wrong way. That stupid comment turned out to be the last turning point in what was the beginning of the end. And a few days later it was no longer the beginning of the end. It was just the end.
When Dad came and sat down in the study next to me later that day, I knew he wanted to talk to me about something serious, although at the time I didn't really wonder what and I was completely shocked by what he said. "Your mother and I have been talking and we think that Justin's using you for your money and we don't want him staying here anymore." The argument elevated from then on. The tears were definite, the hate raging once again. It wasn't really even an argument, because I could hardly get a word in edgewards. Dad's one of those stubborn bastards that makes up his mind and then there's no changing it and he won't even hear what the other person has to say. I yelled and yelled at him but he wouldn't listen, wouldn't talk and eventually got up to walk away. I threw the first thing I picked up at him (which, God damn, was a chocolate bar that he picked up and took). Then I yelled at him, "You fucking bastard!" I picked up my half filled glass of orange juice, stormed out to the kitchen, threw it into the sink and damn near broke the thing (spewing that I didn't). I half expected Dad to tell me to pick it up and wash it but he didn't. This was good because I think he knew he'd pushed it a little far that time. If he'd told me to wash the glass up I probably would have smashed it at his feet. I was crying my eyes out with fury, and I stormed off to my bedroom, crossing his path on the way. We stopped, and I looked at him and said, "You're right. I do fucking hate you, you bastard." And slammed both the doors once I was in my bedroom.
I called up Justin, as I always do when my Dad's being an asshole, and once again Justin came round to rescue me, take me home and tell me everything was going to be alright. I packed a bag, took my guitar and ended up staying at Justin's for the whole day. I didn't come back utnil about 10:30 that night. When I got home there was a envelope stuck in the front door reading, "Mel and Justin, no more sleep overs, out before midnight. Mum and Dad." The coward couldn't even tell Justin himself.
The next few days that followed were the normal hell. I ignored Dad, he ignored me and the only words we spoke were names, swearing, or ridiculously bitchy comments. Once Dad realised I wasn't going to start talking to him or Mum anytime soon, the threats began. I wasn't allowed on the computer unless I started talking to Mum again. Why Mum I don't know and why Mum didn't say something directly to me I don't know either. But I dealt with it. They'd stepped way over the line this time and this was something that I was not going to give in to for once. Call me stubborn and immature, but you don't know my Dad. These are all games to him. The after that they stopped feeding me. I can deal with that too. The final blow came shortly after.
I think it may have been Justin and I's 11 month anniversary, September 20th. We went to the shops and I'd bought a killer dinner. We got lamb chops and Italiano chicken rolls from the butcher, vegetables, soft drink and snack food from the supermarket and we were at home in the kitchen, cooking it all up. Justin went to put something into my bedroom and Dad walked into the kitchen. I was expecting it, so it didn't sting as much as I thought it would. "I suggest you start talking to your mother." "Why should I?" "Because if you don't, you're going to have to find somewhere else to live." "I already am." "Good. You have until the end of October." "Do I look like I care?" "I'm not asking if you care." And he walked off. Justin came back and I was fuming, once again close to tears. I told him what happened, as my eyes began to blur while I was browning the mince on the stove top. Dad came back into the kitchen about 2 or 3 minutes later and spoke to Justin. I knew this wasn't going to be good. "You are not to come over anymore. I do not want you to step over that doorstep again, do you understand?" Justin just said yes. He didn't look angry, didn't look upset or shocked. Perfectly in control. Dad nodded and walked off.