Sorry to jump in with no reference to anybody else. I have to talk about the death stuff. As some of you know, I was a replacement baby. My parents' first daughter died aged about 10 weeks, and I was born one year later. My due date was actually the day after the anniversary of her death, and my mother told me once that she was worried I would arrive on that anniversary. (I was 10 days late in fact.) So. That was all the grieving they did for the loss of a child. Three months. If that. I mourned my miscarriage longer than that, and time certainly wasn't on my side then. They claim that that was the prevailing advice at the time, have another baby and get over it, which is probably true - but my parents are fantastic at being non-conformist and anti-authoritarian when it suits them, so obviously they took this on board because it was what they wanted to hear. Because my mother had no intention of ever bothering to feel or process her own grief and trauma. Why bother when you can have a baby daughter whom you can use to do it all for you? Feeling all that pain and grief is so messy, don't you know, gets in the way of being normal and happy and having a normal, functional life and LOOKING NORMAL TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD, which is the most important thing after all. They didn't want to be "the couple with the dead baby". (My mother has actually told me that.) They wanted to be Mr and Mrs 2.4 children and so I was conceived. The actual roots of my existence are in their denial of what had actually happened. I was supposed to complete the picture, take away the pain, sort everything out. Can any of you imagine how it feels to have that burden placed on your shoulders before you've even been born? I hope and think you can.
It gets worse though in a way. Apart from the fact I felt existentially guilty for being alive, as if I'd stolen someone else's place, which they exacerbated by treating me very much like Pinky's parents - the endless, endless name calling and shouting and accusing and blaming and threatening, all dressed up as if it was completely normal behaviour and we were a happy, close, loving family. Apart from the fact of always feeling second best, like she was the one they'd really wanted (thanks, Dad, for the time you said to me "well, yes, in an ideal world of course she wouldn't have died", ergo in an ideal world I wouldn't have been born. THANKS.) Feeling like she was the one they would have really loved. Feeling like she would have been so good and lovely and well behaved and perfect in every way that they would never have shouted at her, ignored her, allowed her to be bullied by just about everyone she came into contact with, made her feel terrified just to be alive. Apart from feeling that virtually nothing stood between me and death the whole of my life. Feeling that I had to constantly "hold on" tight to life itself, could never relax and just trust it or take it for granted, because if I didn't hold on with all my strength it could be taken away from me too. They hadn't saved her - they had let her die - why not me too? I had chronic asthma all through my childhood and beyond, I want to add. Apart from feeling that she was somehow infinitely more special than I could ever be, by virtue of having died - my mother used to sit and weep whenever references to sick babies were on TV for example, as if I just wasn't there. I NEVER touched her heart in that way, and that was the only thing I really craved for many, many years. To matter to her, to be let right into the deepest part of her heart - the place where parents are supposed to feel their love for their children. Apart from the fact that I was brought up to feel that I wasn't actually ALLOWED to die prematurely because I wouldn't be doing my job of protecting them from the pain of her death then, it would be too much for them if I died too, so it would be like a criminal offence against them if, having been born for that specific purpose, I then "welched" on my job. I was born to serve them, after all; not to have the right to live and enjoy my own life for myself.
Apart from all that, I have now come to realise that there was a - conflicting - non-verbal message from then that told me they actually did want me to die too. My mother used to tell me these gruesome stories - "oh, you mustn't go to bed with the tie of that nightdress undone, because once there was a little girl who went to sleep wearing a necklace, and in the morning her parents came in and found her dead, strangled by her necklace which had tightened itself round her throat in the night." "Oh, you mustn't ever play in the fridge, because once there was a little boy who climbed in and got locked in and his parents came back and found him frozen to death." Is is just me or was the woman completely bonkers? Given the family history, which they had made me aware of all too early? Can you imagine how terrified I was? It wasn't even safe to go to SLEEP. No wonder I have insomnia now. But thinking about the messsage behind it - there was like a warning - don't take any risks at all whatsoever; more, you have to think of EVERYTHING and be prepared for EVERYTHING, because EVERYTHING is potentially fatal, and if you do get into trouble, WE won't be there to help you out. You're in this on your own, kid. Which was the absolute truth. They never were there for me, ever; I always was completely on my own.
As I've said, I had chronic asthma, and could never even leave the house without my inhaler from the age of six onwards. That puts a real damper on childhood spontaneity. I used to fantasise about being able to go out without carrying ANYTHING, without needing any pockets or bag at all. About being free, not having to carry this burden round with me the whole tine. These were the days before the puffer sprays we have now, the inhaler I had then was a complicated propeller type affair, you had to put a capsule into a little compartment, then puncture it using a slidey shunt thing, then stick it in your mouth and it whizzed round and nade an awful noise and shot this horrible dry powder into your lungs. It always made me thirsty so it was hard to do it on the hoof but I had to do it four times a day so obviously I did do it and just had to put up with the yucky dry feeling. It meant I also had to have the capsules with me if I was out for any length of time; and they got sticky and didn?t work so well if they got hot so there was that to think about too, if I wanted to stick it in my pocket, and just this sense of being burdened. The damn thing also had to be cleaned regularly as the powder would stick to the propellers in time, and I hated hated hated doing that. I hated even finishing the capsule as it made my nouth so dry but I always felt really really guilty if I didn?t for the reasons above ? that I wasn?t protecting my fragile, but must-be-preserved-for-my-parents?-sake life properly, wasn?t doing my ?job?. Guilty and frightened of what my mother would say/do if she found out, because it was clear she felt it was a direct affront to her if I only finished half the capsule. This was so clear to outsiders that when we had some family friends staying with us once ? they lived a long way away and we only saw them infrequently ? those friends? children immediately picked up on it and blackmailed me when they found a capsule that I?d only half finished, threatening to tell my mum if I didn?t do what they wanted (horrible, degrading stuff, naturally). I can still remember how absolutely terrified I was of her finding out, and how it never occurred to me that I had any option but to do as they said. And my mother was the one person in my family that I did get any ?love? or ?softness? from at all!!! Which maybe gives an idea of how bad things were with my father and brother.
Anyway, it was my therapist who picked up on some of this, and saw it from a different angle ? when I told her about how I hated cleaning this inhaler, she was shocked ? shocked that at six years old I was expected to take responsibility for this myself. Shocked that given it was a life threatening condition and this was a family where one daughter had already died, they weren?t doing everything they could to make it easier and above all safe for me. Why was it my responsibility to clean it? To work out the logisitics of carrying it around with me everywhere? To remember to take it four times a day? When I was six? I found it ? and still find it ? a bit hard to understand her shock, because to me it seemed so NORMAL. It was all up to me. It was my ?fault? I had asthma, on some level, and I was a big enough inconvenience to them anyway, so it was certainly up to me to take away as much of the stress as possible from them. Why should they worry about it/me? I don?t know if it ever bothered my father one tiny little bit. He never ever sat with me when I had a bad attack. My mother did; she would sit with me, but there was no safety or reassurance coming from her; no loving comforting words, just this horrible grim silence that stretched through the endless night. I could only take the inhaler every three hours at most, and when my asthma was at its worst the inhaler only worked for half an hour. So, two and a half hours of struggling desperately for breath, chest racked with pain, wheezing away, sitting upright against the pillows in bed, my mother sitting by me in the dark without a word for the most part. My father sleeping soundly in the next room. Half and hour of relief and then start all over again. I look back now and I think ? why did she never take me to hospital? Call an ambulance? Surely there might have been more they could do there, even in the days before nebulisers, or at least she could have tried, to find out? Surely she could have taken it more seriously?
And this is what my therapist was saying, that although on the one hand I had to live, because without me, the great festering sore that I patched up would burst open; on the other hand, they were such crap parents that they really didn?t have the capacity to cope with two children, and on an UNCONSCIOUS level, they wanted me to die too. I can?t stress the unconcsious enough. Of course my parents are not the kind of people who would actually physically threaten a child?s life. But they are totally blind to ? and as a result, totally prisoners of ? their unconscious, and there is some evil, dark, really truly festering stuff in their unconscious. There is a real lot of genuine child hating, and an inability to cope with the emotional demands of parenthood ? because emotionally they are just very damaged (but apparently functional) children thermselves. So, one boy they could just about cope with ? but two children at once, they found nigh on impossible, I think; it?s telling that I was the only one of the three that was deliberately conceived and then only as an act of desperation in the face of death. They were never the kind of parents who said, right, we?re ready now, let?s start a family; let?s have another baby, because we?re ready. It was two ?accidents? and then me. And they gave me the message loud and clear all the time that I was more than what they wanted. Too demanding, too needy, too loud, too ?selfish? (yeah, right, Mum, cause you are just about THE most unselfish person who ever lived, aren?t you) ? anyway, I digress. The awful truth is that although they desperately wanted ?a baby? as balm for their wound, they DIDN?T actually want the realities of a child, of having to bring that child up, find more space, more love, more tolerance and time and energy for it ? and the truth is they didn?t actually want ME at all. I was never a real person to them, more a kind of cipher. And that?s why it?s actually so easy for them to do without me now that we?re estranged, even though they pretend it?s awful and they want to get me back into their life (yeah, right ? back as their big trauma bandage, emotional arse wipe). I am completely dispensable. I was never really wanted in the first place.
Just a bit longer? if anyone?s still reading?. The asthma thing also really hit me when, in my mid-20?s, I decided to try and ditch the inhaler (the puffer one by this time). I wanted to prove to myself that I wouldn?t die if I didn?t take it religiously every day, as I had always believed. And I didn?t. I had a few nasty attacks but I managed to get through them and psychologically it was huge to make that leap, although that probably heralded a lot of the other stuff starting to make its way to the surface, so a whole new can of worms ? once the tangible ?burden? was gone, the emotional burden that it had symbolised started to come to the fore. Anyway, I remember going through one attack and it was fairly bad, though not extreme ? and for the first time in my life I became conscious of how terrifying it was to have asthma, to literally not be able to breathe. I?d had it all those years, gone through all that trauna as a child, and I?d never had the safety to be able to feel appropriately frightened, I?d just had to suppress it all, pretend it was NORMAL, pretend this happened to everyone, just part of life, no big deal. Re-living it as an adult I realsied just what a big deal it was. You can?t breathe: you?re scared you?re going to die. Very simple. You have a dead ?sister? in the equation ? even more intense fear.
Of course my parenst never ever stopped to think about what it must have been like for me. Ever. As long as I didn?t actually die, everything was OK.
Finally ? this is a bit grim, I?m afraid ? I have to say more about death in our family. When I was nine, my cousin died, in a freak accident on the water (not drowing though). She was 15, my mother?s sister?s daughter. I didn?t know her at all really, all my extended family lived in different countries, but she was a biological cousin, it was a big deal and it wasn?t at the same time. Very confusing. My mother took the call and came through sobbing, just me and her at home. I comforted her. I said all the things a caring adult might have said to her. She did say once years later that I had been ? a great help? that day. Of course she didn?t say so at the time. She just sucked it all up as usual, all my love and caring and concern for her, and gave no thought whatsover to how it might affect me, another shocking, premature death of a girl child in our family. Gave me nothing. My best friend (the one who bulllied me) came round later and we went out to play and I felt guilty for wanting to go out to play, as if I should be wearing sackcloth and ashes for this girl I?d never really known ? like my ?sister?. We had beans on toast for tea. That night I cried myself to sleep, racked by guilt for having been so heartless as to want to go out and play after my cousin had died, fearing I was going to burn in whatever the atheist version of hell is. Isn?t it funny that although my parents are strident atheists, I was as terrified of eternal punishment as any Catholic? Fearing that it meant I was a fundamentally bad, evil person who would never, ever deserve to be loved.
Then when I was 19 my uncle (father?s only sibling) killed hinself. Also lived in another country. Also barely knew him, though my father always loved to tell me how like him I was. Father and he hadn?t seen each other or been speaking properly for 10 years before he died, after a big family row. Father said he regretted that hugely afterwards; doesn?t seem to have learnt any lessons from it though does he? In the light of current estrangement and the fact he can?t have that many years left on the clock. Father also managed to work said suicidally dead uncle into his speech on my wedding day. Nice. Alnost as nice as the bit when he said about me and DH ?of course, they?re leaving it rather late to have children?. In his speech ON MY WEDDING DAY. When we?d already been ttc for a year and the fear of ultimate childlessness was our absolute worst nightmare. THANKS AGAIN, Dad.
Sorry, this bit is probably the grimmest of all. The day before a birthday in my late 20?s, my brother?s first child also died. A baby boy, six months old. I was the first to be with them after it happened. I was actually going round there for a pre-birthday dinner ? brother is a good cook and a foodie, and I didn?t have a phone of any kind then as my life was already hugely dysfunctional. My brother greeted me on the doorstep with the news. I was there as my SIL sobbed and my weeping brother held her and said ?it?s allright, we?ll have another baby?, and it was like the whole universe concertina?d. NO I wanted to scream, DON?T DUMP ALL THIS ON A POOR INNOCENT LITTLE BABY! GET OVER IT FIRST! WAIT! ? and of course I couldn?t, they were the ones who?d just had their lives devastated, I had to be sensitive to THEIR feelings, had to put them first, just like I always put everyone else first. And I did/said whatever I could to console them, although there isn?t a lot, is there? But anyway ? that precipitated a kind of breakdown for me, suddenly things started coming up that I?d never thought about ? never thought that my ?sister?s? death was something that had affected me, had always just seen it as something my parents had suffered ? but my reaction to my brother?s reaction was the massive, massive alarm bell going off and telling me this was my issue too. And things just escalated from there. Not long after that I first went for counselling; unfortunately, although she was lovely and caring, I think, she was just not experienced or wise enough to be able to deal with the level of pain and darkness that I was bringing to the table and after a year I was in a worse state in many ways than when I?d started ? she?d opened up so much but given me no ways to cope with what she?d opened up, I was just swinming in a morass of gunk.
Interestingly, my brother said to me, years later ? when he and SIL had had Dniece and Dnephew and were a nice, normal family again, while I was single, childless, staggering through my 30?s in a still dysfunctional haze despite all my best efforts to the contrary and copious amounts of therapy, selp help, workshops, healing etc etc ? he said, he actually said, ?I think in many ways you?ve felt his death more than we have and it?s been worse for you, ?cause we?ve got DD and DS to get us over it? ? and I had nothing. Awful because it was true. But how awful that he could let it be true. But this is how it was. I was the one in the family who was designated as the trauma/grief carrier. I had to be dysfunctional so they could all be normal. I was the family ?tombstone?. There was all this grief, all this shocking, horrible death ? but they all just carried on going about their daily business, a bunch of juggernauts that nothing can stop. Someone had to feel it all. Someone had to hold it all, contain it all. It had to go somewhere. It went to me. I felt my nephew?s death more intensely and for far longer than his parents did, after the initial horror had worn off. SIL was pregnant again within a few months, just like my mother was. I was on my own. Carrying the grief. I was absolutely devastated by his death, completely turned inside out. And the awful thing is, if it?s not your grief you?re carrying, you can?t actually process it. Can?t grieve and let it go. Because it isn?t yours! It didn?t happen to you! I was someone who was imbued with the feelings of having lost a child, without ever having had a child of my own. From day one of my life it was like that. And I couldn?t get over it, really couldn?t, until I found my now therapist and started to work on it all the way I do now. Like I?ve said before, finding her was a process that took 11 or 12 years in itself. And I?ve been seeing her and working this way for over 8 years now.
And I think I?ve earned the right to feel proud of what I?ve done, because I?m where I am now because I kept going, no matter how long it took or how shitty it was ? and it was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO shitty ? and I have worked my arse off to change my life, to stop being the tombstone, to become a normal person ? or rather the uncover the normal person I always was inside, underneath the tombstone. And I?m saying this for myself, because I still need to tell myself this ? that I have done a good job, that I am doing a good job, because it is not easy being a mother coming from that background, even though I think I am naturally very maternal (ie in myself, or as I would have been without all their crap) and I know how very deeply I love my son; and a lot of the time at the moment it is quite a struggle because of the issues I am still dealing with ? but for me, just to BECOME a wife, to BECOME a mother was an enormous achievement in itself, because the ?family script? was that I stayed having a non-life and keeping in all the dark stuff the others didn?t want to deal with/look at/feel, and that meant staying a childless spinster for ever, whatever they said about wanting me to be happy. They might have wanted me to be happy (although probably not that much!), but they needed me to be unhappy. And when I turned 40, I was still a childless spinster? and now I am a much loved wife and mother. And isn?t it funny? The more I hate them, the more I can have love in my life. I am SO glad I got away. Smithfield, what you said a while back about feeling that I?m safe now, away from her (them) ? I keep remembering that. It?s true.
Thanks for bearing with me, if anyone's had the stamina to get through this - not so much an essay as a novel! Have had to get it out. Feel much better for it, like I've been sitting on it for a good while. Am thinking of you all and hope I might find it easier to respond more to others now I've got this off my chest. Sending you all love and encouragement and support anyway; you all know, I hope, that I'm always on YOUR side against family members etc who try to make out you're the one in the wrong/with the problem!