father's be good to your daughters.

I have this craven need to belong coupled with an intense mistrust of closeness and any sense of belonging which I may have. My sense is that coaxing me into trusting (under desperate circumstances) followed by a dramatic breach of that fragile trust is one of the tactics my abusers used to keep me under their control. It was brilliant, really. By creating in me such a profound disillusionment in the trustworthiness of apparently trustworthy folk, they effectively blocked the only safe escape route any abused child has : that of placing their confidence in an outsider.
I entered adulthood with an emotional backdrop of intensely coaxed and horribly abused trust, fake help ever more persistently offered with the express intent of achieving some slight trust to then break. The result a deeply ingrained belief that trust will be followed by betrayal, onto which was painted the additional false starts and gains followed by losses experienced by any former foster child. Family is as family does. Family does not need you as much as you need it. People say family when they love you, but really mean friend. They are just saying family because they see the need in you for them to say it, without truly understanding that they do not, in fact, mean it, at least not the way you want them to.

Which is why I was able to harbor enough mistrust for the family who wanted to adopt me (and believe me, who I most certainly and desperately wanted to belong with) at 17, to disappear the first time I really disagreed with my would be dad about what was or wasn't good for me. Naturally I was right (no big surprise there, I was 18 or 19 at the time and as many of you must know, all teenagers are by default correct in any/all assumptions, particularly those in opposition to their parents guidance.) I don't regret not getting involved in the venture he was proposing although I doubt it would have brought about the complete personal demise I envisioned. Likely I would have tried it, my misgivings/discomfort leading to less than perfect results and ultimately a break with it at some point rather than total moral degradation. It's funny, I'm 31 years old at the writing and it is only just now dawning on me that it would not have killed me to have tried my hand at it. My parents thought it would be a good way for me to make some much needed money, maybe buy a car. I thought it was a cult. Funnily enough my college room mate (read best friend) and her fiance sold cutco for a summer to save up money for their wedding. They hated it, but it did help with the bills... I imagine something similar would have happened with this. I may or may not have made enough for that car, but maybe a few flights home (my parents moved from CA to AZ my first year of college).  I understand the depth of my misgivings now, in a way that none of us could have at the time. I had just escaped a cult (though I wouldn't put it together, much less call it like it was for many years). In retrospect it's not surprising that a pyramid model business venture would have made me profoundly uncomfortable.

When we finally did reconnect I said to my dad that I don't think I'd had any concept that our disagreement didn't mean they were done loving me. I don't think it ever occurred to me you would still love me if I didn't give in. His response was along the lines of "and it never would have occurred to us that disagreeing would have any impact on our love for you". And yet, I don't remember ever speaking to them again. I had become afraid, certain they had never really loved me, certain their only interest in me was as one more anonymous notch in the stick, rung on the ladder, cog in the gear (or whatever phrase actually makes sense here). My brain had no use for any input to the contrary. A burn victim exposed to a match, I recoiled and never looked back to see the encompassing flames that weren't. They had used me, they hadn't intended well for me. They had given bad (I thought at the time) dating advice to a friend of mine - obviously they could not love or have ever loved me.

My math was bad. I was putting the wrong numbers into the wrong equation without ever questioning the result. After all, it was the outcome I had always secretly expected. Hadn't I always been waiting for the other shoe to drop and this sure looked liked a falling shoe to me. Sure the input was faulty, but I had no way of knowing this. I was a creature of instinct, believing in myself above all else. The infallible authority on all things personal: me. Even today my capacity for trust quickly wavers under duress.

But writing this has had an unexpected outcome. I think I finally see my dad's pressing me to join their venture for what it was. Something I would have survived. And more importantly simply something my dad thought I should do that I did not want to do. I wish I could have known that refusing, even under some amount of continuing pressure didn't have to be the end. I wish I could have known that my dad pushing me to do something I didn't want to do wasn't the same as my dad raping me. But sadly, I did not.

And because I did not, my father was not at my wedding. My father was not there to welcome his first (and later second) grandson into the world. My mother never got to help me into my wedding dress or watch me becoming a mother or dance a tiny newborn around the maternity ward. My parents never got to shuttle boxes into our first home or see my boyfriend turn fiance fall in love with me and me him, shake his hand or tell him not to break my heart. Instead they got it all thrust upon them at one time when they said "yes" to me, again. An extra grown daughter, family in tow, popping up out of nowhere. Son-in-law and grandsons strangers to them and everyone they are close to now. Only those who knew them two states and almost 10 years ago ever knew who I was, and then simply as a quiet, troubled teen who kept popping up around them. And truthfully, I don't know if they grieve these things for themselves. They have two other daughters, after all, one other son-in-law. But I know they missed it all. That we missed it all. And I grieve. It is hard to know how much I missed out on by my own choice. And yet, I can hardly blame myself for being the gun shy person I was and am. No one can. It served me well and saved me from much.

The funny thing about finally having what I wanted for so long is that just beneath the gratitude, which is abundant, is a profound loss.

And don't even get me started on the beloved and adoring little sisters I lost...

People should not rape, brainwash and torture their children. It really fucks them up, even for the best of what's still in store for them.