Why I Have Never Felt Real Love
An Alternate Title to this could be: the worst things my biological family have done to me and why it messed me up.
The pandemic has left me with too much time on my hands and not in a good way. While other people are posting about their new hobbies, books they have read, fun TikToks, etc, people like me are stuck ruminating about what has gone on in their lives.
Where did things go wrong? Why do I have so little happy memories and how did I end up in such a bad marriage? Why did I stay so long? Are my children going to be ok?
I have been frozen for months, stuck on the couch thinking about my life, depressed and having no one to talk to about it other than people on Twitter. I started having constant severe pain in my right shoulder which forced me to start taking care of my physical health. I also discovered that I have severe anemia as well.
My children were ok with me just taking care of their basic needs of food, shelter and not caring a lot about their home schooling, which turned out to be minimal as their schools were just figuring it out as well. They were happy on their electronics and doing their own thing. I don’t know if they noticed their mom crying for a few minutes a day but I would switch it off if they wanted to show me something as fast as I could and they never said anything.
I know from years ago, what my parents told me in snippets, that their parents were dysfunctional as well. My mom was raised by friends’ parents, starting in grade one, during the school year and returned to the family farm in the summer. Once she entered high school, she took the train to Vancouver to be looked after by her older sister, who was married, and returned to Alberta in the summer. I think this would leave you with a lot of issues, if your parents didn’t raise you for nine months a year from the age of six. Her parents also disowned her for marrying my dad. They cancelled the wedding one month before she was to be married to him. I am speculating that there must have been abuse as well that she never told me about and never will.
My dad was one of ten kids from Saskatchewan, also lived on a farm and I know the belt wasn’t spared in that house. I heard a few drunken tales when aunts and uncles were playing cards. They were a loud bunch and none of them are left, including my dad. I never met either of my dad’s parents. My grandfather died in a farming accident and grandmother also died before I was born. I know the farm was sold for next to nothing and my father brought his mom out to Vancouver with twenty dollars in his pocket and he put her in a rooming house.
My mother’s family were multi-millionaires that disowned her and my father’s family was poor.
Back to what I was going to talk about. I think my family had good intentions but no good role models, no counselling, didn’t read any books and there was no internet. They just thought if they loved each other and had some children it would work out, like magic.
So, they first had a son. Then they had some miscarriages and six years later, they had me. A second child who understandably has no idea what she is getting into, but wants attention and love. There are two parents who have no idea what they are doing and it was probably easier with just one.
I have a small amount of good memories and a lot of bad ones. It’s the bad ones I am going to focus on here, because I think they are the reason why I have never felt unconditional love and why I ended up married to a man who was the combination of my dad, mom and brother rolled into one.
Let’s start with my mom. I am not going to get all Freudian here and say that she is the cause of everything, because I don’t think she is. I think that if my dad or brother was a good person, they could have showed me that I did deserve someone better than my ex. But, she plays a pivotal part because she didn’t protect me from them when she could have.
First, my mom used my dad as a weapon. If she felt that I deserved punishment, she used him as a threat. If that didn’t work, she told him what I did and let him use physical means to punish me, whether it be his belt or his hands. She would also not be above using her hands or a wooden spoon. She had a wooden spoon with a poem on it bought just for the purpose of hitting children, which she denies ever having. She also used used the silent treatment, which could go on for hours or days. She pretended that you didn’t exist, talking to other members of the family above your head. This is not the worst thing she did. The worst thing for me, was her knowing that my brother molested me and not getting me help. I don’t know exactly when it started. I only have one memory of it. I remember her leaving him to babysit me around the time of that picture and my parents coming home soon after. She entered the house saying she forgot something and she finds a bikini and an underwear set behind my bedroom door. She asks me why they are there and I tell her that my brother had me put them on. She leaves the house. That’s all I remember. I have no idea what happened after. All I know is we never spoke about it again. I also remember being molested at the age of 12 by a stranger at a waterpark and got up the nerve to tell her that night, her only words to me were “Whatever you do, do not tell your dad.” We never went to the police and she never got me counselling. It was never spoken of again. My mother didn’t protect me from physical violence and didn’t look after me when I was touched inappropriately. This made me feel that it was ok for me to be violated and that my body was not my own. This may be because she didn’t have a voice and that things were done to her that weren’t ok.
I believe that this is part of the reason that I ended up in a marriage where I continued to be mistreated. I was just a wife and a mother and it was my job to look after everyone else but myself.
My dad was a rough, blue-collar man who felt his job as a parent started and ended with putting food on the table. Children were to go to school, do their homework and not to have any opinions. If you had any you better not share them. My dad did not know what to do with emotions of any kind, but at the same time could cry at Little House on the Prairie and Lorne Greene nature shows. If he caught me crying because something happened at school or we couldn’t afford the clothes that my friends had, I would hear the same refrain “You want me to give you something to cry about?” or “Just wait until you are a grown up and then you will know what real problems are.” I don’t have a lot of fond memories spent with him just a lot of yelling and if I didn’t like what food was on the table I spent hours sitting there until I was sent to my room. He make a lot of jokes about my body when I hit puberty and because of him and my brother, I had a few years being anorexic which, unfortunately, is why I still have eating issues today. There’s nothing quite so dysfunctional as a dad pointing out his daughter’s chest to family friend’s, uncles, etc to cause her to hate her body.
Last but certainly not least, is my brother. He is the one I can’t understand. I don’t know if someone molested him or if something is wrong with his brain. I think something is severely wrong with someone to sexualise your own sister from such a young age and never stop. He had to have been doing it from before I was eight, for my mom to come home so early because she knew something was up. My brain and body isn’t ready to remember it and I don’t know if I want to. It obviously stopped. I don’t know if she spoke to him, or my mom coming home early scared him. I do know that he kept porn out for me to find and he kept looking at me like a sexual object. He used to get jealous of boys looking at me and I was always uncomfortable around him. I forgot about the incident for years and when I remembered I sought out counselling. I felt suicidal living under the same roof as him and when those feelings didn’t leave, the counsellor was going to confront my family which is why I ran away. They didn’t know I was seeing a counsellor and because they were big on secrets, I couldn’t handle them knowing, so I ran. He has never looked after either of my children and I hated it when he asked them for a hug when they were little. I still feel uncomfortable around him and probably always will.
When I ran away, I had no idea where to go. I had a few library books in my bag and my wallet. I went to the cook where I had my first job and he understood with very little words. He previously saw me be sexually harassed by the owner at sixteen. Thankfully, he let me sleep on his couch for one night.
So many things have happened to me in my life, as I used to be the perfect victim. I have never felt loved. An abusive family can do that to you. Amazingly, I have never been promiscuous or tried drugs other than pot or had a drinking problem. I think it’s because I don’t want to lose control of myself.
I continue to be full of empathy and understanding. I can see how people make the choices they do, but I don’t thank my family for that. I think I was born this way.
I do believe that I ended up being married to my ex because I wasn’t given the opportunity to have a voice, boundaries, to take up space or allowed to say no. I am working on this now.
I hope and pray everyday that I left my marriage in time for my children to be given those choices and to not end up like me and that the second half of my life I will find some measure of peace and happiness.
