Families are Dangerous

 

"FUCKING FAMILIES!" MP yelled over the phone as I sat doubled over laughing in my giant, purple, walk-in closet. I've been spending a lot of time in that closet the last 2 days. "FUCKING FAMILIES!" I yelled back, because there was nothing else to say. I heard her husband snort/laugh in agreement in the background. 

MP is a friend who I sometimes refer to as my cousin. We are not related, but our mothers are best friends, and their mothers were best friends, and our lives are parallel in some very uncanny ways. When my mother starts talking with her mother and they step onto the crazy train together and start concocting stories, we give each other fair warning. We strategize to mitigate the crazy. So when I got MP's text saying "WARNING: Your mother is freaking the fuck out..." I made a note to call her. I really didn't want to, because I was having a wonderfully erotic text conversation with P. while doing laundry and I really, really did not want to deal with whatever was going on. 

I called MP and she answered right away. First, she congratulated me on the new relationship. She said what I really needed to hear, that the circumstances were not important, that she really didn't care about the timeline or the age difference, that she was just happy I was happy. After the last 2 days that was really nice to hear. Then I asked her, " what's the damage?" She told me to make sure I was sitting down. I was already sitting on the floor. I need to just get a chair for that room. 

Apparently, her mother had been watching lots of TV. And on these TV shows, 48 hours for example (actually kind of a weird example), she had learned that there are men... older men... who find women online, women who have young girls, and then seduce them so they can molest their daughters. And her mother had been talking in panicked tones to my mother, who was already hyped up due to her shame and embarrassment of my having entered into an unconventional relationship only months after a divorce. Well, it was actually about a week if you want to be technical, but my ex-husband had been gone for 2 months by the time the final decree was issued. Neither MP nor I knew what my mother's reaction had been, but we both know that when they get going they can get each other very worked up. 

Then MP dropped another bomb. "There is something else you need to know," she said. "My mother is projecting, big time. There is a whole story you probably don't know about." It turns out that her dad, who I had been uneasy around for a few years before he died, had molested her older half-sister. By the time MP came into the scene he had stopped, and she never had to deal with that side of him, but her other siblings were scarred for life. She put this together after he died, and was the one to bring it to the light, which of course caused a huge amount of family turmoil. The point of the story was that her mother was also scarred from that and was projecting it on to the current situation. The problems she couldn't deal with then became today's monsters. 

"While we are on the topic, I have something relevant I need to share," I said. And for the first time I told her about my brother. I could hear everything dropping into place for her. She recalled the time she visited when my daughter was 3 weeks old, and my mother had organized a party. What she didn't know is that my mother had invited him without telling me, and was insisting that he hold the baby despite me telling her that I did not want that to happen. I was breastfeeding in the other room and MP had asked me why I could not be comfortable in the room with my family. I could not tell her. She remembered me crying and did not understand why. Now it all made sense. My sister's insistence on going back to her abusive husband made sense. My mother was projecting in exactly the same way as her mother. They could not protect their children in their own home against an internal enemy, but they were now united against a fictional, external enemy. Shit. This just keeps getting uglier and uglier. Who knew that one decision could create such a chain effect that would be so revealing. 

We laughed and cussed and yelled at the absurdity and stupidity of the situation, at the strange forces that kept us from sharing this information all these years, and the "why this, why now?" question that neither of us could answer. "Families are fucking stupid!" she said, and I agreed. My family was certainly feeling like the most dangerous thing out there at the moment. 

Tomorrow evening I will call my mother and have another difficult conversation. I have no idea where her head will be at then. MP will work on her mother, try to talk her down from her TV and trauma induced hysteria. We'll try to be good daughters and repair ties without compromising ourselves. It is a thin line to walk. I hope my daughter never has to walk that line with me.