Persona non Grata

You know, there’s nothing quite like having your traumas confirmed and reinforced. I thought I had pushed far away the emotions I felt when it came to once again hearing and having it crammed down my throat just how much I am not welcome in my supposed “family.”

Yeah, it’s going to be one of those entries; but it’s at the request of my counselor. She thinks it would be good for me to share this openly, here, to process even further what I found out on Thanksgiving Day. Well, “found out” doesn’t really fit; it’s more like it was just once again thrown into my face that I have never belonged with the people who were supposed to give me the greatest sense of belonging one could feel… that one is part of a family unit, part of a group, part of something greatest than oneself.

Here’s what happened.

Turkey Day started off a little rough. I just wasn’t feeling too well thanks to morphine withdrawals combined with terrible allergies. I had been invited to our family friends’ place about an hour south of here but I thought I was going to have to once again back out. That happens a lot with me, and not just because of my illnesses. I very often get too anxious to go somewhere or to be around other people.

Another part of the day that was causing me some distress is that it wasn’t just going to be our family friends there; the ex-husband of our friend — the one because of whom our friend is in intense therapy for PTSD, by the way — was going to be there along with his newish girlfriend. Her two sons were with them, but were going to be spending the day with their dad. I had had a one-sided run-in with the ex-husband several years ago when my brother and I surprised the parents for their 50th wedding anniversary by showing up where they live and spending a couple of days.

Now for a bit of back-story: the ex-husband worked with my brother’s now-ex wife, and through the job they all became friends, the ex-husband (still married to our friend at the time), our friend, my brother and his wife. Does that make sense? Anyway, the four of them became friends and ended up spending tons of time together. And through my brother and his wife, my parents were introduced to our family friend and her husband. They ended up in the friendship circle, too. So now they were six: friend and husband; brother and husband; and parents.

When my dad and my brother were in another state for quite a while building a house for some rich people (meaning the job took forever because the house was huge and they kept changing the plans), our family friend, who worked from home at the time, would pick up my mom and take her to her appointments, to the store, etc. My mom can no longer drive due to blindness from macular degeneration. So our friend, P, and my mom became really close. In fact, when my mom and dad first started talking about her my mom said, “P is the sibling we always wanted for R (my brother).” Ouch! No, really… ouch.

Okay, back to the parents’ house for their anniversary. P was over and everyone was sort of waiting for her husband to show. When he did and I was introduced to him he barely acknowledged my presence, rather just glancing at me with a funny look on his face and breezing right past me. That was the only interaction I had with him, period, ever.

Okay, flash forward a few years and I’ve made it back to Santa Fe. My brother and his wife divorced (thank God… and the angels sang!). P and her husband divorced, and she had reconnected with her teenage boyfriend who lives here in NM. They had been engaged something like three times off and on over thirty-plus years. P moved down here to be with J and they married last year. Along with P came her daughter with the ex, K. P had stayed with her ex only long enough for K’s adoption to go through and then she dumped his ass and came here where she truly is loved and adored. Great situation most of the time for all three, our friend and her now-husband and K.

Over the past few years P and her ex have apparently come to have a better relationship for the sake of K. Plus, the ex lives in another state and sees K maybe four or five times per year. It seems to be working out for them, and to the point where P’s now-husband is fine with the ex. I mean, they’re not best friends by any means. But they get along, blah blah blah.

Still, when P and her hub invited me down for T-day I was really apprehensive when I learned that the ex would be there. I recalled, of course, his rudeness toward me the only time we had met before, as well as his horrible treatment of P and even the little girl, K. I really debated whether to use all of the gas it would take to get there, the time, etc., especially that morning when I wasn’t feeling too well. But, well, on the Monday before T-day, P’s now-husband took me to lunch at my favorite place. He works here in town, commuting from their home about an hour away. But, man, hooray for the lunch. It was the first time I’d been out to eat since the last time he took me, and believe me that was a long time ago… like way back in May. As lunch was done and we left so he could bring me home, he handed me gas money with instructions from P that, “Now you can’t text me early T-day morning and say you don’t have enough gas.” Very nice, huh? But because of that, and of being taken to lunch and them basically being the only friends I have who can be considered somewhat local, I decided I’d go. I mean, I would have my car so if it was bad or I started getting shit I could just leave. I shaved, showered, and did a general what I call “douche and fluff” and was on my way.

When I got to their place it was just the ex-husband and the current husband. I had to spend a good twenty minutes or so in the driveway before I could go to the door, and almost hopped back in the car and ran home. But I made it, and who should greet me when I rang the doorbell but the ex-husband! Yikes! But he was really nice, shook my hand and told me his name in case I had forgotten it (how could I? His name is J but for some reason he decided a few years ago that he wanted to be called L. Don’t ask me.) Anyway, P and the ex’s girlfriend had taken the two boys to their dad’s and were on their way home. P’s current husband was doing a bang-up job in the kitchen. It all smelled so good, and with the nice greeting from both of them I was already feeling much more at ease. Then when K, the ten-year-old girl, asked me to sit by her so I could watch her play some game on the iPad or whatever that thing was.

Soon after, the ladies made it back home, and had picked up P’s mother-in-law on the way. Now I adore, I mean ADORE this lady. There’s a great deal of dementia now so we have basically the same conversation every five minutes, and it’s always funny to me. When I first met her she was still in full use of her faculties. Now, well… not so much. But still, as I said… LOVE her! We all sat down to the amazing meal P’s hubby had prepa

red, and I was good and didn’t over eat. It was nice and casual, conversation flowing easily. P had bought some of those holiday “crackers” usually seen at Christmas. She had found some Autumn ones, too. So we all popped our noisemakers and out came our little prizes and the paper hats wrapped in really bad jokes. Soon all of us were sitting there, cheap paper hats on our heads, telling bad jokes and just having a good time. I thought to myself more than once while I was there that this was SO not what I had anticipated. It really felt “family-ish,” at least to me. I mean, I don’t have a lot to go on when it comes to that.

So, well, the meal is done and the cleanup began. I had been instructed to take empty plastic containers with me for leftovers, and they loaded my ass up. Gurrrrrl, you have NO idea how much food was sent home with me! Very nice, and I was really grateful because I was Old Mother Hubbard at the moment, having bare cupboards.

After the food packing up and while we were all sort of chipping in to clean the kitchen, the ex told me that it had been really nice getting to know me. He told me why he had been stand-offish when we first met (and, me being me and holding a grudge, thought, “No, you were just a bastard!”). Apparently, although he had known my brother and his wife for six or seven years, and known my parents for four or five of those years, too, he was shocked when we were first introduced at my parents’ place because he had never heard of me! He didn’t know I existed at all, so didn’t know what to say when we met. NOW it all made sense. I joked it off with a “Welcome to my world,” and P made a few comments (she’s been very aware of how my family “works”) about how it all was. I felt good, in a way, having the reinforcement from P that people not knowing of my existence was nothing new, that I have forever lived in the shadow of “The Golden Child” who is biologically my parents’ kid, etc.

It was as I was driving home that the pain started… a mental pain combined with some physical reaction, too. The first thing I did when I got home was to throw up. I’ve been trying to process this not-surprising news since, and it’s been really difficult. Now that my morphine dose is so low compared to where I was before, I’m more present and feel my emotions in a much more extreme (dare I say “normal”?) manner that I’m not used to. My counselor was really great with it yesterday and I feel like maybe I made a little bit of progress.

But it hurts to know that people whom my family considered basically part of their family didn’t know of my existence until half a decade into it. Persona non Grata