Billy’s Story

I have let down several friends this week. I made plans with three seperate people and cancled on all three. I know that makes me a flakey friend and I apologized to them profousley for it. Thursday was my first day off after working 7 days in a row.I had an appointment with the dentist, and then the dealership and I had loads of laundry to do…On top of everything I had to get done Thursday I was exhausted. The thought of spending the day in the beautiful sunny weather (albeit cold) just didn’t sound appealing. LOL…I am crazy. And then two friends wanted me to go downtown after I got off work (11:00pm) and meet them at a bar last night. All I could think about doing was coming home, getting into pajamas and crawling into bed with my (senior) kitty. Now I have to make it up to these people so they don’t think I am just a negligent friend. I hope after going to Ft. Campbell I am able to come back a little refreshed on Tuesday.

I got a call from my brother the other day, he informs me he will be coming to visit in March. He moved from California to Michigan last year to escape his fast life and "get clean." Kudos to him. Although we have kept in touch via the phone and internet, we have not seen eachother since I drove home with my father’s remains 6 years ago. I guess Billy could either be my cousin or my brother. The truth is, unless we take a blood test we won’t ever know for certain.

 Way, way. way back in the day my father dated Billy’s mom. Of course their relatonship was dysfunctional so they were kind of off again, on again a lot. Well, during their "off" time Billy’s mom claimed that when my father’s identical twin brother was passed out drunk she climbed on top of him and had sex. (I have been around Frank when he is drunk and I don’t think there is any..getting it up..lol) Afterwards, she and my father got back together. Then she ends up pregnant. My father’s brother swears they never had sex. (Several years later my father finds out his brother is gay and having an incestuous affair with his own uncle, the very one he’s named after.) Although my uncle swore he was not Billy’s biological father, he raised him as his son anyway. I am not sure how much good that did for Billy (especially since he has let on that he was abused, physically and slightly hints at sexually, but absolutely refuses to talk about it. I am sure because of the guilt, shame, and hurt it causes. As well as he doesn’t want to paint his father in a bad light…it would mean owning what happened to him growing up.) When I was 15 and I went to see my father for the first time in 13 years. He had Billy with him in Michigan. They looked, sounded, and…well they were identical twins, so you can imagine why Billy held on to my dad after his own had passed.

You would think, "why would some one hold a father who abused them physically, mentally, and sexually in such high regard?" But when that is all you know, all the attention you have ever recieved from a parent you hold on to that you know? You work harder at trying to show them you love them so they love you in return. I don’t think every day of Billy’s life was a physical trauma. I am sure most of it was alcohol induced and I don’t doubt my uncle loved Billy, but like my his twin, he didn’t know how to get whatever darkness was inside him out. Mom once told me a story where once when we were little, I think I was probably one, and Billy was 4 or 5 and he had misbehaved in some way, and my mom watched as his dad grabbed him by the crotch hard enough to make him cry, and reprimanded him. She was horrified. I don’t know how she kept from grabbing Billy and running far, far away from this family with the both of us.

Really what else did Billy’s father know? He was mentally and physically abused by his own parents, and I am sure sexual abuse by his uncle that eventually led to whatever sick affair they had in his adulthood. I think all this family knew how to do was recycle generation after generation of abuse. My father wasn’t abusive though, even though his own childhood was filled with it, so he drank and cheated and strived to find people who loved him. He wanted to be everyone’s best friend. He just didn’t know how to be a father, to put his own child first.

He is definitely one of their sons though. He looks just like them. It’s just a question as to which man ….but to us it doesn’t really matter. We are brother and sister either by blood, but definitely by experiences, by love. I don’t know if he will ever share with me what it was like for him as a child, I hope so. Despite the abuse he suffered as a child he has turned out to be the most giving and loveable man. HE IS what our father’s should have chose to be despite their OWN abuse growing up. Man..it’s just a sick, sick, SICK family. I often wonder what kind of person I would be had my parents not divorced, or had I been raised by my own father (not that he was abusive, he was just more…self medicated by alcohol and easy women) and spent more time around his family. I can’t even imagine how I would have turned out. I wish Billy had been as fortunate as I was to be raised by my mom. His own mom even abandoned him at the age of 6. I found her two years ago for him and while they have been reunited, I don’t think he has with her what he always thought he wanted….

I remember feeling worse for Billy when my father took his own life. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to go through it twice you know? His father ending his own life, and this his identical twin, who Billy looked to as his own father, a replacement, to do the same thing. To have to live with it twice. I am glad to have one good thing that ties me to that side of the family. If it weren’t for Billy, I think there would just be this black hole tied to my last name that was full of dark, ugly despair.

I worry though, that he will follow suite to our fathers. He drinks a lot (recreationally mostly…) and was doing a lot of drugs back home in California. I worry that his past will catch up to him in his 40’s like it did our dads and he will suffer the same fate. He promised me he would never, ever take his own life. That we would turn out better than they did, that I would always have my big brother. He’ll never make me an aunt though, he never wants kids. I am sure being a father scares him. I don’t think he’d ever be the kind of father his own was, but he has to see that in himself.

An aunt (our grandmother was married three times and had a set of twins each in her first two marriages and triplets in her third! My dad and his brother were two of the triplet boys) is taking her annual trip to see her sister in TN and is going a little out of her way to drop Billy off here and will pick him up on her way back. So I will have him for a whole week! He wont let me tell mom, he wants to surprise her. She has not seen him since he was a little boy. I think it’ll give her a heartattck but I know she’ll be estatic to see him. Can’t wait to show off my big brother *smile.*

**After thought: And FYI, the twins that run rampant in that family make me want to reconsider ever wanting to get pregnant, haha. It doesn’t even skip generations!