LIVING ME 101

Here’s something to ponder.

How much are you entitled to know about your significant other’s family or their past.

I’m not talking about things that could be of potential harm to you or would have a negative effect on you or your life.

Things like a psychopathic uncle I think should be shared … or if there’s a federal warrant lingering or tax evasion charge.. stuff like that.

But suppose it’s perefrial info? Suppose it’s information about a person who has since changed their life around?

Should you know? Do you have a RIGHT to know? If you found out, should you tell your significant other that you did?

Because that’s the situation I find myself in now.

NOTE: Come on.. by this time if anyone DOESN’T think I need a freakin’ reality show then you need serious meds!!

The upside to Facebook is that it puts you in contact with people. The downside to Facebook is that it puts you in contact with people.

Through FB, I’ve become close with one of Chief’s cousins, Bird.

Bird is around the same age as Chief and Sarge and was probably the cousin that spent the most time at their house growing up. Bird, like me, was a major tomboy so growing up where they did.. at the time they did.. with 4 male cousins and a relatively close age difference is basically a tomboy’s wet dream.

Bird is also a talker. And she gave me the low down on a lot of things that are contrary to either what I’ve been told and my own instincts about people.

I just deleted about 27 paragraphs of detail about what she told me. And the reason why I did is not because it’s an embarassment :: yea, me? Embarrassed? Do you READ this blog? :: or because it would make anyone in my family look bad because lets face it, there’s no way you would know any of them…

But the reason why I deleted it is because I started to feel the same way I felt when Bird first told me.

When we had ended our conversation and I was able to lift my chin off my knees and actually swallow, I rolled over onto a sleeping Chief and just held him. I was sooo sad for everything he had been through growing up.. I just wanted to hold him and protect him and never let anything bad happen to him ever again.

I knew he had been through a lot growing up.. I knew in my gut that his reasons for doing the things that he did in the past was a direct result from everything in his childhood. All the scattered puzzle pieces finally fit.

Coming from a big, close knit family I couldn’t grasp the fact that he had no desire to be too involved with his family.. that he hadn’t spoken to 2 of his brothers in years.. I couldn’t fathom having a twin :: Sarge :: and not being close to him..

I know why now.

I know why when Sarge is around for longer then 20 minutes, you can hear the voices in Chief’s head screaming JUST LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE even though he puts on a smile and tolerates him.

I understand now why he’d rather be left alone and not really deal with anyone in his family and I feel a little guilty for pushing him the way I sometimes do.

No child should have gone through the things he did.. no child should have been exposed to what he was.. it’s a tragedy.

Now, my father in law is no where near the person he used to be. We have a great relationship and I love him to death. I can’t hold his past against him because I see no evidence of it now but I don’t have Chief’s scars.

Regardless of anything I’ve ranted about or got pissed off about, one thing is crystal clear. People are who they are because of the things they’ve seen, heard and been exposed to.

And for all his faults… and in spite of everything that occurred prior to meeting me, Chief is a good man. All he wanted was to be loved and that “want” led him down some wrong paths :: ie: the crack whore ::.

But he has it now.. in abundance. And just when I think I can’t love him any more then I already do… I do.

The best part is that he knows it. And knowing it has given him the confidence to know that no matter what happens, he always has somebody standing behind him.. supporting him when he needs to be supported.. anchoring him when he needs to be anchored.. someone who will always have his back and someone he knows he can always trust.

If he had that growing up, how different his life would have been.

A few weeks ago :: sorry, I really haven’t been able to post as much as I really need to! :: my cell phone rang around 930pm. The caller id came up as an area as opposed to a phone number and since my own brother lives in that general vacinity, I assumed the call was from him.

I was wrong.

It was Chief’s mother.

Yep. His mother.

Don’t usually read anything about her do you? That’s because she isn’t talked about.

When we first met and I had inquired about his parents, he told me that she was in a home. He had to put her there because she has :: and had since his youth :: a perscription drug and alcohol problem. She wasn’t able to live on her own and so she went to live with him around the time that he got custody of the boys. Not to go into too much detail, but her living with him was one contributing factor to his own alcohol abuse.

He never told me anything specific and I never pushed because you could visibly see the pain cross his face but the boys had told me incidents and while I could never conceve of putting my own mother into a home, I could fully understand why he had to.

It didn’t help that his three brothers left everything to him.. wouldn’t help with her or bear any burden. Their stance was, “… well, Chief had to deal with her.”

When she called, he was asleep. But I’m not the quietest of talkers and I wound up waking him up. I mouthed to him who was on the phone and he immediately motioned his hand across his throat as if to say, “… I’m not here. Don’t give me the phone. PLEASE LEESE.. do not tell her I’m awake!”

And so I didn’t … she told me that she got my phone number from Sarge’s wife. From what she said, she called there first because the “home” was kicking her out and she needed a place to stay. Sarge’s wife supposedly said, “… well you can’t stay here. Call Chief”

She asked how big our house was and I instinctively told her that we were all living on top of each other since it was so small. That’s not true but I figured that there would be no good coming from telling her the truth.. especially since Chief was so adament about talking to her.

We went on to have a 20 minute conversation and I afforded her every kindess and respect that I was raised to exhibit.

I told her that I would give Chief the message that she had called and we hung up.

Me and Chief spoke about the phone call briefly. He questioned how she got my number and also told me that she was under no threat of being thrown out of anywhere. This was something that she does every so often.

His first instinct was to have me change my phone number.. something that I didn’t want to do.. His second was to get P-I-S-S-E-D at Sarge for giving my number out.

I wound up talking to Bird later on that night and she was telling me all this stuff about Chief’s mom :: her aunt :: that really made my heart bleed. Things like the staff doesn’t believe she has a family because no one visits her.. and that she gets her clothes from the rack that houses the garments of residents who have died.

This really broke my heart because it pains me that the elderly are treated the way they are in some families.. as throw aways.. and I started trying to come up with ideas that would benefit her without necessarily cause Chief grief.

The following night, I was at the shop with Chief preparing for a huge catering order when my phone rang again. The time, a name of a suburban hospital registered and Chief automatically cancelled the call. “I don’t want to deal with her” is what he said.

The voice mail ringy thing went off and so, curious, I listened to it.

My chin dropped to my knees and me.. who usually is NEVER without something to say.. was speechless.

The voice mail lasted for the whole time allotment and was filled with the most vile.. nasty.. horrible things that I ever had directed towards me. Not even anything that my ex spewed at me could compare.

Not being able to help it, my eyes started welling up with tears. I mean, what did I ever do to this woman? Chief asked me what was wrong and I held up the phone.. he didn’t hear all of it, but what he did.. he just grabbed the phone and turned it off.

I went into the back kitchen and sat down on some milk crates.. literally stunned and shell shocked. He said that I had to understand that she was a paranoid schizo and to not take it personally.

I asked him how one could NOT take all that personally and having lived with a paranoid schizo for 18 years, it doesn’t ever NOT hurt.

He said that he had hoped I would never have to deal with her.. why he doesn’t want her in his life or around the boys. Every day was one extreme to the other and the best place she could be was where she was at.

I felt so beat up.. and so blindsided.. and I asked him how much more did I have to take? What the hell else was down the pike that I was going to get hit with?

He just put his arms around me because.. really.. what else could he do?

I talked to Bird again, relaying what happened. She said it didn’t sound like her aunt.. that maybe somebody else said something to her that made her turn on me the way she did.

You have to understand that from Bird’s perspective, Chief’s mother was more a victim of her marriage then an instigator in it. Bird’s father and Chief’s mother are brother/sister so there will be a biased. From Chief’s perspective, his mother.. her illness.. and her addictions caused as many disruptions as his father’s alcohol abuse.

I don’t know who to believe.. and it really isn’t important. It is not my place to take a side or pass judgement for other people’s past actions.. especially when I was not involved or personally affected.

All I knew was that I was put in the fire by someone who gave out my phone number and all arrows pointed to Sarge. That caused tension with Chief :: who as I’ve said before, doesn’t necessary have alot of good thoughts about his twin :: and he said something to his father about it.

Initially, my father in law said that he wasn’t going to bring it up with Sarge because it would be just another person in the middle. I respected him for that and told him that I didn’t WANT him in the middle. I would take it up with Sarge myself.

I think though that our relationship is such that it bothered him that I had been on the receiving end of such vile things because later on that afternoon, I got a phone call from Sarge insisting that it wasn’t him. Him and his wife were on speaker phone telling me all kinds of things to prove it wasn’t them.

I didn’t necessarily believe them until he mentioned that she had also called their other brother. The puzzle pieces started to fit because I had forgotten that this brother also had my phone number.

When Chief had been arrested, this brother called my phone and I’m may be going out on a limb but I believe that he didn’t know that the number he was calling was my personal cell phone and not our house phone.

She may have contacted him asking for Chief’s number because from what I hear from ALL parties, Chief was the only son who cared enough about her to try to help her at all.

I haven’t received a call since then.. and I doubt that I will.

I just finding it hard to wrap my brain around just how fucked up this family truly is.. remember, my family is nothing.. nothing.. NOTHING like this and I feel like I’m hanging on to an empty water bottle in the middle of the ocean in trying to digest everything.