kid with her nose pressed against the candy shop window

always on the outside looking in.

Someone on a feminist blog just put her finger on it for me. She said that a prominent feminist blogger "loathes being a woman and suffers a bit from penis-envy. Can’t say as I blame her. It’s hard to be a woman living under patriarchy."

I think she hit the nail on the head. And it resonated because I feel that way.

I grew-up in a male-dominated family with only brothers and no emotional connections with any of the women in my life - not my mother, not my aunts, not my grandmothers. My mother had only one female friend, and that relationship was quite distant and short-lived.

My mother used me as her emotional prop right from the beginning; when she wasn't turning to me for comfort or 'wisdom' (when I got old enough to talk), she saw me as her best buddy and confidante. And then she'd turn on me any time I failed to be any of those things...confusingly competing with me at the same time she expected me to be her best bud. No wonder my head is so fucked up about women.

I related more to my dad - more logical, more math-oriented, more of a problem-solver. Just like me. Easier to deal with, more predictable, even if an asshole. (Jeez, I sound like a guy!)

But I was a girl. My dad wouldn't let me into his world (any more than mom would let me in to hers - she claimed that she was 'sparing' me from the chores girls always had to do, but what it really felt like was that I was being shut out of her world so she could have some space for herself. And then she wonders why I never liked her much.)

So I had no place in the family. I was the fifth wheel, the one with no use, no purpose, except to get periodically yelled at or lectured by my dad for - what - failing to be male??? seemed to be his basic gripe. I tried to basically disappear by sitting around reading all the time, just like he did. There seemed to be some safe camaraderie in that. And as soon as I was old enough, I was gone a lot playing music. There was nothing for me at home - it was an empty spot, a hole where my safe zone should be. I took to reading late at night, falling asleep on the couch, because it was the only way I could keep myself from noticing how lonely and isolated I felt with my own family. I just simply felt like I didn't belong, like nobody wanted me.

I remember dad used to carry me upstairs to bed for a while when I was little when I would fall asleep on the couch reading. Then I distinctly remember one night where he decided not to, and never did it again - I think he woke me up and asked if I was going to bed, or maybe if I wanted to be carried? and I said no, I was going to read a little longer. And then he never asked me again, and I felt distinctly abandoned.

What is it with parents and putting their own hurt feelings ahead of understanding that children need to go their own way in order to be allowed to grow up? How do they expect us to actually become adults if we're always having to put our own parents' emotional needs ahead of our own? Some seriously fucked up shit there. 'Course dad was probably only in his early 30s at that point. No excuse, but men are pretty clueless, relationship-wise, until at least in their late 40s. They rarely begin to 'get it', at all, until they're in their 50s or later. Something to do with testosterone levels dropping off, I s'pose. Man-o-pause.

***
As I child I never had close female friends - we moved too often, always right at the moment when I was beginning to settle in. I realized this the other day - we moved five times before I was 7 years old! I think I got a bit gun-shy, and since this was the sort of thing my parents would never have thought of, considered, noticed or discussed, it went underground and just became one of those invisible 'patterns' in my life that I didn't unearth for decades.

I had a couple of really good friends in junior high, but they both left suddenly in 9th grade - one moved to the east coast with her family and the other just - disappeared. I can't even remember the details, I just remember feeling abandoned and alone and not having the strength to start again.

I eventually did find a few casual friends in high school, including one friend who was a bookworm like me, and with whom I went bike-riding and had a few other adventures.

But we were never as close as I was with the junior high school friends, they were actually GOOD friends. The high-school friend was, well, a bit of a jerk, to be honest. Her parents were rich, her brothers were weird, her father was a patriarchal, misogynist asshole and her mother was the typical smiley, passive, stay-at-home wife. Bleh.

Wow, just when you think all the crawlies have emerged from under the rocks, you discover still more yet to be revealed...

I think what I'm saying is that I never formed strong connections with women, at any time in my life. I had a chance to do it in jr. high, and got started along that road, but circumstances beyond my control kicked me out of that safe, warm place and found me alone again, stranded alongside the road. Yet another abandonment.

And fuck you if you think I'm making too big a deal about it. My youngest brother was born shortly before we moved into the house my mom lives in now; as far as he's concerned, he lived in the same place for 16 years before dad died. So yes, he's had his share of rough knocks, but he also started out with some significant stability that I never experienced. Something there about growing deep roots that allow you to withstand the later winds of fate. Those of us that were never allowed to grow deep roots - either emotional or physical - are much more subject to being knocked over by those gale-force winds of chance.

There's also something about how mom always sucked up to the men in her family - including her own sons - knowing that they're the ones she'll be dependent on later in life. And yet at the same time she expects me to be her sole-source emotional supporter. While simultaneously throwing me under the bus emotionally, financially, in every real way you can possibly imagine. And at the same time acting like we're best buddies.

Is it any wonder I'm so confused?

I still can't really wrap my head around all this or articulate very clearly how simply betrayed I feel, by my entire family, over and over and over again. My little brother tried to make it up to me for a while, in various ways, but I think he got overwhelmed by how much unfairness there is and how extremely angry I am about it.