Pain

I physically ache. My stomach aches. My chest aches - or is that my heart? I could crawl in the bed and cry. I keep crying in short little bursts like when I've slipped out of class to run to the bathroom and have to get back quickly. I feel betrayed all over again.

AND I'm kicking myself. Why did I think that because she was aging or because she needed us or because she moved here or any other reason that might change? That she might want a normal relationship. That she might be different this go round. What in the world was I thinking?

I feel loss. I have finally come to grips with the reality of what I never had. And it is painful.

Duke vs WFU

I was at the game -- fully expected to see Duke beat the stuffing out of young WFU. Thought winning the the first half was a victory!

With 5 minutes to go, I was screaming. I was jumping. Ron kept saying, "we still have 5 minutes and it's Duke."

I kept saying, "enjoy the moment!" He still had a little smirk though - he couldn't help it. It was fun.

We had Duke customers in the box. Poor things - they came in fully expecting what I was expecting. They were so dissappointed and then when the Duke players started to foul out. One-by-one . . .

What's that on the court!?! Ahhhhh! the rush of Wake fans!

Dino, in the aftergame interview, he kept calling the players kids! Well, they are aren't they! All those freshmen and sophmores! And they beat Duke. I do realize this may be it, but man, they looked GOOD last night.

The Emotional Cripple

This would be my dad. I know this is why he worked the way he did because at work he could shine. At home he was just one of the rest of us. He was abused like we were. He even escaped once and came back! Ann and I probably had something to do with that. He didn't stay gone long enough for us to adjust and we were stuck with mother. We didn't know then that we had any other choices than to be her children.

Daddy's childhood was emotionally crippling if not physically crippling. I'm sure of the first. The second is not so easy to discern. Every thing they owned was sold out from underneath them. PaPa left with other women. He moved off with at least one. Laverne left and moved half way across the country as soon as she could. Martha Jean, well, she's the one we strongly suspect sexual abuse with, but too much time as passed and too many ties have been broken.

Daddy's first wife favored his sisters we've been told. She drank. She ran around on Daddy. She gave him a son and verbally abused them both.

Mother and Daddy met at Western Union in Baton Rouge. Married, had me, led and idyllic life. Right. Daddy had a great need to be dependent on someone, to have his life organized for him, to be told what to do and when to do it. Mother had a great need to make people dependent on her. It was the perfect union.

After Daddy left and came back, Mother had everything, absolutely everything put in her name -- bank accounts, business, CDs, house, retirements. She had that right. He'd left. He'd not been honorable. He knew he was tied to her in unimaginable ways. One of Mother's new favorite stories was that she could just utter the words, "Travis, we need to talk," and Daddy would blanch. She loved the control.

The moment Daddy went back to mother, I realized how dependent he was on her. They were tied together with a gossamer thread, but not the pretty kind like you think of fairies using. This one is harsh and cold and unrelenting. This thread is the kind that nightmares is made of.

Sexual Abuse

Mother was sexually abused by her grandfather while her mother watched. She's lied so much about so many things and I have only her word for this, but I believe her. It makes so many things right. It explains so much.

I don't even know if she remembers telling Ann and I -- not at the same time, but at different times. Once, when we were all here together in Winston Salem, after she'd moved, she told us in one of her pronouncements that she wanted to have sit down and explain some things to us that might help us understand her better. That's what made me think she'd forgotten that she'd ever told us. She wanted to tell us again. I cringed. There are some things you just don't want to hear. There are some hurts you are healing yourself and you don't have the strength to help your abuser heal.