Is Anything About Me?

I am convinced that I have nothing to do with the family’s drama. I firmly believe that even if my mother had divorced the boys’ father and never met mine, the current result of my brothers having cirrhosis would have remained exactly the same. I am not a factor in the equation. Period.

There are some ironies. I also believe that my anger has been my subconscious attempt to support the family. In addition, I feel that my mother’s scapegoating of me was her subconscious attempt to include me in the family. In our own dysfunctional way, we attempted to remain tied together. Ultimately it failed. Because none of this is about me nor can it ever be.

I see the current drama as having been meant to be from the beginning of time. This is the way it was always going to be. My existence is irrelevant.

And that is my problem. I do not feel like a major player in my own life. The only thing tying me to the family was my anger and, as I let go of it, my tenuous connection to them is dissolved. I am left with a gaping hole in my life. The pretense of having a family is over. What do I want to do? I have never known.

I remember being about 18 and someone asking me what I wanted to do with my life. My response? “What does that have to do with anything?” Like Sheldon from TBBT, the question did not compute. I was so dissociated from anything resembling a feeling that I truly could not imagine anything more irrelevant than what I wanted or felt.

As a married woman, your life is not about you. It is always about him or us. When Barry passed almost 5 (!) years ago, I knew my life could really be about me for the first time.

The problem is that I have always found safety in invisibility. Staying out of situations that cannot end well has been survival. I know what danger looks like, but I am unsure of what a good or positive situation would look like. I am attracted to screwed-up situations and then get out by the skin of my teeth, feeling fortunate to have gotten out at all.

I feel like I am the opposite of a narcissist. I am still looking for a situation that is about me, sniffing around like a bloodhound. I see myself and all humanity as having been born into the current situation not of our choosing. Can we make it about us or is our eternal task just to clean up the disaster created by our forebears? How do we not resent that?

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