I AM AN ADULT CHILD OF INSANITY

My childhood was strange, to say the least. My mother was a lesbian hippie, and my father was absent. My grandfather was an alcoholic-pedophile, and my grandmother was a co-dependent and very angry woman. My sister is older, and was the favorite. I, with my chubby cheeks and my wanting ways, was cast as a problem from early on. I stole when I was 7, smoked when I was 12, did drugs when I was 12, and so on. My reactions to my family were bad. I didn't want to be around them. I was terrified that my grandfather would come on to me, and so every trip to see him was fraught with anxiety. I clearly remember sitting next to him in his truck going to the store. He had money, and would occasionally be very generous with it, so I always wanted to be around him in case he felt the urge to give me some. But I was so worried that he would try and molest me. I sat with teeth clenched, thinking that I would sock him in the eye if he ever did. In my memory, I was never molested, but I wonder. In any case, I grew up thinking this of men: they were absent or scary. I have made every partner that I have ever had pay for his sins, and the sins of my father.
My father was gone, but had an enormous impact on my childhood nonetheless. He was an unforgiving narcissist who once actually called himself a sage. He was gone most of my life, and the times I saw him he made hurtful judgements about me. About the wanting. I guess he saw it and condemned it, probably because it looked like him. I vividly recall going to visit him in Washington when I was 14. I smoked cigarettes by then, and brought a carton with me. He condemned my smoking, himself trying to quit. He told me that nothing looked worse than a woman walking down the road smoking. Then he bummed a pack of smokes from me. After I left that trip, he called my mom and told her that I had been greedy and bad. She told me, I am not sure why. He got very sick during my childhood and had a liver transplant. We found out through a 'group mail' that arrived one day. Not even addressed specifically to us. I had no contact with him from 17 to 34, right before I got married. He was very sick again, this time with cancer. We talked, and I told him that I forgave him. We talked all about him, of course. He got sicker, and so I wouldn't regret it the rest of my life, I went to see him in 2001, with my then boyfriend, Rob. His first words to me were, "I think seventeen years is a little bit excessive!" As though it had been my choice alone. Then he said, "wow! You got pretty!"
I could write novels about the things he has said to hurt me, and my hurt. I lied for him, and I am glad that I did. I told him I loved him, that I forgave him, and wished him peace on his journey out of this world. He died when I was 5 months pregnant, just 3 months after my grandfather did. No matter my true feelings for him, I realize that they are my responsibility.
I have since realized that he probably was confused, did the best he could, and that, as in many areas, I took on things that were not meant to hurt me, but to help. I have a positive genious in finding insults.
My emotional life is changing with my recovery from bulimia and binge-eating. I now have two weeks 'clean' and am overjoyed and terribly grateful.
Keep 'em coming, God!
I'm out.
Fabu