Borderline Diary – My Borderline Years – My Borderline Father’s Raging Abuse
Most years I was so protected at Christmas. Most years I was too busy having an anxiety attack at the mere thought of going "home" for Christmas so I would stay away from my "family". I had learned my lessons well. Our family was well off enough and toys and/or gifts were always aplenty. But what came with those gifts and presents was quite the opposite of the spirit of the season – quite the opposite of love. It was enmeshed abandoning betrayal served up as "love" – "love" borderline style.
The Joy – Not – Of Christmas – Physically Assaulted by My Borderline Father
December 26, 1982
11:15 pm
Oh God, as I write this I have such a pounding headache it’s unreal. Most years, at Christmas, I dreaded going "home". I dreaded the whole drunken thing. Relatives sloshing back all the booze my father can shove down their throats. And me, me having to constantly scream NO at him each and every time he tries to shove the booze at me. He thinks I think I am better than him and that that is why I will not drink. I have not ever drank and I don’t ever intend to. It disgusts me.
My approach to this Christmas was so different for some stupid naive reason on my part. I somehow managed to forget the reality of my borderline family – maybe because I haven’t lived with them since I was 17, I don’t know. This year though I got into the Carols, stuff I usually just ignore because it’s just too painful to bother with. For two weeks before I made the trip to London, Ontario, where my "family" had moved last – for my father’s job – I was really enjoying Anne Murray’s "I’ll be Home for Christmas" Like some unsuspecting deer about to be caught in the headlights of on-coming hostile traffic I went "home" for Christmas with some really unwise and unrealistic hope.
By only the second day I was there, I was bored out of my mind. As always the pairings left me out of the activities they decided upon – activities that bore the living hell out of me – either way I feel rejected. My aunt, my mother’s sister was visiting this Christmas too. Oh joy – not! God I hate this woman. Mind you the friction she causes between my parents is sometimes entertaining. Anyway, after a day of trying to get someone, anyone, my aunt, the parents, my brother and/or his wife, to play Trivial Pursuit or do or say anything that might remotely interest me – no luck. So they continued to do the boring crappy stuff they all decided they’d super enjoy. At one point they actually had a two hour conversation about head lettuce. Head lettuce just isn’t that interesting. My brother was working as the produce manager in a grocery store. Well, what a friggin’ hero eh? Did they enjoy it just because I hated it? Finally today I got bitchy. Not unusual for me at "home". I was trying to ask my father something. He was ignoring me. I did get pushy and demanding. I did ride the edge of the danger that exists in provoking this bastard, yes I did – as I had so often done throughout my teenage years as well.
I ended up following him around as he was setting up and testing some intercoms around his house. I was clearly bugging him – he bugged the shit out of me just in that he existed and what who he was. We did not get along – period. I wasn’t the girly girl he wanted. I didn’t fit his misogynous mold of what he thought a woman should be. I did not stay in "my place" at all. He was the biggest disappointment of a father who wasn’t absent that a daughter could ever be abandoned and betrayed by in the name of his borderline idea of "love". Anyway, I guess I let my "borderline" way of just letting loose with my oh so honest and tactless tongue get way too out of control. Fair enough. But my father’s response – well, way over the top and very illegal. Somewhat predictable, however. I must be more self-defeating than I realized?
As I gave up trying to get him to even respond to me and turned out of his bedroom to the hallway to go to the guest room I was staying in – that I would retreat to often just to try to get a grip on my own emotions – he lunged at me and shoved me face first into the wall at the end of the hall. I didn’t really know what was happening at that point.
