patterns

It feels whiny to go on about things that happened to me in the 60s and 70s. But the way life is now seems directly related to things that happened back then, some I didn’t even know about.

An example not even about me: in the last few years I found out my dad was living (with his first family, wife and kids) on the same lot as his parents, when he got involved with my mom. Now, my brother lives with my mom, along with his girlfriend, and the two children that she is raising. These four people all live with my mom in a two bedroom, one bathroom house.

My own problem is that I have no connection to anyone in my family, to anyone I knew from grade school, high school, college, or any of my two dozen jobs, or my boyfriend’s family. This because my mom cut off connections with my dad’s family because she was ashamed about the circumstances of my birth, she cut off connections with her own family (except her mother) because she was ashamed that she’d married a wife beater, she could have no friends over because we never knew when he’d come home stinkin’ drunk, and we could have no friends over for the same reason.

I spent ten years watching TV with one boyfriend who was also depressed. We had no visitors. His family is local; they came over one time in ten years.

I moved for a while, to another state, with another boyfriend, who was… living with his mother. And he had no friends.

I finally bailed myself out of that horrid (that’s a whole other story which I might never tell) in part because I felt I was too much like my brother’s sponging girlfriend.

I believe that my patterns have been partially disrupted because I met my current boyfriend totally at random with a little help from some bumper stickers. He’s also the first person in my life to say they were going to change and actually did it.