Breakfast With Tiffani

Party of Five

No word from my mother. I am officially written off. So sad really. This is the first time we’ve had a fight in 17 years. I find that astonishing …considering.

Although, I’m comforted by the thought that I didn’t do anything wrong and I’ll chalk it up to the lack of lithium.

That fight has had me thinking a lot lately of my family. My brothers and sisters and of course my mother and step father. What we have endured in our childhood. It had me thinking of how we function today. In our separate lives. Miles and Miles away from each other. It wasn’t all heartache and pain. Mostly it was the feeling of insecurity and the feeling of being lost in ones self. How do you become a healthy person of body and mind when you don’t have a healthy role model to look up to? To guide you.

As I look into each of my sibling’s life – I can see the different roads that were chosen for us. I don’t look at it as roads that we chose. They were chosen for us. In our mind we had to get out fast. As soon as we could.

My sister Sheri is the oldest of the five. Ten years my senior and pretty much was my care taker for as long as I could remember. She was the one who took the brunt of it all. The first child. I’ve heard stories of her childhood and can understand why she is the way she is today. She has turned into my mother. She was molded from the same shape as my mom. She left home at the age of seventeen to join the Army. Today Sheri lives in a motel somewhere in California from what I’ve heard. I haven’t seen her or her 5 small children in about 5 years. No one knows where she is.

My brother Jesse is the second oldest and is Sheri’s full blooded brother. Their father died when they were very young from suicide. I’m amazed with Jesse every time I talk to him. He is smart, funny and leads a normal every day kind of life. In spite of the very difficult relationship he had with my step father. They were constantly fist fighting. The torment Paul put the kid through. When Jay (that’s what we call him) left at seventeen he left for good. He lives in Oregon and has four children and wife that loves him very much.

My other brother James (Coco) is by far my least favorite person in the world. He is 6 years older than me. His father beat my mother on a daily basis when Coco was a baby. She left him soon after Coco turned two. I’m convinced Coco has mental problems as well. Some of the things he does just isn’t right. Too many to name. He’s just slow I guess. When my mother was at the bottom of the barrel ill and I was home visiting her for Christmas. He called my mother the C word on Christmas day because he was pissed she failed to tell him I was home. Just little things like that – they don’t sit right with me. He’s twice divorced and has a son he isn’t allowed to see because of alleged sexual abuse. He also left home when he was seventeen. I’m not exactly sure why he left so soon. I really didn’t care. I was happy he was out.

Is there a pattern here?

As I’ve said before I was born, I think, as my mother’s protector. No matter what she had or hadn’t done to or for me. I was her protector. As young as I can remember I was the one who was in the middle of my mother and step fathers fights. Screaming for them to stop because I was so worried that my mother would have a breakdown. Eventually, she would. For my own selfish reason I prayed this fight wouldn’t be the one to knock her over the edge. I didn’t want her to go to an institution because I didn’t want to be stuck in the same house with “him”. Alone with my little sister. The mental abuse that man would instill on us is unspeakable. When my mom would finally come home things went back to normal. It came in waves. The good times. But, you couldn’t enjoy them for long because you knew that something bad was going to happened just around the corner. My mom became so paranoid and so untrusting that sometimes her controlling behavior was so out of whack. By the time I was seventeen I left.

My sister Tonya…the baby. I feel for her. She is Paul’s only child. Although, she was babied the most and I hated her for it. I felt sorry for her too. She had his blood in her. She hated him as much as I did. Sometimes I can see the manic coming out of her. The depression sometimes takes a hold of her young but weary bones. But, she snaps out of it fast. She has no time to be depressed. She is the wife a Naval Officer and the mother of two girls. One of which is Autistic. She is the bravest person I know and nerves of steel. She has endured the most with my family. For she stayed the longest. She stayed well into her twenties.

You see. Sheri left because she saw that she was becoming my mother. She endure the most abuse, mentally. She left only to find a husband that abused her. In a sick way that’s all she knows.

Jesse left because it was do or die with him. Be killed or to kill. Maybe not literally but definitely mentally.

Coco left because he was starving for love- I believe he found his first and only love and went for it.

I left because I was suffocated by fear. Both my mothers and mine.

Why Tonya didn’t leave is beyond my comprehension.

Posted by Tiffani at October 26, 2004 11:17 AM | TrackBack