Torture is Not Merely Discomfort

NFather had a daughter from the first of his three marriages. Father and mother married when he was nearing 40 and she was but 19 years old. Up until I was about age 10, my father occasionally mentioned how he had a daughter that died many years ago. I heard this without it having a lot of meaning for me, simply because I never knew her. I never questioned why he would bring her up at the dinner table. (For the record, because of the sit-down meals we were subjected to almost every evening where no one talked except the father when it suited him, I still cannot stand the sound of chewing. HATE IT.) Anyhoo, on one summer day when my best friend happened to be spending the night that night, the mother received a phone call that I could tell left her stunned. I really didn't get it, but I knew something was going on. After the father got home in the evening from his construction job, he came bursting into my room where I was playing Barbies with my best friend and announced, "She's ALIVE! She's ALIVE! Your sister is ALIVE!!" Shit, I knew he wasn't talking about my sister-sister. I just knew exactly what he was talking about, in testament to his setting this situation up. I think I just said okay and looked at my friend and shrugged, and we went back to playing Barbies. I can't imagine what she must have really thought about the situation.

As mother told me later, when I was not her daughter but her closest walking diary, she confronted the father about this information. As in, "You told me your daughter and ex-wife died!" His response to her: "If you don't believe me, go to hell." WHAT?? WHATTHEFUCK!! That goddamned comeback doesn't even make sense. And what did the mother do? Pretend not to be upset about it to him. She came and dumped it on me.

In the weeks to come, the father made arrangements to meet with this child of his that he abandoned. Because he was too fucking cheap to rent a hotel to visit his daughter who he basically abandoned as a child, a daughter who he told that her mother told him was dead, we stayed in this sister's house. Remember, this is someone only my father had ever met, and that was when she was a baby, when he abandoned her mother and her because her mother wanted to divorce. It was awkward, truly, what with him expecting her to idolize him and believe every fucking word out of his mouth, and with her wanting this fairy-tale that I'm sure any child in her situation might well have dreamed about her whole life. As it turned out, my father had abandoned that baby girl to her alcoholic mother because his pride was hurt, and he couldn't be bothered to pay child support or even want to visit her during her then-almost-30-year life span. And he expected her to be grateful to him for his showing gratitude that she was alive.

Many years have passed since this happened. As it turns out, older sister is a total fucking mess who bragged to me when I was a kid that her husband was a member of the Klan, and who has exhibited her own extremely narcissistic and childish behavior in the brief contact I've ever had with her. I have no desire to know her better than I already know her, and I never want a relationship with her. I attempted that once. I did my time with the father. Never gonna fucking happen.

Is she a hot mess because her father was such a douche-bag asshole? That might be part of it. But lots of us have alot of shit going on in our heads, and we didn't end up like her, either. Life is a mind-fuck for anyone who has a narcissist in their life, and I'll bet her life was hell.

I work in a courthouse, and when the county recorder came to me and told me the older sister was seeking a copy of the father's death record shortly after his death (which my real sister and I tried to notify her about at the time, which notification she finally responded to via e-mail with some bullshit story that her husband had rocky mountain spotted fever and she just wasn't able to get back to us), which I would have gladly given her if she had been willing to ask like a normal person, and that my sister was telling her on the phone that I had kept her away from our father and not told her about his death (not knowing that the recorder knows me or that I work in that courthouse). Really, call the county fucking recorder and work that into a long and breathless tale of needing a fucking death certificate, when, you know, asking for one would do just as well.