OK so I’m the local woman. And the envelope is a letter from my dad. It’s just sitting in my mailbox. Silently mocking me.
I went to live with him for a year last year, and it was a disaster. I was in constant confilct with my stepmother, who became steadily more abusive as I retreated further and further, making myself smaller, more quiet, scarcer and scarcer. By the end, I was spending ALL of my money on fast food and bathing in the laundry tub in the basement because I was too intimidated to use the kitchen or the bathroom.
I practically had to smuggle my possessions into the house after six months of sleeping and keeping my clothes on the floor, because my dad never lived up to his promise of helping to move my things, and my stepmother refused to give directions to my out-of-province mother when mom offered to pay for a van to move my things.
I made several attempts to ask them what their expectations of me were, but they all went unanswered. Since I did not feel comfortable intruding on my stepmother’s routine without her input (which was not forthcoming), I compensated by “erasing” myself from the house - because I couldn’t help with the housework, I made absolutely sure that I didn’t create any housework for stepmom, either. Once, when I cleaned the lint trap of the dryer, I accidentally left some fluff on top of the dryer. Stepmom left me a snippy note ordering me to clean it up. Four months later, when I forgot to clean the lint trap, she paced back and forth outside my bedroom mumbling about it in a resentful manner.
They were kind enough to provide a seperate phone line for me, for which I reimbursed them in full, monthly. At the end, I also paid them $50.00/week for the privilege of sleeping in my bed for an average of 6 hours every night. I used up no resources besides one and a half rooms. I even burned candles rather than use a lamp and bathed in lukewarm water, so as not to use up too much energy.
When I left, I owed them $260.00 for my last phone bill. I was out of work and when I did find work, 3 weeks later, I had to take a pay cut, so I paid them back in 4 installments.
Except I didn’t. I entered one cheque in my book twice (I’m a little scatterbrained like that), and I only gave them 3 payments. I realized this when I moved to Montreal and had to re-organize my finances. My mother and my sweetie have been trying to assuage my guilt about this, and saying I shouldn’t hand it over until Dad mentions it, that he doesn’t even deserve it. I still feel guilty.
Christmas came and went, and my family was more generous to me than I imagined. I even got some money from my Dad and stepmom, as well as my paternal grandmother. But I haven’t sent my Dad’s thank-you card to him yet, which is sitting, half-written, in my livingroom. So I feel guilty about THAT, too.
I can’t even read this letter from him, because I feel so guilty. It’s an icky, icky feeling. Blah.
I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of enough of them.