Good Goddess its been a long ass time since I wrote anything here! Oops.
I’ve been enjoying a personal hard reset that I’m not really finished with yet. But since today is the one year anniversary of finding out the family secret, I think I’ll dust off the old fingers and get clacking.
Remember my post about contacting my mother to ask her why in the hell she willingly married a rapist and murderer? I wanted to give her a chance to tell me her story before I told mine. It just felt like the right thing to do. I wanted to be fair and kind. I wanted to have her side of the story and I wanted to move forward with facts once it came time to include her.
As expected, she’s still not speaking to me and well… I must move on, so here we are.
When I left this story the questions on my mind were How and why?
How the hell did a women whose grew up in an upper middle class household, who’s father was the Senior Vice President of Seaspan, who grew up in the British Properties, who was the snobbiest snob of a person ,who talked shit constantly about people “beneath” her grow up to marry a rapist and murderer?
A man who grew up literally dirt poor. A man who was a criminal drifter. A man she considered in her own words “low class”
How the fuck did they meet and why the fuck were they together?
My parents were from two different worlds. They ran in two different circles. It makes NO SENSE. They make no sense.
The official story is this:
They met through friends.
That’s it. That’s all. No further information was offered. There was no cute story with any details. They met through friends. Full stop. Even as a child I found this weird and as I grew older I pressed for more information. What friends? (My parents barely had any) Where did you meet? “Through friends” is not a location! ” Through friends isn’t even a real answer! Still, their united response was always the same. They never strayed from their story. “Through friends” became almost like a mantra. Eventually, I gave up. The more I pushed, the more vicious their response.
Of course now that I KNOW what I KNOW, their story seems all the more suspicious.
I have a theory.
It’s only a theory but if we allow for Occam’s razor (when one has two competing theories, the simpler explanation is the one to be preferred. ) I’m feeling pretty good about this one.
I think they met in the hospital for the mentally ill.
I think my mother was also a patient there.
My father wasn’t granted off grounds rights until June 24th, 1971.
My parents were married, February 2, 1971. Five months before he was granted permission to be off grounds, under supervision.
Hmmmm. Very interesting.
Does the idea of my mother being hospitalized for a mental illness surprise me?
Not at all. Prior to this I was surprised she seemingly hadn’t been, just based on my experiences with her alone.
Of course I have other reasons to think this too, but those stories are for her to tell.
If true, the thing that enrages me is that my mother sat on her high horse, talking shit about a group of vulnerable people while being a part of that same group herself. My mother did real harm with her words. To elevate herself. To distance herself from the truth of who she was, while contributing to the stigma of mental illness in our society. She threw everyone else under the bus to save herself.
Yeah, yeah.. I understand why a person would do such a thing but still. That woman is the worst. Just the worst.
Anyway, that’s my theory. If true, it certainly answers the how. I’ll probably never be satisfied with the why but it would seem to explain it. It’s the simplest explanation after all.
SEASONELLLE 