Now, where were we?

Day 3 — Your parents

This will be fun. Even though this prompt is just about my parents, of course being their daughter I am pretty involved in some areas so I will be in here as well.

My dad is one of eight children. He has five brothers and two sisters. Both of his passed away years ago. My mom has one brother, and her mother (my grandmother) is still alive but in a nursing home with hospice care.

I am an the only child of my parents, but my dad has a son from a previous marriage. Both my parents worked all day and into the evening when I would younger, so I grew up a day care kid. It was my dad's job to pick me up every day around 5:30pm, and everyone knew his bright orange truck on sight. As soon as we got home he went straight to his computer and played card games online while my mom slept on the couch and I was left to my own devices.

My dad is very passive-aggressive, jealous, and stubborn. My mom is pretty quiet now but I still see the remnants of how fiery she must have been when she was younger. As far as I know the only friends she has are the people she works with. When my mom and I used to go to church she occasionally attended bible studies as well, but dad didn't like her going out. Even for bible studies. I was always under the impression that he essentially didn't let her have friends. He doesn't really have friends either now that he's out of work, just people he does handyman/contractor work for and our neighbors.

I think because I didn't have a model for friendships growing up I didn't know how to socialize properly. I didn't know that kids are supposed to be inquisitive and ask questions, so I was very quiet and shy and did as I was told. Once when my mom and I were leaving church, when I was maybe 10 or 11, my mom asked me if I had ever thought about running away. I said no. She replied that she thought about it sometimes. That scared the crap out of me and I had absolutely no idea how to respond.

When I was in seventh grade, so around 12 or 13, I sort of almost but really didn't attempt to hurt myself. I was really upset about our lack of family anything and stressed about school bullies, so after a bath one night I was crying and grabbed my mom's sewing scissors and made cutting motions across my wrists. Now I have never cut myself and never will cut myself, but sometimes I needed some sort of pain for... something. Mostly I dug my fingernails into myself or poked myself with pens and pencils. Enough to feel it but not enough to cause noticeable lasting damage. The next day at school I cracked again during class, totally broke down, as was sent to the office. My mom came from work and it all came out -- how I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere and how I was convinced they didn't love me because they never acknowledged me and how much I hated that school and blah blah blah.

So, because I was in emotional pain about being ignored by my parents, we went to family counseling. The therapist would talk to me in one room and my parents in another. She started spending more and more time with my parents and finally stopped talking to me altogether. So once again I was left to my own devices. Mostly drawing on the whiteboard or figuring out how to play the Imperial March on an old little plunky musical toy. (I finally did get the Imperial March down, and it sounded pretty awesome on that toy.)

My dad was forced to retire from his position as a crane operator/mechanic when I was in high school. Years before I was born he was electrocuted and suffered really, really terrible burns all over his body. When electricity enters a body is has to exit somehow, which is why grounding is so important. If something isn't grounded it runs the risk of being blown up, human bodies included. My dad was fortunate (relatively speaking) in that instead of blowing off a limb the electricity exited all over his body. He is missing a pinky toe, though. He was pretty miserable being forced to sit at home, but keeps busy by doing handyman work for people. His specialty is custom cabinetry, and he's very very good at what he does. The man is an artist with wood. I love the smell of heavy duty grease and sawed pine because both remind me of him.

Through all of it -- the accident and the awful and painful recovery -- my mom was there.  She changed his bandages, dressed the wounds. I can't image watching someone you love being in that much pain, but she did it. And I get so angry at him sometimes for not being plain old nicer to her considering everything she has done for him.

My mom works as an assistant manger-type for an electrical components company. She's been working there for probably 15 or 16 years, and she is vastly underpaid for her position compared to other companies. She also does not know how to type properly or work a computer effectively, and probably wouldn't be able to survive in a modern office setting where she would be better paid. The company she works for now is basically a mom-and-pop sort of place, but the owners are fantastic and really take care of their employees. Trouble is they have been struggling really badly for years now and has had to cut a lot of the perks they used to have for their people -- the annual Laughlin trip, parties on their boat, trips to Catalina, et cetera.

Nowadays all we do is sleep, work, then come home and sit on our individual computers. Each of us has laptops that we surf on in the living room with the TV on. It's really sad, and it makes me angry, but I don't know what to do about it. I try to get them up and out with me, to dinner or out shopping or a theme park, anything. They never "feel like it." I've pretty much given up trying to do something about it. I'm really looking forward to moving out, but at the same time I don't want to leave my mom. My dad isn't abusive in the traditional sense, but living with him can be very exhausting and difficult.

I guess the truth is we're a pretty typical family, complete with shortcomings and a faults and whatever else you can think of.