Le Weekend - Or - Revisiting a Childhood You'd Rather Forget

I came off of last weekend, with my sister, feeling very positive and happy.  She really went out of her way to make it special and it meant more than I can say.  This most recent weekend, in contrast, was very disappointing.  It made me feel very alone in a place where I have both family and a social network.  I was headed out to meet the dads for my birthday dinner.   Which sounds like it should be a happy occasion and something that would propel me even further into a good mood, but it didn't end up that way at all.

The dinner reservations were made for 3:00pm on Saturday and I was supposed to meet everyone at the Dads' house at 2:30pm so we could all drive together.  Between getting over this cold that won't seem to go away and trying to catch up on laundry from the trip, I knew I wouldn't make it to my dad's by 2:30.  So I called them as I was headed out of my neighborhood and asked them to text me the address for the restaurant.  I wouldn't make it to their place on time but, as I live closer, I wouldn't be late to the restaurant.  Dad agreed to send the address and ended the call but didn't hang up.  He has this problem of not hitting the "end call" button on his phone and I've gotten numerous phone messages with a lot of background chatter.  Normally this is just amusing, but on Saturday he proceeded to complain after he thought he'd hung up.

I heard him tell the other people in the car that I "always do this" and "couldn't be on time for anything."  His friend, O, offers the suggestion of telling me to meet a half an hour earlier, like she does with her son, so I'll get there in time.  At this point, he realized that his phone was still on and quickly hung up.  Had I not been using the blue tooth feature in my car, I would never have heard the details of the conversation but I did and I proceeded to lose my shit.  I thought about calling back and saying I couldn't make it after all but I knew they had people coming.  So I called my sister in an effort to calm down before I would have to pretend was normal.

I am not a person who is habitually late to things.  I value promptness and see chronic lateness to events as a waste of my time.  I get this from my father.  However, more often than not I will be ready to go at their house and have to wait for one or the other to finish getting ready.  The times I have been late, or called to say I'll meet you there instead, have been due to traffic or having to work late - things completely out of my control.  At first, I felt like my dad's comments were very two-faced and he was putting on some kind of act for his friend.  Second, it made me feel like I was 5 years old again and he had told me he was very disappointed.  I was the kind of kid who would punish herself if told her parents were disappointed in her behavior.

But the part that caused me to have a complete meltdown in my car was the residual effects of living with his last partner.  It was like he was saying I was irresponsible to his friend.  I have a gut reaction to anyone implying or outright saying I am irresponsible, careless, worthless, or stupid.  I know most people would have a strong reaction to this as well, so it shouldn't be surprising.  But I spent almost every day of ten years being told how terrible I was, but never to my face.  My dad's old partner would wait until I was just out of the room, but still in earshot, to say what he really thought of me.  He would wait until my dad wasn't around so that no one would catch him.  He would belittle me and make me feel like I was a terrible person because I came out of my room.  And this is was exactly how this situation on Saturday felt to me.

I know that my dad doesn't intentionally leave his cell phone on after ending a call, but my knee-jerk reaction was feeling like it had been done on purpose.  And then I was 15 years old again, just waiting for someone else to come home so I could breathe, so I didn't feel so alone.  It wrecked that entire feeling I had from the previous weekend and I just wanted to curl up in my room.  But I went to the dinner and I even went to the wine bar with everyone afterwards.  Still, I went home earlier than I would have and just hid in my room the rest of the night.

It was the worst feeling.  And, of course, I haven't said anything to my dad about it.  This is not the type of family we are.  We don't even talk about what happened when he was with his old partner.  We just pretend like everything's okay until it is.