*Author’s Note: Sometimes I write out of extreme anger, it’s a way to decompress. This is one of those instances. I use harsh words and even looking back and editing this piece and my emotions leveled out, I loved the images conjured by the words, so I kept them. It was a stretch for me to write like this and I really enjoyed it. And yes, I do still love my family.
Sitting at the dinner table, like some many years before, all of us sitting in our assigned seats that never were really assigned. It just happened that way. Dad, Mom, Brother, Me. Through the glass french doors, the American dream pictured in all of its glory. Little do they know that nothing is as it seems, and rarely, if ever, are people happy when they display such a moment of pure domesticated bliss. I received an email from my father to my phone, but I was already gone. I was no longer there. It stated something along the lines of “can you call your mother? She’s upset.” Well no shit. She has a son who can not stand her in most social situations. I would be upset too. I feel for her, of course I do, I’m not a heartless bitch. But I am the one that is used as the punching bag when my brother is not around. I get yelled at and sworn at because I’m there. I’m the silent one. I am reverted back to that little girl who was so afraid to speak, her mother thought she was deaf. Eighteen debilitating years later I remain and take it. I sit there, at the dinner table silent, accepting the fighting and yelling, knowing there is nothing I can do about it. I sit, the angle of the chair uncomfortable, but I am too exhausted to move. I shift, I fidget. I dig my nails into the hard veneered wood, willing myself to stay put, when my entire body is forcing me to move.
I’m there at the fatal blow, when my brother storms off and leaves with his new wife to the city, to rant about how much of a bitch my mother is. I’m there, sitting in that same position I’ve been in since I was a child because there is nothing I can do to fix the problem. I’ve resigned to give up. After the smoke clears, I am called into action, to smooth everything over with my mother, to relax her into complacent happiness again. I listen. I nod. I try to explain. I accept her side. I let her get her point across. Then she succumbs to the post-fight weariness. She collapses like a balloon slowly deflating of air. She goes into her room, to watch a movie on lifetime about a women whose lives are so fantastic they make her forget her own. And I’m left on that hard wooden chair I used to fall off every day. My assigned dinner chair that I would sit on for hours because I refused to drink my milk. I sit and think, my god, I need to leave. I need to get out of this house with a craving I can only assume drug addicts deal with on a daily basis. I want to be far away. I want to be further away than a phone call. I want to be incognito. I want my family designated personae non gratae. Don’t call me. No more contact. No longer will I be the go-between. I want my parents to take away my seat at the dinner table. That old chair that has been fixed far too many times, that creaks with pain under the weight of my body. The chair that has created grooves on the smooth hardwood floor from over-use. It might as well be thrown in the garbage. I won’t be around to use it anyways.
Twenty Something Blues in Chicago 