I think I've talked before on Wailing And Failing that my earliest memories of my parents had no pictures per se. They worked so long that they wouldn't come home oftentimes till after dark, sometimes several hours after my brother and I got home from school. They would never say hi to us; instead they would immediately trot down to the their master bedroom and the master bathroom, where they always showered together. And while we were playing (more like fighting) upstairs, we would hear Mother just screaming in the bathroom. Sometimes Father would talk calmly, other times he would give it right back to her. But that is how I defined their relationship with each other, which influenced how I saw their relationship to me -- angry, dissatisfied, angry.
I'm in therapy over that, and as I get to know the intricacies of how it damaged me, I'll talk more about it on WAF. However, as their time taking care of The Store wound down, they fought much less often. Obviously their yelling (or at least Mother's yelling) centered around work, and with the source/trigger being sold off to the company next door, I figured the yelling stopped too. (It didn't help, by the way, that they worked and lived together. They are unique amongst parents, I think, in being right next to each other 24 hours a day for years. That had to make things restive between them.)
But more than a week ago, they fought again. And oh my God, I could be wrong, but this fight was as loud, as vicious, as violent as could be without someone raising a hand to the other. I had heard them yelling for so long and for so often that I had become kind of numb to the screaming. But there were times when I got scared that something was going to happen, like one of them was going to do something bad to the other, then come upstairs and do something bad to us. And Tuesday, at the age of 40, I got that feeling again.
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That Tuesday I said I wasn't going to come home to eat dinner. This was a day where *a*** was having a party and I was going to force myself inside her mouth to the point where she would have to swallow my cum. (Yeah, I'm burying the lede.)
I was going to type up a letter for Mother at the library the afternoon before *a***'s party, but I forgot it leaving in the morning heading off to "work," so I went back home so I could type it that night. When I came home their minivan was gone and the door was open -- weird combination. I went downstairs because I heard their TV on. It was Father. I figured Mother went out to do something while he stayed home, which happened a lot. I just told him I had to grab some stuff and then leave again. He told me to shut the door.
A couple hours later, after I got that letter done, I saw Mother upstairs knitting. I've seen her knit this late in the evening sometimes, but oftentimes it's because she wanted to be away from Father. She was being a bitch that night. First she got on me for not telling her I was going to Target, and then she accused me of leaving something out of the letter. She said none of the sort and was being sort of scatterbrained, again. But I got away from her and hid in my bedroom.
I thought nothing of her strange behavior because she is sometimes strange. However, a little later Father came upstairs, presumably to get something from the kitchen. Almost as soon as I could hear his steps, Mother started assaulting him with words. To this day I am angered that I don't understand Chinese; I didn't understand what the hell she was ranting about in the bathroom when I was young, and I don't know what she was screaming to him about that night. What I did not hear, by the way, was Father's voice. He got what he wanted or got so sick of the screaming that he decided to not get what he went upstairs for. But Mother's loud words followed him down the stairs until we could no longer hear his footsteps.
Unbeknownst to me, that was only Round 1. Round 2 began when Father finally summoned up the courage or the words to come back at Mother. From the foyer he came and started yelling upstairs back at Mother, loudly and a lot. I don't remember if Mother yelled back, but she certainly did for a raucous and attention-grabbing Round 3 when she decided to go downstairs and confront him.
I swear, Mother was as loud as she has ever been in my life, and possibly louder. She was yelling at the top of her voice, so even though they were in the basement, she was able to penetrate the floor so I could hear quite clearly. Again, though, she was speaking in Chinese, so the only words I could make out were something like, "You wake up at 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock and I don't complain!" I don't remember too many words beyond that, but I noticed something I don't remember from my childhood: She was so emotional when speaking that she started to break down. Mother probably was in tears when she really began to lay into Father.
This is what I think is happening/happened. Although they no longer have The Store, they do have real estate interests in town. Things aren't going as well as it could be. It's Mother who seems to have the hand on the tiller on this; after all, she is the one who asked me to type this letter at the library. In the meantime, I don't really recall Father doing anything for the properties they own in the area.
Adding that observation with the fact that he nowadays just lays about around the house while occasionally judging me for what I do and do not do, I am guessing that Mother had it up to here with Father's behavior (or lack thereof) and words. So, she let her have it.
Father ... well, he either gave up, gave in, parried her meltdown or totally got the upper hand on this argument. He pulls this garbage a lot: He says something really insulting (he always has a way to push my buttons, that fucking asshole), I (or Mother) go off and start yelling at him while defending myself/herself, and finally, in a quiet tone that makes him sound like he is the calm voice of reason and the better man, says something to the effect of, "Forget it, it doesn't matter" -- which is genius, because it both takes back control of the relationship and completely minimizes all the issues we raise. Goddamn, he's so fucking manipulative.
That's what I imagine the overall gist of his side of the conversation was. Again, the entire conversation was in Chinese, and I understand even less of his side of the story. What I do know is, even though she was screaming so much that it appeared as though she would never forgive him for whatever problem she had with him, Mother quieted down. Finally, they went to bed, together.
They always went to bed together.
By the way, this whole time I was stunned by all the yelling that all I could do was scroll through my Twitter timeline.
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Things progressed/snowballed/collapsed after that. At the tail end of dinner the next night, Mother told me to take Father to the airport. That evening. Huh? (On the way there, of course he got on my fucking case about finding a better job. That's why I'm not going to get that quote for you on moving the piano to the niece!)
After I got home I checked their e-mail. He did not, in fact, buy a ticket that day after that fight; he bought it Tuesday afternoon, just before the argument. So the ticket was the cause of the fight? Huh??
And then the following day or the day after (it was last week, I forget) Mother, for the first time ever, volunteered information about a fight that they had. According to her, they argued over this lawsuit regarding one of the properties they own. She wanted to fight; he ... didn't want to deal with it, she said. Mother wanted Father to work his network around town for a lawyer who could help fight this in court. Finally, Father got sick of all of her haranguing and said Tuesday afternoon that he was leaving the next day for Las Vegas. After a few hours of letting this move marinate, Mother started screaming at him that night ... or, she was continuing the screaming she began that afternoon.
This lawsuit is really weighing on Mother, and it can seriously damage my parents' income. So, my parents are fighting again, just over a different trigger/source. You know, I figured that a healthy relationship wouldn't break down to screaming matches, no matter how hard the situation or the times. That has never happened with this family. And this is why this family is permanently marked by disappointment and hate.
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Three other things.
First, in this conversation I had with Mother about the fight, she revealed something interesting about My Father's airplane ticket: He made her book the flight for him. What? If you didn't want him to leave, why help him leave? I pair this with her finally stopping her yelling and going to bed with him and thinking that she is nothing more than a little bitch. She can scream as much as she wants; at the end of the day, not only is she not getting her way, but she's also going to help you get your way. How was I so afraid of her for so long when she's just a paper tiger ... and a submissive paper tiger at that?
(By the way, she's gotten much more needy since My Fucking Father left. She has continually asked me what does this e-mail mean, can you go to my laptop to find this, when are you going to the library so you can print this out, etc. Did Father get sick of this same crap? Is that the reason why he left?)
The second is something related, and something she also revealed during this dinner. She felt like she didn't have any support from Father when it came to this lawsuit. With him gone (with her help), I think she was implying that it is now up to me to help her with that. So not only am I now helping her with her real estate affairs, I'm supposed to provide emotional support as well. I'm still thinking, Fuck no, I didn't sign up for this shit. But when she confessed this, I saw my feelings of abandonment in her words. Did I get my loneliness from her? If so, maybe I'm kind of, well, fated to stick by her, two lonely souls clinging to one another as we propel ourselves downward into the darkness.
Finally, I heard the damndest thing after coming home late from my trip back out to the mall after forgetting Wednesday night: Father was on speakerphone with Mother. All that goddamn fighting, and now he's talking to her again, like fucking lovebirds?!?!?!
I don't get it. This love thing is totally fucked up.
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