Watching 'Unprisoned,'

After getting sucked into the glossy fiction of 'The Diplomat,' I needed something a bit more grounded whilst I worked through the bathroom demo. So, I decided to give 'Unprisoned' a whirl because I'm not even going to pretend I've been managing my brother's current incarnation. Quite the opposite. 

I think Paige and Edwin and  about my relationship with my dad (and my brother. Paige's impersonation of the call recording - 'This call is from a federal prison...' had me in stitches). I think about all the times we would drive 15 hours to stay 2 or 3, how uncomfortable my dad would get.  I navigated the tricky waters of a relationship with Betty Lou for years. I wrote, called, visited, did all of the things I was supposed to do, half for

myself but half because hurt me that my father couldn't actually be a son with his mother.  I initiially felt guilty that she didn't have more grandkids to fawn over. Then one day it clocked that she was stuck at the inner child age of 11, when her mother had died, just as my dad was the inner age of 9.  In fact, by the time he died, he was almost the size of that nine-year-old and his behaviour had certainly regressed to that point in time.  

Betty Lou was young when she birthed my father, sure: 19. Her own mother had died, I think in child birth, if not just after.  My father was her first child, my uncle Bobby the second. By the time the bullwhip appeared and left it's welts along my dad's back...well, there were at least 2 others and another on the way.  By 1964, Daniel was dead as his body found in a dumpster outside a motel on Waynesville, VA. There were a total of 8 children to try and care for and the relationship between her John Daniel was...volatile is probably being too kind. We'd call him a narcissist today: charming and enthralling one minute, sadistic the next.  And even though Betty Louise came from a large family, she had become an island into herself early.  Already feeling alone and isolated, she was a gazelle with a broken leg, an easy mark for the likes of the man the papers would call Foxy Dan. 

The cattle rancher's daughters: Eualalie, Laura Mae, Mary Alice, Betty Louise, Lola, Sarah. There were sons, too, but it's the women I am drawn to at this juncture of my life, having spent so much of my life concerned with men and what men think/feel/expect of me, for me. I see how much of my time has spent being an echo, a refection, an afterthought, even to myself. 

But as Paige says in the visit to Alabama, it stops here. It has to, this passing down of inherited traumas. I mean, surely we should be allowed to revel in our own without carrying the legacies of others to an extreme that it modifies our DNA. 

This isn't to say that genetic heredity isn't important or relevant; on the contrary. Having spent much of my life eye-rolling genealogy fans, I have had to recognise that was because my own parent guide could not regulate her enthusiasm. It begs the question, what if my mama was also autistic as well as being ADHD, just so good at masking. But we're not here to discuss Peggy. 

One afternoon, James Elmo (my great-grandfather) stopped by the house. He walked up to my grandfather beating my dad with a bullwhip. Jim was 9. His grandfather took him to the Homestead (that's what the called the the main house) and Daddy never went back to the green house to live.  3 years later, his biological father was dead and my dad was given the option of being adopted. The rest of the siblings, well...and now there were more...at least 3 more, they were adopted out. 

I hadn't realised the impact of absence on my father until his mother died. His reaction...well, it had the frank matter-of-factness of a child, specifically a 9 year old child. 6 months later, speaking to him as he died, I knew he was closer to 3. 'I love you, Daddy. I wouldn't change any of it. I'm so sorry I can't be there to hold your hand but I also know you need to take this walk alone.' It was like tucking a child in checking under the bed for a specific kind of monster. 

It's funny, the patterns we chose consciously or unconsciously to repeat. When I look back over the times I've allowed myself to fall in love, it has almost always been with individuals who would not be around 100 or even 75% of the time. Usually men, but not always. When I talk about these times, I am of course referring to living people. I mean, I fall in love with the dead and fictional every day. And I think these are al deliberate.  It's how I was conditioned, by parents, by the US Army. It makes a certain kind of sense but also explains why staying is so difficult.