Storytime- A Clever Segue
The Amishish-es were really great storytellers and they told stories together. It wasn’t his stories, or her stories, they were their stories, each highlighting different perspectives, each giving embarrassing subtext that might have been glossed over by the other. She was allowed to embarrass him much more than he was allowed to embarrass her.
It’s something my autism notices.
Everyone is usually good natured about chiding to begin with, but quickly within a group one person will be expected to take more of the embarrassing corrections in “good humor,” and someone else will start to give warning signs that they are not as humored by the additions.
He was really adorable about it all. He had a gentle self-effacing nature. Those moments gave him an opportunity to be vulnerable with me, which he clearly craved. Those moments made me feel invited into the world they shared.
They were both terribly witty, and they laughed readily. They weren’t busy hating anybody, just wanting to be left to do things their way. At least that’s how I interpreted it at the time.
An Old Love
They talked about a woman they had been very close to, who they had both really fallen for. She was best friends with Mrs. Amishish, and the Mr. was head-over-heals for her.
They maintained a friendship with her for years, with her always saying how much she wanted to be with them, and how much guilt and self-loathing she carried as a result.
She was sure she would go to hell if she gave in. No matter how much she had wanted to, there was always that.
She married someone else, and had kids. They still shared an occasional phone call, all having to pretend that this deeply intimate history didn’t exist between them.
Lucky for me, I was bound for hell from the age of 5, so I didn’t really feel any of that inhibition. Woohoo!
It really sounded like she was never really happy, but needed the conformity more than she needed to be happy. There was a deep sense of grief to it all. I was sad for them.
The Mrs. seemed genuine. She seemed legitimately sad that the friend hadn’t joined their marriage, and had spent years not only watching him yearn for her, but also just missing her friend, and the closeness they shared.
I did notice that there was a tinge of something when they mentioned the friend’s kids. Her eyes sharpened just a bit. There was anger under there. Regret was seeping through this microexpression. There was something unspoken underneath that.
They also talked about the Mrs.’ grown up daughter, who she had before she married the Mr.
Even the Old Witch talked about how incredible the relationship had been between the Mrs. and her daughter when she was growing up. They had open communication and their home was free of judgement. (How on earth had I been so lucky as to find such people?)
Through the daughter’s teenage years there were all sorts of shenanigans that all ended up being harmless anecdotes of the past, because the real danger was always mitigated by their closeness.
I wanted that in my life so badly.
I wanted to live openly, without secrets, without hiding, without hating myself. I wanted to share my raw vulnerable self with others, and I understood that I wasn’t going to be for everyone. That didn’t matter, because I had at least found someone to be vulnerable with. I didn’t need more.
The grown up daughter came to visit once, and it was almost forcefully apparent that there was a lot more to the story. The atmosphere was tangibly tense between them. The daughter, (can we call her LaDaughter? She’s going to come up again later), was kind to me. She made great conversation and was very easy to get along with.
I sensed that between her and the Mr. a very specific tension. There’s a very specific vibe that comes with a shared history of betrayal. I didn’t know what happened, but I could sense very clearly, that LaDaughter had been betrayed by her mother, and that he enabled it. It was obvious that he still felt guilty, she still felt betrayed by him, and the Mrs. carried a sense of righteous indignation.
(Well, of course it was a red flag, but I was looking for the best in everyone. I was not looking to get into everyone’s business, and I figured that everyone had complicated pasts. I certainly didn’t want to be judged for mine, and I knew I didn’t know enough details to be judging anybody for it.
Besides, if I did want out, where would I go? Without anywhere else to go it set the stage for me to overlook a lot of red flags, believing the absolute best in people.)
This power dynamic felt unfortunately familiar. I could see all of the things controlling their behavior that they weren’t speaking out loud. I could feel the power of their silences, and the pain that came from carrying this betrayal for years.
I mostly just tried to keep from being hit by the energy being levied in every look, every grunt, every swallow or shift of weight. Every sound and motion in that exchanged was charged with this unspoken meaning.
Before LaDaughter left, she assured me that she thought I was cool, and she didn’t have beef with me. I thought that was pretty awesome. It would have been so easy to just walk in and take things out on me, especially with how charged all of those feelings were.
She was picking up some of her stuff. She hadn’t come to fight. She hadn’t come to hurt anybody. She did come to stand her ground, and hold someone accountable who was refusing that accountability. She was fierce.
(I didn’t realize it at the time, but later trips to my mom’s for various reasons would have this exact feel. I wish I had evolved to this point by my first trip back to my mom’s to get some of my things. The difference though was that I bawled and begged and pleaded for her to accept and love me. I tried to not show how hurt I was that all of my faces had been covered or cut out in the family pictures that lined my mom’s walls. I wept openly as my sisters repeated the SCRIPTs they’d been told.
I had steeled my resolve enough to leave, but not to stop desperately wanting my mom. It had already been years since I had a safe place to take my struggles. I still felt like I needed it. That hurt so much.
In many ways I’m grateful, because seeing that resolve in someone else helped me find it in myself. )
It also made it clear that the “butterflies and sunshine” arrangement I had agreed to wasn’t exactly what was going on, and that nobody felt like I had a right to that information.
Survivor Literacy 
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