Damned if you do!

                   

I went to a funeral yesterday, I nearly didn't go, in fact it got down to the last minute and Gez tossing a coin for me! Heads I went tails, I didn't = I lost!

No "biggy" going to a funeral you would think, she was my father's youngest sister, had a full life and was 90. I hadn't seen her for years but always had nice memories of her and that side of the family.

My Dad's side of the family the "Paines" were actually all very nice people, very kind always and all of them had nice kids and grandkids etc. 
Problem for me is, they are VERY catholic! Not in the same bigoted manner of my mother's family, in fact very much the opposite, genuine and  simple, if not somewhat  naive. Walking their walk, while my mother talked a good talk!

And they don't know about me!

They do not, as far as I am aware, have any knowledge of my abuses, or the role I have played in trying to bring their dreadful church down!
They live a long way from me, we tend only to meet up at funerals, and that has been my doing really. I have always felt it was better to be thought badly of than be exposed.

 They could have seen me on the television I suppose, but I do really think they are the sort of people who simply would not watch that stuff, and might even have turned it off if the subject came up at all. My surname  wouldn't automatically have registered.

This  has  always been my  dilemma, and ultimately my dreadful burden, this terrible secret I had to keep at all costs.

When my mother caught the abusive priest and did nothing, although I never trusted her again, and my life spiralled out of control, I still had a strange desire to protect  her secret too! 
When  trying to talk to a cousin once, I lied and said my Mum didn't know, because I knew it would have hurt her!!  

There always seemed to be someone who's  hurt would be far greater than mine if I told than if I kept it all inside. This is surely one of the things that wretched church relies upon, they fuel our guilt from birth, and being abused compounds that guilt, so we are always ready to "take the hit"

That isn't a quality, I take no credit for this, in fact  it has been a curse, and even yesterday, sitting with all of the "Paine family" I felt I had to be someone I wasn't, because to show them my damage would have caused so many problems for them. Opened up a can of worms, and not helped anyone.

It has always been a very painful  impasse, damned if you do- damned if you don't.

Which is why I have chosen to just have an arms length relationship with everyone, despite in many ways wishing it could be different.
I have often talked about feeling like an alien in the world I so badly wanted to belong in, and once again that was the raw reality.

The other problem of course was the requiem mass!( I avoid churches like the plague!)  Having to sit in the church for over an hour, being triggered right left and centre by the familiar hymns, and the rituals, and worse than that , it was in the church where my parents were married, where I was baptised, and where I married to my first very unpleasant and violent husband! 

The churchyard is full of reminders, Grandparents graves, a stained glass window to an uncle who died in the war, the dreaded confession box where the grooming still goes on.
The arrogant, didactic, priest spouting lies and more lies, to these very nice people who hung on his every word.Obsequiously grovelling his thanks as they gave him "offerings" at the end. It was hideous!

I met a  distant "cousin" who I had never met because after my father died, my mother wouldn't have anything to do with her mother because she had married a non-catholic vicar! 
The cousin was very nice, and so pleased to chat, telling me all about her happy childhood with her vicar father and she asked me if I had a happy life? What do you say to that sort of question? Well I did what I always do, laughed  and said "It certainly has had it's moments!"

We all left swearing that we would keep in touch more, but of course that is not going to happen.

It left me feeling sad and tired and a bit more battered, but over all I am glad I went.
The church is just bricks and mortar, the priest a twat, the words I know to be nonsense, but  I felt I had gone to honour my father who died when I was twelve, and his family who have never hurt me.

And among my Aunt's photographs they had found a really old photograph of my Dad,
Lewis,  in his early flying days aged about 30. I had never seen it before, so it had all been worth it just for that!

I cannot help feeling that had he lived, my life and that of my own family would have been very much different. I have never missed him so much.