What happens when...

What happens when your dad is known as the "town drunk" in a town full of drunks? It's an interesting question to ponder, isn't it?

Then, just for fun; what happens if your mom is mentally ill and everyone expects you to be a "good girl" and not "stress out" said mother...because she's already got that drunken husband to worry about.

And then, your older sister is a psychotic drug abuser who sometimes tries to do you great bodily harm...what then?

The answer would probably be a little different for everyone. Here is my answer...

From an early age I was taught to keep secrets. Between my family, and all of the weirdos I've encountered in my life, I'm just overflowing with secrets; some mine, some not. And I'm so over-full, that everything else just spills over. I say things I probably shouldn't, and I don't mean to say, but I can't even keep a lid on my not-so-nice secret opinions of people and things. I make an ass of myself, I hurt feelings, and I really don't mean to.

The world isn't a safe place, and no one can keep me safe, not even me. We've talked about safety before...there's no such thing as absence of risk...but I have a pathological belief that I am not safe. New experiences terrify me to the point of inaction. Certain social situations petrify me. I've avoided doing so many things that I really wanted to do because stupid little things terrify me. Logically I know that it's...illogical, but the terror overrides anything that I know in my Right Mind.

I believe that everyone thinks less of me. I'm always the trashiest of the trash. The dumbest of the dumb. I can never be the smart one, the cool one, the best one. No matter how hard I work. I will always be the outsider.

...And I hate to be around alcohol...I use my own alcoholism as the excuse, but the truth is that it is just as much, or probably more because of my dad. When I was about 4 my mom asked me if my dad was drunk. I couldn't answer because I didn't know what he was like sober...so it was kind of a dumb question for her to ask. He was never not drunk...just lesser degrees of drunk. He went to bed drunk, and woke up drunk. That was all I knew. And I can smell booze on someone a mile away...and I just don't like it. It doesn't make me think of good times and parties, it makes me think of hours stuck in the bar with dad on a "parts run" to town, of the nasty stench of weeks-old BO and booze that wafted off my dad, and permanently was embedded in the interior of the pickup...and of the many, many scary rides home not knowing if we were going in the ditch, and not knowing if this time when he ran off the road he was going to roll the truck or just take out the neighbors fence, or how far we were going to have to walk home in the dead of night in the middle of the 30 degree winter night. And does that smell of alcohol mean that that person is going to mean, flat, creepy, psycho?

And all of this means that as much as I love people, I kind of hate being around them. My guts are always in a knot wondering if I will say or do the wrong thing, or if they are going to do something to harm me...and if they do hurt me, surely it'll be my fault anyway.