The heart of a rat is a lonely one

I guess I should update this thing, before my life passes by undocumented (and what a damn terrible thing to happen that would be), this entry however isn\'t going to be all jokes and nonsense. This is about the \'bombshell\' I mentioned on Saturday.

Long story short, my Mum has found out my Dad has been cheating, and she\'s chucked him out, for good this time.

Now for a piece of family history that most other than people like Meech that I\'ve known since the dawn of time know much, if anything, about. It could be fair to say there have been two major events in my life that have carved certain negative aspects of my personality, certain quirks I guess, and I\'ll probably carry the weight of these two events for the rest of my life. They have affected me more than anything else in my life, even the torment Fuckwit put me though is absolutely nothing compared to the detrimental effect these events had on me, regardless of what many may assume. Both happened at the same time, when I was much younger, in a far more innocent time, around 15 years ago.

I was around the same age as my sister (who is 12), possibly a few months younger, but close enough. I was the son of your typical nuclear family, the whole married-with-two-kids-and-a-pet-cat thing. Perfectly normal, until one night it was suddenly and heartbreakingly ripped apart, as my Dad had been cheating on my Mum. This was a seriously hellish time for anyone, and definately not an experience you\'d wish on any kid. It was crazy, and it definately wasn\'t pleasant to experience some of the events as a result of this, that still stick with me to this day. Thinking about it, my absurdly relentless devotion to monogomy is probably a result of these days. My unquenchable desire for escapism, which to this day keeps me sitting up to stupid hours of the morning playing videogames, for example, is probably a result of all this too. Let\'s just say, my Dad was not a very nice man indeed.

Several months later, just after I started high school, things got even worse. My younger sister Lorraine (who was nine) died after, believe it or not, falling from a swing, in the park that was just behind the house we lived in at the time. Now, this is sort of besides-the-point and I should probably write about it elsewhere because I won\'t do the subject justice here, but apart from losing a sister, I\'ve carried a lot of guilt around with me for many years since then... even though I was only 12 years old, I can\'t help but blame myself. What happened was my Mum had to work, and didn\'t finish till 5, I obviously was the older kid and I was actually quite good with responsibility back then (in stark contrast to now, where I suck with it), so I came home from school and was in charge of my younger sister for the hour or so till my Mum came home. This one day, I was supposed to go to the video shop to get a tape that was to amuse us till she got home. Being a lazy little fuck, I asked my sister to go instead. The video shop was only a couple of streets away, and we lived in a good neighbourhood where everyone knew us, so it seemed perfectly normal at the time. On the way round, she stopped at the park which was between our house and the video shop, and that\'s where disaster struck. It\'s absurd that back then all the parks were built on concrete, though in that area that soon changed, as my sister was killed making contact with that concrete after falling. A fall that wouldn\'t have happened, had I gone to the damn shop myself like I was supposed to.

Now, I don\'t want to get into how that\'s affected me, I\'m merely writing about it to add weight to the destruction my parent\'s relationship caused. At the time, my Dad was in Spain with his girlfriend, which is why he wasn\'t going to the video shop for us, which also is why two pre-teen kids were in the house looking after themselves. My Mum had to work after all, though perhaps there should have been someone older in to look after us... though we were close to the neighbours, who would check in now and again. Anyway, the family sort of came together to get through this new tragedy, but only for a short while. It wasn\'t long before my Dad was being a right bastard again, and it\'s this period that upset me more than most, given that I still had all that grief and guilt to deal with. Some of the lowest points in my childhood came in the times when my Mum had broken down and ended up in hospital, and in many ways I\'m thankful for the fact that she didn\'t end up dead, too... especially with me being looked after in her absense by a man I had started to hate.

Then... a peculiar thing happened. My parents got back together. I can still remember to this day the exact conversation my Mum had with me to get my approval, because she said one word from me and he wouldn\'t be allowed back, which is kinda funny. Being as I was then your typical young teenager with an attitude problem, \'whatever\' was my opinion. They got back together, and made plans to have another child, which is when my sister Victoria was born. She obviously came along after all this happened, and although she\'s been quite aware of some of the things our family went through (in particular the fact that she had an older sister she\'ll never meet), it was once again like being part of the perfect nuclear family, with me being your typical fucked-up drop out teenager and everything. I grew up, my parents grew old, and my sister grew to be the age I was when all this happened. I\'ll have to say, I don\'t think I ever did have a proper relationship with my Dad ever again after this happened... it\'s always been strained, in particular when I was a teenager, less so as an adult, because although all this was long since forgiven and forgotten, it still stuck in the back of my mind now and again. Still, looking at them, even recently, it was the image of a perfect family.

Now, all of a sudden, my Dad has been caught cheating again. My Mum told me a few days ago, but I\'m still not sure how I feel about it. She\'s thrown him out, and she\'s determined he\'s never getting back. Although upset, she actually seems much stronger than before... she says it\'s not so bad this time because she knows herself what\'s important, and that she\'s much older and wiser now (she\'s 50 this year). I guess if it was just me, I wouldn\'t be particularly bothered, apart from the fact this is opening a whole lot of old wounds and bringing back a lot of bad memories for me. However, it\'s not just me... I have a 12-year old sister, who worshipped the man.

I am obviously fiercely protective of Victoria. She\'s a great kid, and I\'d do anything to make sure she\'s happy. Anyone hurting her would send me into a blind angry rage. Lo and behold... I (probably quite stupidly) didn\'t expect my Dad to be that person. What the fuck was he thinking? I think back to the troubled times I went through, and it really distresses me to think what my poor sister must be going through. It\'s bad enough that my Mum has to go through it all over again, especially after the awful year she had last year... but my sister, who almost looked like being the first of my parent\'s children to have a tragedy-free childhood, man that\'s not on. So I\'m angry, very angry. I\'m also hugely disappointed... the past 14 years or so, what a farce. Here\'s me going out of my way to stand up for the man where it comes to things like his trouble with work and all that, and now I\'m left with nothing but disappointment in the man. I have no desire to speak to him, and it\'s probably best I don\'t... see, I\'m not a boy any more, very fucking far from it. I\'m also feeling quite sad... sad that all this stuff from the past has been brough up again, sad that my Mum and sister have to go through all the hurt, sad that I thought he was a man I could actually look up to... he had everything I aspire to have, and he threw it all away, and for what? A cheap shag. I hope the fact that I can see how completely absurd that is means it\'ll never be a case of \'like father, like son\'... I couldn\'t think of anything worse than throwing away my family, my home, my entire life, just for a cheap thrill. Sorry folks, sex might be great, but there\'s some things that are just way more important. I\'d give up sex for the rest of my life just for the chance to change all this so my poor sister doesn\'t have to go through what I went through.

I\'ll probably write more about this at some point later, I\'m planning to go see my Mum tomorrow and stuff, but there you have it. That\'s my sordid tale, and that\'s why I\'m telling it.