["How typical my beliefs and behaviors are of those who've grown up in alcoholic homes! The literature says that children of alcoholics don't know what normal is, that we are obsessive approval seekers whose identity is lost in the process, that we will go to any extreme to hold onto a relationship in order to avoid the pain of abandonment— even though we are masters at seeking relationships with those who will abandon us— that our loyalty to others is unparalleled.
What is normal for me is to feel responsible for everything that happens; it is my fault if things go wrong, if I am treated poorly, if I am lied to, abused. I know how to take responsibility. I do not know how to turn the hurt around, to set limits on how I allow myself to be treated, to say "no," to leave.
I have been masked for most of my life. The point was to look good, not what was going on inside. I learned early not to talk about what lay beneath the surface. I learned early not to know. Like others who as children had suffered the emotional abuse of broken promises and lies— lies that disguised the essence of reality and the context of our lives— I had thoroughly integrated the three cardinal rules of alcoholic homes: don't talk, don't trust, don't feel.
The lie masks personal shame. I look at my lovers and see how our lies mask our hatred of who we are.... The lover of mine who turned all of her lesbian books with the titles facing the wall, so that no one would know who she really was... The lover who displayed all the right feminist and lesbian books to impress her more activist sisters... The lovers who so hated themselves, their own identities, that they could not face the truths about themselves that loving another woman revealed.
And how does this self-loathing project onto one's women lovers, onto other lesbians? How close is the anger, the violence, the rage to the surface of these veiled images we use to hide who we are? How much does our own denial and self-abuse hurt the women we love?"]
