It wasn’t until that moment when my mother expressed to me how she felt about our childhood that I fully began to gain other perspectives on Ophelias’ attempted suicides. I know this sounds horrible, but at some point I stopped thinking about how it must have felt to watch your daughter attempt to kill herself a plethora of times. This was a strange realization for me considering I generally try to put myself in someone else’s shoes when they choose to react poorly to a situation. It dawned on me that I'd been giving strangers an automatic kindness that I hadn't extended to my own flesh and blood.

Up until now it was easy to see things from my child-like perspective. How could I have reached out to my parents for their healthy attention and been shut down so abruptly? Why did Ophelia got all of the attention whether it was good or bad? How could my parents not see they had two daughters and not just one? I'd played these questions like a broken record in my head for the past 15 years and now that I was of the age to contemplate having children of my own it all started to make a lot more sense.

This whole time I'd been so angry with Genevieve that I'd justified my feeling by pointing out what I felt was bad parenting. However, looking back on her life she only did what she'd been taught. Genevieve was born in 1954 to a woman who thought she was going through menopause and and had put on a slight amount of weight recently. Genevieve's mother went to the doctor only to discover via x-ray that she was pregnant. Suffice it to say that our mother wasn't a part of our grandparents plan. Her older sister was 13 years old when she was born. Her older sister then married at the age 18. Keep in mind that means our mother would've been 5 years old when her older sister left home and was raised primarily raised as an only child.

Still Genevive grew up hearing about how amazing her older sister was in every way, shape, and form because her older sister was nothing like her. Her older sister, Pauline, was tall, blonde haired, and blue eyed with alabaster skin. She had the boys chasing after her and from what our mom heard good grades too. Genevieve on the other hand had more of her fathers’ Italian genetics, including dark olive toned skin, dark brown-black hair, and deep soulful almond colored eyes. She wasn't tall and lean but short and stocky, she even jokes today that she looks a little bit like Danny Devito. The poor girl also had to wear a back brace because she suffered and still suffers from Scoliosis. Life probably felt a little rocky for her.

Additionally, Genevieve, much like her daughters after her, wasn't exactly popular. In fact, she was a bit of a clumsy nerd, and her children would follow the same course. I'll give you a few examples. Genevieve grew up in a time where young women were only allowed to wear skirts; pants weren't a thing for women yet. So you can probably imagine how hard it was to use the restroom and make sure your back brace wasn’t caught on your skirt, allowing God and country to see your underwear. Yeah, that totally happened to her when she was in junior high but she lived through it. Genevieve also loved to read and even made a library complete with the Dewey decimal system so she could let people check out her books. Needless to say, Genevieve needed to have a strong personality to offset these quirky behaviors. Our mother has always been loud and boisterous, with a sharp tongue and even deadlier wit. Yet while these traits made her unique they also made her nothing like Pualine, who seemed to be the crowning jewel of their parents’ lives.

Another form of torture Genevieve endured was that Pauline was often forced to take her school clothes shopping. As you can imagine, as a heavy-set girl this is no fun whatsoever. First of all, nothing is made for short people, I'm calling it like it is. Especially not pants, so at best you might find some short sizes in the petite section but they won't be the least bit flattering. Secondly, women’s clothing sizes make absolutely no sense at all. Men are luckier than they know, at least their actual measurements are written on their clothing. Whereas women’s measurements are non-existent and the numbers assigned to a size are completely arbitrary because they don't transfer between differing brands of clothing. Thirdly, if you have breasts larger than a B cup shirts won’t fit you correctly because they didn’t account for the extra stretching of the fabric that you'll need. Lastly, if you're insecure about how you look in clothing as a women of any age, you'll find any and every flaw you ever thought existed on your body while trying on clothes. Since Genevieve falls into all of these cateogories, she obviously had a horrible time as Pauline, her bullemic older sister, would point out how fat she was the entire time. Then, I shit you not, after Genevie leaves the stores empty handed, feeling down and out about her looks, Pauline offers to get her Dairy Queen! Then Pauline throws a fit when Genevieve decides she probably shouldn't be eating ice cream.

A story that our mother used to regale us with was when she found Pauline's grades from high school in the attic. She was livid when she discovered that her older sister wasn't very booksmart at all! Pauline was nothing more than a C average student, while Genevieve on the other hand consistently made straight A’s. When Genevieve brought this up to her parents she began to analyze her sisters’ behavior only to find that she wasn't booksmart, she stole, drank, had sex early in life, and couldn’t get along with their father to save her soul. Obviously in the early 60s these were all rather unladlylike things to be, keep in mind this was a different time folks.

Genevieve would always talk about Pauline with a slight bit of jealousy. She'd tell us how her mother and father didn’t pay much attention to her but that they told her things like,“Don’t you dare give us any trouble.” A phrase that our mother consistently repeated to me throughout my childhood, as if Ophelia and I were cut from the same cloth so-to-speak.

It's unfortunate but Genevieve and I shared a very similar childhood, but shew as so wrapped up in her past that she couldn't see it playing out in her present. I was our mother’s last pregnancy. I also had a sister with an eating disorder that stole, drank, had sex, raised hell in our house, and was locked in an unbearable power struggle with my father. Yet there wasn't a thing that you could say to make her believe the sun didn't rise and set with Ophelia. Genevieve just couldn’t see that she was repeating the same mistakes that her parents had made with her. In fact, she said it best, "You just don't have the same bond you have with your first child. They're your first experience with being a parent."

Rowen on the other hand was raised in a house full of boys. Rowen's father, much like Genevieve's father, worked for the railroad and didn’t have time to be dealing with any errant fuck-ups. Rowen was one of four brothers: Derek the oldest, William the second oldest, and Roald the youngest. Unfortunately, his oldest brother Derek had been struck by a vehicle as a young child. The ambulance couldn't get through the throngs of people in the middle of the street in their tiny town, and so he was dead on arrival. As you can imagine, this did a number on Rowen's mother and father. Honestly, it shocks me that they stayed together for so long, but times were different then I suppose. This extenuating circumstance had made Rowen the middle child and I can't really comprehend how that must've felt. The oldest child and the youngest child likely steal the vast majority of attention while nothing you do really seems to matter at all.

It's easy to understand that our father felt rather out of sorts having two growing girls. Especially considering one of them was an insecure girly-girl while the other was a tomboy through and through. How could he talk to Ophelia about anything after she turned 13 years old? He didn’t know a damn thing about periods, boys or being sensitive. Rowen was a man hardened by working outdoors, with his hands, and years of unfortunate events that had crafted him into a tough as nails kind of person.

Do you remember the episode of Roseanne where Becky gets her period for the first time? Do you remember how Roseanne says something super sweet to her about how important it is and how she's a part of the natural cycle of things? Roseanne says that it’s a blessing in disguise, and that Becky's now a part of the moon and the tides, which is a very nice way of putting it. Our dad's way of responding to his young girls getting their period was by crassly stating that if you're “Old enough to bleed, you’re old enough to breed.” A statement that during a different time might've been appropriate, just made us feel disgusting, relegated to less than the opposite sex. Like our only purpose was to have children, or to be sexualized and tossed aside once we'd fulfilled our purpose.

Rowen was never the least bit delicate. I remember when I got my first period and he repeated this to me, I started to see my dad as a whole different person. It was so insulting a thing to say, like we were just whoring around and just out prowling for dick. It’s a weird thing that happens when you get your period, but you truly start to drift away from being your dad's little girl, or at least that’s how it was in our family. It was almost like we were pitted against each other from then on.

It isn’t like Ophelia or I could go to Rowen for boy troubles, because he didn’t want either of us dating or being remotely interested in the opposite sex, or the same sex for that matter. None of the sexes were allowed in our household, we'd remain celibate until death if Rowen had his way. Not only that, but when would he ever have real world experience with having a crush on a guy or dealing with the awkwardness of being rejected by a guy? That’s right. He wouldn’t. Instead his fatherly advice usually chalked up to,

“You know boys only have one thing on their mind. I know, I was a teenager once to you know.”

I remember not understanding his meaning at the ripe age of 10 or 11, so I asked what he meant. That was a huge mistake.

“Pussy, Roslyn! That’s all they want is to get in your pants. Don’t let them in your pants because then you’ll just be little sluts.”

Thanks for the advice, dad... I mean, while not entirely untrue of teenage boys, a little tact would've gone a long way.

Now I don't know that other kid’s fathers talked this way to them, but ours did, so it made it hard for him to be likeable or even relatable to other people’s parents.

In fact, to be terribly truthful, I feel that Rowen had a hand in Ophelia developing her eating disorder. I learned in our house that in man world you can say just about anything and not be held accountable for it. Men tend to say something inflammatory, fight about it for twelve whole seconds, and then move past it like nothing happened. Whereas if you insult a woman, she’s probably going to hold onto that information for all of eternity, brood on it, and then bring it up in an altercation later. It’s kind of like rationing your worst memories until they can be made useful to win an argument in the future and damn does it work wonders. Rowen's insult wasn’t necessarily an insult so much as an observation. He said it after Ophelia had tucked herself into the fetal position and performed a cannonball into the pool, which was located only a few hundred feet from our apartment,

“You’re looking kind of fat there, Ophelia. Maybe you need to stop eating so much.”

Our couldn’t see it but he was repeating the same mistakes that his parents had made with him.

From both of my parents’ perspectives it probably seemed as if they were doing everything right, but from Ophelias’ perspective it must've seemed obviously wrong. How could her father be so insensitive? How could he repeat the same horribly sexist, misogynistic, and prejudiced things that he'd been taught as a kid? How could our mother have married a man like this? How could our mother let our father talk to us like this? How could my mother be a total helicopter parent and never let her make her own mistakes? How could her little sister never leave her alone to have her own friends? Why is it that boys wanted to sleep with her but not date her? Why did she have to be someone completely different to make other people like her? Why couldn’t anyone just accept the person she really was? Why is it that nothing she ever did was good enough?

I can literally hear her brains thoughts churning away at the ripe age of 12. She'd never be pretty enough or thin enough. Or smart enough or be creative enough. She'd just never be enough. This self-doubt was never ending and I know exactly how that feels. My own internal voice of negative thoughts made me anorexic for a time, a type A personality, suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. The internal voice has also been so loud and hurtful that I've also often thought of how I could kill myself in a way that it might look like an accident, or cause the least amount of cleanup for a stranger. An obsessive and worrisome mind only breeds more obsession and worry over things that may not have an immediate or long term solution. The important thing to keep in mind, however, is that sometimes things take time to get better. Ophelia's inner voice just got so loud that she couldn't see the forest for the trees anymore.

Looking back, everyone was so complacent in their own perspective when Ophelia first developed her eating disorder, and later attempted suicide. No one tried to see the forest from up above or down below. A different perspective was impossible because we were all so damn self-centered. Genevieve had her own view of the parent-child relationship and in her role she was simply a best friend. Rowen had his own view of the parent-child relationship and his role was to be the totalitarian enforcer. Of course, I had my own view as just wanting to be a part of everyone else’s lives, to feel like I mattered to my family. I wanted Rowen to stay my go-to person forever because we could play sports, go hiking, and just be. I wanted Genevieve to feel the need to be my best friend, just the way she was trying to force Ophelia to be her best friend. I just wanted Ophelia to like me again. Everyone's priorities were all over the place and one ever voiced them out loud.

Unfortunately, Ophelia and I took these lessons of love with us from our family into our other relationships. I chose to put up walls and keep everyone out because in my mind no one ever really wanted in. My experiences had taught me that I wasn't loveable or valuable, and people were only placating me to get something they needed. I also grew to value people’s quality time over any other forms of affection that they could provide. Whereas Ophelia grew to need words of affirmation from those that she pursued relationships with because all she ever heard were the negatives. However, she makes up for her own inabilities to provide these same words of affirmation by sacrificing her own happiness for her partners; never making a decision, just letting other people tell her what to do or what she wants.

You see my parents always told us that there was no rulebook for parenting, usualy to defend their actions rather than to provide any sort of wisdom. But the truth is that there is a rulebook for parenting. Every one of us learned how to treat or spouse, neighbors, friends, and eventually our children from our parents. The rulebook was something we were bestowing unintentionally along the way. The thing is though, we could've been rewriting the book as we went. We could've listened to what the people around us needed, and written a chapter for each of those experiences. We could've been tailoring our style of parenting to each child because quite frankly, no two children are alike. We should let this be a lesson to all of us, that sometimes our actions are writing the rulebook that the next generation will follow. We need to be conciously aware of this and actively work to rewrite the rulebook.