The Contingency Plan

There's a confrontation I have to make that I've avoiding. Actually there are two.

As I've previously mentioned, my immediate family is healing from the mess of my parents' divorce two years ago. I won't go into too much detail, but when things blew up, we discovered my father had been cheating on my mother for 25 years with various women, including a number of her best friends. I was really close to both parents and they'd often confide in me so I found myself in the middle of their mess.

At the time Lucas and I were living nearby and I'd quit smoking for two years, but on the night that I was called in to help I went through a whole packet and didn't really stop until around February this year. That night dad lied to me and said he'd only had one affair and mum went crazy and trashed their brand new house. I was called over to settle things down and to mediate their arguements. Later, dad would go to bed to find knives in his pillows and I had to talk one of mum's 'old friends' who'd come from Tiawan from trying to cause him major harm.

The arguments continued for days and towards the end I got tired of mum acting self righteous when I knew she'd done things to deteriorated the relationship. So with this, I confirmed dad's suspicions and revealed, in front of mum, that she owned a 'massage parlour'. I betrayed her trust but was tired from the secrets, the arguments and was stressed and wanted desperately to show that both people were to blame for this mess and should both take responsibility.

Unfortunately this didn't eventuate and the rumours started. Dad was a womaniser (which he is) and mum was a prostitute (which she wasn't, although she owned a part of the industry). I was angry at dad for starting this rumour as my younger brother and sister shouldn't have suffered from it and I was tired of being in the middle.

After the initial shock, mum disappeared overseas. She never said goodbye to anyone, but we all knew she was in Tiawan with her family. She's very close to my Aunty. She stayed out of our lives for around a year and it was familiar territory as it wasn't the first time she'd left without any warning.

It's now been two years and things are still raw. My parents claimed to have moved on but they haven't. Dad's been dating a woman, who's only a few years older than me for over a year and mum's now dating a millionaire who's crazy about her and wants to marry her. Everyone but me has met dad's woman, but mum refuses to introduce any of us to Benny. She won't even tell us where he works in case we look him up.

So this pretty much brings us up to date. And I'm mad because my mother is upset that my sister didn't stand up for her in a recent argument she had with dad and says that Natasha obviously doesn't need a mother figure anymore. At first I listened, but now, perhaps like the past I'm mad and can't believe she can so easily walk away again.

And I'm mad because I had to change the date of my baby shower because Mum'll be away in the Barrier Reef with Benny and his daughter. At first I tired to overlook it, but it upsets me that she's prioritising time with someone's else daughter, someone I haven't even met.

And the situation stresses me. Sometimes I just want them to be there for me and not have to sift through all the shit.