I am Marilyn Munster

The thing I whisper to myself all night - "Everything's okay. Don't be afraid."

I don't even realize I'm doing it anymore, I just do it. It doesn't help much. It's windy here tonight. I don't like all the rustling and the noises. The wind whispers and howls. It moves the palm fronds and their giant shadows sway on the road in the light from the streetlamps. I can also hear the slithering and the footsteps of the wildlife as they mash the dry grass on the side of the property. I don't like it.

Could it be that these things are not really what I am afraid of? Could it be? I can't believe myself, you know. It's just so hard to believe. I spoke with my therapist today about something I once dared to believe. I was somewhere between 11 and 13 years old. I found a photo of a boy in my parents' bedroom. I was very, very drawn to the boy. I 'knew', I felt, that he was important to me. He felt like... brother. I took the photo downstairs and asked my parents about it. My mother was the one who answered. She said it was just a photo. No one, really. Not important. "Not true," said the feelings inside. I asked again, desperate. "Who is he?" Then my father, much to my mother's dismay, sighed and stepped forward. He told me that he had been married before and that the boy in the photo, and also another boy, were his sons. Brother! He said that I knew the boys and played and visited with them when I was little. I didn't remember. I didn't remember, but what I 'knew' turned out to be true.

That was a bit easier than this. I didn't have any memories that would have hindered my ability to believe that those boys were my brothers. This is different. Not everything my father did was evil. I have memories that I know to be real of my father being kind, caring for me when I was sick, coming to my rescue when I got myself in a jam. I remember him rocking me and my cat in his rocking chair. I remember the sound of his heartbeat and his breathing. I remember the squeak of the rocker. I felt loved. This is very difficult. How could my father who loved me and sometimes had the ability to be very kind... How could he also have done such a terrible thing to me? How can this be? It does not compute. It fries my fucking brain. I feel like I need more proof that my intuition is good before I can really believe some fuzzy memories that come for me in the night.

I have a plan. I need a DNA sample from a specific family member. I don't think she is my aunt, I think she is my sister. I have had this obsession before, but I didn't tell anyone because it sounds too nutty. A couple of years ago, she started thinking the same thing. She did tell people, though. I was afraid to say anything and the others convinced her that she's nuts. I don't believe that my grandmother was pregnant at the same time as her seventeen year-old daughter (my mother). I don't believe my mother gave up the child to strangers and my grandmother gave birth around the same time and came home from the hospital with my 'aunt'. I don't believe that when I was five and my family moved to Texas, my parents unsuccessfully approached my grandmother about allowing my 'aunt' to come along and live with us. No. I believe it very well may have been a sister who was left behind. And I think she was better off for it, too. I believe I am going to ask Aunt P if she would like to have genetic testing and compare our DNA to see if we share a mother. You know what else? If she really is my sister, I'm not so sure that my mother is aware of this. I think the pathological apple just may not have fallen far enough from the grandmother tree is all. I could be wrong about the whole thing. Maybe I will get to find out. Or not.

You know what else I don't believe? I don't believe my mother forced me to sleep with painful hair curlers on my head until I was six just because 'she always dreamed that she would have a beautiful little girl who would have curly hair just like Shirley Temple'. No. I believe she did it because she always dreamed she would have a little girl with curly hair just like Aunt P. How bitterly disappointed my mother must have been with my thin, straight hair. How distraught to find she had given birth to an imposter child who could not replace the other one. Well, guess what, Mother? *I* was not the problem in that scenario. It was you and your own manipulative mother who were the problems. I was just a little girl. Yes, I was the little girl you could not love. And now you are the mother that I cannot love. How fucking sad it is to realize that when I am not living in a horror novel, I'm living in Shakesperean tragedy. How very fucking sad.