Tegan: Chapter 3

Continued from Tegan Chapter 2: Discovery https://sylviawoodham.wixsite.com/home/post/tegan-chapter-2

Chapter 3: Inseparable. Silent Support.

To be fully immersed in the story of this Fuzzy Pup, it would be really beneficial to be able to experience the softness of her fur. When people were surprised, I would describe her as a plush toy that was real.

Something I never imagined in my wildest dreams was how easy it was for me to take her everywhere. We had dogs that got in the car to go to the mountains or the vet and we're not always the biggest fans. I had a special command for Tegan "Car," which was her signal to hop in. Sometimes she would try to hop in other people's cars.

She was absolutely attached to my hip when she was young after her experience as a rescue dog. However I drove stick shift. She would always want to put her chin to rest on my hand while to sat on top of the clutch. It was slightly problematic when I needed to shift gears quickly. However it was less of a problem than if she tried to come across the divide from the passenger seat to sit in my lap. I accepted that part of having a rough and tumble instead of prissy dog were the constant baths required. With all of the trips to the dog parks, I had a saying I went with a black dog and came home with a brown dog. If there was mud, she would find it and come home covered in it.

People keep saying "unconditional love," but I feel like any dog can give you that, and still might be an annoying dog. She was still fairly independent, and I encouraged this, but we did so much together. One time driving back to my parent's I went the back way to get to our land in the mountains, and the first time I took her there she was in heaven. "Crazy pup" showed up in a major way as she raced up and down the creek having the time of her life. I poured support and encouragement, instruction and guidance, into this pup how to reach her potential, and in return learned the extent of my own.. If I was supported instead of held back and punished.

It was comforting, after years of being attacked by everyone around me.

My brother and I were talking, but the relationship was strained. Through his circle of friends, my brother knew someone who had gone to university with Him, and he seemed to think that gave him some kind of entitlement to opinions about my love life. The problem was, it seemed to make him incredibly jealous. Our family clearly didn’t have the healthiest outlook on dating, something I was trying to change, both for myself and for my brother.

Even when my own life was a mess, I tried to help him:

1. In my twenties, after being sexually assaulted and afraid to be alone in a room with a man, I still tried to care about my brother’s interests inside our unhealthy family.

   My mother was obsessed with his doctor friend, and toxic about the women around him.

   I had lunch with my brother to feel out his feelings. There was a woman clearly into him who seemed much clingier than I was comfortable with, compared to a long-time friend of his who seemed more confident, and whom my mother was oddly protective of.

   My brother seemed more interested in the clingy woman, whose sister was going to Yale while I was studying Latin and literature there. I made an effort to befriend the sister when I ran into her on campus, trying to remove any obstacles for my brother.

   When they broke up, he refused to talk about it.

2. When I moved closer to home I tried to spend time with him giving him space to talk about it. He shared a lot of weaknesses and toxic attitudes of men who aren't confident with women. He literally told me when he talked to women they had a "checklist in their head" that he didn't check. It was truly groan worthy. My advice to him was that if he had really wanted the women, to go after her. She had taken off to go to grad school. Was that too intimidating for him? Instead of being honest with me, he decided that all women were against him. His attitude was what myself and other friends began to recognize as the toxic "nice guy: "women were to blame for dating guys he deemed asshles and overloing "nice guys like him, while he was repeating misogynistic comments about them to his sister. Let's be honest, if he had been interested in one of my friends, would I have told them there were red flags and run away? In the end, his conclusion was, he was going to let a woman know she was into him. Theoretically a good concept of consent. He got what he asked for, certainly.

He did not necessarily deserve my support, but when he was so dishonest with himself, what could I have done anyway? He had been engaged with abusive emails non stop when I was trying desperately to send out resumes during the economic crash. They contained horrible language telling me not to be on my computer and go to work! Instead of sending out job applications in my email? Seriously.

During all this time telling my parents I was to blame for any fight we had. He and I had been partners in planning secretly against my parents before Him. We had planned my parents 30th anniversary surprise party from afar without either of them knowing. When He was abusive to me I had flown to Boston to meet a guy - I'm not the kind of girl who would ever have just one reason, so I also stayed with a friend, and I was trying to consider the option of moving there since He was not working out. My brother was the only one in my family who knew my real reason for the trip, and my brother was incredibly insecure about it. I knew the guy through the international sports circles all of my social circles moved in, and including the one my brother knew only my association. When my brother learned about this guy, all he could do was say he was a loser for being a spare on the Olympic team. My brother's captain of his swim team went to Olympic trials, and wasn't even a spare, so I wonder if the guy I was dating was a loser, what that made this childhood friend? My brother also told me that my dating life was entirely fictional and I made it all up! Some brother.

That was a few months before the events I mentioned in Chapter 1, and prior to the events described there, my brother had thought he had the right to as the associated friend about my dating life with Him. Then got upset when I said He could kick my brother's ass, a comment I stand by to this day, considering how bratty my brother was being. Supposedly that was what started our fight, not anything before that, if you asked my brother, until the next episode where he poked the bear, and something else happened between us.

Tegan came along while I was losing one of the closest, but also most immature, infuriating family relationship I had, one that would become central to the unravelling of my nuclear family unit. The summer I was working for the census and taking a victorian lit class, one I regretted missing during University, taking Tegan with me everywhere, she became central to one odd event one holiday weekend.

I could not reach my parents. I had driven home to find no one at the house, and neither of them reachable on their mobile numbers. I do not remember if I tried calling my brother, but Tegan and I wound up stopping by his house, out of concern, to see if he knew where our parents were. I rang the bell and he came to the door. I mentioned the reason for my visit, and he and I conferred abuot whether he had heard from them. Behind him was a woman, who he was clearly hiding. The factor that made his plan to block the doorway with his large hulking frame, was his dog trying to get through to greet Tegan.

Finally his awkward attempt to conceal the woman inside failed utterly as the dogs burst through, and she asserted herself anyway. At the time, I did not think anything about how awkward it would have been to be his girlfriend who he was literally trying to hide from his sister? I had never seen his house, so he showed me inside, teased me about being weaker on the pullup bar. We wound up in his kitchen discussing whether he might be able to send my c.v. to his classmate who worked at a major company.

Afterward, again, I attempted to offer sisterly encouragement for him to be brave in facing how horrible and ridiculous our family was about relationships and dating, not repeat the past of trying to hide things from our parents, and invite her to have dinner with them. Little did I know this situation was much much more toxic than I could have imagined!

It was later that same summer, during one of my mother's toxic cynical outbursts/ fights she actually gloated that I was the one person in the family in the dark about my brother's girlfriend. This woman was more welcomed by my parents into my family than I was, yet none of them realized what a dangerous dynamic that put me in? As it unfolded, this woman asserted herself with my parents also telling them she was his girlfriend, clealry not at all phased about my brother hiding her from his family for over a year. Nothing about this history recommended her to me.

While my parents were in family counseling with me, he was playing a victimizationo narrative the entire time, and I was forced again and again - by the couselor - to show that I was reaching out to me, making efforts to reconcile with him - while he was literally sending me email responses that he "was going to be a stubborn son of a bitch" or "asshole" to me. But even seeing those emails to me in his own words, they would remain unconvinced about the dynamic between us. Why do women believe toxic narratives by men about other women?

Literally the day of this email, I went to my parents house, where they announced that his girlfeind was pregnant, they were getting married in two weeks, and he had told them to invite me. I spent two weeks, visiting the family therapist about this, consulting with friends, and getting into a row with my brother, about this whole predicament. Coming home from my part time job with one of my only joys this little dog who was so far removed from the toxic drama of my family.

It was a shame Tegan could not come with me to the wedding. In the end, as much as I did not want to be part of this fiasco, an objective friend helped me see not attending would not impact my brother in any way, and the only person hurt if I was not there would be my mother. As a result, I put effort into finding an outfit to show up the girlfriend. It was a Christmas wedding, so I was dressed in a fashionable silver dress and heels, towering over her at the same height as my brother. I refused to be in any pictures except one with him. This was to be one of the last times he and I were in the same room voluntarily.

His circle of friends were there, so I went to the reception. I made a beeline for the bar for a mojito, to be intercepted by her beaming brother asking me if I was proud of my brother. I drank a lot of wine that night. However, she appeared at my family Christmas morning brunch, after all of this drama she had caused. My brother literally whispering to her in front of me that I must be a virgin, or some shit. There was never a single effort by a member of my family to ingratiate this woman to me. I saw her once more at brunch for my mother. On that occassion, my friend I had visited in Munich was staying with me and came. It could not have been more obvious what different leagues my sister in law was in than me. One lunch with my mother that spring I did express concern for the stress the situation caused for my brother. When I found out that his girlfriend's profession was as a dula, I could never be convinced that she was a woman in her mid-20s who got "accidentally pregnant." My conclusion was that she was a selfish, insensitive woman, who decided applying stress to my brother's life when our family was in crisis, to get what she wanted. Despite that I gave her chances to demonstrate who she was to me, but being rejected by my family in favor of the grandbaby bearing woman, was not something she ever attempted to overcome in my eyes. Rather, she continued to coddle my brother who felt the need to hide behind him than deal with the conflict between us. Despite the fact that it broke our mother. She had an unhealthy fixation and attempt to meddle in "fixing" the relationship, which he just took to manipulate her over. I never met the child. I brought tulip bulbs back from Amsterdam for him, and made an attempt to deliver a potted bulb once when I was passing through their neighborhood. That resulted in this incredibly immature woman calling my brother at work, and him calling my mother threatening to call the police. For me delivering a tulip bulb to a baby. It was a fiasco, with my mother crying. One weekend I was coming home from the boathouse. My mother had told me she had some important mail for me she had left in my bedroom, and asked me to come over and get it. I stopped by and ran the bell. She opened the door, and when I started to go to collect the mail as she had requested I do, she started telling me that I was not allowed because she was babysitting her grandson. I kid you not. I strode past the strange baby crawling around on the floor to collect the mail and be gone. On my return trip, it had moved. My mother picked it up and asked me if I wanted to meet my nephew. I felt numb, no connection to this thing that my brother would use to hold over my mother's head about who she was allowed to have in her own house. He refused to let her babysit the baby at her house after that because of that incident as well. Using a baby to manipulate our mother! Yet I was the problem child.... As I navigated the complexities of my own healing, I found myself already on the path to relying on myself. I had begun the hard work of believing in my own decisions, trusting my instincts, and working toward my personal goals, despite the chaos around me. I thought that by simply doing this, by simply taking responsibility for my own life, I could find the peace and progress I needed.

What I didn’t expect, though, was the backlash. Instead of support or understanding, my family seemed threatened by this shift. They couldn’t grasp how me trying to believe in myself and rely on my own strength would cause such drama. Their response was not one of encouragement but of resistance. They fought back, not with understanding, but with dismissal and control. I had no idea why my independence, my desire to be my own person, was causing so much turmoil. Why couldn’t they understand that I just needed to stand on my own feet and heal? Yet, the more I tried to assert myself, the more they pushed back. It was like the very act of trying to own my journey was seen as a threat, and I was left wondering why my desire for self-sufficiency felt like betrayal to them.

Tegan wasn’t just a dog; she was a constant presence in my life, a reminder that I wasn’t wrong for seeking independence and that my desire to heal on my own terms wasn’t a flaw. Her presence was a reminder that I wasn’t wrong for wanting to move forward on my own terms. In a world where everything felt uncertain, she gave me the strength to keep going.

I had to learn, through trial and error, that I couldn’t wait for approval from people who weren’t capable of giving it. My family’s lack of support was just one more obstacle to push through. It wasn’t easy, but slowly, I realized that my journey was mine alone, and I was the one who had to carry it whether they understood it or not.