A residual stressor for months down has been the fact that my best friend's husband got a very nice new job in North Carolina. I've known they were going to move. I've smiled and given encouragement. Justin and I attended their last-hurrah style get together and drank and listened to music into the night.
Today thought, she told me they got a house. They're leaving the 25th. So, 12 days. I don't if we'll be over in that time. We have a busy schedule and she's painting and packing. I'm going to miss them. It will be hard on Evelyn, too. Her best friend in the world is Kyleigh and 4 year olds don't do distance well.
I am happy for them as they've taken a gigantic leap in life. Ben will now be making about $70k a year, nearly three times what we make. Tonya will finally get her hair done, her nails done, her kids in all the best extra curriculars. They will have nice furniture and new cars. Well done.
Meanwhile, we keep plugging away at treading water. I know that the program tells us to keep to our own business, tend our own lives. It's hard when you have dreams just as big but no chance to leap. Justin insists he'll start truck school in February, but Tonya's right in that I don't know if he'll actually do it. And then, will he end up OTR? Will I end up a single parent anyway?
I kinda hope that we visit in NC a few times and Justin finally agrees to check out jobs down there. I know he's still clinging to the idea of Arizona. And maybe I'll just get hit by bus tomorrow.
So, I have been pondering what sort of training astronauts go through for isolation. I figure I'll be pretty much alone for the next 6 months. I'll have the outings with the kids, but after the Ochs leave and since I've pretty much written off my mom for a few months, I don't think a single human being will be to the house until maybe spring. Sure, Val will drop by once a month or so, but that's not much. And all she does is talk about whatever fight Doug's been in recently, try to sell me MLM, or play on her computer. It's not like it used to be when we'd watch movies and cook. Now, Doug calls all night and she can't focus on anything long enough to digest a film.
I even asked Justin if I could join MOPS, until I found out it's a Christian thing. No thanks.
Margie comes up, but she's always awkward and can't wait to beat sand home.
And while it's fine to throw myself a mini pity party, the real problem is the kids. I don't want them to be isolated and anti-social. With the Ochs gone and the Dunkles busy and Chucky/Margie if-y and my mom on the outs... I'm starting to think that I shouldn't throw Ollie a birthday party. It seems like I'm cheating him, but why dump $200 into a Daniel Tiger themed celebration if no on is here to see it?
So, I'm sad today. Worry has taken over.
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Billy
One morning, while living in the crappy house in Antioch, I was woken up by a golden retriever jumping on me and barking in my face. I was terrified. We did not have a dog. I got up and ran to my mother, who was sleeping on the fold out sofa with a person I'd never seen before. I told her that a dog got in the house. She laughed and told me it was just Billy's dog.
I was in second grade. And I had no idea who Billy was except that he was big, had a beard and tinted glasses, and was in bed with my mom. She told me to go back to bed. I remember feeling displaced. Whatever small amount of care I got from her was suddenly given to this man.
My memories are fuzzy at this age. I know I get things out of order, but I also know that meeting this man was the start of a long chain of trauma and bad memories for me. My mother gifted me a collection of photos from each year of school, once. You can see a drastic transition in my weight and appearance after 2nd grade.
I remember that the house was large, had a sunken living room, and a huge fenced in back yard. We lived directly across from a lake. I don't think Billy had a boat, or if he did, we never used it. There was a yard full of conifers in the front.
We had a sitter at this house. I think her name was Anita. She had a boyfriend. I think his name was Tom. She was ginger and short, he was tall and balding with a mustache. I have memories of them talking about their genitals and making me go on walks to other people's houses. There were geese that pecked me near one of them. Its all so foggy, but I think these people hurt me. My mother says that she fired the woman when she heard her tell her own son that "I brought you into this world, I can take you out." I don't know if that's true.
I have memories of having a panic attack. I don't know what triggered it, but I couldn't breath and couldn't stop crying while we were driving. My mother parked the car in Billy's driveway, turned around, and smacked me across the face. Her ring split my lip wide open. She got out and left me in the back of the car. I remember being suddenly silent. Shock? I noticed blood on my hands and check my lip in the mirror. It was cut wide open and swelling up. I knew she'd get angry again if she saw it. I remember internalizing that. It was my fault and I was only going to get in trouble again. So I stayed in the car for an hour, squeezing the blood and water out until my lip was flat again. It was dark by the time I went inside. She didn't speak to me that night.
Karen and I had a joint birthday party in the front lawn while we lived there. Aunt Linda came in her flight attendant uniform and tried to cheer me up. She was always reaching out to me when I was little. I probably should have told her what was happening. I didn't. At this particular birthday, I was attacked by a swarm of wasps that were nested in the ground at the base of a tree. My mother scolded me for crying and wanting to stay in the house. I lost my brand new Barbie's glitter shoes during the attack. I was shamed for that, too. Linda left.
I remember always trying to please Billy. I made him a club sandwich (from my first cook book) and put toothpicks in the halves, like the book said. He bit into a toothpick and I got in trouble.
My mother made mandarin chicken for dinner once. She liked to try new foods, sometimes. He told her that little oranges did not belong in his food and forbid her from making it again. Fucking idiot. It was MANDARIN chicken. Putz.
I remember him punching the wall and throwing my mother. I remember there being blood in the kitchen sink one day and my mom told me to never mind it. I remember trying to run away. I remember having nightmares where the house was on fire and I crawled to my mother's room to wake her but I couldn't speak. In my dream I screamed as loud as I could but no sound would come out. I remember having panic attacks. I remember stealing. I remember trying to teach my cousin how to have sex (where the fuck did I get that from??) at 8 years old.
I have nearly zero memories of the back yard except that it was large, fenced in, and the grass was tall and dry enough to irritate my legs. I must have been out there though, as I have memories of crying at the fence and memories of looking up at the back of the house to where the bathroom window was. My mom says we never went out there. She's wrong.
I was sent away to Pennsylvania for a summer, while we lived with Billy. Last year, I asked my mom about the time we lived with Billy, saying that I had a hard time remembering some things. She brushed it off, saying nothing happened. Then why the fuck did she send me away? I think she knew something was up. When I got back, Billy's golden retriever looked like a completely different dog. Mom said I was making things up, but that sticks with me. He'd poisoned his own cat while we lived there and I sometimes wonder if it really was a different dog.
Billy would drink beer on the roof and shoot a rifle over the lake on the 4th of July. I watched him point it at the dog. He terrified me.
He didn't take care of the house. My mother did all of it. The yard was always over grown and dying. There was a bunch of crap tarped to the side of the house. I think it was our stuff because the furniture in the house was all Billy's.
I had two friends over once and they were so scared of Billy that they came into the bathroom with me when I had to pee. This was shocking to me, as I didn't like people seeing me any kind of naked. I was already ashamed of my body and hated it.
I remember not doing well in school during 3rd grade. I was in trouble all of the time. The teacher was old and horribly mean (She'd go out of her way to point out my disheveled clothes or unkempt hair. She'd yell at me in front of everyone and ban me from recess.) I started wetting my pants at school by the end of 3rd grade and into 4th. I was too afraid to ask to use the bathroom. I once felt my bladder release in the middle of class, overflowing my chair and soaking my red overalls. The 4th grade teacher was nice about it. She cleaned me up and the nurse helped me change. I had to keep a change of clothes in the class after that. A grungy kid found them once and held my underwear up for all to see. The teacher was mortified, but that was nothing compared to the betrayal I felt. I stopped wetting my pants at school and started wetting the bed at home. Billy told my mom he'd start beating me if I didn't stop. I remember hiding and bawling. He terrified me, as I'd seen him punch holes in the wall and throw my mom before.
I had dreams of being able to twirl fast as a tornado and flying far, far away.
I remember trying to be good, the best girl I could be, but it was never good enough.
I remember that my brother started having problems, too. He was beat up by his boy scout den. He was cornered in the school lobby and punched in the face. He would poop in the bathtub. Billy just said he was pathetic.
Once, I saw Billy grab the back of my mother's chair and flip it with her still in it. She fell down the steps into the sunken living room. I remember moving a few days later. We moved back into the ramshackle house in Antioch. Things didn't get better for us, but Billy was mostly gone.
She started working two jobs and trying to sell MLM on the side. She was exhausted and overwhelmed. We were a burden to her. She had black-outs from exhaustion. My cousin things my mother was binge drinking, not exhausted. To him, I say that we didn't have money for alcohol, so I doubt it. The worst was when never showed up to pick us up from CCD. The priest crammed us in the back of his sports car (making sure to tell us that his car wasn't meant for kids and taking us home was highly inconvenient for him). When we got home, my mother was passed out on her bed (which was located in the corner of the dining room). She was still in her coat, keys still in her hand from dropping us off that morning. The priest stayed just long enough to make sure she was awake, but she was not okay. She couldn't even remember having taken us to church. She couldn't remember work the previous day. She was convinced that she was dying and laid all of that on us. She wanted me to remember to bury her beside her father and what bank her accounts were at. I was maybe 10.
Billy came back into our lives from time to time. I still tried to please him, but he never stayed. He helped my mother build a giant swingset in our yard. Another time, he took us all to Chuck E Cheese. But we never moved back in and eventually he faded away.
I was in second grade. And I had no idea who Billy was except that he was big, had a beard and tinted glasses, and was in bed with my mom. She told me to go back to bed. I remember feeling displaced. Whatever small amount of care I got from her was suddenly given to this man.
My memories are fuzzy at this age. I know I get things out of order, but I also know that meeting this man was the start of a long chain of trauma and bad memories for me. My mother gifted me a collection of photos from each year of school, once. You can see a drastic transition in my weight and appearance after 2nd grade.
I remember that the house was large, had a sunken living room, and a huge fenced in back yard. We lived directly across from a lake. I don't think Billy had a boat, or if he did, we never used it. There was a yard full of conifers in the front.
We had a sitter at this house. I think her name was Anita. She had a boyfriend. I think his name was Tom. She was ginger and short, he was tall and balding with a mustache. I have memories of them talking about their genitals and making me go on walks to other people's houses. There were geese that pecked me near one of them. Its all so foggy, but I think these people hurt me. My mother says that she fired the woman when she heard her tell her own son that "I brought you into this world, I can take you out." I don't know if that's true.
I have memories of having a panic attack. I don't know what triggered it, but I couldn't breath and couldn't stop crying while we were driving. My mother parked the car in Billy's driveway, turned around, and smacked me across the face. Her ring split my lip wide open. She got out and left me in the back of the car. I remember being suddenly silent. Shock? I noticed blood on my hands and check my lip in the mirror. It was cut wide open and swelling up. I knew she'd get angry again if she saw it. I remember internalizing that. It was my fault and I was only going to get in trouble again. So I stayed in the car for an hour, squeezing the blood and water out until my lip was flat again. It was dark by the time I went inside. She didn't speak to me that night.
Karen and I had a joint birthday party in the front lawn while we lived there. Aunt Linda came in her flight attendant uniform and tried to cheer me up. She was always reaching out to me when I was little. I probably should have told her what was happening. I didn't. At this particular birthday, I was attacked by a swarm of wasps that were nested in the ground at the base of a tree. My mother scolded me for crying and wanting to stay in the house. I lost my brand new Barbie's glitter shoes during the attack. I was shamed for that, too. Linda left.
I remember always trying to please Billy. I made him a club sandwich (from my first cook book) and put toothpicks in the halves, like the book said. He bit into a toothpick and I got in trouble.
My mother made mandarin chicken for dinner once. She liked to try new foods, sometimes. He told her that little oranges did not belong in his food and forbid her from making it again. Fucking idiot. It was MANDARIN chicken. Putz.
I remember him punching the wall and throwing my mother. I remember there being blood in the kitchen sink one day and my mom told me to never mind it. I remember trying to run away. I remember having nightmares where the house was on fire and I crawled to my mother's room to wake her but I couldn't speak. In my dream I screamed as loud as I could but no sound would come out. I remember having panic attacks. I remember stealing. I remember trying to teach my cousin how to have sex (where the fuck did I get that from??) at 8 years old.
I have nearly zero memories of the back yard except that it was large, fenced in, and the grass was tall and dry enough to irritate my legs. I must have been out there though, as I have memories of crying at the fence and memories of looking up at the back of the house to where the bathroom window was. My mom says we never went out there. She's wrong.
I was sent away to Pennsylvania for a summer, while we lived with Billy. Last year, I asked my mom about the time we lived with Billy, saying that I had a hard time remembering some things. She brushed it off, saying nothing happened. Then why the fuck did she send me away? I think she knew something was up. When I got back, Billy's golden retriever looked like a completely different dog. Mom said I was making things up, but that sticks with me. He'd poisoned his own cat while we lived there and I sometimes wonder if it really was a different dog.
Billy would drink beer on the roof and shoot a rifle over the lake on the 4th of July. I watched him point it at the dog. He terrified me.
He didn't take care of the house. My mother did all of it. The yard was always over grown and dying. There was a bunch of crap tarped to the side of the house. I think it was our stuff because the furniture in the house was all Billy's.
I had two friends over once and they were so scared of Billy that they came into the bathroom with me when I had to pee. This was shocking to me, as I didn't like people seeing me any kind of naked. I was already ashamed of my body and hated it.
I remember not doing well in school during 3rd grade. I was in trouble all of the time. The teacher was old and horribly mean (She'd go out of her way to point out my disheveled clothes or unkempt hair. She'd yell at me in front of everyone and ban me from recess.) I started wetting my pants at school by the end of 3rd grade and into 4th. I was too afraid to ask to use the bathroom. I once felt my bladder release in the middle of class, overflowing my chair and soaking my red overalls. The 4th grade teacher was nice about it. She cleaned me up and the nurse helped me change. I had to keep a change of clothes in the class after that. A grungy kid found them once and held my underwear up for all to see. The teacher was mortified, but that was nothing compared to the betrayal I felt. I stopped wetting my pants at school and started wetting the bed at home. Billy told my mom he'd start beating me if I didn't stop. I remember hiding and bawling. He terrified me, as I'd seen him punch holes in the wall and throw my mom before.
I had dreams of being able to twirl fast as a tornado and flying far, far away.
I remember trying to be good, the best girl I could be, but it was never good enough.
I remember that my brother started having problems, too. He was beat up by his boy scout den. He was cornered in the school lobby and punched in the face. He would poop in the bathtub. Billy just said he was pathetic.
Once, I saw Billy grab the back of my mother's chair and flip it with her still in it. She fell down the steps into the sunken living room. I remember moving a few days later. We moved back into the ramshackle house in Antioch. Things didn't get better for us, but Billy was mostly gone.
She started working two jobs and trying to sell MLM on the side. She was exhausted and overwhelmed. We were a burden to her. She had black-outs from exhaustion. My cousin things my mother was binge drinking, not exhausted. To him, I say that we didn't have money for alcohol, so I doubt it. The worst was when never showed up to pick us up from CCD. The priest crammed us in the back of his sports car (making sure to tell us that his car wasn't meant for kids and taking us home was highly inconvenient for him). When we got home, my mother was passed out on her bed (which was located in the corner of the dining room). She was still in her coat, keys still in her hand from dropping us off that morning. The priest stayed just long enough to make sure she was awake, but she was not okay. She couldn't even remember having taken us to church. She couldn't remember work the previous day. She was convinced that she was dying and laid all of that on us. She wanted me to remember to bury her beside her father and what bank her accounts were at. I was maybe 10.
Billy came back into our lives from time to time. I still tried to please him, but he never stayed. He helped my mother build a giant swingset in our yard. Another time, he took us all to Chuck E Cheese. But we never moved back in and eventually he faded away.
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
My Mother: a dichotomy
It's coming up on 10 months since I took action towards recovery. Since I admitted that I am an addict. In that time, I have come to look at my childhood through a very different lens. I took the angelic spotlight off of my mother and have chosen to see the ugly parts.
To preface, I think she tried. I think she was broken, though. She had a terribly abusive father and cold mother. She had her dreams torn away from her over and over. She was lonely and raising three kids in absolute poverty. She had moments where she tried to go above and beyond. She'd surprise us with a Disney VHS (that was big news back then). She led girl scout troops and boy scout troops. She'd work until midnight and still remember to put Easter baskets together. She took in my aunt and cousins when they were destitute (a really fun summer!). She took us to Chuck E. Cheese on a whim once. But there was always anger behind the things she did.
She neglected us. She hit us. She shamed us. She blamed us. She had nervous breakdowns and tantrums in front of us. We were dumb. We were lazy. We were feral. She had zero respect for us. And I still don't get any.
Today, when I visit my mother, she walks away from me mid sentence. Straight up leaves the room. Even when I think she's listening, I know she's not hearing me because she never retains any information I pass along. If I put a rule in place, she breaks it to "be nice" to my kids. I understand that grandparents get this sort of freedom. But it's way more than candy before dinner or staying up an hour past bedtime. She tells me that Justin and I need to be responsible and independent, but then guilt trips me when I say no to something. For example, we both were excited to garden this year. She doubled her garden plot (which I'm genuinely happy about, her garden does very well). My garden was a bust. We discovered that the yard floods and everything I planted during 3 different attempts all washed away. Anyway, she grew a large plot of corn. When it was ready to harvest, she suddenly told me that I needed to come pick it because she grew it "for my family". Since we moved, the drive to my mother's is longer and I had zero gas money, but she added that 'I did it for you' whimper and so I felt compelled to find time in our schedule to spend the day in Butler. To be fair, Evelyn got a kick out of picking corn and my mother did slip a $20 in my purse when I wasn't looking. Gabriel did nothing but stay inside and play video games (another issue I have with my mother). I guess my beef with the situation as that she tried to manipulate and guilt me instead of just asking us to come hang out.
The other side of our interactions these days is that my mother is always willing to give me things. She always has a little cash or a piece of furniture for me. I guess she has her own journey and her way of dealing with our horrible past is to give me things. She has never turned down a request. But I'm at the point where I want to heal things and confront things, not just numb them with material things. She is very giving when it comes to my kids as well. She drowns them in gifts at birthdays and Christmas. Everyone tells me to be grateful, but it's hard when I know the complicated web of hurt and guilt that these motions are made from.
Our household vocab word for the week is DICHOTOMY. It's something divided into two parts wherein the parts are polar opposites or conflicting. For me, my mother is a dichotomy.
Side 1 is that I love her and understand that she was angry and alone and sleep deprived and hungry for like 95% of my childhood. She'd been beaten often as a child without any warning and I understand that it takes 2 generations for something like that to leave a family. It's what she had been taught to do and so she beat us. I don't always think she wanted to. She stopped at some point, maybe because we'd gotten older.
Side 2 is that regardless of the cause, I was shamed, guilted, beaten, and crushed into the ground. I was told to do things that were way beyond my scope of understanding and maturity. I never should have been made to sleep in the back of a station wagon in a scary parking lot. I never should have been shamed for falling asleep while going to school and working at 14. I never should have been ridiculed by my own mother. I was left with sitters who hurt me, belittled me, isolated me, and taunted me. I should never have been left in charge while my mom went out to the bar. I had a million warning signs of severe trauma and clinical depression but was never treated nor was any of it even recognized. I was neglected and alone when I should have been cared for.
We lived with a boyfriend of my mother's for a while, Billy. Things were bad. I didn't know it then, I guess I normalized it, but looking back, a majority of the trauma I can remember happened there.
He's the boyfriend who laughed and threw away the father's day card I made for him at school. I remember that I was a horribly behaved child after we moved out. I remember binging after we moved out. I remember being latch-key kids after we moved out. We were alone when we woke up and I almost always missed the bus. I remember the vice principal taking me into his office and telling me all the horrible things that would happen to me if I was late again. I internalized all of it. I was bad. I was lazy. He never bothered to ask if anything was wrong. I never told him I was alone in the mornings and all of my clothing was covered in cat fur, cat piss, and there were fleas in my bed. I never told him that I didn't brush my teeth or hair in the mornings, only put it in a pony tail because there was no one around that taught me to care about my appearance. No one taught me how to use a pad or a tampon. No one taught me how to style my hair or put on makeup. My gym teacher told me about deodorant, so there was that. The vice principal never knew that when I did miss the bus, that I had to walk all the way back home, call my mother at work, wait for her to get home, and then have her drive me in (berating me the entire drive).
No one knew that when we got home, the house was empty then too. I would head straight for the fridge. Make 2-3 plates in a row. Mom was gone on the weekends, too. I would spend all day in my nightgown, eating and watching tv. There were times when my mom would take Jon and Karen out to do things, but leave me. I was either too old for the event or the boyfriend didn't like me or there wasn't room in the car. Whatever. Once, after she left, I remember having what my therapist now describes as a classic anxiety attack. I was about 10 or 11. I remember suddenly sweating and being dizzy. I laid on the floor in the living room, feeling the walls moving in. My tongue swelled up and I cried and cried. I was alone. I begged her to take me anywhere when she got home. I tried to explain what was happening to me. She brushed it off.
I remember my mother having meltdowns and memory loss from the stress of single parenthood. While living with Billy, my mother rented out the house she actually owned. It was a shack of a place. The tenant complained that the pipes were freezing in the bathroom. She couldn't afford to have anyone come work on it, so she bought straw and spend an hour outside packing it into the crawlspace and building up the wall outside with this hay. When she came back to the car, her hands were so sore and frozen that she couldn't move her fingers. Her fingertips were blue and she was crying. She had a full blown meltdown and I had to tell her to calm down. I warmed her hands up and told her we could go home and get a hot bath and curl up on the couch. I was maybe 8.
We never had decent clothes. Everything was a hand-me-down from cousins and stained beyond recognition. Everything was sweatpants and t-shirts. I never got glasses when I needed them. Charlotte bought me a pair when I was sent away for the summer. I remember suddenly being able to see the tile in the restaurant floor and could see my grandmother's face while sitting across from her. I had those glasses for 4 years. They were held together with a twist tie by the time I got another pair. They didn't work anymore, either. I had to sit in front of the class and push them up against my eyes to read the board. We never got vaccinations, we never got cold medicine or Tylenol. I had bursitis (swelling and fluid around torn cartilage) in my knee that went undiagnosed for half a year, until my gym teacher demanded to know what was going on with me. I had torn it slipping on ice because I had 3 year old sneakers and my glasses didn't work.
Today, a school official would have called CYS. Today, I would have been removed from my mother's care and put in a home. I might have been further molested. I might have had a dog and a pool. Instead, no one cared. No one helped. And I was more damaged every single day.
Now, my mother worked a lot and I get that we were poor and these things were just want a single mom in the 80s and 90s did... but that meant that I was alone with my younger siblings nearly 24/7. We had half a dozen sitters over the years, but they never lasted long and honestly they were all terrible. We were bullied, cornered, hit, threatened, and things were always horrible. When we werent' with a terrible sitter, we were alone. I binge ate, as far back as I can remember. I would tally every single item of food in the house and start to eat them all, one by one.
We were beat with a belt and called 'monsters' because the house was always messy. But you know, she never once showed us how to clean up. She left us alone and then complained that the house wasn't clean.
More recently, in the years that I've known Justin, I became a person who forgave my mother everything. I sought her approval constantly. I defended every thing that came out of her mouth and every action she took to help or hinder us. I jumped when she said so. I did everything, went everywhere she told me to. Until this past year.
And now, things are wretched. She undermines me, constantly with the children. I say no soda, she buys it. I say "Gabriel is grounded from his Xbox for the summer." she buys him a brand new one. I don't talk to my brother for six years, tell the story of our estrangement for six years, tell her that Gabriel is not to see my brother for six years.... and then she allows him to write Jon a letter. And gives the man who threatened to kill Justin our home address. When I push it with her, she hands the conversation over to Karen and pretends not to know anything about Jon and I not speaking for years.
That sent me over the edge. I have been binge eating for a week solid. I started my period 10 days early over it. I cut all my hair off. I really don't know if I can see her for the holidays this year. She's so non-confrontational that she'll probably just have Karen tell me they're spending Thanksgiving with Laura and Patsy, instead. She's probably working for the day of our Solstice party. And I'm so angry that I'm okay with it.
To preface, I think she tried. I think she was broken, though. She had a terribly abusive father and cold mother. She had her dreams torn away from her over and over. She was lonely and raising three kids in absolute poverty. She had moments where she tried to go above and beyond. She'd surprise us with a Disney VHS (that was big news back then). She led girl scout troops and boy scout troops. She'd work until midnight and still remember to put Easter baskets together. She took in my aunt and cousins when they were destitute (a really fun summer!). She took us to Chuck E. Cheese on a whim once. But there was always anger behind the things she did.
She neglected us. She hit us. She shamed us. She blamed us. She had nervous breakdowns and tantrums in front of us. We were dumb. We were lazy. We were feral. She had zero respect for us. And I still don't get any.
Today, when I visit my mother, she walks away from me mid sentence. Straight up leaves the room. Even when I think she's listening, I know she's not hearing me because she never retains any information I pass along. If I put a rule in place, she breaks it to "be nice" to my kids. I understand that grandparents get this sort of freedom. But it's way more than candy before dinner or staying up an hour past bedtime. She tells me that Justin and I need to be responsible and independent, but then guilt trips me when I say no to something. For example, we both were excited to garden this year. She doubled her garden plot (which I'm genuinely happy about, her garden does very well). My garden was a bust. We discovered that the yard floods and everything I planted during 3 different attempts all washed away. Anyway, she grew a large plot of corn. When it was ready to harvest, she suddenly told me that I needed to come pick it because she grew it "for my family". Since we moved, the drive to my mother's is longer and I had zero gas money, but she added that 'I did it for you' whimper and so I felt compelled to find time in our schedule to spend the day in Butler. To be fair, Evelyn got a kick out of picking corn and my mother did slip a $20 in my purse when I wasn't looking. Gabriel did nothing but stay inside and play video games (another issue I have with my mother). I guess my beef with the situation as that she tried to manipulate and guilt me instead of just asking us to come hang out.
The other side of our interactions these days is that my mother is always willing to give me things. She always has a little cash or a piece of furniture for me. I guess she has her own journey and her way of dealing with our horrible past is to give me things. She has never turned down a request. But I'm at the point where I want to heal things and confront things, not just numb them with material things. She is very giving when it comes to my kids as well. She drowns them in gifts at birthdays and Christmas. Everyone tells me to be grateful, but it's hard when I know the complicated web of hurt and guilt that these motions are made from.
Our household vocab word for the week is DICHOTOMY. It's something divided into two parts wherein the parts are polar opposites or conflicting. For me, my mother is a dichotomy.
Side 1 is that I love her and understand that she was angry and alone and sleep deprived and hungry for like 95% of my childhood. She'd been beaten often as a child without any warning and I understand that it takes 2 generations for something like that to leave a family. It's what she had been taught to do and so she beat us. I don't always think she wanted to. She stopped at some point, maybe because we'd gotten older.
Side 2 is that regardless of the cause, I was shamed, guilted, beaten, and crushed into the ground. I was told to do things that were way beyond my scope of understanding and maturity. I never should have been made to sleep in the back of a station wagon in a scary parking lot. I never should have been shamed for falling asleep while going to school and working at 14. I never should have been ridiculed by my own mother. I was left with sitters who hurt me, belittled me, isolated me, and taunted me. I should never have been left in charge while my mom went out to the bar. I had a million warning signs of severe trauma and clinical depression but was never treated nor was any of it even recognized. I was neglected and alone when I should have been cared for.
We lived with a boyfriend of my mother's for a while, Billy. Things were bad. I didn't know it then, I guess I normalized it, but looking back, a majority of the trauma I can remember happened there.
He's the boyfriend who laughed and threw away the father's day card I made for him at school. I remember that I was a horribly behaved child after we moved out. I remember binging after we moved out. I remember being latch-key kids after we moved out. We were alone when we woke up and I almost always missed the bus. I remember the vice principal taking me into his office and telling me all the horrible things that would happen to me if I was late again. I internalized all of it. I was bad. I was lazy. He never bothered to ask if anything was wrong. I never told him I was alone in the mornings and all of my clothing was covered in cat fur, cat piss, and there were fleas in my bed. I never told him that I didn't brush my teeth or hair in the mornings, only put it in a pony tail because there was no one around that taught me to care about my appearance. No one taught me how to use a pad or a tampon. No one taught me how to style my hair or put on makeup. My gym teacher told me about deodorant, so there was that. The vice principal never knew that when I did miss the bus, that I had to walk all the way back home, call my mother at work, wait for her to get home, and then have her drive me in (berating me the entire drive).
No one knew that when we got home, the house was empty then too. I would head straight for the fridge. Make 2-3 plates in a row. Mom was gone on the weekends, too. I would spend all day in my nightgown, eating and watching tv. There were times when my mom would take Jon and Karen out to do things, but leave me. I was either too old for the event or the boyfriend didn't like me or there wasn't room in the car. Whatever. Once, after she left, I remember having what my therapist now describes as a classic anxiety attack. I was about 10 or 11. I remember suddenly sweating and being dizzy. I laid on the floor in the living room, feeling the walls moving in. My tongue swelled up and I cried and cried. I was alone. I begged her to take me anywhere when she got home. I tried to explain what was happening to me. She brushed it off.
I remember my mother having meltdowns and memory loss from the stress of single parenthood. While living with Billy, my mother rented out the house she actually owned. It was a shack of a place. The tenant complained that the pipes were freezing in the bathroom. She couldn't afford to have anyone come work on it, so she bought straw and spend an hour outside packing it into the crawlspace and building up the wall outside with this hay. When she came back to the car, her hands were so sore and frozen that she couldn't move her fingers. Her fingertips were blue and she was crying. She had a full blown meltdown and I had to tell her to calm down. I warmed her hands up and told her we could go home and get a hot bath and curl up on the couch. I was maybe 8.
We never had decent clothes. Everything was a hand-me-down from cousins and stained beyond recognition. Everything was sweatpants and t-shirts. I never got glasses when I needed them. Charlotte bought me a pair when I was sent away for the summer. I remember suddenly being able to see the tile in the restaurant floor and could see my grandmother's face while sitting across from her. I had those glasses for 4 years. They were held together with a twist tie by the time I got another pair. They didn't work anymore, either. I had to sit in front of the class and push them up against my eyes to read the board. We never got vaccinations, we never got cold medicine or Tylenol. I had bursitis (swelling and fluid around torn cartilage) in my knee that went undiagnosed for half a year, until my gym teacher demanded to know what was going on with me. I had torn it slipping on ice because I had 3 year old sneakers and my glasses didn't work.
Today, a school official would have called CYS. Today, I would have been removed from my mother's care and put in a home. I might have been further molested. I might have had a dog and a pool. Instead, no one cared. No one helped. And I was more damaged every single day.
Now, my mother worked a lot and I get that we were poor and these things were just want a single mom in the 80s and 90s did... but that meant that I was alone with my younger siblings nearly 24/7. We had half a dozen sitters over the years, but they never lasted long and honestly they were all terrible. We were bullied, cornered, hit, threatened, and things were always horrible. When we werent' with a terrible sitter, we were alone. I binge ate, as far back as I can remember. I would tally every single item of food in the house and start to eat them all, one by one.
We were beat with a belt and called 'monsters' because the house was always messy. But you know, she never once showed us how to clean up. She left us alone and then complained that the house wasn't clean.
More recently, in the years that I've known Justin, I became a person who forgave my mother everything. I sought her approval constantly. I defended every thing that came out of her mouth and every action she took to help or hinder us. I jumped when she said so. I did everything, went everywhere she told me to. Until this past year.
And now, things are wretched. She undermines me, constantly with the children. I say no soda, she buys it. I say "Gabriel is grounded from his Xbox for the summer." she buys him a brand new one. I don't talk to my brother for six years, tell the story of our estrangement for six years, tell her that Gabriel is not to see my brother for six years.... and then she allows him to write Jon a letter. And gives the man who threatened to kill Justin our home address. When I push it with her, she hands the conversation over to Karen and pretends not to know anything about Jon and I not speaking for years.
That sent me over the edge. I have been binge eating for a week solid. I started my period 10 days early over it. I cut all my hair off. I really don't know if I can see her for the holidays this year. She's so non-confrontational that she'll probably just have Karen tell me they're spending Thanksgiving with Laura and Patsy, instead. She's probably working for the day of our Solstice party. And I'm so angry that I'm okay with it.
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