Contrast

I had "the talk" with my daughter yesterday.  She's eight and has been asking a ton of questions over the past few months and I had a lot of catching up to do.

I have very much fallen down on the job... I have never called body parts anything.  At all.  I've never talked about normal functions of our bodies; especially what happens as we grow up.

I'm very uncomfortable with all of it.  However, it wasn't the discomfort that I dreaded the most.  I was so afraid that I would bring it up and it would reveal that something had happened to her.  That was my worst fear.

If someone had sat me down at eight, I probably could have told them more than they knew as an adult.  It would have been very clear that things were happening to me.  Not surprising though, nothing was ever explained to me.  It was demonstrated instead.

So when we started talking I was so relieved to hear that she knew virtually nothing other than a few details that she has picked up on from other kids and TV.  I used a book to explain everything; books are my cure-all for anything I don't know how to do.  Most of this topic, terms, body parts, etc are upsetting and can flood me with bad memories.  Thankfully the book kept me on track.

Everything was fine until she started asking me how old I was when I found out about all of this.  I didn't know how to answer her.  It had been such good conversations until then and I didn't want to taint her own memory with my garbage bags.  The best answer I knew to give was that I didn't remember.  We finished the conversation and went about our day.

I put on a smile for everyone but on the inside there was a deep and burning grief in the pit of my stomach that has yet to leave.  In trying to do the right things as a parent I often get blindsided by the very simple, very wrong actions of my parents.  And it hurts.

I would be lying if I said that I don't get jealous of my daughter at times.  I know that's a terrible thing to think let alone say but it makes me wonder what was so bad about me.  I want to do the best that I can by her yet my parents couldn't muster much more than not killing me. 

It's an intolerable contrast that I can't seem to wrap my mind around.

My daughter is a good kid with a kind heart.  She can also be very challenging.  But even at her worst I can't imagine doing what they did.  And that makes me wonder just how horrible I must have been.

My parents were bad people and I loved them.  I still do.  So how can my daughter be such a good person coming from such a bad person for a mother?

Another intolerable contrast except this one is one that I can't wrap my heart around.

Madness

I find it easier to talk about my father than my mother.  His was such an overt evil that even when I lose myself to denial, I find my way back quickly with the jolt of a single memory.  Because they are all bad.

So much is made of the father/daughter and the mother/son relationship and how that connection shapes a person.  But what about the mother/daughter relationship?

My mother.  I believe that I was the beginning of the end for her.  During the holiday with my father's family I learned that I spent time in a mental hospital via my mother.  She was pregnant and they found her trying to abort me.  I'll spare the details but off to the loony bin she and I went.

How does something like that shape a daughter?  I have always known that she did not want me.  Even that she wished that I had never been born.  Once I was in this world; I forever connected her to him and she was trapped. 

That makes me sad for her.

His eyes were always black with rage, lust or something in between.  Her eyes danced with madness.

I have always bristled at the assertion that she was crazy.  It feels like an excuse for her.  But what it really is; it's terrifying.

I remember being in kindergarten waiting for her to pick me up.  I was almost always last because she was always late.  Fridays were the best though because I got my Weekly Reader hand out.  I would sit at the end of the hall and tear tiny pieces away and eat them.  A good day was when I only had the time to eat half of the back page.

It started as a good day when she picked me up.  The teacher called my name and I crammed my paper into my bag.  I always rushed down the hall but each time the doors opened I would slow as I approached her car.  I suppose I was trying to gauge her mood but really I just irritated her by being slow.

This day she leaned across the front seat to fling the passenger door open.  As the door creaked to let me in I saw her.  A gauzy pink robe.  Her naked belly bulging with my sister due in early June.  Curly hairs that I had to tear my eyes away from.

hurry up.  get in the car.  it's hotter than hell sitting around waiting on you.

None of this was spoken in her mean voice.  This was that scary sing song voice and when she picked me up like this it was the worst.  Mean; I knew what to expect.  Crazy; I couldn't anticipate a thing.

I scooted across the hot vinyl seat as I heard her say something about ice cream.  I wanted to tell her that I wasn't hungry but I did not want to be the one to pull her down in a crashing heap.

She wasn't dressed.  Not even close.  But as I stole a look I saw perfect make up and perfect hair.  These were the hardest days to figure out.  Depressed body.  Happy hair and face.

Steel blue eyeshadow surrounded her pale blue eyes.  Her pupil was the calm eye of the dancing hurricane whirling in her mind.  Music blaring.  Hot wind blowing my pigtails in my face.  She's singing as she lights a cigarette.  Between her legs is a pretty bottle hiding in brown paper.  Her robe is moving with the air and I can see the cuts and scars on her thighs.  Madness.

Baskin Robbins... 31 flavors... what kind of ice cream do you want?

we can't go in.  you don't have clothes.

Don't be silly... I can tie my robe... what do you want?

a clown cone.

I can remember thinking... clowns are scary but not as scary as you are.  Madness.

I sink down in the seat while she goes in.  Looking for something to do, I open the glove box and see her silver bottle.  I pull it out and screw the top off as I hear the sound of liquid.  I tip it back and my head follows.  It burns but I keep on drinking.

I finish it and put it back as quickly as I found it.  This isn't my first try.  I don't know what it is but I know that it makes me feel weird but better.  Calmer.  And warm.

I hear her yelling as she storms out of the shop.  The tie of her robe is trailing behind her.  There she is but not ashamed.  In one hand is my clown cone.  In the other is a cup of chocolate ice cream; her favorite.

I hate chocolate ice cream.

She gets in the car and practically throws my cone at me.  The white wrapper falls to the floor but I save the clown.  She is incensed.  As I lean down to pick up the paper I peek again at her naked belly and I see the baby moving.

Tried to do something nice for you... this is the thanks I get...

I whisper a thank you and she slaps me across my face.  I feel bad about eating the clown.  I'm scared to hurt his face.  It starts to melt and make a mess.  She grabs it and throws it out the window as the car weaves between the cars and lines around us. 

Pick your feet up... we are on a magic carpet... feel the hot desert wind... close your eyes to keep the sand out...

There is no sand but I feel really funny so I close my eyes.  I lay down on the vinyl seat; as close to her without touching her.  Hot ashes sprinkle on my cheek.  They sting but I am too tired to care.   But then hot fire touches and my scalp begins to burn.  I smell the burning flesh and hair and know that another circle will be hidden by my thick brown hair.

A single tear slips out as the madness of the speeding car rocks me to sleep.

I wake up in the dark with the stickiness of the ice cream still on my hands.  I'm still in the car.  My mom is gone.  I don't know where we are.  The windows are cracked but I can't get the door open.

I'm not worried about where she is.  I'm just scared of what will happen next.  I count my fingers to twenty over and over.  It's really dark now.

I open up the glove box but remember that I already drank the silver bottle.  I shut it.  I'm hungry.

I open my bag and find my Weekly Reader.  Half of the back page gone; that was a good day.  I start to tear pieces off and one by one I feel the tiny papers melt on my tongue.  I tear until there's nothing left to tear. 

It's a really bad day when I have the time to eat all my Weekly Reader.  Madness.

Family

After Christmas we went to visit family.  My fathers two sisters and their families.

I agonized over going or not going.  I've lost so much of my family so I get a little weird about what I have left.  As the time got closer I really began to worry.  I didn't make the final decision until the morning we were due to leave.

I didn't spend a lot of time with them growing up.  The majority of holidays were spent with my mothers family.  I have fond memories of his sister just a few years younger than him.  She married a very nice man and they had two daughters.  I always watched in amazement at how they were with their dad.  They weren't scared of him and he was nice, but not too nice, to them.  And then their mom; she hugged them, spoke kindly to them, and it was obvious that she loved them.  I remember secretly wishing that they could be my parents.

His youngest sister; not so many good memories.  She, my father and I all look alike.  I have always despised looking like him and I'm pretty sure she hates it too.  She has always been a little on the crazy side.  But I also know and understand what is wrong with her. 

him.

We stayed with the oldest sister and stayed up late talking each night.  A lot of the conversations were nice but there were others that left me with the wind knocked out of me.  Her husband went to high school with my father and said that he was the meanest person he has ever known.  Because of that, combined with my mother, he didn't think I had a chance in hell to turn out even halfway OK.  Given that, they weren't surprised about my sister.

My aunt began the first night with an apology because they knew that things were going on but didn't say much or do anything about it. 

I told her that it was fine.  It's really not but what good does it do to cause her more distress over something that cannot be changed?

My uncle talked about walking in on my father with me.  He wasn't sure exactly what he saw but my father quickly told him that he was putting me to bed.  My uncle wondered how that was since I had been put to bed three hours before.  He never said anything.

My aunt told us about one conversation with my father.  She was concerned with how rough he was with my sister and me.  She made the observation that it looked like he was trying to raise little soldiers.  Robots would have been more accurate.  He got mad and they didn't see us again for three or four years.

There were other things too... my bruises, scars, behavior, strange fears, and just odd behavior in general.  I was not a typical kid.

I was also told how my father was sent to live with their grandparents because he kept hurting his sisters and their family pets.  He was sick from very early on.

I had little interaction with his other sister and that is probably best.  She's nice enough but she is also drunk most of the time and hasn't been the best of mothers to her own children.  She is on her third marriage after marrying two abusive creeps.

On one of the nights, her daughter approached me because she needed to ask some questions.  She told me some horrible things that her mother said to her about not wanting her when she was pregnant.  It all sounded very familiar but all I could tell her was that I was very sorry. 

Then she asked about her biological father.  She wanted to know if I remembered him messing with me or my sister.  The short answer was yes.  The longer answer was that my father found out and almost killed him.  And not for the right reasons either. We didn't see them for awhile and I never saw that uncle again.  He eventually terminated his rights to my cousin and her older brother.

She told me that her biological father abused her and that she was in counseling.  She said that she was making progress but she needed to hear it from someone else that he really was a monster.  Her mother has never been supportive of her and always dismissed it as she was imagining things, making things up, or just crazy.  That also sounded very familiar.

I also understood her need to hear the confirmation from something other than her own memory.  I have always held on to that tiny bit of denial that I was just crazy or imagined it happening.  I received that same confirmation on this trip.

Does it make me feel better? 

Not really.

I've lost the security I had in my tiny piece of denial.  In the past when I have really felt bad, I would make myself feel better by using that denial.  Now I don't have that safety net and that is frightening.  I am also forced to accept what happened and who they really were.

And then there is the obvious reason that none of this made me feel better. 

If they knew that things were going on. 

Witnessed things with their own eyes and ears. 

Knew what he was capable of. 

Knew that my mother was crazy too. 

Why the fuck didn't they do anything?!?

I get that they were scared and maybe even intimidated but shit, they have two daughters of their own.  Wouldn't they want someone to speak up if something had been happening to their girls??

It's always nice to reconnect with family over the holidays.  Especially the part when they tell you they knew that their brother, your father, was fucking you all along.

Fuck them.

Completed

My mothers sister killed herself in November.  I spent part of my Thanksgiving week traveling to view and claim her body.  Of all the horror I have witnessed; this was one of my more disturbing moments.  I went in alone and I still wish that I had not.

She is number three.  My sister.  My mother.  And now her.  They are a group of three while I am on the outside looking in.

I wish people would leave my life without forcing themselves, by their own hands, through that narrow tunnel of death.  Forced is never easy.  For the person dying or the one left behind.

I try not to imagine what their final moments might have been like.  I walk that fine edge of looking but then ripping my eyes away.  I want to know but at the final moment I turn away because I am not a part of their sacred group. 

I wander into another kind of group that is supposed to support people like myself.  Those left behind to answer all the questions that never have an answer.

There are six of us.  A group of six with little in common except a forcible death in our lives.

Completed suicide.  That's the phrase they use when introducing their loved one. 

When I think of the word completed, I think in terms of... completed 1st grade... completed a project... completed a task. 

Completing death?  Creepy.  And a nice way of dressing up the fact that there are some people who off themselves because things suck really bad for them.

The circle stops at my chair I say my name and rattle off my group of three.  The leader repeats back my group of three and it suddenly sounds so much worse.

The circle begins again as each describes how their loved one completed suicide.  There's that word again.

In graphic detail... three gunshots, a hanging and an overdose.  Blood... eyeballs bulging... vomit... brains and walls.  If completed didn't sound strange before it has certainly become the fucking understatement of the evening now.

The circle stops at me again and I stare.  I finally just say no thank you and the circle keeps on rolling down  the steep descent.

Now it's time for the grief and feelings.  The other five members have all lost their children.  I'm the only one who has lost a parent, sibling, and an aunt.  I tell myself that doesn't matter.  Grief is grief.  Feelings are feelings.

But as I listen to the parents grieve their children I am stunned as I hear their words.

... anything to take their place...

... I would have taken their pain...

... miss them so much...

I hear their words but hear my mother's louder as she wished aloud that it was me instead of my sister lying in that hospital bed.  And once again speaking her wishes once my sister passed away.  Quite the contrast.

I break out in a cold sweat.  I shiver as my stomach lurches.  My head is screaming as the voices gain momentum.  I try to gather a few feelings to speak but they are drowned out by the frantic pitch my mind is at.

It's once again my turn to share.  My heart is pounding and the room is spinning.  I know what comes next.  I grab my keys and excuse myself.  I get sick in the parking lot and then I drive away.  My head hasn't stopped screaming yet.

I completed my first attempt at a support group and that was the only time that evening that word was used correctly.

Chaos

Growing up in a never ending cycle of chaos, I came to expect it.  Of course there was always the calm before the storm but the more pronounced, the more prolonged the calm; the worse the storm was.

I think my father had his ways to keep us guessing.  Everything was fine and then someone would commit an offense that had always provoked him in the past.  But this time he wouldn't explode.  No fists.  No belts.  No starry shakes of my head.  No angry touching.

The artificial calm was almost more than I could take.  Predictable chaos is better than uncertain explosions.

It was then my mission to make him angry.  I was in control if I could chose the moment of his anger and the consequences.  I continued this behavior into my dating and first marriage.  We lived the comfort of the vicious cycle.  I didn't believe that I deserved to live in anything but an abusive home so that is what I accepted.

In my re-marriage, there have still been times that I have tried to invoke the chaos.  Problem is, my husband never bites.  He doesn't hit.  He doesn't break things.  He doesn't do horribly passive/aggressive things either.  It doesn't push him away.  He never even leaves.

Sometime I wonder what it must feel like to be my daughter.  To come home to a clean and peaceful home.  To never have to clean up broken glass.  To never know the sound of leather hitting skin.  To have parents who can disagree and work it out without violence.  It must be wonderful.

I am far from the perfect mother.  I have issues.  And God know that I have hang ups. 

But I hope that I will never teach her chaos.  I hope instead that I teach her that peaceful is good.

And unlike chaos, there is no need to control peace.

Birthday

My birthday is this week.

I was looking through some old posts here and noticed a pattern.  For the past two years, I have never posted in the month of September.  Until now.

I don't know exactly what that means.  I want it to mean that I'm stronger.  I want it to mean that I'm healing.

I despise my birthday.  It celebrates the cruelest of jokes.  The day I was born into that family.  If you can call them that.

But as my daughter has grown, one of her very favorite things is to celebrate a birthday.  I have had to grit my teeth and smile because it's certainly not her fault that I don't enjoy marking the day I was born.

And then there's my husband.  Sans one year that he forgot; he likes to be extravagant.  I don't care for extravagant anything.

This year feels different.  I still don't want the fanfare or gifts but I'm at some sort of peace with the day.  My memories of years before are still hell but I'm not drowning in their depressing sorrow either.

Am I happy?  Not really.  I feel grief well up from my hurting heart. 

I am also alive and that was no small feat.  Dead before 30.  A "doctor" spoke it.  And I believed it.  But somewhere along the way I learned to fight. 

It hasn't been easy.  It's still not easy.  But I also have a sense of pride to have fought and won.

I can't say that I'm always glad to be alive.  But I survived and that has to count for something.

This year I choose to celebrate survival.

Lump

I find myself tangled in the lump of my throat.  Trapped somewhere between my mind of logic and my twisted and aching heart I am dizzy with conflict.  I am worth something.  I am worth nothing.  I am worth more than words can offer.

That familiar lump squeezes and twists my weary emotions as I grasp for a momentary breath of logic.  A thought that reassures what kindness says; an understanding that I am so much more than what they said.  But in that moment their words, their actions; they come crashing down on me as the lump threatens to engulf me.

Pain and bitter bile wash over me and the choices seem so non-existent.  Why else would their hatred spiral?  Why else would a child so young bear such deep and burdened scars?

It must be because I am worth so little.

The secrets that we shared.  The secrets that I keep.  These are the fuel to ignite a burning lump of torture.  I struggle to move on and I struggle to let go while the lump clutches its tiny treasure.  How do I feel my worth when all I feel is the pain wiping away even the smallest doubt that they might have been wrong?

I want to breathe.  I want to feel the full capacity of worth expand until that lump of disbelief is pushed aside for good.  I want to exhale until I know that they were wrong.

Brown

As far as colors go, brown ranks pretty low in terms of beauty.  It is drab.  It blends in.  It is a non-color.  It is certainly not in the rainbow.

Dead plants are brown.  Rotten bananas turn brown.  Brown is what comes of all the colors when they collide together.  Paper bags are brown.  And these bags are meant to disguise a secret.  An embarrassment.  The guy on the corner who drinks all day... he hides his bottle in a obviously discreet paper bag.

I carried a brown paper bag today.  It didn't contain my lunch.  And no, it didn't carry beer, wine, or liquor either.  It's the see-you-in-six-weeks kind of day.  The day where I go sit in my shrink's waiting room and pray that I don't look as crazy as I feel.  Today is the day that I rate my mental state by the bag I carry.  Am I carrying my favorite handbag or am I carrying a loud and awkward paper bag stuffed with meds?

My psychiatrist is a nice man.  He is fairly intelligent as well.  He is the first of his profession to treat me with kindness and respect.  It's refreshing.  I don't say a lot.  I smile at least once so I do not present flat.  I answer his questions with single words if at all possible.  I am not having a good time of it and that must show.  When he starts his shrink talk with "I'd like to talk to you today about..." I know that my meds are being tweaked or changed.  Yippee.

Thirty minutes later I've paid my bill and I walk the twenty five feet across the waiting room full of people and I'm holding that damn brown bag.  Any chance of appearing normal is wiped away when people see that crinkly bag full of she's-not-quite-right samples.

I skip the elevator to avoid riding in a closed space with someone who would clearly know they were confined, for a one floor descent, with a crazy girl.  I make it to my car and I dump the bag out and cram the samples into my black leather handbag.  Much more presentable because crazy people don't carry professional messenger bags, right?

The snarky humor is here but beneath that is my anger.  I'm angry that I have to do this charade every six weeks.  I'm angry that I'm a walking stigma.  I'm angry that I pay good money for appointments and medication to help me function and unfuck what they did to me.  I'm angry that I have side effects from the cocktail of meds that I take.  I'm angry that the medicated me is better than the can't-get-out-of-bed me. 

I'm still struggling over the events with my mother in law for reasons that some may not understand.  I will try to put that into words shortly because I need to find a way to express in words what is churning in my mind.  My husband's advice has been, "just be yourself", which I always inwardly smirk at because the thought of an un-medicated "me" attending a family dinner is something I'm almost certain he never wants to encounter.

Update

I apologize for neglecting my blog.  I've been in a weird place as of late and I suppose I've spent some time pretending that all this isn't happening.  In my mind, if I don't write here then I must be fine.  Right?

Wrong.

I got over the hump of the last integration only to slide downhill into a family mess.  I have worked hard to keep my head above water and ignore the worry that comes with this shit.  And I was doing a good job until last weekend.

A breach of my intimate trust occurred nearly five years ago when my husband and I were engaged.  His relationship with his mother has always been strained for a number of complex reasons.  In an attempt to share his life with her he shared with her about me, our relationship, and what seemed to be harmless details. 

At least to him. 

When he told me about their conversation I learned that he told her about my past and my Dissociative Identity Disorder.  I have never believed that he did this with ill intent but I have always worried about her own ignorance of perception.  Because she is a truly ignorant person.

And now their conversation, as I have always worried, has come back to bite me in the ass.  For a whole other post about the reasons, she is angry with me for something I have no control over: my husband's relationship with his two kids from his previous marriage.  To pay me back she has taken my disorder, skewed it's reality, and has shared it in an open email to any family member with an email address.  All under the guise of "let's pray for her".  Like all good Christians do... and I write those words dripping with truthful sarcasm.

My husband keeps telling me that she looks worse than anyone could ever think of me.  I am having a hard time believing that.  I'm also having a hard time not being angry with him.  I know he didn't do this with the intent to hurt me five years later but the truth is that is exactly what is happening.

I have tried. I really have. But I am out of ideas or delusions that this is OK. It's not and it hurts terribly.  I am horribly embarrassed and no matter what I don't see a way out of that feeling.

Money

This is a discussion I avoid at almost all costs.  Money.  Yet I am surrounded by it. 

Literally.  By way of my profession.

My family was wealthy.  So now that they are gone, I am left with a mess.  It's not a mess to most people but rather an inheritance.  I have now stood up the estate attorney four times.  I make the appointment and then I don't go.  His office assistant drives me crazy.  She probably is a pretty nice person and she probably wouldn't drive me crazy if I showed up for appointments. 

I get in my car.  I drive down the freeway.  I have even made it to his office.  And then I break out into a cold sweat, my head begins to spin, and my heart pounds with the anticipation of finality.  And then I leave.  I just can't do it.  I can't go in and legally acknowledge what has happened.

My family is gone.  A family that I never quite had in the first place.  So if I never had them, did I really loose them at all?  Perhaps my loss is bigger, even different than just their physical presence.  My loss was the chance for a caring mother; a loving father; a best friend for a sister.  I never had these things.  But I hoped for them.  I begged for them.  I even prayed for them.

Well meaning people offer me encouragement and ideas for what to do with these funds.  I nod my head and listen but each idea hits a dead spot in my brain and travels to a broken part of my heart.  Money doesn't make this better.  And while this would be a welcome addition for most; it is a painful insult to my own existence because I did not die.

I survived and they did not.  And for walking through hell I get the prize.  When I sign those papers I will make this official.  The black and white proof of their end and perhaps my own twisted beginning.  I want to say that this is good.

But all I feel is that money makes a dirty and really shitty band-aid.

Husband

I have a good husband.  I was very fortunate this time around.  Husband # 1 was a first class nightmare who also found himself enmeshed with my family from a young age. 

We were doomed before we even thought about dating.

My second time around I knew better what I was looking for and I found someone reasonably healthy.  No, my husband isn't perfect but I am sure that everyone here also knows that I am far from perfect as well.  I wish I could say that I have been an open book with him but I cannot.  He knows I have a past.  He knows I had a ruthless childhood.  He also knows I have D.I.D and he has done enough reading to know what kind of abuse causes such a disorder.  Prolonged and severe; he knows these things about me.  He "knows" my alters.  Some of them like him, some of them don't have much to do with him.  Others spend a great deal of energy trying to make him leave us. 

Except he doesn't leave.  Thank God.

When we were engaged we met with my therapist together and he got the short version of D.I.D, what living with me would look like, things to avoid, and things to do.  I was able to tell him that I was abused and that there are things in my past that I do not want to talk about with him.  All this he was fine with.  And he has remained fine; frustrated at times but still fine.

I used to journal on paper a lot.  And then he found one of my journals, read it, and all hell broke loose.  So I stopped writing until I began writing on this blog.  This has been a lifesaver for me to write here.  I have shared excerpts of my writings here with him but I have not freely shared the link.  It would not be the end of the world if he found this blog but I like it better knowing that I can write without censoring and having to answer questions about the day's blog post over dinner.  Talk about indigestion...

But now I am at a crossroads; my family is gone and with them died a lot of secrets.  My husband believes that I do not have a relationship with my father or mother and that my sister passed away... many years ago.  Knowing what he knows about D.I.D he has always been fine with us having no contact with them.  Now however, why am I still holding on to many of these secrets?

Anger is one reason.  My husband will be angry over much of what was done to me.  That anger will make me vastly uncomfortable.  And further, I have yet to justify causing someone to be angry for no profitable reason.  So why make him angry?

I fear what he will think of me; this is another reason.  What if he believes that I am a whore?  What if he realizes how fucked up I really am?  It boils down to my fear that he will believe what I already believe about myself.  And if we both believe the worst about me does that then mean that we will be doomed too?

That is my greatest fear.

Surprise

Sitting on a small couch last night, I felt as if I was sitting on the corner of some cosmic world.  Alone.  Completely alone.  And this particular world was not round; rather it was square.  Square because there is no circular justice.  Not unless you count being tortured and murdered as some sort of redemptive revenge.

And then I felt injustice pressing squarely behind my tired eyes.  What has happened is not just.  Nor is it fair because they have made their exits and I have survived.

Everyone is dead... that keeps ringing in my head.  I know that is not the precise case but in my own twisted world, everyone is, in fact, dead.

So now I sit week after week, even moment after moment, left to deal with their abuse, their hatred, their woundings, and their deaths.  Then there are my scars, my memories, my terrors, and all the collateral damage that comes with being a member of this disappearing family.  Theirs and Mine: two separate and fancy walk-in closets full of skeletons and ghosts tucked away in every nook and custom built drawer specifically designed for keeping the best and most wrenching secrets.  What an inheritance.

All this while their ashes stir peacefully in the smallest pockets of square cosmic spaces.

Death let them off the hook.  And now I feel that I am on the hook for the lion's share of the damage.  This hurts deeply; deeper than I ever imagined.  This surprises me.  I knew and yes, I fantasized, that this day would come.  And here it is and I writhe alone. 

But with this pain I have also discovered a considerable peace.  I can sleep.  Really sleep.  I have never slept well, even as a married adult sleeping in a safe environment.  From the day he fled I held my breath dreading his return.  Checking on my daughter five times a night was nothing strange.  I had to know that he was not in her room.  And with that knowledge I stole another hour of sleep.  So now I sleep surprised, soundly and deeply. 

While I always knew this day would arrive, I never believed it would. We are no longer looking over our collective shoulder. 

And that freedom is a complete, yet lost, surprise.

Enmeshed

en·mesh (n-msh) also im·mesh (m-)

tr.v. en·meshed also in·meshed, en·mesh·ing also in·mesh·ing, en·mesh·es also in·mesh·es

To entangle, involve, or catch in or as if in a mesh.

 

Used in a sentence: Shattered is enmeshed in a complex web of lust, love, and abuse.

 

Dear Ruth commented on how deeply embedded my parents are in every aspect of my being.  And possibly more so than the typical adult child.  This thought caught me falling off balance it wasn't until I fell to the ground that I took a hard look at the truth of this idea.

 

And she was right.

 

My sense of normal has always been skewed.  Well meaning people always insist to me that there is no "normal" and I have always smiled and accepted their offering of kindness. 

 

However, I'm finally going to have to flatly refuse that well meant advice because what sense of normal I have always had is certainly no where close to the typical yet non-existent normal.  Ruth brought this thought to the surface when I had to look at the possibility that in many ways, I was more connected to my parents than the typical adult.  Just like I used to think that everyone heard voices in their heads; I also thought that this enmeshment was normal.

 

But it is not.  Not even close.

 

I lived and died by my parents hands.  I starved and was fed at their discretion.  I was his companion and her demise.  I was his lover and her deepest competition.

 

And all these roles were diametrically opposed to the single role that should have existed.  Parent and child.

 

It is creepy, weird, dirty, strange and wrong but my father was my first lover.  And I use the word lover very loosely but to a daughter starving and begging for affection, that is exactly what he was.  A sexual bond existed between us that served him well to emit his constant control.  For many who read here, one can probably equate this bond to your first love; they are someone you have moved on from but you never quite forget.

 

My problem is that I never really moved on from him.  He was unforgettable.  He cast his net wide and though I struggled I never was quite free.  I was trapped in his warped lust because I carried a bond of both a child to a parent but also a bond that intimate partners share.  But now he has moved on from me.  And I would be lying if I said that I didn't feel a deep twinge of impure loss.

 

No wonder I am so very fucked up and confused.  Every single day has been a struggle lately.  My only solace is that this is finally over and with each step I take I am walking out on this distorted love.

 

I hope.

Orphan

It is funny how I just wrote about perfection and then I turn around and I'm getting smacked in the face with the unexpected, the uncontrollable, and a definite lack of perfection in my life.  And this is the shit I couldn't control even if I wanted to.

I am back on the mental roller coaster of sorts; blindfolded and going backwards while refusing to throw my hands in the air because this is just not fun at all.  I cannot write in great details right now but I will say that it appears that something has happened to my father.  So sans the details, which are gory, I can write about how I feel.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't unsettled.  I am.  In a big way.  My head is full of screaming chatter and not one bit of that chatter agrees with the next refrain of chatter.  I have always been conflicted over him and this is no different.  There are those who love him and proclaim his innocence.  There are those who hate him and wish this to be true.  And there are plenty more who are just terrified about the situation all together.

As for me, I want it to be true.  I want to be free of him and never have his thoughts cross my mind again.  When I think, I feel very little.  A lump of shame I suppose, because this is my father and I should not wish these things on anyone.  And then a single frame of my own torture is smashed into the back of my eyes and I feel an overwhelming helplessness and pain.  It appears that he finally got a taste of what he inflicted for so many years and I am at an emotional loss.

If this is true then I am an orphan.  In legal terms I would be the sole survivor. 

Survivor. 

In the singular.

Game over.

I have watched my family fight its demons to the collective death.

I am the last one standing.

Did I win?

Friend

What's that line... hello, darkness, my old friend...? 

My friend is making a raging comeback.  Yippee.

I do not know exactly what has brought this on but I am knocked down, sideways and can't get up depressed.  Those irritating Cymbalta commercials showing depressed people sucking at living?  That's me minus roaming around aimlessly in sweatpants because I don't wear sweatpants.

I just stay in my pajamas.

I don't have the luxury of sleeping the day away or even lying in bed with my eyes open praying that a spontaneous lobotomy will occur.  I have a kid, I have a job, I have judo, gymnastics, and swim team to attend, and I have a rather important (to me) husband who occasionally would like to see me out of pajamas and showered with a smile on my face.  It's a rough life these days.

The thing is, I do shower, smile and dress nicely.  It's my mind that is still wearing pajamas and perhaps that is where the conflict begins.  I am fucking exhausted and I honestly believe that there is not a soul on earth that understands where I am coming from.  Try as he may, my husband doesn't get it and he substitutes his confusion with anger.  I don't do anger so I just shut up and stay quiet.  I certainly am not talking to my daughter about this and I don't have any girlfriends to call up and bitch about my fucked up life.

So here I am.

I told my husband this morning that I am a really fucked up person and it is really hard to live.  His response was to yell at me that I'm not fucked up.  Right.  Everyone he meets hears voices, sees people who aren't there, and wishes they could carve the feeling part of their brain right out of their skull.  Right.  I'm definitely not fucked up.

Love him.

But seriously, I'm tired.  I walk a mental high wire, balancing with hate in one hand and sorrow in the other.  And then I crash with only my pretend friends to catch me.  The reality of my horrors catches up with me on occasion and now is one of those times.  I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can barely think.  The Shelter is screaming and I can't help those babies enough.  I am getting that familiar feeling that I am not the one made for this job.

What this boils down to is that I hate my parents.  I hate what they did and I hate what they allowed.  That hate is consuming me and I feel myself getting angry so I turn the hatred on myself.  It is easier to hate me.  It is safer.

Until I run out of room for cutting.

And I'm there; I have no more hidden skin available.  This is usually where I retreat deep inside but I'm not OK accepting that this time.  Problem is, I don't know where to go.

How

As I consider the New Year, I consider the typical responses.

 A fresh start... a better year... putting to bed a bad year... this year will be better.

I have never seen a new year as anything.  Perhaps an excuse to get drunk and maybe not alone.  That is the extent.

A fresh start is a foreign body to me.  To do that would be to erase the memories, the scars, the voices in my head, the shadow people in the corners of nearly every room I enter.  All are impossible.  Especially when there are many, many memories below the frozen surface of my mind.  Frozen in time; so cold that it hurts. 

A perpetual brain freeze.  I wish for just one day without this pain.

No fresh start for me.  What I can do though, is obsess over the how of my life.  I have pretty much given up on the why.  There is just no good answer there; at least not at this point.

How doesn't have to do with other people.  It has to do with me.  How the fuck did I survive?

There are a lot of awful childhood verses sung; a creepy uncle, a leering step-dad, a secret priest, an angry mother, a lost and groping sibling.  Each verse different yet fraught with painful similarities and fragile coping. 

And then there is me.  And others like myself.  I am shattered and still standing yet I have no idea how I got here or how I figured out that this was a life worth surviving. 

How did I not give up?

How did I put one aching foot in front of the other, day after day?  Night after night?  

How did I barely sit down at breakfast each morning believing that our dance in the dark was a household brand?

How did they know just how far to go?  Close enough to fearful pleasure.  Far enough from impersonal death. 

It is a precarious how.

Gifts

I have a secret habit.  I actually have many more than just this one but I guess that is why this blog exists; to spell these quirks out in hopes that I am not as bizarre as I see myself to be.

I buy gifts for dead people.  I started doing this the year my mother and sister died.  First on accident; participating in the grief while still believing that they really could not be gone.  Now I do it as a conscious ritual each December.

The sweater that my sister would have loved.  The book that perhaps would have finally been the perfect gift for my mother.  The gift card for my father to use at one of his favorite stores. These are the gifts that would have spawned "thank you"... "I love it"... "I love you".  This is what I pretend in my head.

Christmas was an odd holiday in my family.  More often than not, I didn't get anything.  My mother would cancel my Christmas for the smallest transgression.  Each time I would watch the family open their gifts and wait with anticipation for my gifts for them to be opened.  These were gifts made at school.  Silly, child-fashioned presents.  With no present of my own to open, my waiting time was magnified.

"Well, I guess that's it" my mother would exclaim.  While scooting with her foot my wrapped gift under her antique chair she would say this.  Right on cue my father would begin the clean up of the paper and I would sit there dismayed as my wonky, un-wrapped gifts were whisked away as trash.

Nothing was festive.  Nothing was happy.  We went to my grandparents for the afternoon and evening but everything was perfect.  Robotic.  No kitchen disasters.  No burnt food.  None of the things that make each and every holiday unique.  Nothing that makes a holiday memory.

I guess this is why I have no hidden memories.  Instead I have a perfect sheet of white paper in my mind.  Blank without a family signature.

I am a generous person but giving a planned and wrapped gift is terribly difficult for me.  The unknown, the question of approval or worse, no approval, makes my stomach churn.  I wait until the waning weeks to shop, too nervous to purchase even a few anxious gifts. 

In those same few weeks, I make my dead purchases as well.  No one knows that I do this although my husband will probably catch on in another year or so.  I wrap these gifts like all the others and stash them away in a place that no one will look.

After 4 years of this madness, I have built up quite the pile of grieving gifts.  Yesterday, in the Wii-filled frenzies of my daughter and husband; I slipped away.  I loaded my secret habit into bags and announced that I was heading out to make returns.  No one questioned me or begged to go; neither husband or child willing to brave these selfish crowds.

In my brand new car, alone, and my husband would string me up if he knew this, I headed to the poorer area of our inner city.  This is an area I am familiar with and I was amazed to find even more familiar faces.  I parked and grabbed my bags of gifts.  I locked my car and off I went.  I found a group gathered and without even trying, I easily garnered their attention.

Amidst the dirty faces, I found their eyes that told a hundred tales.  I saw myself in their eyes; we share that same sad reflection of the world.  I gave my hidden gifts.  Gift cards, clothes, books, ornaments, all the gifts that most regard as small and typical. 

And here I must insert and confess, I did not do this with an original, selfless purpose.  I needed to clear out these wasted presents but could not justify using them for myself or throwing them away.  I needed to disperse of a secret; before I was discovered and the questions would begin.

In handing these items out, no one pushed, no one cursed, no one threw out an expectant hand in my direction.  Not knowing what each wrapped present contained exactly; I guessed my best.

What I did not expect was the reaction I received.  The "thank you"... "I love this"... "just what I asked for"... "I have always wanted one of these"... reactions poured out of dirty and even drunken mouths.  The very reactions I longed for from my own birth family were given to me, in response to the gifts I bought for them, that I gave to complete yet familiar strangers.

I did not do this in my family's memory.  What I did do, though, was create a Christmas memory of my own.

Party

What is a blog in December without a cheery holiday post from a Christmas past?

My blog.  Sorry.

I have spent the last several days attempting to conjure up even one sliver of a Christmas memory to smile and roll my eyes at. The bike I always wanted. The puppy in the bow-tied box. The impossible-to-find-toy found under our tree. The antics of out-laws and in-laws. Something. Anything. Nothing.

I can't remember a Christmas in my past; I just know that I have never enjoyed the holidays. The closest I come is in remembering a school party, candy canes, and trashy gifts.

I hate getting notes sent home from the teacher. Whatever is detailed, asked for, or is changing; those things will be ignored. My face red with shame, I will stand and explain to my teacher why the note was not followed and why I am unsigned, empty handed, or out of new guidelines. My parents are too busy to care or too unimpressed with me to help a kid be a productive member of a second grade class.

I am sitting in the carpool line and pinned to my shirt is a note on green paper asking for my contribution to the class Christmas party. Filled in the blank with curly teacher writing are the words candy canes. I like to eat paper and I would have been better off eating this note. I would be less hungry and my mother would have one less item to concern her hatred with.

Walking to the car, I pulled the note off the pin and crammed it in my uniform jumper pocket. I waited for the seemingly right time to ask... after my sister had presented her own classroom party request and had it approved. What better time?

I ran to my room to rescue that green note from a certain death in the washing machine. I took it to my mother and showed her my own request. Quickly she glanced and returned the note to its original creases. I received a conditional "yes".

Behave, keep your room clean, have good manners, don't talk back... these were the conditions pressed upon my behavior in order to receive my candy cane contribution.

The night before the party came and went. That morning, I asked my mother where my Christmas party requirements were and informed me that they were in my bag. Once at school, I opened my bag to find a smaller bag. Inside was one, single peppermint.

One fucking mint to share with my class.

Humiliated, I am sitting at my desk when I hear the morning announcements. The younger kids are having their parties first. There is my one chance. I twist and fret until the younger parties are finished. I ask to go to the restroom and slip into the other wing of the school. Happy kids are leaving hand in hand with their hurried parents. The classrooms are black as I step into each one to forage for my treats.

Digging through cold cups of hot chocolate, sticky red frosting, and squeezed small juice boxes, I find my treasures. Discarded candy canes. I carefully wipe each one off and will the broken ones whole again. I carefully stuff them in my pockets and repeat this process until I have twenty precious canes to share with my friends.

I race back to my own classroom but not before I peer into my sister's room. And there she is. My mother. Smiling, laughing, and enjoying my sister's Christmas party. I hate her at this specific moment.

I return to my seat only to linger a few minutes behind when the recess bell rings. With everyone gone, I retrieve the rescued candies from my pockets and place them on the table with all the other green notes fulfilled.

She didn't come to my party. She never said a word to me. I never said a word to her.

Need

From The Pliers: The question that occurs to me tonight as I follow the progress of your reclamation project is, What is the singularly most important thing that any given reader of your blog can do for you, with you, or on your behalf as s/he or reads your words?

To be an effect.  To be affected...

There are remarkably unique readers here.  I wrote to another reader that I want my readers to take from my words exactly what they need, not what I want them to need.  That would be rather selfish of me as I have spent a lifetime being told what to feel, what not to feel, and how to feel.  Here is not the place for that.

I began writing here to keep a journal.  One out of ink and out of nosey hands.  I love my family but one member in particular likes to read my spilled guts.  I'm anonymous here and so I write freely.  I have in fact shared printed pages of this site in person but that is as far as I have gotten.

In my writing you will find love.  I deeply love my daughter and my husband.  On paper I am not capable of love.  I believed that lie for far too long.  Love is what drives me to succeed in this; to excel at being whole. 

My love goes beyond those who live in my home as well.  This is a bold love; a love that hopes and believes for the best.  This love hopes that every time my father calls that he will be calling to tell me he has changed.  This love hopes that my mother found the end of her turmoil.  This love envelops hate, consumes despair and braids the three into something fierce and sharp.  My love for my parents cuts and and shreds but loves these imperfect people because they gave me life and they did not kill me; this is the best I got from them.  Underneath the shards of pain, I love them.  Not for what they did but rather for what they didn't.

In these pages the closed mind, the unscathed will find truth.  There are those who hold tightly to a small little world where nothing all that bad happens.  It does.  To children and adults alike. An awareness can be found here as brutal words are wrapped around the perspective of a small child.  It is hard to ignore.

And lastly, for the broken, for the survivor, for the lost; there is hope.  What I write is only my version of hope so seek your hope out as well.  But take from me what you need even if it is just the smallest understanding that you are not alone. 

Because you are not.

For those who are able, take from me the awareness that there are others like me; your neighbors, your friends, the child in your own child's class who forces a smile but carries a frown that is just a little too deep for a tiny face.

What can a reader do?  Please do not waste my woundings.  Take what you need.

Be an effect.  Be affected by love, truth, hope...

Baggage

I know we all have baggage.  Some more than others.  Some less than others.

I have closets crammed deep and to the top, a storage unit full, and an 18-wheeler truck full of my baggage that follows me wherever I go.

Last night my husband did something that triggered me beyond reasoning.  He was in the wrong and of course he apologized but this was after nearly an hour of my screaming and even tears. 

Yes, I cried.

I got a hold of myself only when he matched my pitch and told me,

I am not your parents... I am not him... breathe and look me in the eyes...

 Pressed into a corner of the room, it was then that I came back to reality.  Suddenly he didn't look like my father anymore and his words didn't sound like my mother's searing rage. 

He told me late last night, after we went to bed, in the dark so that he didn't have to see the hurt on my face, that he hadn't fully realized just how damaged I was until this episode.  His words cut me to the bone because they were true.

I am damaged and on the off chance that a closet door is opened just a little too far, that baggage tumbles out crushing whomever is standing in the way.  It is times like these that I feel so badly for my family.  They did nothing wrong yet they are getting trampled by my past.  Although not as bad, this is my mother all over again.  Her past knocked me over flattened me.  Damaged me and smothered me under her own musty baggage.

I can't be her.  I just can't.  It is not fair to my family and it is times like last night that I wonder what the fuck I was thinking when I started playing house.