by Band Back Together | Oct 1, 2010 | Abortion, Abortion Recovery, Adoption, Family, How To Help A Friend With Infertility, Infertility, Woman's Health |
I am infertile.
We have been trying to have a baby for years to no avail. I will spare you the details, but I was approached by a potential birth mother who is a friend. She is pregnant, doesn’t want the baby, was going to have an abortion and decided she didn’t know if she could go through with it. She asked if we might be interested in private adoption. YES, oh YES, it would be a dream come true.
I did it. I got my hopes up against all logic and warning from everyone.
I got a text today that says she is not going through with the pregnancy. I am so sad right now. I am heartbroken at the needless loss of a life that could be my baby.
Where do I go from here?
I had such a tight lid on this I never let myself feel this hope or dream.
I let the lid off and now I am devastated.
by Band Back Together | Oct 1, 2010 | Abandonment, Anger, Autism, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loneliness, Loss, Parent Loss |
When you are in pain, part of you wants to shut yourself off from the world in your own discord, but there is another part of you that wants to take that pain and hand it to others – the gift of misery. In doing that, you hope that someone will see and understand what you feel; that may never happen, but it’s a chance we all want to take.
I lost my dad on July 1st of this year. The loss of a parent is devastating, full of sadness, guilt, reparations, and so on. But it is so much more…and this is my story.
My mother and father were married when I was six years old. My biological father was 5-years gone (out for milk? gone for bread? Nope. Just a loser leaving his wife and kids, it seems). So, my step-dad (and, moving forward, this will be the only occurrence in which you will see this word, because it is woefully incorrect) became my Dad. And we were instant soul-mates. My mother and my sister were always so close and so tight; when my mom and dad married, it felt like I had someone of my own.
Growing up, it was ever apparent that we had common interests and personalities. Out of seven kids, I was the baby and the proclaimed “weirdo” of the bunch. I took (take) so much heat for being “different” and “sensitive,” but my dad was always there, wanting to know about my life and wanting to know about the things that made me happy. My teenage years weren’t angsty – they were filled with friends, activities, and a parent who was there for every stupid teen-aged emotion I went through.
My adult years were tougher. I was in an unhappy marriage for many years and my first child was diagnosed with autism. I can’t begin to tell you what a blessing having my dad as my companion through all of this was. I didn’t have a husband that wanted to go to doctor appointments with me and my son (he could’ve given three shits less), but I had a Dad who wanted to be there. He wanted to learn with me. He wanted to help. He gave me time, love, understanding and peace.
And he was ALWAYS there.
And, now? I’m 35. At an age where I should be helping him in return for everything he gave to me, he’s gone. And I mean GONE. I can’t take comfort that he is “looking down on me” or “always with me” because I don’t FEEL it and I sure as fuck don’t SEE it. I feel angry. I feel alone. I have to accept the fact that the best friend that I (and my two children) ever had is never to be seen or heard from on this Earth again.
I have to look at my mom. My mother, who after so many years, is alone. I should be there for her, and GOD KNOWS I do try, but all that really does is make the absence of such sunshine that much more pronounced.
Two weeks after we buried my dad, I remarried. Two weeks after that, I was off to Europe for the trip of a lifetime. I have a beautiful family and a lovely home – but the emptiness I feel sometimes overshadows everything. How do you get through it? How does every memory that gets jogged at random times during the day not absolutely break your heart?
I miss my dad so much more than I can ever adequately describe.
by Band Back Together | Oct 1, 2010 | Addiction, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Blended Families, Child Abuse, Child Grooming, Child Sexual Abuse, Childhood Fears, Fear, Incest, Rape/Sexual Assault, Shame, Therapy |
I was the first girl in my family. Six older brothers, one younger sister from my mother’s second marriage.
The man who became my stepfather was an alcoholic. He was abusive. He would beat everyone except my sister. After all “she was his” but we weren’t angry about her being spared. We were thankful. She was safe.
He would think of ways to inflict more pain during our beatings. He would gloat about his “latest idea”. He was so excited when he created a board for our beatings that had circles and lightning bolts cut out of it. Thrilled when he saw that his plan worked. The cut-outs left circular and lightning bolt blisters on us where he had hit us with it. Our butts, our legs, our back. Wherever his newest invention connected with our flesh.
We couldn’t control our stepfather. We couldn’t control his drinking. We couldn’t control his beatings. And by God, you had better cry when he beat you. One of my brothers tried to control the only thing he could. He decided not to give him the satisfaction of seeing the pain he was causing. When he didn’t cry, he was beaten harder. Then harder still. Then harder, until the rest of us were screaming that he was going to kill my brother. He finally gave up in disgust and went to the bar. My brother was home from school for a long time after that beating.
There were days that he felt “fatherly.” He would take me, at three or four years old, to the bar with him to show off his “little girl.” There I would sit, hours on end, surrounded all the other drunks who weren’t home with their families. Even at that age, I knew this wasn’t the right place for me. I didn’t like the way the men looked at me. Asked me to sit on their laps.
I was scared.
When I was seven, my stepfather upped the ante and found a way to scar my soul. He began sexually abusing me. He didn’t start out with other things to gain my trust, or tell me how special I was, or try to make me believe this was because he loved me, like so many other abusers do. No, he did what he wanted with no preamble. He took what he wanted violently. HE was angry with ME afterward. HE was disgusted by ME afterward. He had found a much more efficient way to destroy me than a beating.
This abuse went on for years. I started walking to a little country church every Sunday. It began as a way to get out of the house. It became my only source of hope.
He tortured my brothers and I. He waved guns in his drunken stupors. He humiliated us by bursting into our grade school classrooms drunk and demanding we leave with him. (This was in the 70′s. The school let him take us when he could barely stand. I would hope that wouldn’t happen to children these days.) He would be gone for days or weeks at a time. We would learn not to relax when he was gone, as soon as we did he would return. It was as if he knew we were suddenly feeling safer in our home and he couldn’t have that.
When I was in sixth grade, my mother divorced him. I felt guilty for the internal relief I had over him leaving our lives. After all, the Bible says to honor your mother and father. I struggled with that for such a long time. Now I know that I couldn’t be expected to honoring a man who was so unhonorable. No loving God would ever expect that.
I haven’t seen him in the 30 something years since the divorce. Thank God I haven’t seen him again.
I followed the Family Rules for a very long time. I didn’t tell anyone outside the family. I took on the shame. I took the responsibility. I took the burden. I took the pain.
But eventually I grew up. I married. I told my husband some of what happened after we had been married a little over a year. I regret that, I should have told him sooner. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready. Thankfully, he is a wonderful, gentle soul and understood why I didn’t tell him sooner. And he didn’t run from my pain. He didn’t run from my past. He didn’t see me as the damaged goods. He was supportive. He was awesome. We have been married 30 years now.
We had children. A boy and a girl. As my daughter grew, the childhood I tried to forget started pushing itself forward in my mind. First a whisper, then a speaking voice, and eventually screaming YOU CANNOT IGNORE ME! I was a mess. So emotional, so raw, so frightened to face it – to speak the truth.
Eventually, I had to seek counseling. I could not get through a day without the memories forcing themselves front and center, in my dreams at night, in my day with flashbacks. Horrible, painful, frightening memories.
I was blessed. I found a wonderful counselor on my first try. She guided me. She gave me a place to speak. She encouraged me when I felt overwhelmed (most of the first year). She HEARD me. She didn’t judge me. She showed me that the shame and disgust didn’t belong to me. They belonged to HIM. It took a while for me to believe her. That pain, shame and disgust had been mine for so long.
Eventually, the shame and pain was transformed into anger. No, that isn’t quite right…it turned into ANGER! Anger that frightened me with it’s intensity. But finally I was feeling the anger at what he had done to the little girl I once was. Once I found the anger it was a very good thing that I didn’t run into him (he lives in another state). I would have ripped his manhood from his body and shoved it down the throat that used to tell me it was my fault.
I went to therapy for a year and a half. I won’t sugar coat it, it was a very tough year and a half. There was a lot of hard emotional work to be done. But oh, what a gift that therapy was for me.
I KNOW it wasn’t my fault. I KNOW I didn’t deserve what he did. I KNOW it wasn’t the clothes I wore, the way I acted, the choices I made. It was HIM. He is a sick perverted person.
Therapy made me a stronger person. My hard work transformed a victim into a survivor. It helped me become a better mother, a better wife, a better human being. It helped my soul to be set free from my past.
My younger sister? The one that was “really his”? The one he spared the abuse? She grew up to feel horribly guilty for what her birth father did to us. (We are all still thankful she didn’t suffer along with us.) She couldn’t escape the pain of her guilt. She began abusing drugs as a teen. She is forty three now. She has spent the last 27 years in a deep pit of drugs and alcohol trying to escape the past. She lost custody of her son when he was five, due to her addictions. My husband and I adopted him. We couldn’t stand to let him go to strangers and lose everyone he had ever known. We couldn’t stand to lose him in our lives either. We continue to help him battle the demons his past have created. Spared her? I don’t think so.
I am no longer angry. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to ever be anywhere near my stepfather. But I don’t want to harm him anymore either. Growth. Now, if I think of him, I feel pity for the twisted, dark, hurtful person he is. But I don’t feel sorry for him either. He made his choices. If what he did haunts him when he least expects it, that is his consequence. Somewhere deep inside of him he knows what he did, who he is.
I don’t want to give him one more minute of my life. A minute I spend hating him, is one more minute he owns. He took enough. He took too much. He can’t have any more.
