Note: some of you may recognize parts of this story. I ask that you please respect the thin veneer of anonymity I’ve created by posting this here and only reply in the comments here, on this post. Thank you.
Why am I always the reliable one? I’m tired of people depending on me.
When my ex and I first got together, I announced that I was going to be teacher as a means to support my novel-writing. She thought that sounded swell, so she was going to be a nurse to support her art. That lasted a year or so. She finally had a little mental “snap” and quit school, just two classes short of a degree in English and art.
“If it’s what you want,” I said, “then do it.”
A friend later claimed that my now-ex had “supported” me as I went through grad school. Wrong. I worked full-time through grad school just as I had through college. I brought in at least half of our income. I paid my bills. On time, no less.
My ex’s little “snap” got worse. There were times she was catatonic on the couch. I pleaded. I begged. As a last resort, I yelled and that seemed to be what she wanted at that moment. Not something I could do ongoing – so I pleaded and begged her to get counseling. “Sure,” was the response, but it never happened. She met someone else. He convinced her to get help. So she did. For him.
She showed me a journal entry not long after she started therapy. The first blow was when she said that I was her financial stability while the other guy met her emotional needs. I thought this was her way of announcing she wanted a divorce. Apparently, however, she didn’t see anything wrong with this and pointed to the most disturbing part of the entry – “This, THIS is what I wanted you to really see!” This was the part about how she was so full of love that she loved everyone, and more than that, that she could bed anyone. Including her mother and grandmother.
Ummmmmmmm.
We went back to her counselor to answer the question that had been posed the previous week: why are you married? My answer was: I want a divorce. There was just no coming back from that journal entry. Not when she couldn’t see how screwed up it was. Not when she only thought of me as her financial stability.
My next wife couldn’t believe I’d put up with so much from the ex, much less for ten years. But I don’t believe you leave just because someone is ill. I stick to the commitments I make and I take that responsibility seriously.
My current wife moved in with me because, well, because she was falling apart and because I keep things together. It’s what I do, what I’ve done since I was very small. We fell in love. And then we got catastrophic news – I had cancer. No health insurance, not even breaking $20,000 a year, despite having a coveted professional job at a very prestigious place. My new wife worked, but didn’t have a career and was not sure what she wanted to do next. We were dead broke.
But just as I fought my way through childhood sexual abuse, I beat the shit out of the cancer as well. About then, I was offered full-time employ at another prestigious organization. I thought I had a career. I began to relax into my life.
We fussed over the hours I kept. We fussed because I have difficulties taking breaks and tend to work myself into a state of exhaustion. We fussed over keeping the house picked up. We fussed over what to do on vacations.
We never really fought or had an outright argument, not really. We were good at dialoguing and compromising. I’m not saying sometimes there weren’t sometimes emphatic words, but we worked hard at being reasonable and at not actually yelling.
Until I woke up one day and realized that I felt like I’d made all the compromises.
Please note that I said I felt like I’d made all the compromises. I don’t think that’s strictly true; I’m sure she has her list.
I lost my beloved career. Part of me thinks it’s because she complained about the hours I kept. But I have the feeling that’s not true – there were political reasons for getting rid of someone like me, many of them. But I can’t help that feeling ….
I found a new job eventually. It was dull and boring and I said I was only doing it until she was done with school and ready to head to graduate school. Then I could – perhaps – afford to be more picky with my choice of employ. So I waited. And I grew to love my job. The longer I worked there, the more they fitted tasks to me instead of trying to fit me into a particular little round hole when I’m so obviously a triangle. She asked me to quit talking about it because she hated her job.
She had one class left. The one class I was most fit to help her with. But she put it off. Dropped out. Took it by correspondence class, but then didn’t keep up with the work. And somehow, still got her diploma in the mail.
But she didn’t apply to grad school.
She continued at the job she hated. Insisted that there were no jobs in her field. Her workplace is making her sick constantly, but rather than look for any job just to get out of there – even a temporary job instead of something in her career field – she continues with this one. Fusses about it.
The job I’d started out hating but had grown to enjoy and was launching a new career for me, abruptly and unexpectedly closed just before the economy really tanked. I eventually found a new job at the most dysfunctional company I can imagine and have spend the last three and a half years trying to find something else locally.
And now she has completely folded in on herself. It’s been painful to watch in every single way. Neither of us are outgoing people but she used to go out with friends. I realized the other day not only do I not have any friends (long-standing issue having to do with my shyness and social confusion, not with her), but she no longer has friends either. It’s like pulling teeth to get her to agree to go out without me, even just to the grocery store to pick up something that she needs. (Don’t assume I don’t go to the grocery store – I do. I’m talking about a run for the one vital ingredient she forgot or the one medicine she ran out of two days ago and keeps forgetting she needs until it’s time to take it again.)
Like my ex-wife, she, too, has ground to a halt. Stopped functioning in any meaningful way. She wants praise when she remembers to do a load of laundry. (Again, please don’t think I don’t have chores – I take care of the dishes and kitchen, she does the laundry. We have split all of the household chores.) I appreciate having chores done – but I don’t see the need to congratulate her every time she does the things she is supposed to do. I don’t want to be thanked for doing the dishes or scooping out the cat box. Those are my chores; I am supposed to do them.
Now, if we’ve been really busy and she makes an extra effort to do 18 loads of laundry in an evening (I exaggerate!), then I do tell her thank you. That genuine, kind of surprised, wow, honey, that was a lot, thank you!
But I’ve felt like she’s disappearing. I’ve pointed it out, cautiously, gingerly. I’ve talked around asking her about counseling, but she has always insisted that talk therapy does nothing for her. She finally announced six or so months ago that she decided she needs counseling. But she never followed through.
And now? Since the middle of August she has been to work twice. TWICE.
She went a week and a half before telling me. Turns out work called and left a message on the machine telling her that she needed to contact them and get put on short-term disability. Or -the implied threat- lose her job. She finally did contact her doctor. She was put on short-term disability. Had a slew of doctor appointments. The “stress specialist” said given her symptoms and her general twitchy demeanor, she is genetically predisposed to panic attacks. He’s giving her exercises to do. She’s also been prescribed medicines to take to help when it gets bad. The stress doctor would rather she stay off work for a total of four weeks since he started seeing her, but for some reason, she was to go back last week, after just two weeks. She made it two days (I think. I fear it was only one day, but I don’t remember and I’m afraid to ask.)
She sits at home and honestly, it’s become a cliche. She reads romance novels and pets the cats. I have to ask her if she will please do the smallest amount of one of her chores. She is home all day, doing nothing. She doesn’t do whatever small chore until after I get home from work. (Except for the day in which her chore was to make a phone call.) I have had to do several of her chores just to make sure they get done – on top of my chores, on top of my work week, on top of my work-from-home extra job. I have cringed when she makes a commitment at the church, fearful that she will fall down and I will have to keep that commitment for her (or put up with the fallout) – and been amazed when she keeps a commitment made to others … but not the ones she makes to me.
I am wracking my brain to figure out what I’ve done wrong. Did I just fall in love with women who happened to have similar issues? Did I do something wrong to trigger such behaviors? Am I so toxic that I poison them somehow?
I fear that she will lose her job soon. There are a lot of plans we made together which were time-sensitive which will die completely if this happens, including one that I have wanted with all my heart and soul since I was a very small child, but if it doesn’t get put into motion within the next year, the window of opportunity will slam permanently shut. She’s the one who told me we could do that, not to give up hope.
And I can’t help but feeling that this breakdown is tied to the timing of that plan. That her heart is not in it, but she can’t tell me and so the breakdown. The problem is, I had given up on that plan. I had put it aside completely and given up on it. And she brought that plan back to life two months ago. Dragged it out of its moth balls, dusted it off and set wheels in motion so that I believed with all my heart that it would happen after all.
And now I fear it will not. And I fear that we will not survive as a couple if her breakdown kills that plan.
I don’t understand inactivity. And so I have a difficult time understanding how she can just not walk into work every day. I am trying to be supportive. But for God’s sake, people are relying on you to go to work every day. I am relying on her to go to work every day. I do it. I hate my current job, but I go every day. I don’t understand how she can not only not go to work, but then not accomplish anything at home either. There are so many projects that need to be done. And she reads trash fiction all day.
I am trying to be supportive. She needs me to be supportive so she can get through this. And as long as she is working to get better….
But I am so very tired and this scenario just feels so very, very familiar.
And I am so tired of being the responsible one upon whom everyone relies.
Her first memory became her second memory once they started coming back, a piece at a time.
The old first memory, in her words:
“My stepfather has brought me into the back part of the house that we used as a living room. I am maybe four years old, maybe younger. I am very happy, as the Monster is being nice to me. I have a dress on, black patent-leather shoes with buckles and white ankle socks with ruffles. The couch is plaid – brown, yellow, green. His hand is on my knee and he is rubbing my leg, smiling at me. I don’t remember him taking off my panties, but they are gone. I am not concerned, I am just happy he is not hitting me, he is not yelling at me, he is smiling at me and I feel safe for the first time in a long time. His hand is under my dress and he is rubbing me and I have this strange feeling in my belly.
Out of nowhere, the most tremendous blinding pain I have ever felt. I try to scream, I try to move. He has his hand over my mouth and is holding down. The pain is unbearable. He is smiling. I can’t breathe. The pain is excruciating. Am I dying? Is he finally killing me? What is he doing? Why is he hurting me like this? As suddenly as it started, it is over. He gets up and leaves the room and I curl up in a ball sobbing. He returns with a washrag and rolls me over on my back spreading my legs again. The rag is moist and cold, he wipes me. I lay there terrified the pain will start again. When I see the rag, it is covered in blood and still he is smiling.”
She ran away then, into the fields of purple flowers. She ran and ran, finally falling down into the tall grass. The sun went down, it got dark, and though she was afraid of the dark, she was more afraid of him. Later she hears voices calling her name. Her mother, her aunt, her brother. Her mother crying for her, she stands up and hollers “Mama!” Her mother runs to her, crying, saying “My baby is OK! My baby is OK!”
Back at the house, her mother asks her why she ran away. She tells her.
“She slapped me so hard across the face that I was knocked several feet backwards and fell to the floor. She screamed at me, that I was a liar and sent me to my room. I sobbed, hurting from the pain in my bottom and the pain in my heart, knowing that I was going to die. He was going to kill me. There was no one to stop him. So I did what all good Christian girls did: I prayed to God that I would die in my sleep before morning.
That was the longest night of my life. Somewhere in the night I fell asleep. When I woke up, the Monster was smiling down at me once more. My heart was racing and I knew I was about to die and he just kept smiling. He puts one hand on either side of my head holding me down by my long brown hair, and smiling the whole time, he said, ‘She didn’t believe you, she never will and if you ever try to tell again I will kill you.’ Then, like nothing ever happened, he walks to the door, opens it, and calmly says, ‘Breakfast is ready when you are.’”
She later remembered a time in the car, when she was much smaller. Three, maybe, almost four. Her mother was asleep in the back. She was on his lap, “driving”, a policeman is yelling at her Daddy. “Where are your shoes? Why are your pants unzipped? What is going on here?” She had a little dress on. He hadn’t hurt her yet.
How did her mother sleep through the policeman, through the yelling? Or was she asleep at all?
Her words:
“After the first night when I was raped by my stepfather and ran away, two things happened. Because I had run away, a lock was placed on the outside of my door. Every night when I went to bed I was locked into my room. From then on, when mother passed out at night from her ‘nerve pills’ and alcohol, Monster was guaranteed easy access to me.”
The abuse came from her mother as well. She wasn’t “Vicki” anymore, she was “bitch, slut, liar, whore.” Any infraction of any kind was met with blunt force, blows to the head, back, ribs, whatever was closest. Her fingers were held over an open flame until the skin bubbled and blistered.
In a few years, it was not just Vicki who was being sexually tortured, it was her two brothers. And then the brother and sister that her mother had with the Monster.
When did it end?
You want to know how long it went on?
Vicki was fourteen years old when her stepfather finally went to prison for his crimes. A caring neighbor finally heard her, believed her, and confronted her mother. Her mother had the option to help provide evidence against him or be charged as an accomplice.
Perhaps worst of all, her mother did not leave the Monster. When the Monster got out of prison? He left HER.
Vicki is my sister.
Vicki is my hero.
Vicki has spent most of her life overcoming the most horrific kind of abuse imaginable and despite it, despite every bit of it – the foster care, the beatings, the years of alcohol and drug abuse to blur and erase the memories – she has not only survived, she has overcome. She has raised a son who is now in college. She was married to the love of her life until she lost him to a sudden heart attack. She is the strongest, most self sufficient woman I have ever had the privilege to meet in my life.
I thank God for many things, but most often I thank Him for two things:
That Vicki is my sister. And that I? Was relinquished by her mother at birth to adoption.
My sister thanks God that I was given up for adoption. Which makes me weep.
I’m having some kind of weird mid-life crisis, though I don’t know if being just shy of thirty counts as “mid.” Either way, my main problem is that I just want to be left the hell alone. Of course, wanting to be left alone and actually being left alone are two completely different things, and the sad truth is that I will never be left alone.
It’s not due to the bipolar depression, although I know damn well it’s a contributing factor on my worse days; it’s simply because I’m tired. I’m tired of going through the motions of my daily life, getting up early to tend to all manner of things. I’m tired of everyone in my household demanding something from me at all times, whether it’s my daughters, who want/need all of my attention since they are both so young, or my husband wanting to constantly have sex, or even the damn cat for bitching about not having food even though his food bowl is completely full. (The cat is an idiot).
I have no friends – all of them live in a different state because we moved away 2 years ago in order for my husband to pursue a new job opportunity in the northwest. We have family not too far from where we are, but we barely see them as it is, so they wouldn’t dare step in and watch the kids in order for me to get the hell away for a little while.
A few days ago, one of my friends told me to come visit her so we could go on a bender, and to be honest, I would fucking LOVE to! It would be an opportunity to get away and have some fun for once, since all of my hobbies have gone to shit since becoming a stay at home mum 5 years ago. However, even if we still lived close by, that bender would never happen because my husband, while a great guy, is insecure as fuck, and at times errs on the possessive side of things. He would be paranoid about me cheating on him even though I’ve been a million percent faithful.
Pretty much all of my time I try to reach some semblance of reprieve by burying myself in my laptop: reading the news, blogs, messaging friends or (my secret shame) reading and writing fan fiction. (Now The Band knows my horrible secret!) Sometimes I listen to music. Music is a major way for me to unwind, and the advent of Spotify has been very useful since I can listen to stuff that I’m too cheap to purchase via iTunes. My husband thinks that I have some kind of bizarre internet addiction, but that’s so far from the truth. I know this is a form of escapism.
This is my dilemma. I just want my family to back the shit off, but at the same time, it makes me feel like a terrible person. I don’t want to play with the kids. I don’t want to engage in “sexy time.” I don’t want to do the goddamn laundry or feed the goddamn cat.
I’m grumpy, I’m exhausted, and I’m just flat-out sick of everything!
I am not a “blogger,” even though I have a blog. I am not good at writing.
I have tried. I have written as catharsis. Anything I write eventually ends up used against me. I even used to write poems long ago, but what I got in return for pouring out my heart effectively put a stop to that.
I don’t know where to begin or how to form a coherent compilation of a jumbled life. There is much I will leave unsaid.
I am a child of a mentally ill parent. The woman who gave birth to me, whom I am supposed to call Mother, has schizophrenia. I am sure there are many other diagnosis that could be added to that, but we will keep it simple. As if there is such a thing as simple with schizophrenia.
The shame. The guilt. The fear. The secrecy. Being judged from HER illness.” Crazy by association.” As a result, I think I have been depressed and angry my entire life. I never was able to have a “childhood”. The early years are a blurry nightmare. Memories that are locked away by choice and repression. Sometimes I feel like I am made up of nothing but scar tissue. Who am I? Will I be judged based on her illness forever? How long will I carry her baggage as well as my own?
By some miracle I was given a reprieve. When I was 5 I went to live with an Aunt and Uncle and their two sons. God only knows what they thought of the feral child they received. Merging into a “normal” household was difficult. For all of us, I’m sure. I was a child who fended for herself and had to adjust to a new way of life. At some point I started to call my Aunt & Uncle, Mom & Dad. My cousins were like brothers. Although I was still reserved and doubtful about the security of love, I loved them.
But then like a piece of property, like a borrowed casserole dish, my “owner” demanded around the time I was 10, that I be returned. Returned to hell. I remember having an early birthday party with my friends before I left. I didn’t understand. Why would they send me back? What did I do wrong? Why was I being punished? Part of me still doesn’t understand. Even as an adult who has actually been given some of the information that as a child I was not privy to. Only those that were adults at the time will ever truly know the whys of it all.
I became the caretaker. I felt thrown away. Invisible. Damaged. Unwanted. Unlovable. Once again fending for myself in every way. Any time I made my NEEDS known, I was told I was selfish. Like dinner. How dare I expect dinner. Or school clothes, or to have my laundry done. Or or or… infinity. Any time I tried to speak up to ask questions of my family or tell someone that something wasn’t right or even to break free of the twilight zone I lived in, I was brushed aside and told “we’ll speak with your mother”. Yeah great idea. I was screaming. No one heard me. No one saw me. Or they chose not to. Selective blindness. She was the adult. I was just the child who acted out.
Unheard. Screaming inside. Unheard. Seriously!?!? How could family simply go on living their lives like mine was disposable?
Not ONE person in my family could admit to the secret that was my mother. So I became the problem child. It wasn’t her it was me. It wasn’t HER sick twisted warped behavior, it was somehow MINE. It wasn’t because I didn’t have a functioning parent or that I was subjected to abuse and exposed to things no child should be exposed to. It wasn’t because I was expected to be her caretaker, therapist, mental and physical punching bag and be sucked into her warped reality. No couldn’t possibly be that! According to them, I was a “bad” kid. I was wrong. It was ME. I had problems. I was the cause of the problems. All of the dysfunction was MY fault.
I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me. It has affected every aspect of my life. When I was a teenager, I finally found out what was wrong with her. Not because I was told, but because I wrote down the names and doses of all her medications and a person in my life was able to tell me what they were for. Needless to say confrontations were served all around. I stopped staying at “home” when I was 16, spending as little time there as possible. Still being labeled the problem child, I moved out completely at 17.
I have gotten therapy ad nauseam. I asked that I be given every psychological test known to man to see was I anything like her. Would I turn out like her? Was there something wrong with me? Despite my many flaws and admitted quirks and dysfunctions, I AM SANE.
So I still may not always know who I am, but I AM NOT HER. Nor will I ever be. I am bitter. And yes I am damaged. But I am ME. Whoever that is.
And for all the people telling me I have to forgive. For the so called family who abandoned me and still to this day judge me, shun me, and blame me, instead of facing the reality of HER illness, I give you a ginormous mushroom print. FUCK YOU.
1. This Band right here? Y’all? Knock me over with a damn feather for how blown away I am by you. Your words, support, mad crazy love and humor are sitting at the tippy top of the stuff-I’m-grateful-for sundae. I love each and every one of you and there will never ever be way for me to express my love and gratitude. I wish I could make all of you chicken parm. Because my chicken parm rocks.
2. Anyone offended by the word fuck in all its versions and glory should probably stop reading right now. (I just re-read this post. Take this warning seriously.)
3. If you don’t mind, oh interwebbers, I’m probably going to be here a lot. I JUST started my own blog but this little issue I’ve got going on is a little personal and raw so this is stuff I’d like to keep here, where I feel safe and loved. Do you mind ?
OK. So the doctor’s office was essentially big, mega, fucking bullshit. After sitting in the waiting room for NINETY MOTHERFUCKING MINUTES, I finally see Dr. V. who does a little poking around my poor sore breasticles. You know, they should really have a class in medical school on the poker face. Like, I don’t need to see you looking startled. Oh, and I also don’t need you to ask me three times if there is any chance that my eggo is preggo. Dude, I am so fucking sure I’m not knocked up. I mean, if I am, hallelujah because not only does it explain the sore boobies, me and Chelle are about to be really, really rich. And I may even be able to make it on the Rachel Maddow show.
So he immediately starts writing out the referral for a diagnostic mammogram and sonogram and informs me that depending on what those show, we may need to do a biopsy. A biopsy? Doesn’t that involve a needle? In my boobie? Speaking of needles in my boobie, yes, my right nipple is pierced (that’s a good story, I will tell it to ya someday). He also looked at that in horror and informed me that I need to take it out. Which, I mean, I knew but that’s an added stress because it has been there for almost 15 years. It has never been taken out. When you go through 12 gauges of needle going IN, why the hell would you ever take it out? Plus its lots of fun going through medical detectors in deep south airports. So yeah, I’ve got to worry about that, too. Motherfucker. He also gives me a prescription for this massive antibiotic in case it is mastitis. He jokingly informs me that this is what he gives teenagers to treat their acne, so my skin will be great. Okay, first of all dickwad, my skin is already pretty fucking awesome. Secondly, I’m not here about bumps on my fucking FACE!!!
Anyway, referral for all the poking, prodding and boob squishing in hand, I leave the doc to walk over to the CVS to fill the prescription for the antibiotics. I am all about being proactive, so I decide to call the imaging center he has referred me to and see when I can get in because he said sometimes they are open on Saturdays. Full of the Win right ? Well, not really since I am informed that my motherfucking government employee insurance is not accepted there. Are you fucking kidding me? So now I’m pissed. I drop off the prescription and head over to Starbucks to wait for it and to call the motherfucking HMO. They inform me that even though it’s a DIAGNOSTIC mammogram, not a shits and giggles one, there are a very limited number of centers I can go to, all of them roughly in Indonesia. AND I am currently car-less (another sorta funny story).
Again, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
And, just because I was CLEARLY Attila the Hun in a past life and karma is making me its bitch, Monday is a holiday so I dont know if any of these places are open. I leave for fun-filled Kansas City, Missouri Wednesday morning for six days. So basically if I can’t get an appointment for Monday or Tuesday, I’m laying up in Kansas City, stressed the fuck out, licking BBQ sauce from my fingers, with sore boobies and a growing sense of dread and doom. For SIX MOTHERFUCKING DAYS.
So that’s where we are kids. I’m glad that I’m fairly consumed with a cocktail of detachment and general pissed off-ness so the panic and fear have to take a number for now. But ya know what? I am going to kick that lump’s ass, no matter what it is. I’m bigger than whatever it thinks it’s got. And I have one hell of a posse.
Note: some of you may recognize parts of this story. I ask that you please respect the thin veneer of anonymity I’ve created by posting this here and only reply in the comments here, on this post. Thank you.