by Band Back Together | Oct 21, 2010 | Abuse, Child Abuse, Emotional Abuse |
In my previous post, I talked about the emotional abuse my children are going through.
I constantly fear that they will carry these scars with them. But I don’t think I have ever been more proud of my daughter than I was yesterday.
I got out of work two hours early, so I called my daughter to tell her that after her homework, we could go to the playground. She was so excited. I told her to get her school books ready and she said “Mom, I am playing right now and I REAAALLY want to finish this.”
I asked her what she was playing. She told me she was pretending to be a counselor. She’d gone to summer camp and the older kids volunteer as camp counselors. I figured that was what she meant.
So I asked, “What kind of counselor? Are you starting a camp?”
She said, “no Mommy, I am being a counselor who talks to people. That’s what I want to do when I grow up. I want to talk to kids like me so I can help them.”
It brought tears to my eyes. It made me sad that she acknowledges the scars she is going to carry but it also made me so proud that, instead of feeling sorry for herself, she wants to use her experiences to help others. At six years old, she is already thinking about how to help others instead of dwelling on her own problems.
Most kids her age play house, doctor, and teacher. She is thinking about how she can use the small amount of experiences she has had in her short life to help other people.
I am so proud of her. At age six, she is such a smart, kind, and compassionate person and I truly believe she WILL help many people in her lifetime. I am so thankful that she is learning how to help people rather that assume that abuse is okay.
I have always loved the song In My Daughter’s Eyes, but yesterday I could hear the lyrics over and over again in my head: “I see who I want to be in my daughter’s eyes.”
I only wish I could be as strong, caring and compassionate as she is.
by Band Back Together | Oct 21, 2010 | Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse |
[Ed. note: I’m leaving the grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors in place since this was written by a young person. Correcting everything would take away some of the authenticity of this piece. -Adrienne]
I’ve been wanting to write a post about what I went through as a kid for a while, but I have not been able to sit down and do it the way I want. Instead I pulled out my diary I kept back then. I am going to write down the raw emotions I felt that day and maybe it will help me to get through some things.
June 17, 1995
Dear Diary,
I haven’t wrote in a long time but I have been really busy.
Well, let me start on June 10th….
Mom let me go to Dan’s sisters wedding and he gave me a gold bracelet (no it wasn’t stolen) and he also went out with Missy! NO JOKE!
I have confusing news too, K here’s what happened…
I was laying on the couch at Denises yesterday getting ready for bed because we were going to go to the lake today since I was babysitting the little brat Becca I needed a break.
Anyway, Ron came in to tell Brittany the dog good night since she was sleeping with me. He moved the sheet and I thought it was so he could pet Brittany, then he just started rubbing my vaginal area..My heart was beating 50mph then he started rubbing my chest and I was so scared to do anything because he had had a few bears and I wasn’t sure what he was capable of, but then I ran and told Denise and he left.
I didn’t know where he went but after about 30minuts Denise found him and he admitted he had done so then, I knew I wasn’t dreaming! Denise kept saying he was sorry from the bottom of his heart and he was gonna turn himself into the police tomorrow night and get counseling.
Why did he? I though I could trust him but now I can’t trust no one!
I’ll probably be real touch for a long long while! I never want to see him again! Not in court, at Sue’s, at Denise’s anywhere! I don’t want to go to court either!
Why did this happen to me again? I don’t understand why am I so confused? I need to spill my guts to someone who knows what I am going through.
I’m thinking about telling Krystal.
I better go now.
Confused and Sad,
Me
That is the same night it happened. I am also going to include the next few days…
June 20, 1995
Dear Diary,
I’m now in the car headed back to Moline. I just had to get away from that hellhole Peru! David beat Krystal for asking questions about what happened and told her if she told her mom he beat her, he’d beat her worse! Well she didn’t tell..D.L did, so now David is blaming Krystal’s nightmares on me and so was Sue.
I confide things I don’t even tell my best friend in you and I trust no one with read you, at least I hope
Well I better go.
Still Confused,
Me
June 2, 1995
Dear Diary,
Last night I wrote a letter to my mom about what happned and then I guess all my feelings caught up with me cause I have been holding them in for so long I guess. I just started crying for no reason at all, just because.
When Grandma came in I couldn’t tell her anything! I confessed all my feelings to mom though. Grandma would ask me a question and I could only move my head in circles. I couldn’t decide anything! I am scared of my own shadow and even the dark! I am 14 years old and acting like I am 2! I even feel uncomfortable around Uncle Scott! I feel so horrible and I miss my mom! The only time I am not or I don’t is when I am around Dan and Alisa.
Yes I know Dan is a guy too. But he’s so casual and calm he makes my whole body loosen up and feel really good, same thing with Alisa.
I miss my mom so much! I hear her voice and her car and car keys being laid on the table. I am so scared and confused I don’t know what to do!
Me
June 14, 1995
12:10 am
Dear Diary,
I talked to my mom tonight and I started crying. I felt so bad.
I feel funny when I’m around Uncle Scott. I know it’s sad But I can’t help it, it makes me feel uncomfortable when he even tickles me.
I am going to Peru next week. I can’t wait to see my mom again. I miss her so much!
Gotta Go!
Me
That is where I will end it. I don’t want to bore you too much with all the 14-year old babble.
Let me finish by saying that my mom had to stay behind to finish things up with her job. I understood that at the time, but it didn’t make it any easier. I can’t say I would make the same decision with my children. I hope I will never be in a position to have to choose something like that.
My uncle Scott has always been like a dad to me. He was there when my father wasn’t. I knew why I was feeling what I did around him and felt incredibly guilty about it. Denise and Ron were my mom’s boyfriend’s (David) sister and brother-in-law and I was spending the summer with them to babysit their two girls.
I was supposed to be home that weekend but they begged me to stay and go to the lake. I have regretted that decision a lot! Krystal is David’s daughter. She was my sister and I wanted to tell her because she had been through something similar. And when I say he beat her, he really didn’t he spanked her but you know…that was acceptable then.
I still struggle with what happened to me. I am terrified of it happening to my kids. I think sometimes I am too worried about it. And I try to talk myself through a lot of things. I can see where my problems came from and what happened and I just can’t seem to work through them.
So they get pushed to the back. I do the best I can without dwelling on the past.
by Band Back Together | Oct 20, 2010 | Bipolar Disorder, Happiness, Hope, Mental Health |
Bipolar Disorder is a tough diagnosis.
This is her story of hope:
Having Bipolar sucks sometimes.
Having bipolar disorder means that there are cycles that the meds will never fully be able to control. It means never being able to fully “let go” because letting go means not checking yourself every five minutes to make sure you’re within the normal range.
It means having people look at you funny and then avoid you altogether once they find out. It means being unable to just “be yourself,” because like it or not, bipolar disorder is like a wild, out-of-control animal. The medication give you reins and a saddle so you can sometimes steer the beast, but the disease has control.
And I’m one of the lucky ones.
I am one of the rare cases who found a medication regime four years after onset and haven’t had to change it since. I’m graduating college with honors and have been accepted to grad schools. I.am.lucky. and yet most days it’s a struggle to fit in with “normals.”
What I’ve found after years of studying other people to try and figure out how they have stability so easily is that most of them have skeletons, they just don’t acknowledge them and take them out to dance.
That’s a terrifying thought, but a relieving one, too. Relief to know I’m not the only one who struggles, frightening to know that everyone goes through their own shitstorm. Their heartbeat puts them on the list and the rest is a matter of which nouns and verbs you use to describe the “w’s” (who, what, when and where).
We all should keep fighting. We keep fighting and pulling ourselves off the ground. The truth of life is that sometimes, well, shit happens.
But I’ll say one thing; I wouldn’t trade having bipolar disorder for anything. Without it, I would be half the person I am today. It’s hard, so hard that some days that I’m afraid to be around myself, but I’m so much stronger with it then I ever would have been otherwise.
Surviving bipolar disorder is an amazing feeling. The enormity of what we go through is huge. We walk through fire every day and while sometimes we scar, there is a section of cool water is on the other side if you allow yourself to feel for it.
Keep fighting.
by Band Back Together | Oct 20, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Family, Feelings, Guilt, How To Help A Friend With Infertility, Infertility, Jealousy, Loneliness, Sadness, Stress, Trauma |
“baker baker baking a cake
make me a day
make me whole again
and i wonder what’s in a day
what’s in your cake this time”
Infertility has forever changed the fundamentals of my being. Almost two years have passed since I suffered through the last of my IVF cycles. Physically, my body seems to have recovered from that violation. Emotionally, I am damaged beyond repair. I mourn the loss of that whole, hopeful person I once was. Even though he’d never admit it, I’ve also crushed my husband’s dreams of normalcy. I can’t help but wonder how many maybe babies there were that we never knew, that never stood a chance. I’m heartbroken for my friends who are still fighting the uphill battle towards motherhood and those who are suffocating under the crushing weight of loss.
Maybe today I’ll file away some of my bitterness and anger. So much of it I carry around in secret. After all, I have my beautiful, perfect little girl here in my arms. What about my friends who don’t? Don’t they better deserve to wear their heartache like a badge of honor?
Aren’t I supposed to just get over it and just be happy? I want to, but I know I never will.
by Band Back Together | Oct 20, 2010 | How To Cope With A Suicide, Suicide |
They say (and just who the hell are “they” anyway?) that the first year is the hardest. I keep waiting for this to be true, for it to get easier. Maybe no one dares tell the honest truth: that losing a loved one so unexpectedly, so needlessly, and so tragically never gets easier? I don’t know. I am still figuring it out.
All I can truthfully say is that September 9, 2009, marked the end of my carefully-constructed life. The walls of shelter I had built around my family – especially my boys – were instantly demolished, leaving no trace of the safety I believed they provided. After that day, I no longer understood anything. I didn’t view anything the same. Some things I became unable to appreciate, while other things that I had previously not noticed, I began to cherish. My days are still like this – full of the confusion and turmoil of what life means now that my brother is gone.
In some small ways, it does get easier. Rarely anymore is my first morning thought, “Jeff is gone.” I don’t cry during my morning showers anymore, or lock myself in the bathroom just for that purpose – in fact, I can’t remember the last time I did. I don’t feel that sense of impotent anger that I couldn’t stop his actions, and worse, that I wasn’t aware, didn’t notice, and/or missed the signs he was even considering such a drastic way to fix what he thought unfixable. I no longer hold myself responsible for not seeing what couldn’t, and wasn’t, seen by anyone, not even those closest to him.
The hard times come at unexpected moments, like when I am at the bedside of an elderly patient, dying due to incurable disease, for some reason being kept alive by every conceivable medical intervention. Usually I am involved with my team performing an intervention that will do nothing lifesaving or really even ease any suffering. I wonder if the patient truly is suffering, and if this moment in the future could have been foreseen, would choices have been made differently? Then I think of my brother – choice no longer applies to his mortality. And I think about the patient’s family; I re-experience how very painful it is to let go of someone you love, and whether or not I agree with their decisions to keep the patient alive. I empathize in my own way.
Other hard times come when I am with a newly-diagnosed cancer patients, in the prime of their lives, now with a disease that is quite possibly incurable – I sense their questions, sometimes before they even utter them, things like, “Will I see my son or daughter get married/have kids/graduate from college?” or “Will I be alive to see the birth of my next grandchild?” And questions like “What will be left of me as a functioning person after all the surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, etc….? Will the suffering be worth it?” To all of these questions, I do my best not to answer, as I simply don’t know. I try not to say much, if at all, and instead offer a hand to hold and a listening ear. I don’t want to influence other people’s personal dramas with my own loss. After such encounters I feel the whole cycle of emotions of losing Jeff again, from denial, to anger, to bargaining, to sadness, and to a sort of acceptance – not necessarily in that order.
Do I still have times when I burst into tears because of a song on the radio? Or when my youngest child brings me a book to read that Jeff and his lovely wife bought for him? When my oldest son says, “Remember when Jeff and I would have sleepovers, play video games, and eat Oreos?”….or at any of the thousand other Remember When’s he has about his uncle? Yes!! Absolutely yes!! And sometimes, for no discernible reason at all – I simply miss him so acutely that I feel a physical ache. I don’t expect that to ever go away.
At the same time, I want my boys to know what a kind, giving, loving person their uncle was. I want them to know what a fantastic sense of humor he had, and how he had a way of charming even the most cantankerous person. The way he was a fantastic dresser, had impeccable taste, and was generous almost to a fault. Those were some of his many gifts. The world is definitely poorer without him and his light. And that is the saddest part of all – not that I miss him, or that my boys miss him, but for all the people who now won’t have a chance to meet him and be touched by what made him someone we all loved so much.
I love you Jeff! My boys love you!! We miss you more than words can say, but I know we were blessed to know you for the time you were here! Thank you for your love, for making us laugh, for having the grossest feet of anyone in our family, for being most comfortable making us all uncomfortable, and for always being there with a big, reassuring hug. On some of my worst days, especially lately, I remember those hugs, and imagine your big, strong arms are still hugging me from wherever you are. Then I feel a little better, and I remember just how much strength you have given me through the years to keep on going. So I do.
I love you, my “little” brother!
