by Band Back Together | Nov 27, 2015 | Anxiety, Emotional Regulation, Family, Fear, Long Distance Relationships, Military Deployment And Family |
Almost 7 months ago, I gave birth to my first baby. Four days later, I sat on a cold set of bleachers for 6 hours and said goodbye to my husband. Surrounded by his family, I watched him hold our beautiful baby boy, give him a kiss goodbye, grab his rifle and get on a bus. His destination? Afghanistan.
The bulk of the deployment wasn’t too difficult. He called often, and I emailed him pictures every day. Our son grew. I held my breath each time someone unexpectedly knocked on my door. But my husband is on his way home right now. And this is where the trouble begins.
Where in the world is my husband? No one will tell me. I have a “window” of a week when the Marine Corps told me he would be home. It’s halfway through the week and still no word.
Is he in Afghanistan? No.
Is he in the U.S.? No.
Is he in Russia? Maybe.
But no one I have talked to who is there has seen him. Has he been able to eat? Sleep? Is he even safe? Did the plane he was on crash? (Most likely not, as I would have seen that on the news)
I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHEN I CAN HANG ANOTHER TOWEL IN THE BATHROOM!
I am not the first woman to go through this, nor will I be the last. But in the midst of a bad day, or a trying time, don’t you always feel like you are the only one who is experiencing your troubles? “There can’t possibly be another wife going crazy because she doesn’t know where her husband is”, I think to myself.
Well, there’s surely another wife out there camped out by her computer and cell phone, waiting for a call, an email, or a Facebook update. Military wives usually have to keep it together. We have to be strong for our men, children and families while our loved one is deployed. But don’t let anyone tell you to calm down in the few days before your Marine/Sailor/Soldier comes home.
Situations like this warrant a little bit of a freak out. And it’s perfectly normal.
Especially if no one will tell you where in the world your husband is.
by Band Back Together | Nov 20, 2015 | Abuse, Adoption, Baby Loss, Bipolar Disorder, Divorce, Suicide |
Target.
1:30 on a Tuesday.
Buying my husband socks.
This is what I was doing when my mom called me to tell me that my older brother had taken his life.
I broke down crying in the middle of the underwear section as onlookers watched. We bought our items and drove to my sister’s workplace to tell her what had happened.
My brother was bipolar. He was in the middle of a divorce. His six month old son had died a year ago. Our father had been abusive. He didn’t like his job. He was adopted. He had been in jail several times. He had attempted to take his life several times before. All of these are risk factors, we just never thought he’d actually do it.
That day was the most painful day in my entire life. Even now as I write this, I’m welling up with tears. He was only 21 years old. He was the most brilliant person I know. He was always inventing things and had a unique way of looking at things. He could be a jerk sometimes. I mean, he was my older brother. We yelled at each other. I feel terrible saying this, but I hate it when people sugar-coat the lives of the deceased.
I had gotten married ten days before his death. He didn’t make it to my wedding because he had to appear in court. We had just gotten back from our honeymoon and were going to go spend our gift cards, thus the sock buying. I hadn’t spent much time with my brother leading up to the wedding even though he was living in the same house as me because I was so busy and I regret that. But I can’t go back and change what has been done.
by Band Back Together | Nov 18, 2015 | Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Divorce, Rape/Sexual Assault
When my mother was four years old, she lived in Cambodia. Her mother passed away due to the war with Khmer Rouge and the killing of poor, innocent people. My grandfather was a soldier from Vietnam who didn’t speak a word of Cambodian, yet fathered 14 kids.
Most of my mother’s brothers and sisters died during the war, but there were a few of them left. My mother, two uncles, two aunts, and my grandfather were all that remained in the family.
As time went by, my mother grew older and when she was 13 years old, she was sleeping in her room and her father came in. She didn’t think anything about it until he started pushing her down and forcing himself on her.
She screamed but no one in her family heard her cries. The next morning, she told her brothers and sisters what had happened to her, but they didn’t believe her. They asked her why would a man rape his own daughter? From that night on and for the next two years, she was raped regularly until she escaped to America to live with her brother.
Her brother was the black sheep of the family and he hated my mother.
His wife would only feed her four chicken wings and a bowl of rice a day. She had to work and give her brother the money or she would’ve been beaten. Her sister-in-law hated her so much that she made my mother wear men’s clothes to school. After so long, she forced my mother to quit school and to get a full-time job to pay more bills in the house.
After time went by, my mother met my father (who was my uncle’s best friend) and she believed that he would save her from the life she was living. She decided to marry him. Things weren’t right, but she had to get away from her brother and her evil sister-in-law.
Little did she know my father was worse then what she could have imagined.
Always yelling at her, beating her, and forcing her to have sex with him.
He made my mother give him a bath every day right before his girlfriend would come over to have sex with him in my parents room while my mother sat outside in the living room crying her eyes out.
He told her she was lucky that she was with him, that no one wants her and she was nothing.
My mother gave birth to my brother and then two years later, to me. My father loved my brother but always looked at me like I wasn’t his, and always accused my mother of cheating.
He used to call her all sort of names.
Then she had enough… she divorced him and moved out. Every time my father came over, she had a butcher knife ready for him. She was not taking it any more, and she stood her ground.
My parents went to court and the judge decided that my father should keep my brother and my mother should keep me. My father told the judge that I wasn’t his and my mother had cheated. The judge believed him and he granted his wish.
I have never seen my brother, but I saw my father when I was 16 years old. The first thing he said to me was, “You are my child, you look just like me.” Then told me that I “will not receive any money from him when he dies.”
These are the only words I really remember from my father.
by Band Back Together | Nov 17, 2015 | Abortion, Abortion Recovery, Hospice, Rape/Sexual Assault, Trauma |
I saw the lights on the ceiling. I felt the tear. The nurse held my hand with saintly love as I sobbed. A part of me died in that moment, a ripple through the eons.
I was 21 and a newly graduated nurse when I went through my abortion and had landed a prestigious hospital job. My mum was accidentally pregnant at the time at 40 with my brother who I later helped to deliver with the midwife (after I had undergone my abortion)
I freaked out. I couldn’t move back home in a small town with a pregnant mother. My boyfriend said he wasn’t ready for a child and we couldn’t afford it (I later discovered he was wealthy and had not been honest with me). He was living far away at the time going to university.
As he slept in my room one night at the nursing quarters against the rules of no men, we were discussing what to do. I got caught with him in my room and I was kicked out by the nun. Pregnant, I went to house hunt by day after my night shift work. The nun who found us gave me one week to find a place after I begged her. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t tell a soul.
My boyfriend booked a hotel for the week as I was homeless and I went through with the abortion. I didn’t want to go through with it but I was so scared, alone and overwhelmed. I always said I would have a child if I accidentally became pregnant, but I just didn’t realize what it was actually like to be in that position.
The first doctor I approached rejected to care for me due to his religious beliefs so I had to hunt for a doctor who would.
I went to get counselling afterwards and was paired with another religious man who rejected me so I had to keep searching for help. I gave up.
I went back to work and it was a very hard year. I saved a few lives and I decided to work in hospice to become more familiar with death. I nurtured people through their losses.
Many hard, lonely years accompanied me with multiple instances of sexual assault and trauma I started to have difficulties coping. I always comforted myself with the idea that losing a child to help others may be excusable as a choice but when I left my career, in those last days I sat down by my friends nieces side who was losing her new baby that had just been born. It was dying in her arms and her tears dropped on that babies face. I watched that baby die as I said goodbye to my career. She didn’t know of my past and now I hear she wants to be a nurse. The chain continues.
My whole family said I was always the mothering, nurturing type and I would have the most kids. I am childless and not married. Tortured by bad memories. Too lost for words.
You don’t forget but you learn to live with it. Its a silent shame for me but I see now with my history of abuse I needed to feel some control over my body. I don’t feel it was the answer now, and in retrospect I would like to say I had all this courage to stand up to this invisible community who bad mouthed people but I was a young vulnerable frightened girl. While I was being accused of being a baby murderer I was saving their lives in hospital.
I think now about it more in philosophical ways. The things we should terminate in our minds and and how a new beginning can start for us to live a happier life. My God believes in redemption and love.
by Band Back Together | Nov 13, 2015 | A Letter I Can't Send, Blended Families, Coping With Divorce, Divorce, Emotional Abuse, Estrangement, Family, Loss, Psychological Manipulation |
Dad-
I don’t think that I can ever forgive you. I want to so badly, but I don’t think that I can. We’ve come through so much together. You didn’t have to be there for me; you didn’t have to be my father. You didn’t have to love me. You chose to. You chose me. You chose me for a long time. I hate that you let things change. I hate that you were so blind to what was happening around you. I hate the words that you said to me.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
I want my dad back. I want the man who loved me despite my illnesses, despite what my birth certificate said, despite all the shit I put you through.
I hate you for choosing a woman over your daughter time and time again. I hate you for it, but after many years, I forgave you.
I forgave you for it, but I stopped putting up with it. I will never forgive you for the actions that you took once I put my foot down. I hate you for saying those horrible things about me. I hate you for saying them about my mother. I hate you for not realizing that both of us were, and are, suffering from mental illnesses. I hate that you look away. I hate you for placing all of the blame on me. You say that your wife has done nothing wrong? You clearly are also suffering from some sort of mental illness.
You are the most passive man I’ve ever known. That used to be something that I loved about you. But it seemed so easy for you to tell me that you were done with me. That you couldn’t have a relationship with me. That you were once and for all choosing your wife over you daughter.
Do you feel anything at all?
Did this choice hurt you like it hurt me?
I’ve listed a million things that I hate about you, but I could just as easily list a million that I love. Those things will never change. I will also love the man that you were, just as you will love the girl that I was. But we will never have the relationship we once had. No matter what happens, I can never forget the words. They are scars on my soul. I think about them everyday.
Your words were horrible. They were not words that would ever come from the man I knew. I’ve done some digging, some looking around and I’ve learned a lot about you. I’m amazed at the things you’ve said and done. I guess you were just sheltering me. Now I know the real you. I don’t like that person. You said that if I didn’t change, you couldn’t have a relationship with me. I’m saying the same to you. Just know that even if you do, I will never trust you again. I can’t.
Of all the people in my life, I never expected to lose you. It is a loss that I will never recover from.
by Band Back Together | Nov 12, 2015 | Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Family |
My mother might be one of the strongest people I have ever encountered. That woman has been through more in her 50 years than most people have in a lifetime. She isn’t perfect, by any means, but she is mine and I am furiously protective of her.
My mother was raped by her stepfather when she was 11 years old. She never told a soul (except for me) so no charges were ever brought against him. My grandmother did end up leaving him because he threw her through a glass door.
It’s amazing how much you can hate someone you’ve never met.
I hate him for what he did to her. I hate him for the pain it still causes her. I hate him with every fiber of my being.
I recently came across his name while doing some family tree research and low and behold, there was his family’s information – even his address.
Now all I can think about are ways hurt him. Not physically of course, but emotionally. I want to spray paint “child rapist” all over his house. I want to contact his entire family and tell them just what kind of man he is. I want to ruin his life. I just hate the thought of him living a normal life when my mother has had to live with the pain and scars he caused.
What do I do? No pain I inflict on him will make what my mother went through any less traumatic, or help her – or I – forget.
