For the last five years, I’ve been lying to everyone; my parents, my children, social services, but most of all, myself.
My “courtship” with my husband lasted just three months before we became engaged. A year and a month after we met, I married him. I blindly ignored the warnings from my parents, my loved ones, and my own eyes. I thought I could change him. He would be better after the wedding, when all the stress was gone.
How wrong was I?
Within months of our marriage, what I saw scared me, but I decided to stay, thinking, “I can still change him. I can make him better!” I was so arrogant!
We had just conceived our first child when he sprained my arm. I told myself that it was an accident and justified it to everyone else.
His sister assaulted me when I was pregnant. He put me down in front of his parents. His mother assaulted me many times. They told me it was my fault. It was all my fault. Everything was always my fault.
What’s worse is that I genuinely believed them!
They threatened to take my baby away from me if I left. I was so scared of them, I stayed.
Now that WAS my fault! I should have left, but I didn’t!
He raped me the first time when our daughter was just five days old. I can still remember the searing agony that tore through my whole body as he did it! The tears and cuts burning with fire, my screams mingling with those of our daughter who was in the same room as us! That was my fault too apparently. After that, I had to have treatment for an erosion in the womb. That was also entirely my fault.
He was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Now he had something else to justify his treatment of me. He “needed” round the clock care, an excuse to stop me from working.
He moved me away from my parents to an isolated town and wouldn’t let me visit them. My parents still blame me for that, as if I had a choice!
After our second child was born, the abuse got worse and worse. I confided in my midwife about him raping me when our daughter was five days old. She and all the other midwives we saw made a point of reminding him that sex wasn’t allowed before my six week check. Normally a woman is signed off by the midwife within days of giving birth. They visited me for over a month to protect me. As soon as my six week check was over, the rape began again. This time almost every night and sometimes while I was asleep.
I haven’t slept for almost two years! I began to crave the oblivion of deep sleep, but I couldn’t because of the fear of what he would do to me while I slept. Twice he raped me anally because I had a period. If he wasn’t doing that, he would say things like, “I was hoping to have sex with you, but I can’t because you’re bleeding,” as if it were somehow my fault for being a woman.
That wasn’t the end of the emotional abuse. There was always shouting and yelling. The police were called. Social services were called twice. He isolated me more and more from our friends and would only let me go out with one of the children at a time.
He’d lock me in the house and “forget” to leave my key behind. Sometimes, he would move my keys, and when I wasn’t looking, would put them somewhere I’d already looked. I thought I was going mad!
When our son was five months old, we went on holiday with his family. While we were there, he dragged me out of the room by my legs in front of our daughter and threw me out into the rain with no shoes and no coat. When he finally let me in half an hour later, I had to sit in my wet clothes feeding our son, while his mother lectured me on how the whole thing was my fault.
A week later, I was rushed into hospital with chest pains. Everyone noticed the bruises and three people made separate calls to social services on my behalf. They sent two police officers out that night to check on the children and me. It was so humiliating! He would never let me speak to men because as far as he was concerned, I was cheating on him with every single man I spoke to.
While I was visiting my parents, he kissed another woman. I wish I’d left him then! But I listened to his sob story about how he was really going to change this time! He did change …for the worse.
In November 2012, his brother assaulted me. I had to go to hospital and was on crutches for six weeks because my sciatic nerve had gone into spasm. I lied in the hospital and said that I’d fallen in the kitchen. I was so scared that my children would be taken from me this time.Do you know how much sex hurts when you have sciatica? Especially when it’s rape.
In May 2013, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. The doctor believes there is a link between Fibromyalgia and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That was another excuse to isolate me further from everyone. I wasn’t allowed to do housework because I was “too ill.” I’d given up fighting him. I was so far into my shell, I couldn’t even care for our children.
He slowly crushed me to the point that I didn’t know any different.
We had a visit from our new health visitor. He told her that he was afraid of bathing our daughter because he was afraid of having sexual feelings for her. I was shocked and scared, but I didn’t know what to do! I should have left him there and then, but I couldn’t! I was paralyzed by five years of emotional, financial, and sexual abuse. He’d groomed me for this very eventuality so that I wouldn’t leave him!
The next day a social worker turned up with two police officers who seized all of our computer equipment. They told me that I needed to get the children out of the house. I replied that if they were going, I would be going too. They agreed.
My children have been protected by social services for three months now. I’ve ended the relationship and am seeking help for the abuse. Social services are being as helpful as they can be, but the health visitor thinks I should have left and should not have my children back. She thinks I’m a failure as a mother.
Maybe I am. I should have left. I should have sought help sooner. I have to live with that for the rest of my life. I obviously don’t deserve my children. Obviously love isn’t enough!
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.
Every once in a great while my job requires me to go out of town, fine and dandy… extra money and all that jazz. Today I had to go to Cedar Rapids. Good enough…Today I’m driving… listening to my favorite morning radio talk show, laughing my ass off… Then I look over I see a sign.
Iowa City 40 Miles.
I stop laughing.
My chest tightens.
I can’t breathe.
My mind turns off.
I no longer hear the banter of the D.J.
I’m back there.
It’s the 4th of July and I’m back to the back seat of my mom’s Kia. My step dad is driving, my younger brother next to me, my mom in front… 85 miles an hour. I see that sign… Iowa City 40 Miles… There is no way we can beat the helicopter…We are all blank. Dead inside. They have my bubba… My sweet baby brother. We speed up. Hoping there are no cops… maybe hoping there are so we can drive faster.
My mom’s phone rings. It’s the hospital… They need a recorded permission to take him to surgery… My mother speaks with the courage of a thousand Roman soldiers. I hear the wavering in her voice. She’s not crying though. She can’t… None of us can. The Doctor. or whoever was on the other end of the phone asks for the details… What happened? We don’t know… He fell of course… how do you not know???? Everybody must know by now….How far??? We don’t know 50 – 75 feet maybe further, maybe not as far… The Doctor tells her nothing.
But we’re closer now…. Iowa City 27 Miles…
My mother is pleading with the surgeon to please not take him back yet. Let us see him… Let her see him… Before the surgery… It’s brain surgery for crying out loud… Just 27 miles… We’re almost there just please wait another 27 miles. They can’t. They have to take him back now…My step-dad drives faster…. We’re not going to make it in time. We all know it’s a waste of energy to try to make it there before they have to take him back… We still drive faster.
Iowa City 6 Miles…. 6 MILES we’re only 6 miles away from where he is… From where the doctors are performing miracles.. We are too late to see him. He’s already in surgery. We know this… We still drive faster… We’re there… FINALLY we’re there… We can’t find the entrance… There’s no “Panicking People To the Left” sign… There should be… (remind me to put that in the suggestion box). We go in… We can’t see… Still blank… It smells like sick people. Like fake real flowers and wax… There is a player piano… (I will later find this very disturbing and somewhat humorous.) Elevator… up… Okay, waiting room… We sit… and wait. The lady at the desk is clearly ready for her shift to be over. She tells us the surgery will last up to 4 hours…
4 hours… OK… 4 hours… How do you function for 4 hours while an 11 year old is having brain surgery??? We pace… We get a Pepsi… It has no taste… I think we talked about who was going to drive what car when this was all over… I don’t think we knew if this was going to be all over. Then my husband was there. The one who saved him, the one who scaled almost 45 feet down a bluff without shoes to save him. Blood stained and covered in mosquito bites. Blood. So much blood….
Then over the P.A. system my mothers is called to the triage desk. He’s done… He’s in post-op… He’s okay… or at least will be.. They won’t be able to tell until the next day or so if he has any brain damage, but the outlook is good. Over 200 stitches. I’m terrified to see his face. His sweet cherubic face cannot be tarnished. Post-op… The second worse place in the entire world. (Only to be outdone by the children’s cancer ward in Peoria… story for another day.) It’s sterile and cold. Dead. It smells worse than the lobby. Like saline and metal. They try to make it pretty with florals and leafy shit. It doesn’t work..
They let us see him, my mom first. He doesn’t say anything. Then me… Bandages cover his head. His face is swollen. He has a drainage tube coming from his head. It’s so cold. I lean down to kiss him, his warmth radiates through my entire body. My sweet bubba. He says nothing… He can’t; the drugs are still doing their job. Then my husband… He comes out crying. My brother told him thank you… The first words he managed were to tell him thank you. That still radiates deep. It was then I knew he would be OK. My bubba…
It all came back to me. In a red hot flash… Like a ton of bricks…The day my little brother fell 45 feet from a look out point at a park in a nearby town, while at a family reunion picnic. Thank God for my husband who scaled the bluff to try to rescue him and for my son who alerted us and for the amazing rescue team who was able to get him out. It was straight out of a Rescue 911 episode. Except real… and not re-enacted for your viewing pleasure.
I wasn’t afraid to drive to Iowa City. In fact the thought never had crossed my mind that it would sneak up and haunt me. But it did. I don’t do that. I don’t freak out. I deal well with most things. I cope well with most things. I think what scared me most was how it took me off guard. Then it was over as quickly as it started. The rest of my drive was fairly uneventful. Maybe this was my mourning. Maybe this was my way of closure and coping. I really don’t know. But now… He sleeps. On my couch. I had to go pick him up… I had to be with him tonight.
His face isn’t tarnished, except for a small Harry Potter-esqe scar on his forehead. His back is still sensitive. He did suffer a compression fracture to his spine after all… But HE his fine. He is still my sweet amazing cocky little brother. He still gets in trouble at school and gets mouthy with my mom. We are so lucky to have him. I could not imagine my life with out him. I thank the good Lord every day for that. My sweet bubba.
I can’t believe you’re drinking again. In February it was a HUGE shock to learn that you’d started again after TEN FUCKING YEARS of sobriety. But now, 8 months later, it’s not that shocking. And it’s really no surprise that you’ve been at it for 6 months, either.
I know I should probably be all supportive and shit like I was last time. But quite frankly, I’m really pissed. Not only did you drink away your entire teenage years and your twenties, but you drank away all of your family, too. Including me, your little sister. You were supposed to BE THERE for me. You were supposed to be my big brother. But no, your drugs and alcohol were more important. Dad left, and then you left, leaving Mom and me wondering what the fuck happened.
And so I lived without a brother for 15 years. Entire years would go by that I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. But you finally got your life together, got sober and stayed that way for a long time. You got married to a wonderful woman and life was good. I was so proud of you.
So why did you have to go and fuck all of that up again? Are you TRYING to kill yourself? Because that’s certainly where you’re headed, no doubt about it. You’re a 44-year-old smoker with diabetes and God knows what else. Let’s add some binge drinking into that equation and see where you come out. And if you do want to die, why not just get it over with? There are plenty of ways to get the job done faster.
If you don’t want to die, then ask for fucking help. I’m pretty sure you’re way past the point of being able to do this on your own. Man the fuck up and get treatment. Stop being such a selfish asshole. Do you even care what your behavior does to your wife, your stepchildren, your grandchildren, your parents and your sister? Yeah, remember us? We’re tired of this. Tired of getting our hopes up and then having them crushed. Tired of worrying and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Take the help now, brother, while it’s being offered. Because I’m afraid you’re not going to get many more chances.
Yes, this is harsh. I know my brother’s alcoholism is a disease, and that I have no clue what it’s like to be him. I’ll come around. But right now I just need to be mad.
If you said that I was broken when I met him, you’d be right, but there were a few pieces of me still hanging on.
He was sexy and wild and I wanted to be part of that. I was a bad-girl. I was the other woman and played the role well. We did the things we shouldn’t be doing and it was all fun and games. Until we decided to make us a permanent thing.
We married and I settled in. Doing all the things a good mom does. We had a baby together and I got to experience what it felt like to have a partner to help me through it.
I was not alone. But my wild and sexy husband remained wild, and drank and drank and drank. He drank us into debt. He drank away our love. He drank away my life.
Two more babies came and each time I thought it would be better. But it never was. He called me names. He pushed me. He drove drunk. He forgot to pick up our children from school. He ruined birthday parties and anniversaries with his moody, sloppy drunkenness. I tried to leave half a dozen times and every time he said it would be different and so I returned to him. But it was not different. It was worse. It was a game and we were all losing.
One summer day I could not take it anymore and I (stupidly) demanded that it stop. Furniture was thrown at me as my children watched. I pushed him out the door, made him go. My 9 year old son called the police.
He never drank again. He worked hard to be sober, and it’s been 5 years. He is healed, people say. How proud I must be of him.
And I am outwardly pleased, but inside I do not trust. I wait on the edge of my seat for the other shoe to drop.
Will today be the day? Will it all fall to pieces again? I can never be sure. I took my vows, and I stood by him and helped him through his darkest hours.
I suffered through years of agony. I cried along with my babies at night while he was out drinking us away.
I am supposed to forgive and move forward, our lives restored, but I am unable to find this “fresh start” that people tell me I’m so lucky to have. I am not the lucky one.
He is.
I spent too many years fixing him for it all to fall apart now.
But I’m the one with the memories, the nightmares, the emotional scars. All the deeds that he cannot undo, and the behavior that remains the same, whether he is sober or drunk. I am still mother and father and caregiver and nurturer to everyone but myself.
I am tired of doing this alone. I don’t want to be a martyr. I want my life back.
Every once in a great while my job requires me to go out of town, fine and dandy… extra money and all that jazz. Today I had to go to Cedar Rapids. Good enough…Today I’m driving… listening to my favorite morning radio talk show, laughing my ass off… Then I look over I see a sign.