by Band Back Together | Dec 4, 2013 | Adult Children of Mentally Ill Parents, Anger, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Child Neglect, Gay Is Okay, How To Help A Friend Or Loved One With A Gambling Problem, Mental Health, Pathological Gambling, Therapy |
I am finally coming to accept that my mother has a variety of mental illness. I’ve known all my life something was wrong. Mostly I have ignored it, and even joked about it, trying to blow off steam.
Nothing was ever good enough for my mother. If I came home with B’s on my report card, she would want to know why they weren’t A’s. She would say that I could have done better. My father only talked to me about how to fix something. He never shared much about his life, other than stuff about his job. He would tell stories for hours that went on about nothing. In lieu of parenting us, my mother just bought stuff for my sister and me.
Mom was also a bulimic. Day after day when I was growing up, I would hear her in the bathroom throwing up after every meal. If we asked about it, she would deny it and change the subject. Dad defended her and said it was none of our business.
My grandmother knew they were incapable of parenting so we stayed over at her house as much as possible.My grandmother basically raised me from the time I was 12 years old. I moved in with her and took care of her after her first heart attack. Sadly, I was an adult from that day on. I cooked, cleaned and ran her house. We had a great relationship.
Then, my grandmother found out I was gay. She told me I was a sinner, an embarrassment, and told me I wasn’t her grandchild anymore unless I was “healed”. I moved out on my own for the first time. We didn’t speak for years.
After granny died, and later, my father, mom was on her own. For the first time in her life, she had control of the bills. It took less than two years until she had spent all of the money in the saving accounts my dad and granny had left. She then mortgaged her home in order to go shopping and go to the bingo halls. She recently moved in with me because she had no choice. She couldn’t manage her money and had gambled it away.
Mom has always been controlling, She gets mad if I go someplace or even leave the house without telling her where, when and why, even calling my friends to find out where I am. She argues with me over everything: the food and even the type of trash bags I buy. She says I owe her and refuses to chip in with the utilities. If she is driving in the car with my sister or me and she doesn’t like the music or the conversation, she will tell us she’s going to ram the car into a tree.
She is home all day alone while I go to work. When I get home, if she hasn’t already called me ten times, she has had the whole day to get worked up about something. She will unload on me as soon as I walk in the door.
She gets “nervous” about some story on the local news, or something she heard on the police scanner she listens to all day, or something horrible a friend told her about, and has to tell me it could happen to me so I must be careful.
Almost every night is a war and a screaming fit complete with her shaking her fists and slamming my door. The next day, she says “Good Morning,” like it never happened. Tonight she screamed at me, told me to go to hell and stay there and slammed my bedroom door. I cant stand it anymore, she refuses to go to a doctor. Tonight I told her if she didn’t get help, I would call an ambulance and force her to see a doctor. I have no support, no family to help. She badmouths me to her friends, and they always act like I’m such a jerk.
Despite how it sounds, I love my mother. I know there is help for her, but she will not go. She says therapy is stupid, and she just bites her nails when she gets upset.
Is anyone else going through something similar? Does anyone have advice for me?
by Band Back Together | Sep 5, 2013 | Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Anger, Child Sexual Abuse, Fear, Marriage and Partnership, Marriage Problems, Mental Health, Self-Esteem, Stress |
The scars of childhood sexual abuse can last a lifetime.
This is his story:
With my wedding in few weeks time, I feel more vulnerable regarding my past.
I have been raped by three teachers, one neighbour’s servant for over three years. I have boyish looks which may have made me attractive to them.
My dad is an overpowering, angry man’s man and my mom is thick-headed with abusive tongue. None of my other siblings are anything attributed to normal.
Today, I keep a thick French-cut beard to hide my face. My body is shaped like a pear, which means my torso is fatty near my back and legs. This makes my confidence shatter while I’m walking.
However, I have a positive mind and never lost hope. Rather, I created a habit of forgetting everything bad, all behaviours and all piercing eyes.
Thanks to my habit of forgetting, I face many problems in this overly-competitive world. So often I feel if I’d have given a normal childhood, I’d have been much more of a achiever. I’ve finished university education and have a fantastic job. Unfortunately, the job is contractual which continues alarming and ruining the enjoyment of having a good paying job.
As anyone can understand, my threshold for patience is very low; therefore I have lowered my choices in the past. I feel angry, sad and pathetic for very small reasons; I’m known by my friends and family for having one black day in every other week.
All this explained, my wedding is up and I feel too stressed and feel like breaking down. I want to go forward but I feel this is going to be too much of a burden; like I should quit. Getting married and having children seems to be hell of a job – maybe I’m not ready.
I just wanted to share my story and could use some of your comments, The Band.
by Band Back Together | Jul 20, 2013 | Abuse, Anger, Emotional Abuse, Estrangement, Loneliness, Love, Psychological Manipulation |
Emotional abuse is not limited to romantic relationships. The scars of emotional abuse last long after the hateful words are spewed.
This is her story:
Every couple months, she contacts me again.
My best friend, the closest person in my life for over a decade the hardest breakup I’ve ever been through.
I’m writing this because I can see those attempts for what they are, and I want to solidify it so I don’t forget. Perhaps my words may even help someone else who’s suffering from a verbally abusive relationship.
My best friend and I split up – rather, I cut her off – almost three years ago now. For a solid year before that, we couldn’t interact without her verbally abusing me.
I’m so very grateful to have friends who understand what verbal abuse is and why it’s so damaging, because I didn’t. Without their help, encouragement, and constant resources and strength, I might not have left. Or, I may not have stayed away, which would have been equally difficult – abusers don’t tend to give up easily, as many of you (unfortunately) may know.
There are many wonderful resources about emotional abuse, but what’s helped me most is this statement: A verbal abuser is someone who claims to love you, but who uses their love to consistently make you feel awful. The love of an abuser revolves around what you owe them, how you’re letting them down, and what you need to change in order to be worthy of that love.
Guess what?
Love shouldn’t feel like that.
The first time I realized that something was seriously wrong with our friendship was the day I caught myself thinking, “How is it okay to deliberately, consciously, repeatedly, hurt someone as badly as you can? How is okay for friends to do that to each other?”
Because no matter how much we disagreed, how angry we got, I never, not once, pulled out my worst words and aimed them to hurt her as badly as I could…yet I could clearly see that she did this to me.
That behavior got me looking more closely, and I realized (I believe “dawning horror” is a good phrase for how it felt) that almost every single thing she said to me was manipulative…every word chosen to get me to do what she wanted. And like some sick psy-ops torturer, every time I wasn’t going in the “right” direction, she pulled out the ones that hurt and started swinging.
Having not heard from her in months makes it obvious that’s what’s going on. It doesn’t make it hurt less – someone who knows you well, who you loved a long time can master causing emotional pain.
Seeing it clearly makes it easier to do what I know has to be done – it isn’t easy, even though it’s been so long and so bad. Once you love somebody deeply, it’s hard to choose to not have a relationship with them, but I recognize that to do otherwise would be stupid, self-destructive and gain me nothing. So I’m working on learning my lessons and moving on.
Yesterday we “talked” via text-message – all told, the conversation wouldn’t be half as long as this story. During the conversation, she informed me that I’d betrayed everything about myself, thrown away my ethics; and she’d have a happy future without me.. but I’d get what I deserved” for “abandoning everyone who’d ever voluntarily loved” me (she and my also verbally-abusive ex. They now live together).
She said that the words she’d said hurt me was proof she was right and I felt guilty; she’d be willing to give me a second chance, but only if I would do the work to stop “disappointing her with all my actions and decisions.”
When I stopped replying, she pulled out the really big guns; she’d love my daughter forever, she’d always be her family. She threatened that she’d see my daughter eventually whether I liked it or not; my daughter would rather be with her anyway. She told me that I wasn’t acting in my girl’s best interests – “look at everything you’ve cost her already with your bad decisions” – and that I only cared about myself.
All told, this tiny conversation probably contained twenty hidden knives, and as many less-deadly clever little needles, designed to prod me in the “right” direction. Hints that her life is so awesome now that it’s a “shame we can’t share it,” using her father’s cancer to lay guilt that I’m not being supportive.
Participating in that short conversation brought me to my knees, quite literally at times.
But fortunately, no one I love (or even mildly care about) has made me feel so awful in many months, and the contrast really helped me see this for what it was: ABUSE.
Say it with me now, The Band: People who love you do not deliberately hurt you.
We all hurt each other sometimes, but there’s a difference between “my actions hurt you” or “I was angry and said something awful and I apologize,” and “I will systematically make you feel as awful as I possibly can in order to control you.”
The latter verbal interaction is abuse, it’s a method of control; it beats at you, bends your spine and, over time, it wears away your resolve. Eventually no matter what you’d decided or how good an idea you have, you desperately want to change your mind and do what your abuser wants, just to make the pain stop.
It’s not okay to control people like that – we must have free will, and respect the right to make our own decisions – but it’s especially not okay to exert that kind of forcible control over those you love.
Verbal abuse is an emotional cattle prod. It’s bad enough to use pain-motivation and torture on strangers, but using them on your beloveds is just vile. And I don’t care how much abusers like to throw around the word “love” – that’s not love.
Love is what I have for my daughter.
Love makes me say things like, “Sweetie, I may not always agree with your decisions, I may get angry at you sometimes, but I will always love you.”
Never, EVER would I say to her, overtly or as an insinuation, that my love obligates her to do what I want; never would I make her feel like a terrible person who betrayed me by making a choice I didn’t agree with.
I know what that feels like – it’s torture. Even if it caused her to do what I wanted, it would never be worth it.
Love is something you give. It is not a transaction that leaves the loved person in perpetual debt to you. And it sure as hell doesn’t give you the right to hurt them.
Deliberately hurting someone is betraying them and their love, and I have sworn to never allow myself to stay in a relationship with someone who hurts me deliberately again.
I don’t have friends as close as we were now – I’m working back up to that – but as I said to her before blocking her number, the best part about my life now is that I know that if anyone else I love ever deliberately tortures me the way she does, I have the strength to end that relationship.
For awhile, it was terrifying and terribly lonely. But I wanted to write this so I could say that ending my abusive relationship was the best thing I ever did, and it’s a decision I’m standing by no matter how hard it is.
The less I let her in, the less control she can exert, and the less she can hurt me. I’ve resolved to keep abusive people far away from me and surround myself with people whose love is supportive and strengthening. I’m be better off, happier and healthier, than I would eating the poisoned apples of verbal abusers.
Thanks, The Band.
Glitter for everyone!!
——
What have YOU, The Band, learned from an abusive relationship?
by Band Back Together | Jun 24, 2011 | Anger, Breast Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Caregiver, Coping With Cancer, Family, Feelings, Guilt, Stress, Trauma, Trust |
i’ve written before about my love hate relationship with the pump… well, mostly about the hate portion. its rhythmic sucking makes me sing little songs to its always irritating tempo. then they mix around with the gymboree songs already stuck in my head. then i realize how badly i really do need the prozac and ativan.
i don’t know for sure how long it’s going to last. i’m trying to be realistic about the prospect of having cancer, undergoing chemo and pumping for (hopefully only) six months. it’s kind of like starting out nursing. i tried to limit my expectations of myself. i said i’d aim for six months and then see if i could go for a year. that seemed ridiculously long to me at the time, much like pumping for six months does now. but a year came and went and well, here we are.
my husband, nugget daddy, stayed down at my parents’ last night so nugget and i have been left to fend for ourselves for the majority of the past two days, save for a playdate and lasagna drop off yesterday afternoon.
i didn’t get to pump at all yesterday. i can’t pump in front of my daughter, nugget. that would be like asking your pregnant best friend to take you to happy hour. i meant to pump last night once she went to sleep, but i fell asleep, too. my boobs had been angry ever since.
nugget likes to have her naps with me, but this limits my options for the duration of naptime as to what i can actually accomplish with twenty pounds of sleeping toddler strapped to my chest, lovely though as she feels snuggled against me. her grandmamie puts her to sleep in the stroller and i bribed her into it with chocolate chips this afternoon so i could pump, finally, and subsequently blog about it. lucky you!
i was so angry the first few times i pumped after starting chemo. it was like rubbing salt in the wounds. i couldn’t nurse nugget and i had to stand uncomfortably in the bathroom watching my milk fill up plastic bottles instead of a happy baby. and then as i would dump the ounces of heartache down the sink a new wound would appear like a gaping mouth to catch my salty tears and sting my aching soul. what a waste.
you won’t find much if you google “cancer” and “breastfeeding” except for articles about nursing after breast cancer. “chemo” and “breastfeeding” yields the same contraindication tagline over and over, and “cancer” and “breastmilk” mostly just points you to article after article about this guy who drank breastmilk to fight his prostate cancer. those, mostly sensational and local news, articles mention milk banks selling milk to cancer patients when they have excess available to sell. it costs $3 an ounce.
i’ve had plenty of time to think about that guy and those $3 ounces while making up songs to the pump’s rhythm and calculating how much i’d just poured down the drain. warning! here comes the crunchy freaky part. squee! maybe you want to stop reading, uptight next door neighbor guy or old school grandpa, maybe there’s a golf game you’d rather be watching. okay, so seriously, why the fuck would i want to keep dumping my milk down the drain when other cancer patients are paying good money to get their hands on it? i don’t know what exactly it might do for me, but it sure won’t be doing anything at the bottom of the sink that’s for sure. so i sucked it up and sucked it down.
it was sort of gross at first, though why exactly i’m not sure. i think it was the temperature. i can’t think of any beverage i regularly consume at body temperature. but now i’m used to it and pleased by thought that i might actually be doing something to help save my own life.
so, now i have a new goal. i want to pump twice a day for the whole six months, or however long it might be. i know i might get sick. i know i might have to stop if i do. but if i approach it the way i did breastfeeding, then maybe i can make it through. maybe if i tell all of you about my plan then i’ll be hell-bent on reaching my goal. maybe some mother out there trolling the interwebs for a glimmer of hope will find my blog now, instead of all the other useless crap i found.
by Band Back Together | Dec 12, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Breast Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Caregiver, Compassion, Coping With Cancer, Fear, Feelings, Loneliness, Love, Sadness, Stress, Trauma |
I’m sorry. Right now, I cannot be a good friend. I am not a good wife or daughter, sister, neighbor, niece or cousin. I love you. I appreciate everything you do for me and for my family. But for now, everything I have, every smile I can eke out, every happy moment, belongs to my daughter. I can’t give you what you want, not today and maybe not tomorrow either. I don’t have enough for you.
My fear is all-consuming. I am endlessly treading its dark waters. Your well-intended positivity crashes into me, knocking me down before washing back out to sea. Your genuine, heartfelt words of hope leave me salty-eyed, gasping for air, bracing for the next wave of “You’re so strong!” or “Kids are so resilient!”
Your generous offers to help are not falling on deaf ears, but I’m afraid my desperate cries for it are. I can hear you happily proposing your casseroles, a walk in the park, an eager ”whatever you need!” I’m sure one day I will very much need those things. Today I just need simple kindness, compassion, companionship. I need you to hug me and hold my hand. I need you to stop worrying about the tasks on your list and just be with me, sit here and keep my head above water.
I realize nothing about this is convenient for you. I know the closer you are to me, the deeper the water, the stronger current. I’m sorry that you’re being pulled in, challenged, diverted from your regularly scheduled life. But this is my nightmare and sadly, you’re in it.
so bite your tongue,
you’re not the only one
who’s been let down.
by Band Back Together | Dec 4, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Baby Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Grief, Guilt, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Livng Through A Miscarriage, Loss, Love, Miscarriage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sadness |
I have never spoken to anyone about this but my husband, my mother, and, of course, my doctors. This may be one of the hardest things I will ever write. It may not all make sense. I don’t remember it all. But yet I remember it like it was yesterday. I will never forget it. This is my PTSD talking. I am in a very bad place right now. And I know what happened to me isn’t as bad as some but to me it’s worse because she was mine.
Anyway, Oh God here goes…
You were due December 25th. I was so excited that both of your sisters were Christmas babies. I love Christmas. And I still do. Your due date was so amazing I couldn’t believe it – three children born on or around Christmas.
The beginning of my pregnancy didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Normal morning all day sickness for me. Around 6 weeks something felt off I called my Doctor who is AMAZING, and she got me right in for an ultrasound. There you were – perfect. And fine. Little heart beating to beat the band with a due date of Dec. 25th. I felt better. Things resumed. We got to our 12th week and we told everyone and even started buying things. Come on – you were my fourth baby. What could go wrong? How could I even think that?? Everything was fine .
Then it happened. July 27th I felt yucky and my back hurt SO bad. I should have called the doctor. You might be here today. I should have known. But I just thought I worked hard that day. It was hotter than hell. And it was just a back ache. I never ever had back labor. At 2:12 on July 28th, I woke up and thought, “shit, I wet the bed.” I hit my husband and said, “I wet the bed. Go get new sheets.” And then I went to turn the lights on. And it felt really off. It was sticky. I turned the light on and there was blood everywhere. I heard a sound like I had never heard before – it was my screams. I told my husband call the doctor and tell her we’re going to the hospital. Something was very very wrong.
My mom came running in and tried to calm me, but it didn’t help. I remember telling her keep the kids out. I didn’t want them to see the blood. And my back – OMG the pain. All the sudden I felt a pop between my legs and there was a “doll” between my legs – it didn’t seem real. I thought WTF is that about my own baby. I saw your little chest heaving up and down. You were breathing!!!!!!!
I screamed for my husband to stop calling the doctor. We had to leave NOW. She’s here. She’s ALIVE. She’s breathing.
You were 18 weeks and 5 days. You were perfect – tiny and waxy, but perfect. You breathed for 5 minutes. I held you in my hand as you took you first and last breaths. I will never forget them. I loved you so much in those 5 minutes. You were my daughter, Ariel Grace.
But the horror didn’t come until we got to the hospital. You WEREN’T a baby. You were nothing. You were – I choke on the words now. You were a miscarriage. But I saw you and I held you. You WERE breathing for 5 minutes. I have a cell video of it. But you were going to be discarded as if it was a miscarriage. I flipped out like my husband has never seen me flip out. I screamed and I wailed. I hit a doctor, I think. Not my doctor. She was AMAZING. She held me while I rocked the baby. She stroked my hair. She couldn’t change the policy.
You would never exist to the world. You would get no birth certificate and no death certificate. But to me and your father, siblings and grandparents you were EVERYTHING!
I made my uncle call his friend at a funeral home. He kind of laughed – not in a mean way but he told my uncle, “She’s not even as big as a cat. I can’t charge. I won’t. It’s a freebie.” I have her ashes. Although that was a HELL of a fight. But I think they knew I was a mad woman and I would not leave that hospital without MY baby.
I have her ashes hidden in my room. I left the hospital the next day with nothing. No baby, no belly, no nothing. I was empty and blank and a Zombie for a LONG time. Hell, I still am. I never mentioned it to anyone. Some people asked questions. I think I probably stared at them blankly. But I never answered. My husband or mother would later. I couldn’t talk about it. It’s over a year later and the pain is still unreal. I have nightmares of waking up to the blood every five minutes. I don’t know that they will ever go away. But what is the worst for me is I can’t talk about her to anyone but my husband, mother and therapists.
Am I forgetting her, am I not remembering her, am I cold? I just it hurts so bad. And no one that I personally know can understand that pain. No one I know in real life understands my anger and bitterness of her not being a baby because she was 18 weeks and 5 days and not a viable birth. Isn’t breathing for 5 minutes viable? Had we been at the hospital could we have made it farther my AMAZING doctor thinks that those 5 minutes were pretty darn special. And so do I for a baby with such under developed lungs.
Obviously now everyone knows she was never born and just went away. People have stopped asking questions. And I just can’t talk about it. I feel cold. And I miss her even more now. I don’t know that it will get better. She wasn’t a “real” living baby. But she was mine. I held her. I named her. I talked to her. And on her birthday I buy her a gift. I guess that really does make me crazy. Maybe I’ll stop someday. I don’t know. But I guess tonight on one of my darkest of nights, this needed to come out. Thank you for listening. No one else knows. And it hurt to talk about. A LOT so this was BRAVE. So thank you for reading.
