by Band Back Together | Sep 14, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Breast Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Caregiver, Coping With Cancer, Family, Fear, Feelings, Guilt, Stress, Trauma |
I’m not even sure to where to start. Remember that fever? It finally went away. Then it came back. A second set of bloodwork later, the doctor still thinks it’s viral. I get a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. Next is a CT scan, then a biopsy. The biopsy has to be done under general anesthesia by a mediastinoscopy, and a bronchoscopy is thrown in for good measure. Now they think I have Hodgkins.
I know that there are readers who will get this so much more than others that have already heard it from me. My biggest fear? What if I have to have chemo and stop nursing my daughter? It’s going to break her little heart (and mine) if she looks up at me, her mama, with her pleading, beautiful blue eyes and signs for her nursies and i have to say no.
I can’t say any more than that right now. I just can’t. This fear is crippling me and the tears won’t stop.
by Band Back Together | Sep 14, 2010 | Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Infidelity, Psychological Manipulation, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem, September 11, 2001 |
I dated a man that was prettier then I was, and he took it upon himself to tell me everyday for three years. He also enjoyed telling me nobody else wanted me, that I was lucky to find him (as if he was doing charity work for dating me), and that I would be alone in life forever if I did not stay by his side with my mouth shut for the rest of my life.
I felt smaller then the tiniest grain of dirt. My self-esteem and self-worth out the window. I was worthless without him. He signified my worth and my inner bank balance was $0.
When I cooked him homemade meals to prove I would make an excellent wife, he scraped half of my portion off telling me I was too fat. Who could ever imagine a size 0 being too fat? When he came home from Rome (where he is from) telling me on New Years they kiss their friends on the lips (I found a photo of him kissing a friend), I believed him (really Aimee, frenchkissing?). When he went to school in Milan for 6 months and I paid all of his bills in the U.S.A, and made all of his phone calls, and held down the fort, I trusted he was doing right by me. When I found proof of his lying, snake ways, he talked himself out of it and made me believe I was making it up in my head. I was the crazy one.
This is abuse. Abuse people never speak of, or think does “real damage”. Verbal abuse certainly does damage, and a lot of it.
We broke up on 9/10/01, just a day before the attacks on 9/11/01. I had just moved to Boston to try and regain some self strength, and he just started a new job at the World Trade Center. When the postman at my new job told me the news I freaked out. I frantically called him for hours, and I began to think the worst. He did call hours later telling me he was alright. He ran out as bodies fell from the tower windows, and jumped over body parts, office supplies, and the pavement soaked in jet fuel. He ran 8 miles as fast as he could without stopping because he thought he would lose his life if he hadn’t. Sadly so many made it out of the building that day, but stayed to “watch” and didn’t make it any further.
In our relief, we rekindled our relationship. I had high hopes this moment had changed him – that since God had let him live and gave him a second shot at it, he would find it within himself to be a better man.
I stood beside him a week later at Ground Zero holding his hand. We wept. The heavy smell of death encircled us and permeating all of our being. The city was in silence. All you could hear were machines cutting steel trying to find bodies. The hospital close by had a wall of “missing” posters filled with people that were now part of the largest burial ground in American history. He wondered why he survived and why they didn’t.
We broke up a year later when he told me about his girlfriend in Italy and the prostitutes he had slept with. I cut all ties and moved on with my life. A few years ago I got an odd e-mail from his new girlfriend asking me questions in broken English. He wrote me and said, and I quote, “If you ever cared about me and 9/11 you won’t tell her anything”.
Yes, he was trying to use 9/11 to shut me up. A day that he should have gained perspective and feel blessed, he was using to hide behind as a last attempt shield to not let his new girlfriend find out about his cheating, abusive ways. I was disgusted, and copy and pasted his e-mail and sent it right to her. I also told her every little bit I could about my past with him.
How could he go on to take this day as “his”? How can he accept emails today that say “thinking of you” or “this day must be so hard for you” and still go on unscathed. Why must I remember such an asshole who didn’t really deserve a second chance over so many good hearted people that died that day. Why did I accept his abuse for so long, and let him be all of who I am? And why must such a significant day always be about him?
I am pissed. He doesn’t deserve the day.
He once asked if I would light a candle in honor of him every year on this day for the rest of my life. I will do one better for you babe–I’ll light up a finger in the air, and you can see it all the way to Rome. Plus I will eat an entire plate of pasta in my size 14 jeans, and sit on the floor and eat up the love I have with my family. My family I created with a wonderful, loving, non-abusive man, that believes I am wonderful just the way I am.
I will always mourn that day, the people who lost their lives, and will never forget seeing and feeling the aftermath. I will always grieve for NYC, a place that will always have my heart and that will never be the same.
And for that…. I will never forget. For that, and only that, I will light a candle.
by Band Back Together | Sep 13, 2010 | Abuse, Child Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Boundaries, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Parentification, Passive/Aggressive Behavior, Psychological Manipulation, Psychological Manipulation, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem |
Preface: This got extremely long and emotional, but I’m not making it friends only because I’m sick to death of hiding and being embarrassed by this part of my past. There are some things in here that are very sensitive and some that are probably a little too blunt. Some parts of it will doubtlessly make me sound very self centered, but I really think all of it needs to be said.
I somehow ended up spending over 2 hours last night talking to a friend about my mother and my childhood. I so rarely have these conversations anymore, but when I do they come completely out of nowhere. She was so good though, just let me talk it out, agreed with me when I needed her to, but didn’t try to comfort me either. I’m at a place about all this, I think, wherein I don’t need to be comforted nearly as much as I need to be heard. And since she won’t listen in real life, here’s another of my open letters:
Mom,
It’s not right. Our roles have always been so ass-backwards, I’m sick of feeling like your mother instead of the other way around. I don’t think any of my friends, as many times as they’ve heard me say it, believed me when I told them your emotional growth was stunted at about age 13. They believe me after the last couple of weeks. You didn’t get what you wanted, sometimes that happens when you treat people like shit for no reason. I wanted you to come out here, I wanted SO badly for you to come out here, but not at the risk of your health or sanity.
I found a way to save $1300 and not have you and C (my brother) have to sit in a hot, miserable U-Haul truck for 4 days while still getting my stuff out here. A way that I talked to you about, and you agreed with at least twice, before I made the arrangements. How, exactly, is that “unilaterally changing the plan without discussing it with anyone”?
And as far as not making this move on my own, no I absolutely did not. Paul drove with me, your sister (even after all the bad blood between the two of you) let me live with her for almost 6 months until the house opened up. Yes I had help, but I haven’t asked you for a damn thing since I moved out here, and you have done nothing but go around quietly undoing everything that I have tried to do to get my stuff out here. You’ve taken things that weren’t yours, you’ve unpacked and gone through the boxes that I left there.
Every suggestion that I’ve made, everything that I’ve tried has been unacceptable, but you’ve yet to come up with a workable solution. You’re holding my stuff hostage, but I will not be manipulated. I meant every word when I told you that for all I cared anymore you could just call Goodwill to come pick it up. It’s not worth it to me. It’s not worth the aggravation, not worth fighting with you over stuff I’ve lived without for a year. I’ve had so many people tell me recently that I’m one of the most independent, self-sufficient people they know.
I suppose I should thank you for making me fend for myself (and for you, and my siblings) for so many years. It kills me, though, that you seem to be the only one who doesn’t see that I really am trying (and succeeding a vast majority of the time) to stand up on my own two feet.
I told B (my college roommate) last night that it just makes me sad that the one person that I’m trying so hard to be enough for is the one person who I will never manage to please. She said that you were the one person who I shouldn’t have to do anything to be enough for, and she’s right.
I’m sick of trying to earn your love. Of working myself half to death and never making you happy. Love is supposed to be unconditional, especially maternal love. I am not a bad person, I was NOT a bad child, I did and said some stupid things sometimes, sure, but so have you.
I’ve been told this by so many people that I’ve actually started to believe it and now I’m going to tell you:
I deserved better from you.
I deserved to be put first sometimes. I deserved to be protected from the man you chose to marry. I deserved to be allowed to be a child without having to carry the weight and the fear of your unhappiness. I should not have had to be a co-parent to my younger siblings. I should not have had to protect you from him. I should not have had to hear you make excuses for him or tell that police officer what a hoodlum I was ( I had just been named student of the month a couple of days beforehand!). Do you know how hard it was to sit in that kitchen with the cop who was taking my statement and taking pictures of the bruises and hear you in the other room actually taking his side?
It’s not fair to expect me to have all the responsibility and none of the decision making power. It’s not right to, in one breath, tell me to act like an adult and in the very next say “I’m putting my foot down and this is what you are going to do.”
You don’t get to say that anymore. You just don’t. I’m 23 years old, I haven’t lived in your house for nearly a year, I pay all my own bills, and deal with the consequences of my own decisions. You don’t have to like those decisions, but if you would like to remain a part of my life you do have to accept them.
I had no option but to be treated this way as a child, but as a woman if I continue to allow you to do so – now it will be as much my fault as it is yours. I am making the conscious decision to no longer be a victim. I want to have a relationship with you, but I will not be manipulated and guilt-tripped and screamed at for no reason. I don’t need it, I don’t deserve it, and I will not tolerate it. I will speak to you when you can do so like a civilized adult, but I refuse to expose myself to you when you cannot do so.
I hope someday you’ll understand that this is not about not loving you, it’s about finally beginning to love me. It’s about realizing that I’m worth standing up for and understanding that I’m the only person I can count on to do so.
I truly hope that we can find a way to move past these wounds and have our relationship change without ending, but I’m afraid they may take a very long time to heal. I think I am going to seek counseling and I don’t think it would hurt you to get some, either.
Love,
Kacey
by Band Back Together | Sep 13, 2010 | A Letter I Can't Send, Grandparent Loss, Grief, Guilt, Help For Grief And Grieving, Hospice, Loss, Stroke |
Dear Grampa,
I don’t know if I will ever be able to live down the guilt that I feel for abandoning you in the end. I should have gone. I should have called. I should have written.
When the stroke hit, I felt like my own life was falling down around my feet. I was barely hanging on to my own sanity so I said a few prayers and cried a few tears as you lay in that hospital bed over a thousand miles away. I took the rest of the day off of work to feel sorry for myself and to soothe my sense of loss but I didn’t go. I didn’t call. I didn’t write.
Time went on and you went home. Gramma did her best to take care of you with some help from Dad and your other kids and my cousins. I cried when I talked to Mom about the difficulties you were facing. You had to learn how to let other people do things for you instead of being independent like you always had been. I felt better with the sense of urgency gone so I didn’t go. I didn’t call. I didn’t write.
It was a Sunday when Mom called. You were in the hospital again and it wasn’t looking good. Your kidneys were failing. They were going to let you die. I cried and I cursed Mom for waiting to tell me as you’d been hospitalized days before. I went to work the next day, numb and angry but still I didn’t go. I didn’t call. I didn’t write.
You slipped away on a Thursday, two weeks before my birthday. I got the voicemail from Mom just before I went into a meeting at work. It was all I could to keep the tears from my face as my boss yammered about something or another. I sobbed all the way home, grief and guilt overlapping in my tears. I didn’t go. I didn’t call. I didn’t write.
I don’t know if I kept myself from your funeral because of the expense (which is what I told everyone), out of selfishness (I’ve never been good at dealing with death) or to punish myself. By staying away, my guilt is complete. I didn’t go. I didn’t call. I didn’t write.
My Grampa, I have eulogized you in my heart: You were a mean, ornery old bastard that said what you shouldn’t and stepped on plenty of toes, but we never doubted that you loved us. You taught me my first swear words and gave me my first gun. You were the hardest working and most independent man I’ve ever known and I will miss you for the rest of my life.
I’ve never believed in communication with the dead, so my pleas for forgiveness must fall on deaf ears or be lost in the air. Still, I wish I could tell you that I am sorry that I didn’t go and didn’t call and didn’t write.
I will love you always,
Stephie
by Band Back Together | Sep 12, 2010 | Adult Child Loss, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Infidelity, Loss, Trauma |
The Year Was 2009
I was 19 and had been attending college but, thanks to financial difficulties, had to leave. I moved back in with my parents and started working a minimum wage job, 50+ hours a week almost an hour away from home. Mid-December, in the middle of my shift, I got a tearful call from my mom asking me to come home. I left as soon as I could.
At home, I calmed my mom down so that I could understand her. She dropped the bomb: my dad had been having an affair for about a month, told her about it AND had no intention of stopping it.
I called into work the next day to be home with my mom to make sure she didn’t try anything stupid and when I needed a second day off, I was fired. Guess I got all the time off I needed, right?
I saw my dad about 3 times between the 14th and Christmas. The presents he got us he bought while he was with his girlfriend, and were wrapped in surgical paper from the office because he was there with her the whole time. My mom, younger sister, and I moved out the day after Christmas. It was mostly quiet for a few months, other than struggling through visits with my dad when I was so angry at him I could barely control it.
In March, my aunt came up to visit and we planned to visit my dad at my grandparents house one night. Because of a rumor, my dad ended up staying with his girlfriend that night. My sister and I stopped by dad’s on the way home, to find a police car sitting out front speaking to my dad, and my mom at the gas station across the street. ‘Supposedly’ my mom had tried to break in to get financial records and then tried to attack my dad when she realized he was there instead of with us. ‘Supposedly’ my dad then punched her and pushed her down a flight of stairs. April to June was a constant barrage of being lied to from both sides and listening to my parents bad-mouth each other.
On July 12th, 2009, I was headed home from a bonfire at a friend’s house. I was completely sober. Northbound on a north/south highway, there is a hill with an intersection about 100 feet from the crest. I looked down for half a second to put my cell phone in the cup holder. Wrong second to look down. There were two cars stopped at the intersection, going opposite directions, each making left turns. As soon as I saw the car in front of me, I slammed on the brakes. It wasn’t enough. My truck rear ended the car in front of me, which cause the car to spin around and hit the other car in the gas tank. They caught on fire. The car headed southbound had 4 teenagers in it, who all got out okay. The car I struck had a teenage girl driving and her boyfriend. She got out okay. He did not. He was pinned in the backseat and burnt to death. I can only pray that he was knocked out from the impact.
At 20 years old, I was responsible for someone’s death, a someone who was a son, a brother, a boyfriend. I was charged with vehicular homicide as a 3rd degree misdemeanor, which carries a 2 year license suspension, 2 years probation, 200 hours of community service, and 90 days in jail. I was given the maximum sentence.
In October, my dad and his girlfriend announced she was pregnant. I haven’t finished a single credit hour of school since the accident, despite my best efforts to keep going. I work for my dad because I have no way to get to another job. I have a jail sentence hanging over my head as a threat. I am afraid to go places in the town I live in because I don’t want to run into the family of the boy who died and cause them more grief. I was single for more than a year and a half. And you know what?
I love my life. I am happy. I have an amazingly supportive family. My relationship with my dad is better than it has been in 15 years. I am actually pretty good friends with his girlfriend now. I love my baby sister so much. I am in a relationship with a man who knows about the accident and loves me anyway. I am proud of myself, proud of how I have dealt with this traumatic situation that I was given, and that I’ve turned it into something positive.
I talk to young drivers about what can happen if they don’t take driving seriously. And they listen. I appreciate life so much more now than I did. I know it’s easy to be preachy and say “Oh, you just have to find the silver lining, blah blah blah.” Fuck that. A year ago I was at the lowest point I’ve been in my life, but I just kept trucking, because really, what other choice do you have? And things got better. It took time. And they definitely got worse before they got better, but it happened eventually.
My only advice is hang in there. And stay off your fucking phones while you’re driving please.
You will never get a text or call that’s more important than your child’s or your mother’s or your partner’s life.
by Band Back Together | Sep 12, 2010 | Coping With Divorce, Divorce, Guilt |
My parents broke the news to me and my brothers when I was nearly 17, about five years ago. We kind of expected it, really; as my mom said, “We would argue over what shade of blue the sky was.” I’d spent plenty of car rides with my mother where she angrily ranted about my father, always apologizing at the end, and me saying that it was okay, I understood.
My father wasn’t, and isn’t, a bad man. I think he has problems coming to terms with that sometimes, but he isn’t. He’s strict, and he has high expectations. But I think he’s just as lost and confused as the rest of us, trying to do what he thinks is right for everyone, and until lately that meant to the exclusion of himself. His well-paying job kept us more than comfortable, but he loathed it; business trips every few months became once a month became twice a month became every week. He hated it, and he still hates it.
My mother was, is, more laid back, and prone to leaping without looking. Which, I think, is how they came to be married so quickly after their first failed marriages. I was born into the world with a half-sister already eight years older than me, and a half-brother legally adopted by my father who was only a little less than two years older than me. My little brother followed three years later. Then my mom became a nurse, and bounced from job to job, looking for what made her happy.
Nothing really did.
And so I sat in the kitchen with my brothers, listening to my parents going over the reasons I already knew, and I cried anyway. Because my mom was moving out, and my life turned upside down.
I was leaving for college soon, anyway, so my mom’s new apartment only had one room for my little brother. When I was there, I would sleep on the couch. Every time I went there, I felt guilt dragging me down, avoiding saying more than I had to, to my father. Every time I left there, I felt guilt that I couldn’t stay longer, even though there was no where for me to sleep.
I began walking a thin line. I know my parents tried not to put me in the middle, but they couldn’t help it. I’m sure it’s difficult. My older brother was already in college, and he lived with his girlfriend at the time. My younger brother had no car, and was dependent upon me and them for transport, so they set his schedule. I had to balance my own schedule and pray that it would be somewhat fair.
Every week I would have a chore list from each of them, and I would travel back and forth between houses, doing what I could. There were always arguments over “you do more for your Mom/Dad than you do for me.” Eventually, I broke down. I was trying. I really was. Maybe I could have tried harder, but I hated doing chores when they were together, and now I had two different places to do them in. Plus extra chores, like sorting out the boxes of photos so my heartbroken father didn’t stumble across pictures of my mother and sob over how she hadn’t wanted to go to couple’s therapy.
When I first knew, I allowed myself some time to grieve, and then I focused on what I would do. How I could handle this. I had seen the movies and the cartoons, of children rejecting step parents and acting comically like brats in order to somehow fix their parents back up together. I knew that was stupid. I was nearly an adult, nearly in college; I would handle it with grace and maturity.
I complained, sometimes. Sometimes I bawled about how unfair they were being to me, not by their divorce, but how they tore me between them. Home became uncomfortable, a constant trip back and forth, til I had two of everything, and even then there were forgotten cell phone chargers or shoes or books. I slowly lost my “place,” living in dorm rooms, couches, or spare rooms.
I was counselor, sympathizer, errand runner, schedule balancer. I assured my father that he would be okay, assured my mother she was doing the right thing for her, scolded the both of them when they tried to talk down about the other to me. I took my mother’s elopement in stride, as well as my father’s ease away from the Catholic faith and his decision never to remarry.
I found guilt. Guilt in accidentally letting slip the word “stepfather” around my own dad, when talking about Matt. Guilt for having to leave my mother’s early for dinner at my father’s. Guilt for working for my mother watching my stepfather’s kids when I couldn’t find a job. Guilt for hiding from one parent at another’s house. Guilt for not knowing the answers, for watching TV instead of doing some chores, for asking for money because my gas was almost gone and I needed to drive between houses more, guilt for not being able to evenly spread my time during spring breaks, guilt for trying to partition holidays, guilt for blaming my brothers for not “doing anything.”
My family has come back together, in a way. In pieces. Five years is too short a time to mend everything, but I can say I’m going to my mom’s without my father feeling hurt. I can talk about her dogs in his house without pain. I can discuss my father with my mother without there being insults. Everyone is calmer, and I’m drifting away. My father still won’t call the number at my stepfather’s cabin, and avoided them at my commencement, but…steps. Everything is in steps.
I just signed a lease to live in the basement of a woman’s house, so I will be moving out on my own. I won’t rely on their sofas or guest rooms for living, their money for my car, or even their judgment on how long my boyfriend can stay over. I won’t do their chores, and I’ll call once a week or so to check in and chat. Money will be tight, and I’ll be looking for a second job to fill hours and plan for my next big life step.
But I’ll have my own space, my own time, and I’ll begin the final process of unwrapping myself from the middle and moving on.
