by Band Back Together | Aug 20, 2018 | Anger, Anxiety, Caregiver, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Depression, Emotional Boundaries, Guilt, Loneliness, Major Depressive Disorder, Mental Illness Stigma, Parentification, Psychological Manipulation, Sadness, Schizophrenia, Self Loathing, Shame, Trauma |
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 didn’t know where I began and my mother stopped.
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.
I could write endlessly about the trauma, dysfunction, neglect, and abuse of my childhood.
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.
I am me. Someone you do not know.
by Band Back Together | Aug 19, 2018 | Anger, Anxiety, Breast Cancer, Health, Stress, Trauma |
So three pieces of housekeeping first…..
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.
Thank yo, Band Back Together.
I love you more than you motherfucking know.
by Band Back Together | Aug 18, 2018 | Anger, Blended Families, Brain Injury, Fear, Stress, Trauma |
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.
by Band Back Together | Oct 22, 2017 | Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Cancer and Neoplasia, Caregiver, Chronic Illness, Fear, How To Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, How To Help A Friend With Chronic Illness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Stress, Trauma |
Four years. Four years later. And still I struggle. Not every day. But enough.
The reminders that won’t let me forget.
Seeing my daughter doing the things my son should have been doing four years ago. Climbing, running, not needing to hold the walls to walk down the hallway as he did at the end.
The surgical scar on the back of my son’s neck echoed in the scar on my soul.
The checkups, though now yearly, renew my fears… what if…
When does this end? When do I get closure?
When it’s been five years since the tumor was successfully removed? When my son gets to go to prom like the diagnosing neurologist essentially promised us? Or goes to college? Gets his first job? Gets married? Has kids of his own?
Do I get closure? Or is closure bullshit?
Yes, it does get easier. Yes, I’ve gone on with my life. But some days (most days?) I’m not convinced it’ll ever really be over, that the door on this chapter of my life will ever really close. Rather I feel that this chapter is just beginning and it’s a long one.
I try to console myself, thinking it’s okay to feel this way, that it never ends. I can be okay with that. Right?
And yet… And so… this is where I am left… my son is alive and well. Why can’t I let go of the past?
Why won’t it let go of me?
by Band Back Together | Sep 22, 2016 | Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents, Child Abuse, Childhood Fears, Emotional Boundaries, Fear, Mental Illness Stigma, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Passive/Aggressive Behavior, Psychological Manipulation, Shame, Stress, Trauma |
Once upon a time, I had a narcissism blog I never published. Mostly because it had a lame name and most of the posts were responses I had written on a message board where I was once a member. When the service was shutting down, I wanted to keep some of the things I had written, so I put them in the draft heap. There they sat.
See, to me blogging isn’t just a medium to get ‘my story’ out. While there’s a certain catharsis to that, it’s more the conversation and feedback I get from you guys, the readers, that I treasure most. There’s nothing more validating and healing than that. It’s where we learn that we’re not alone and the tricks our Narcissists used to make us believe they were so special and unique fall apart. We all have stories to tell, and countless nights I’d stay up way too late reading, commenting, and nodding my head in agreement.
There’s so much I don’t have to explain to you. You already get it.
Years ago, all I knew was that my parents weren’t normal. My mother was a totalitarian dictator who thought that somehow my life belonged to her. When she tried to ‘punish’ me for not adhering to her life plan, my husband stepped in and told her off. He gave me a choice…either it was my family or my marriage. In retrospect I don’t blame him. My mother is an absolute tyrant, enabled by my narcissistic father who fears her. But honestly, at the time I was scared to death. I understood that in going cutting all contact with my parents, it would also be with the rest of my family as well.
My mother would make sure of that. My husband did what was necessary.
What I couldn’t do myself.
What saved my sanity was a little tiny blurb on the sidebar of a crafting blog. It was a link to information about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). I hit it out of curiosity, and spent the whole night, and many nights thereafter, learning and researching. I finally had a term I could plug into a search engine that explained my mother’s behavior.
After 30 years, I learned it wasn’t my fault.
In our ‘real life’ exchanges, narcissism is like a dirty little secret. To explain it, most people can’t comprehend how a parent can be so predatory. They can comprehend it only on a ‘it-happens-to-other-people-they-don’t-know’ level, but not as it happening to someone in front of them. And certainly not to the kids that lived on the nicest house on the street, or the ones who went to church every Sunday. No, it’s much easier to believe the mother who complains about her ungrateful children who keep her grandchildren from her. It’s so believable after all, because they live in such a nice house and go to church every Sunday. The hypocrisy of it all leaves us silenced.
I don’t know the person who wrote the blog I happened across, but I am forever grateful to her. It was a small voice in a barren land of silence. It led to exchanges with others seeking the same healing we seek. A virtual hug of sorts, where we lean and learn from each other. We don’t share to play the victim card, we share to heal. We feel compelled to write for our own healing, to comprehend our past and somehow move forward from it. We lend our listening ears through our eyes and offer our experience to help others.
Compassion and courage.
It’s the people that have brought us to this place out of the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), not the countless psychology articles we’ve read. We’re used to feeling alone and afraid. Together, we’re a beacon of sanity. It’s what our narcissists feared the most: people in our lives that can positively influence us. They sought to destroy any of our relationships, but didn’t count on the rallying cry of a rag-tag unit of strangers on the internet. Blogging is powerful because it’s real.
Real people writing truth the only way they know how: in their life’s experiences.
It’s a far cry from the overly produced stage we grew up in.
by Band Back Together | Sep 15, 2016 | Addiction, Adult Children of Addicts, Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Anxiety, Cocaine Addiction, Compassion, Fear, Guilt, Happiness, Help With Relationships, Hope, Loving An Addict, Romantic Relationships, Trauma |
Adult Children of Addicts are at a far greater risk to develop addiction to substance abuse.
This is the story of three brave men:
My father was the son of an alcoholic. He had a brother and 3 sisters who all would partake in the ocassional alcoholic beverage but never let it interfere with the normal every day functions of their lives. My father, on the other hand carried on the family tradition/trait/ illness, or whatever you wish to call it. He was not an abusive drunk, although I do remember he and his best friend trashing our house fighting each other when I was a pre-teen. He was very much involved in my life and that of my brother and sister, but he was still an alcoholic.
As years passed, his drinking became more and more severe. It wasn’t until my teen years that I really started paying attention and noticing that he was consuming a case or so of beer by himself, everyday, along with as much as a pint of liquor. He became more pissed off at the world and everything about it. The world was out to get him and so was everyone on the planet. It was getting to the point where nothing we did was right.
After graduating high school, it was time to marry my high school sweetheart. A day I had dreamt of for a long time. I was never one for dating and the whole girlfriend issue, but this girl was for me and I was so looking forward to that special night and our first dance as husband and wife. In the middle of the most special dance of my life, my father interrupted and said, “why don’t you play something we all like?” Our wedding song was “All Of My Love” by Led Zeppelin.
I was stunned, flabbergasted, ashamed, and yet I let it slide.
I vowed my entire life that I would not be like him, and to that I stayed pretty true. Sure, I had the occasional drink as a teenager. Yes, I got drunk from time to time but never really cared enough for it to become a regular thing. Never would I be like him. I would not put my children through that, even if he was not mean, it was not a childhood I would not want any kid to have to live. Little did I realize at the time that I was just like him.
Although I was not a drinker, I had no problem smoking pot, tripping on acid and mescaline, doing ‘shrooms, or just about any mind-altering substance that I could get my hands on. But hey, I was not a drunk.
It wasn’t until my mid twenties, deep into a cocaine free basing addiction that my wonderful wife, the high school sweetheart, told me ”I don’t know what you are doing, but you either quit or I leave.”
Wow, a brick in the face that one was.
I finally looked at myself in the mirror, literally, and saw a pasty grey skinned man, skinny and sick looking he was just one step away from death or an institution.
I quit. I vowed to myself and my wife that I would never touch the stuff again. I spent several years going to narcotics anonymous, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day and I am proud to say I am free, clean, and sober. I am a fairly healthy 45 year old man still married to my high school sweet heart, and I have 3 wonderful sons and 2 grandsons.
I have felt their joys and sorrows. I have seen their smiles and frowns. I have been there for them. And I was there to help my oldest son through his addiction.
He chose to follow me and go the drug route. I have always been open with my children about drugs hoping that it would steer them away since I was speaking from personal experience; not quoting something I read in a book. He saw it like, hey you’re still alive, it couldn’t have been THAT bad.
On his 17th birthday, I did something that even I could not believe.
On the way home from picking him up at school one evening, he was so wasted that he was actually hallucinating in my car, asking me questions about how we were going to get the car through all those trees, and what were we going to do when we got to the end of the road where it turns red. I was so scared for him; it was time for another search of his room. I found pot growing in his closet, for the second time, so I figured I had no choice. I turned in my own son and he spent his 17th birthday in the county jail, and several others months following. It opened his eyes a bit. He stumbled a few times since but is now a wonderful 21 year old man with 2 sons.
One night, not to long ago, he finally told me that he hated me for quite a while for turning him in, but he then said he could not thank me enough for what he did and that he loved me.
I am constantly worried about him. Will the stress of the children lead him back to the drugs? Will he make it through as I have? Will any of his children follow the familiar path?
One good thing that has come of my sons addiction is that his younger brothers want absolutely nothing to do with any of it. So for now I just let him, and his brothers know, that I will always be there for them, and that life might not always be wonderful but it could always be worse.
And of course, I must thank my wonderful wife.
She stayed with me.
She saw the problems and instead of bailing out she stuck by my side.
She spent several weeks with very little sleep as my mind and body fought each other she was there to calm me.
She saved my life.
