Hand Lotion & Interrupted Goodbyes

Tags

death, grief, narcissistic mother

The days when it hits me fresh, as though I’ve been sleeping and just woke up to discover he is gone.

And gone forever.

I wonder at times if I’m crazy. How can it possibly,  still – after five long years – still knock me to my knees when I realize for the gazillionth time, it’s forever.  Gone forever.

He’s not golfing.  He’s not at work.  He’s not on vacation or visiting friends out of state.  He won’t be home in an hour, later tonight, in a week or 100 years.

He won’t be blowing my phone up later. he won’t be taking me to lunch tomorrow.

He. Is. Gone. Forever.

Just like my daughters, except my daughters live…live to be gone from me.

I didn’t just learn this and I’m not stupid.  He wasn’t my husband or my child or a dear childhood friend.  He was my father.  People lose parents!  For God’s sake, that’s just a normal part of life.  How can it still sting and ache and tear to suddenly think, oh my God, he is really never, ever coming back…? How? What the hell is wrong with me?  How in the fuck does it still seem so, so so very impossible?  That, it can’t fucking possibly be forever?

I’m not in absolute denial. My mind does know and understands.  I imagine on some deeply subconscious level, I’m constantly telling myself that, as for all my life, he’ll be home any minute now.  He will walk through that door, smelling of fresh air and golf greens, grinning that beaming whole-face smile, and tell me how his golf game was.

Any minute now, right? Because only so many unacceptable things can happen to one person, right??

Any god damned minute now…

Darlene (mother) made his funeral a big fucking joke!  I can’t let myself be angry.  Senseless to burn with fury over that now, just like it’s senseless to rant and rave about what my “family” did to me during and since.  Wasted energy to wish so hard that I’d been less in a dazed state of shock and been more aware of what they were all doing.

My dad was fucking dead for Christ’s sake!  DEAD!!!!

I waited after the “Darlene show” of a funeral to have a few last minutes alone with him.  I wanted a last few minutes alone my DAD, my best friend, my only parent, my only cheerleader, my only compassionate, helpful encouraging soul.  Waiting til the people had cleared out, I went to him – peaceful in his casket – looking so much like him, yet somehow not at all like my dad…

I touched his face.  I kissed his cool, firm, rubbery-like embalmed cheek.  I placed my hand gently on top of his and remembered only a few weeks ago we’d sat in his car and I’d touched that same warm, loving, age-spotted right hand as it rested on his gear shift and said, Daddy, your hands look so dry! They need lotion. And I silently wished I hadn’t taken the trial sized lotion out of my handbag the week earlier.  Looking at them, so old and so dry –  almost (dare I say?) frail like?

NO.  They could not be frail!  Not my dad’s hands.  Not my superhero.  Not the only person in the world who really did only hurt me when he wanted to help or better guide me.  Not this strong,  can-do anything, never stopping, ceaselessly giving and doing man with the invisible superhero cape I’d always pictured on him as a child.  NOT. FRAIL!  Not he! Not those hands! Nuh uh!

I just wanted to put lotion on his hands for him, this amazing man who’d done more for my life, my spirit, my kids, and my heart than anyone one human  being deserves… God, how I wanted to put lotion on those hands that day!  I have a thing about hands…  How had I not noticed before today that his hands had somehow become dry, older, so different from MY dad’s hands? HOW HAD I NOT SEEN THIS BEFORE TODAY?

…and WHY HAD I TAKEN MY LOTION OUT OF MY PURSE? WHY??

…so I wanted those last precious moments with him after the people cleared out of the funeral room.  After all, it had been just he and I for most of the past 20 years.  Seemed fitting the last final moments with him should be shared quietly between he and I, alone… on our own, like Darlene had expressly seen to it both our lives were?

I touched that hand again, thinking of that conversation and REALLY wishing more than ever I’d had that damned lotion in my bag that day so that the last time we had together I’d done something special and thoughtful just for him – just because I loved and cherished and appreciated him.

I put my head on his chest and I let the tears come out.  Not shrieking and wailing tears for show like Darlene had done in the middle of the funeral, just quiet tears. I held in the sobs and shrieks I actually felt welling inside me.  I lay my head there, imagining the countless times I’d put my head there all my life.  My safe haven – right there.  My comfort when I was scared.  The place my tears often fell as a child and adult alike.

Within moments, my egg donor, Darlene, comes back in to, of course, pull me away.  GOD FUCKING KNOWS SHE HAD TO INTERRUPT EVEN THIS LAST FUCKING MOMENT ALONE WITH MY DAD.

I should have told her to fuck off.  I should have said, This is my last time with my dad, could you please just step away?  COULD I JUST HAVE THIS?  JUST THIS???!?

Get your fake fucking hand off my shoulder and shut your filling-my-kids-heads-with- ridiculous-bullshit-while-we’re-grieving-our-loss filthy, evil, lying mouth!  No, I will NOT do as you tell me today…  NOT TODAY!

Being the dutiful child she trained me to be(and swears to the world I wasn’t), of course I did not.  I just did what she told me.

…And let her interrupt and steal EVEN THAT.

I can’t be angry.  Anger wastes my spirit and there’s just not much left of that to throw away on narcissistic vile evil pigs like she.

Anger would be so wasteful.  My dad never wasted time angry.

And I am my father’s daughter.

so much nothing

Tags

goodbyes, memories, Miranda Lambert, nostalgia

So ironic that this house of my daddy’s I now live in is more like the “House that Built me” than any other place I lived growing up…even though I didn’t move here til I was 18. My daughter, Lexi loved this song, but she felt it about our house that her  dad took from us “for our own good”.  And regardless of where my children go or whom they choose to love, this house is the only one we have left that “built us”.

He stole that one because he “felt it best” along with all my personal memorabilia…so, we have this one…my dad’s…

I find myself frequently asking for signs… I’ve no clue what that even means, but I ask hourly.  I don’t believe in anything so much anymore, so I don’t even know what I’m asking to send me a sign…

I’m still here.  I have all the ingredients to escape, still feel confident my absence might be best, no one has stepped up to say Oh please don’t, my mind hasn’t changed (if anything it’s more determined and decided)…  Today, I contacted a realtor about listing my dad’s house…this beloved, ancient manor of memories… and immediately after contacting the realtor, the song that most reminds me of my dad started playing on the radio.  It’s a very old song, so I was surprised to hear it play.  And I ask myself, is that my sign?  If it is, is it a sign of yes or a sign of NO DON’T DO IT?  I wouldn’t know.

I have no other safe places.  I belong no where.  I guess I never have.  I only belonged wherever my dad was or where my children were.  None exist anymore for me, so it’s this house.  This house, where my dad helped me learn to walk again at 26, where both my daughters learned to walk for the first time, the place of so many Thanksgivings, so many birthdays, Christmases, family dinners, family giggles…  The only place I ever felt a sigh of relief when I walked in the door, knowing I was safe, knowing I was loved, knowing everything would be always ok no matter how bad it seemed….a real life refuge.

I didn’t actually grow up here. Although, I sort of did.  My daddy bought this house when I was 18.  My first boyfriend beat me here several times.  Two primary doors were replaced by him from when he busted them down.  I moved away to live with my aunt awhile to escape him and came back to be with my real first love/best friend.  And there are so many wonderful memories here of how he loved me, how he was my best friend ever.  There’s an ancient father’s day card, tucked away in a drawer, that he gave to my dad, so sure he was that he and I would be married.  He and my dad got along very well, except for my endless long distance phone calls to him when he went away to college in Chicago.  Long distance!  It’s such a foreign concept now.  In hindsight, I feel so badly for my dad.  It was actually cheaper to drive to Chicago to see him than those 4 hour long distance phone calls were!

My dad had every right to be furious, every right to not even allow me to use the(his!) phone after countless outrageous phone bills I couldn’t pay for!  He did get mad…often…but he never once beat me or shamed me or punished me or kicked me out for being so childishly selfish.

Every single thing inside this house has meaning to me.  The chips in the paint over the hall? Those are from the bouncy swing we got for Lexi when she was only 4 months old. Oh, and how she’d bounce!  Bounce and shriek with laughter…  She was the center of the world right then!  Then, Savannah came and I was so handicapped that I couldn’t hold her as much as I did Lexi…  but we had the bouncy swing and she’d shriek with joy.  And even as I’d watch her, single handicapped mother of two amazing girls, worrying about what our life would be; worried about what they’d need and if I could provide it always, my dad would just laugh watching her bounce and I didn’t know what our lives would be, but I knew it would be okay whatever it was, so I’d laugh with them too, no matter the depth of my uncertainty and fear.

Anyway,  that’s why the center of that entryway has some chipped paint that was never repainted.  In the tiny drawer of the library?  There’s a child’s tiny notepad where my dad must have been helping Savannah when she was learning to write and Savannah first wrote the word “Mommy” and her own beautiful name.

In those fun little drawers, there’s also the first portable Britney Spears playin’ CD players my dad got for my kids when they wanted them but I couldn’t afford to buy them.  One was red and one was yellow.  The yellow one is in there, haphazardly left behind at some point when my daughters transitioned to iPod music.   Those fun sized drawers hold baby sized hair ties and barrettes, some fairy tale storybooks, some 25 cent bubblegum machine jewelry that made their faces light up, tiny little child-sized sparkly nail polishes… they are a virtual nostalgic treasure chest!

A million teeny-tiny worthless, priceless little whatnots that no one on the planet would think a thing of throwing in the trash, but which flood my heart with happy, useless, hurtful memories.

So much nothing that means so much.  I bought this house when my dad died.  I confess it was only because of my dad’s memory and hoping that my children might someday feel happy that it was still in our family, holding all those memories of their childhood and their papa.  They have no need for nostalgia, nor memories…  so I really just wasted the money wishing on a star, hoping to preserve a million happy memories that my children have committed to forgetting.

I still feel like this is my refuge, even while the memories simultaneously refresh my hope and destroy it.

The Daddy Issues Accusations

Tags

abuse, apologies, Daddy, deathbed confessions, forgiveness, Lies, narcissist mother

I’ll never forget the first time a therapist suggested to me that I wasn’t realistic about my “dad’s part” in my childhood abuse. I was furiously defensive. My daddy had never abused me!! Dr. Patty caught me off guard though when she said, Don’t you feel some anger at him for not protecting you from your mother, though? 

Um, NO! My dad loved me and that’s all I ever wanted from a parent. It’s not that my dad never punished me, he did when I deserved punished. It’s not that he “didn’t protect me”, it never once occurred to me that anyone would be brave enough to take on Darlene! Meanwhile, I realize now the game she played with our fear of her. She just filled my head full of awful things he’d done to hurt her (none of which ever rang true to me even at just 4 years old) and then she’d tell my dad horrible things about me. This part never occurred to me though because as a child I couldn’t imagine my own mother would tell lies about me to anyone, much less my dad. 

But she did. And I never corrected them because I had no clue my dad didn’t know the truth of whatever latest ordeal she’d put me through. And I assumed he knew the truth and that he would spend our brief, precious moments together showing me love and laughing together so I could get the strength to return to mother and better try not to upset her. 

He didn’t know what was really happening though. He only knew her lies and in my childhood trusting innocence, I never told my version of events; never even fathomed that mother would just change the story so I’d look worse than I was and she’d look far better than she was. 

It’s like when I was molested at school, it never occurred to me to complain to an adult. After all, an adult did it so he couldn’t be wrong, I had to be wrong. I had to have deserved it. I had no right to dispute any adults choices! Darlene effectively enforced that so thoroughly that I was too spineless to ever feel I had any rights to protest other people’s actions against me. 

Because of this, I never blamed my dad for not protecting me. And it’s obvious that my entire life, I was an easy victim to the world because I had no sense of having and right to even be here, much less rights as a human being for respect or dignity. Probably why I was an easy target for rape and abusive men. Spineless creatures with zero sense of self worth are the easiest to prey upon and mold to accept the abuse. 

My daddy loved her more. I’ve been aware of that for many years, but he loved her more only because he never knew the truths of her and he knew all my truths, good and bad.

Only once did I think he started to get a clue of her truth. His pastor preached on abusive parents. And after the sermon, daddy bought me a book called Toxic Parents and brought it to my house, as though something had happened and he saw a glimmer of truth in my life struggles stemming from the abuse. He didn’t say he understood or believed and I didn’t ask any questions because my dad’s loyalty was fierce and I never wanted him torn in the middle. I knew he had blinders she’d carefully sewn on his eyes and he was most comfortable with those blinders. I never had the urge to rip those off completely. I loved him too much and as hurtful as his devotion to her in spite of it all was to the little girl in me, I understood it better than most and I adored him for that quality of unconditional love. I had no real interest in changing that or hurting him by destroying his carefully plotted necessary false idea of her. 

As my daddy was getting older toward the end, he’d become not quite senile, he was still cognizant and clear mostly, but his fears for and about me became irrational and confused. In hindsight I see that he knew his time was coming and he wasn’t scared about anything at all… except for me and my children.

I didn’t realize it at the time of course, I thought he was just being irrational and controlling. I wish so much I could have understood why before he passed away, but I did not. And one of our final talks was him apologizing to me for his irrationality and saying to me, I’m sorry baby, but I promise you I’ll do it differently. You tell the girls that “they’re gonna see a BIG change in papa. I won’t do this to y’all again.”

And of course I had been very angry with his recent irrational actions but I could never stay mad at my daddy who always owned his mistakes and apologized immediately for them. So I knew he recognized his mistakes and I was relieved and grateful for his apology. 

I could never stay mad at my daddy. He was too genuine and good down to his soul to ever hold any mistakes he made against him.

Darlene attempted to take that apology after he died and make that her story with my dad. And amidst a huge amount of bizarre and random discrepancies surrounding my dad’s death related directly to my mother and my sister, I know she’s lying with dramatic poetic license. She makes stories up all the time because she needs to be seen as the victim she made me into. She must be seen as the sparkling angelic “victim” of her actual victims.

There will never be recompense or exposed truth of her lies. She’s told them so long to do many people now that I know even she believes they’re truths now. 

A single sentence

Tags

abuse, blame, challenge, destruction, donestic violence, parental alienation, psychopaths, scapegoat, surviving

Some days I want so badly to scream my story from the rooftops and just throw every sordid (and possibly boring!) detail into the air like confetti .

Other days, I wish there were even one person in my life who knew it all already and I wouldn’t have to struggle with words and sordid (or boring!) facts and stories at all.  I realize at this late stage in the game after all the damage has been done and my eyes have finally and painfully been pried wide open to the truths of it all,that is no longer a feasible possibility or option. 

So I challenged myself to try to wrap the whole thing up in one sentence…just one solitary sentence that might somehow encompass the feel of the whole thing.  The entirety and bitter irony of my entire life to this exact point in time. 

And this is my sentence:

They cut off my wings then crucified me because I couldn’t fly… and blamed me that I couldn’t grow them back from their mangled feathery bloody stub-bits that were  left behind. 

Happy Birthday Mommie Dearest

Tags

aparht, child abuse, children, cruel mothers, DENIAL, desperate for love, growing up, hate, invisible child, love, narcissistic personality disorder, neglecr, scapegoat child, siciopath, Therapy

Today is the birthday of the female who gave birth to me. She turns 67 today. I will always feel uncomfortable on this day. It’s a weird feeling to know there is a person out there whom I once shared a body with who not only doesn’t care if i live or die, but who actually gets pleasure from my pain. 

As a child, I sensed her snide joy whenever I hurt either from her hand or another’s. I was a wise enough child to try to justify that in my mind and heart. I fully believed that was real love and I accepted to the best of my young and immature ability that when I “grew up”, I’d be able to understand better how that is love no matter how much it didn’t make sense to me at the time.   My sick gut feeling I got regularly when this woman was ruthlessly and randomly cruel would be proven wrong the minute I matured enough to understand real love. After all, I was just a child… how could I understand such complex things as even love was supposed to hurt? And hurt bad and hurt regularly? How could I possibly know the right way to love a child? I was just a child myself! One day it would all be crystal clear and the words she occasionally spoke saying I love you would some day make sense even though her actions and behaviors didn’t feel like love to a silly little sensitive child like myself who probably was just extra needy of love and affection because I was just so unlovable and so very difficult to love.

As an adult, it never did make sense. I was 23 and had been in therapy since I first was freed from the mother at 17. After my first year of therapy and telling brutal truths (truths I hadn’t ever  admitted even to myself before) about how truly horrible and unlovable I had always been, I will never forget the exact moment my therapist said the words, Do you ever resent your dad for not protecting you from such horrific abuse from your mother?

Immediately, I felt defensive of both my parents and guilty that I had apparently somehow inadvertently misled this woman whom was the first person in my world I’d been brutally upfront and honest about every single bad thing about me, every last little bad deed I had done and even the horrible thoughts of self pity and ingratitude I had felt so often throughout my 20-some years of life at all the love I’d been given even though I didn’t deserve any at all.

What? Abuse??!?  No, you don’t understand Dr. Patty! I wasn’t abused. My mother loved me! There was no abuse?? I was not abused. I was a difficult child. I was born really bad and impossible to love. My mother tried really hard to love me and she loved me sometimes in spite of how awful I was born. And my daddy??!?? Ummm… why would my daddy have protected me from being loved by my mother? He loves me too. He wanted me to be loved and to grow up and be a good person. He loves me in spite of being born bad and completely unlovable too!! ABUSED? ME?!??  No! You’ve misunderstood ! Somehow I’ve tried to tell you every awful truth about me and you’ve totally misunderstood, Dr. Patty!! 

I couldn’t understand how I had misled Dr. Patty so badly even by being 100% truthful no matter how embarrassing it was to admit what a horrible human being I was. I couldn’t grasp why she wasn’t confirming what I needed her to confirm- how lucky I was to have had a mother who loved me so much even though I certainly had never been worthy of any love at all. 

This was why I was investing so much time and effort into therapy!! I was a “grown up” now and I was still sometimes ungrateful and immature enough to not feel like my mother loved me even though she’d said the words to me all my life,  why did her actions still seemed senselessly cruel, demeaning, and evil? Those words that proved my intuition and understanding were just twisted and backward. Those beautiful words that proved what a wonderful and amazing mother God had given me… those three words, I love you. 

Abused?!? I was not abused! I was lucky and so very loved! And now, I’m an adult and I need to understand that truth . I’ve waited my entire life to understand this is the truth of love. Love hurts . Love feels cruel and sad and very painful , but that is what love is!! Why do I STILL feel in my gut that it’s not love? Why can’t I understand what real love is? How can I be intelligent and still be clearly so immature emotionally that my mind and my heart are still in constant conflict? Why does my mind STILL try to convince me that love shouldn’t hurt when my heart knows my mother painfully loved me !?  I was supposed to understand by now  that my mother loved me beautifully all my life!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME THAT I STILL DON’T GET IT?

Dr. Patty, that’s just crazy…. I was NOT abused. Why would you even say that to me?

After this infuriating misunderstanding, I skipped my appointments with Dr. Patty for a few weeks. I was so frustrated that I had somehow misled her even by being brutally honest.  

It felt like the time I was 14 and went to the optometrist.  I answered every question and eye test truthfully and still I somehow “faked that I needed glasses”. I didn’t need glasses. I “just wanted attention because I was a needy, overly sensitive, never-satisfied-with-the-love -I-got-every-single-day kind of impossible and ungrateful child”. I didn’t need glasses, I was just trying to get attention. And ohhhhhhh boy, was my mother pissed at me for lying to the optometrist!!  And livid that I had “cheated” on the eye exam and totally “manipulated the doctor” into believing I needed glasses when I didn’t. I was just trying to get more undeserved attention than I already got every day. 

And now, I’d cheated and misled my own therapist too! I had to accept that I was so bad and so irreparably broken that I had done it again even though I thought I’d been totally FUCKING honest this time!

I was just fucked. I was hopelessly fucked. 

It wasn’t until a few years later when I became a momma myself that I realized Dr. Patty had been so right. There was nothing in the world I could imagine more terrifying and utterly crushing than the sound of my babies crying or hurt or disappointed even. Then, I knew I had been in denial all my life. I had never even known or been able to understand love nor to what degree I would be willing to go to protect my child from hurt and harm until I looked into the sweet blue eyes of my two precious babies.

I knew love. It really wasn’t me!! The woman who gave birth to me had zero comprehension or ability to love outside herself or her bitter resentments or her furious seething anger at simply being forced to look at the light in my soul. 

I have understood love all my life. And dammit, I would show my children all the love I could possibly demonstrate. 

So happy birthday to the woman who doesn’t acknowledge my existence, who thrives on my miseries, who feels invigorated by my pain and struggles, who can’t tolerate anyone loving me, who doesn’t care if I starve, or if I die, or if I’m beaten or raped… happy birthday to the woman who spent 27 years showing me everything HATE, apathy, anger, injustice,and senseless cruelty is… who demonstrated clearly the fucking opposite of anything love could ever be.

After all, Mommie was really nice to me once when the janitor at my school put his hands inside my panties in the first grade.  That was before I was truly bad and slutty and evil though…  several years before my Shameful Panties. 

Happy birthday, Mommie Dearest. I don’t wish you any ill will. My only wish for you is that all the “love” you showed me will come back to you threefold. You worked hard for that karma. And I want nothing less for you. 

Happy birthday from your other, nonexistent child who could never get anything right in her life, who desperately just wanted to love and be loved by you. 

Happy birthday to you. 

Mommie Dearest, her golden child(my sister), and Mommie Dearest’s 3rd husband: Christmas circa 1992

Mean, Mean Mac n Cheese

Tags

abuse, cheating, children, Cruelty, Domestic violence, Domestic Violence by proxy, parental alienation

Last night, I made macaroni and cheese.   I’m not telling you this because anyone on earth cares what I had for dinner.  I’m writing of macaroni and cheese because it should contain a warning. That’s right.  Macaroni and cheese provokes some serious emotional baggage, I’m telling you.    That deliciously rich silvery packet full of golden cheese viciously smited me; locked me smack in the old memory bank  I strive daily to keep myself locked out of.

I live alone now and I have little interest in grocery shopping these days.  Cooking (the way I love to cook) for one just seems superfluous, so I scoured through my pantry for something on hand that would be quick and filling with minimal cleanup required. Lo and behold: a lonesome rectangular box of mac n cheese! I love mac n cheese and I’ve not had any in years.  Literally, years. So….. ummm…. Yay!

Clueless as to what this sneaky little pre-packaged solitary supper in a box was capable of, I  put the water on to boil.    Innocently, I tore open the box  still filled with eager delight that I had the little forgotten treasure on hand. I struggle with opening boxes, but that’s another story and nothing could burst my mac n cheese bubble of gratitude I was floating in at this moment.  I managed to open the box and then – only then – did it hit me.

…a f**king tsunami of long held back memories flooded my eyes instantaneously with tears when I caught that first glimpse of the shiny silver packet of cheese inside peeking out at me among the flecks of pasta shells trying to bury it as though to protect me from the acute pain this cheesy treasure would bring. I’m immediately blurry eyed from bushels of salt stinging my eyeballs and instant asphalt-hot tears streaming like two waterfalls down my face. My hands shaking, I carefully pulled out the silver demon of painful nostalgia, regret, and furious anger all tossed together in this silly little cheesy packet. At this point, I’m still fairly confused about the spontaneous cry baby tsunami hitting me.  Fuck, I just wanted to whip up some mac n cheese, for the love of God!

But my brain…or was it my heart?  My soul?? my spirit???!?  I can’t even know, I just know I’m overwhelmed so much that I couldn’t even catch hold of one individual thought/memory/feeling long enough to fathom what shard of my brokenness was cutting the deepest.  They all started to cut and dig and the salt in my tears seemed to be scattered instantly inside a billion winds of unidentified mac n cheese puncture wounds.

It was all too brief visits to Daddy’s safe haven where I was so very little and so very safe and happy, gloriously excited for daddy to set that plate down in front of me.  I’m only 4 and mac n cheese is my favorite and Daddy actually made it!  I never get this at “home”…  I’m sitting right next to him on the nubby red loveseat with tv trays in front of us that I can barely reach from sitting, but I wanna be like Daddy and we are watching re-runs of Hogan’s Heroes while we eat.  And it’s my favorite because Daddy laughs at the tv so much that I laugh too, even though I don’t even understand what’s funny.  I just know I love that sound and I want to hide right there inside those notes of laughter forever.  this is the only address for joy and laughter i know.  It’s the only residence of the safety to feel at all, much less to allow my very own  laughter to bubble up and explode from my belly in uncontrollable giggles.  It’s safe to be happy here.  It’s safe to be silly.  Laughter echoes on these walls long after the literal sound has stopped.  Macaroni and cheese is visits to Daddy’s. It’s safety.  It’s laughter.  It is the home of momentary  security and still being young enough that all there was was then, was right NOW. So in those moments, although just flashes, thoughts of sadness and fear and the knowledge that this was only a flash in time before I’d have to return to the real world could not co-exist.  When you’re that little, now is all there can be and now is strong enough that all the fears and hurts and worries your 3 year old self normally carry are literally flushed away…in that moment.  That moment is all there was…while a 3 year old is in it. And sometimes there was Mac n cheese in it too. 

It was a brief flash of college years and making it for my entire meal just  because  I could… And the childhood memories of comfort it brought back even then while far away from home’and having no friends and no daddy anywhere near.  Reminiscing on the flashes of Mac n cheese laughter that thankfully spotted the otherwise chronic pain and confusion of my childhood as spurts of temporary relief from the excruciating loneliness of my reality back then. Reminiscing about those little breaks from the tortures of the cruel prison of childhood and still young enough to almost believe your daddy will live forever, just because he just must. 

Mac n cheese was raising two beautiful little toddlers all alone with a physical disability in subsidized housing. It was stretching the pennies of a fixed income to afford to try to feed them the stuff they liked.  It was the excitement I felt on the rare days when I splurged to afford the “good brand” for $2.69 rather than the powdery generic .34 cents kind I usually had to buy while their  perfectly physically-abled,  healthy father made $800k+ a year, lived alone in a gigantic house, drove fancy new cars, enjoying the fortune of freedom and good jobs, and the fun party life of a healthy single man who took his kids for weekends and vacations whenever it suited his fancy or his work and personal schedule.

Mac and cheese is the pang in your gut at the grocery store of the life a traumatic brain injury resorts you to when you’re affected at 26 years old. It’s not having the strength, coordination, or balance  to play normally with your little children who so desperately want you to play with them, or bathe them without help from your dad, or run with them on the playground,  or brush the tangles out of their hair using both hands to make it easier for their tender scalps.  

Mac and cheese is the cheap stuff you feel guilty for serving your children when you know their perfect little grins and glorious giggles, hugs and tiny “I love you Momma’s” so deserve the rich, creamy, delicious kind. The guilt of not having the  physical strength to raise them the way you’d always dreamed and work a regular full time job.  its not having the strength to pick them up when they reach their tiny arms out and say “hold me momma!”. It’s having the strength to pick them up on good days and fearing you’ll lose your balance and fall with them in your arms, and maybe scar their sense of security or faith in you as a momma,  thus creating  trust issues you swore your children would never have to battle  It’s your words slurring with fatigue on the second bedtime reading of Winnie the Pooh because your brain is unable to formulate words well after a long day… and you can’t hold them both at the same time like they deserve and hold a book too, but they so deserve to hear it a second time.. And they also deserve to be held tightly with two strong arms until  they drift of to sleep feeling adored, loved, secure, and safe, the way you never did as a child … Except during the rare Mac n cheese visits at your daddy’s house. 

This Mac n cheese was the childhood  my children deserved rather than the one I was able to give them.. The one I’d  always dreamed of giving them when i had played with dolls as a child and fantasized about what kind of momma I could be someday, promising myself I would you’d be everything my mother never was.  My children would not know fear or insecurity. They would not know the desperate longing for a momma that played with them every day and read to them and laughed with them and chased away their bad dreams and allowed them to know security in their environment and security of faith and love in and outside of themselves. 

This Mac n cheese was the regret of feeding my children cheap shit so that I’d never have to depend on their dad for money to survive. Not caring about child support rights or entitlement or all the money in the world if it meant having to raise my daughters watching their dad cheat, lie, and abuse me. It meant going without just to not even risk fighting legally or otherwise  with him about custody when I knew I didn’t have the money for the battle because he had all the time, freedom, and money while all I ever wanted to have was my children and the ability to raise them with love and understanding, peace and security…and joy. It was choosing to encourage their relationship with the man who abused me after I left him and he had destroyed my dreams and who didn’t care about much other than sex with “strange”, job power, and making money to buy nice things for himself. It was passing on child support for 15 years no matter my disability or how much money he was free to go out and make because love and peace for my kids’ home life seemed more important than buying the good kind of Mac n cheese for them. 

Mac n cheese was the ache of remembering when my children  loved me in spite of my disability. The excruciating torment of recalling countless nights of guilt at being poor, being disabled, being single, and being afraid of not ever being even close to everything I had always dreamed of being for them… Of the hurt at wanting to give them so much more but literally not being able to. It was The indescribably deep wound that comes from unexpectedly losing the only parent who had loved and wanted me as a child or as an adult. 

Mac n cheese is the endless sting of betrayal that my children turned against me, lied about me, negate me as ever being their mother even, crucifying my every flaw and every life hardship, magnifying every mistake big or small, denying any good I brought to their lives. All on top of the years of guilt at already not being enough, not being worthy, not being anything but a disappointment to every one … To Everyone except my dead daddy who has abandoned me once again and finally for forever. 

I will never make or eat macaroni and cheese again. That stuff is just vicious. 

 

 

Trauma Therapy

Tags

Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Daddy, depression, desperation, estranged, fear, hopes, loveless, Mother, nostalgia, parent issues, Therapy, trauma, unacceptable

I fell deeper into that pit of despair a few weeks ago when my daughter reached out to me because her boyfriend had roughed her up.  Previously, I had thought I had already hit the bottom of that pitiful pit.  True to my inability to fully accept that it can always get worse (which I never seem able to let penetrate my mind), I’d enjoyed (for lack of a better word) the belief and feeling that at least I had hit the bottom of the misery pit.  That provides some relief in itself.  As I lie there on that cold hard scratchy floor from several different drops lower and lower over the years, I breathed a sigh of relief that although it was miserable and I was confused and terrorized from the various drops, I could breathe that I was, at last, on the actual bottom.  There could be no more sudden shocks as that floor disintegrated and I fell another story or two or twelve down the pit.

What a false sense of desperate relief!  More was to come as my daughter dangled the carrot of hope in my face…inches from my mouth…so close my mouth watered at the thought that I might actually get to taste this carrot of her love again.

As I scrambled, crawled, and begged for the dangling carrot of my daughters love and presence, I stumbled upon a thin part of the floor of my misery which broke it open.  I tumbled further down the Rabbit Hole of despair and confused bewilderment.

For several days, I simply plotted my death.  Desperate for the final solution to end this pain and prevent the possibility of more carrot dangling in the future, I had the answer, but not the sure-proof means and this is one thing in my life I simply cannot allow failure.

Without the means, I reached out for help.  I started taking antidepressants again after nearly a year free of them and I went to a local domestic violence shelter that provides free counseling. It took some pleading and finagling to talk them out of calling an ambulance to have me scurried to the hospital and admitted, but I did it!  In exchange, I agreed to try counseling (sigh….again).

Today will be my 2nd appointment.  My task given at session #1 was to find the one trauma point from which to begin this trauma treatment: a pivotal point, if you will.

In terror as though my life depends on it (no pun intended), my brain has scrambled for a week trying to select the point from which to begin this process.  It’s as though I have one bullet to hit the moving target.

Was it when my daddy went on vacation and only his dead body returned?

Was it when I was gang raped at 17?  Or raped at gunpoint again later at 31?

Was it from the beginning, any number of soul-injustices and spirit-murders I endured at her hand in my first 26 years of life?

Was it when my ex abused me mentally, emotionally and physically while I carried our first child only to add more abuse after she was born?  Or when he cheated over and over and then yelled at me for asking questions?  Was it when he spit on me and our infant daughter when I asked him what a receipt was for when I was reconciling our checking account?  Was it that moment I held her nursing and he looked me cold in the eye and said, “I’m on a downward spiral.  You and Lexi can come along or get the fuck out?”

Was it the moment my beloved oldest child attacked me verbally after my dad died and fabricated the ugliest lies I could imagine to set me up for her plan with my ex and my mother to destroy me once and for all?

Was it when I lost the only man I’d ever loved other than my father and yet he strung me along for years afterward declaring his undying can’t-live-without-you-love until I’d believe him finally and then he’d take it back again?

Was it when I was molested by the janitor at my elementary school? Or when my babysitter Marcy molested me repeatedly a few years later, but I didn’t understand it was molestation because she was a female?

Was it when I trusted my ex enough to move our children across the country to make his life and relationship with his children easier only to watch him break their hearts in the very ways I thought I had protected them from?

Or when he stole our home and tried to make us homeless by threatening my dad not to help us to punish me for not accepting him breaking our children’s hearts every day?  Was it when I listened to my children sob in depths I had never before had to sit helplessly and watch over this cruelty from their dad?  My heart ripping and the first time I felt rage in my life?

Was it when I was 2 months pregnant with my youngest daughter and suffered a massive stroke and told I’d never walk or work a job again on my own or be able to raise my babies on our own?  Being too ashamed to take a shit because I was mortified at the thought of someone having to wipe my ass for me at 28 years old?  Or that the prognosis given at the time destroyed my every idea of being a momma as well as lynched my independence and autonomy?

Was it two years ago when I spent 40 thousand dollars in court pleading my ex for a visit with the children I had raised alone for 15 years only to be granted the right , fly across the country, and was told (in so many words) by my oldest and youngest to fuck off because they changed their mind when I brought up a promise Lexi had made to my dad, her papa, about piercing her face?

When was the pivotal point of trauma from which I haven’t returned or recovered?

 

 

 

 

Where the f*ck is it anyway?

Tags

Abuse by proxy, child abuse, Cruelty, Darlene Higgins, Domestic violence, gaslighting, heartless, Lies, Malignant Narcissism, manipulation, Mark DeDeaux, monsters, narcissists, parental alienation, Predatory, Sick Fucks, Thieves, triangulation

To whom it may concern:

I’m somehow to try to understand that the people who have destroyed my life, my mother, Darlene Higgins, and my children’s father, Mark DeDeaux, are hurt and angry at the destruction they allege I created in their lives.

Apparently, these people of whom I have zero (read zilch, nada) recollection of having done any damage or inflicted any pain upon were able to convince my children of what a horrible, awful, undeserving, worthless human being I am.

I haven’t seen either suffer or lose material property, or finances, loved ones, jobs, or their dignity at my hand.  I’ve not been at all aware of this “destruction” which has caused their hate for me.  Hate so big that they relentlessly poisoned my children against me, apparently because of the awful things I’d done to them?  These things I’m totally unaware of and can’t find a single memory of…

I’ve wanted to understand the hate, the burning desire to punish, the massive cruelty…  God, I’ve wanted to understand.

Being that I’m that person who once got angry at a virtual stranger and merely said ugly words to her… and still carried the memory, guilt, and remorse for those words 20 years later.  Being that girl who accidentally ran across this virtual stranger twenty years later and immediately apologized for this misdeed I enacted upon her so many years earlier.  I apologized to a woman who didn’t even recall what I had said, so futile and apparently non-damaging was this “heinous abuse” I heaped upon her of which the guilt I carried twenty years later still.  I guess the “cruelest” I ever intentionally was, was not only enough to cause all those years of remorse and regret inside me, but not even close to enough for this woman to even recall.  It is flabbergasting to try to wrap my head around the awful things I must have done to my mother and my ex to make them both hate me enough to destroy me.  How can I not recall what I did?

I recall being a child.  A desperate for love, desperate to please, pathetic for approval little girl.  I remember that.  I remember praying every night that God would show me how to earn and deserve my mother’s love. I remember not getting any answers and I remember trying everything my little mind could think of :  I just had to be perfect.  And after all, my mother was perfect in my eyes, so I could be perfect too, right?  I came from the goddess of perfection so if I tried hard enough and never quit trying to be pretty, funny, smart, polite, obedient, loving, sweet, and deserving, I could get her love. I remember that not working.  I remember lying to protect myself from punishment and getting in big trouble.  I remember telling the truth because my mother “hated liars” and still getting in big trouble.  I remember trying to be pretty and getting in trouble.  I remember trying to be intelligent and getting in trouble.  I remember not lying for her when she cheated on her husband and getting in trouble.  I remember painting my nails and getting in trouble.  I remember shaving my hairy  legs like every one else in my gym class did and getting in trouble.  I remember forgiving my friend for being mean to me and getting in trouble.  I remember sticking up for myself with others and getting in trouble.  I remember not sticking up for myself to others and getting in trouble.  I remember being noisy no matter how hard I was trying to be quiet and getting in trouble.  I remember trying harder to be even quieter and still getting in trouble.  I remember missing my daddy and getting in trouble.  I remember a babysitter giving me a piggy back ride and getting in trouble.  I remember writing my aunt a letter telling her how much I missed her and getting in trouble.

I also remember sneaking to use the phone to talk to friends and getting in trouble.  I remember sneaking boys over on Halloween to play Atari and getting in trouble.  I remember having vaginal discharge in my panties before my period and getting in trouble.   I remember trying to overdose on alcohol and getting in trouble.  I remember having people over when mother was out of town and getting in trouble.  I remember getting a C in geometry and getting in trouble.  I remember asking for help with my math homework and getting in trouble.

I remember using the wrong tone of voice and getting in trouble.  I remember having the wrong look on my face and getting in trouble.  I remember defending my sister and getting in trouble.  I remember not defending my sister and getting in trouble.

I remember letting my first boyfriend beat me and getting in trouble.  I remember smoking cigarettes and getting in trouble.  I remember not eating for 12 days while pregnant and being told to “go get on welfare”  I remember caring about the father of my child and getting in trouble.  I remember getting sick because I was pregnant again by the same man and getting in trouble. I remember wanting to have the same last name as my two children and getting in trouble.  I remember almost dying and getting in trouble.  I remember the psychiatrist who was supposed to tell me I was worthless defending me and telling mother she had serious parenting and mental illness issues and getting in trouble.

I’m not sure what I’ve forgotten.  I’m truly clueless as to which of these awful things I did as a child made me deserve hate and cruelty; made me deserve to have my whole world ripped from me; or made me deserve to take the only love I had in the world.  I’m not sure of the damage I did with these horrible acts.  I must have done some serious damage, though to spark the punishments I received and continue to receive.

I would like to apologize for my worthlessness, for my awful acts which caused unbearable pain and destruction to my mother, but I can’t figure out where/what/how I caused any damage to her. I would gladly take responsibility for being born, breathing, being a child, being immature, being lost, being desperate for love except that I did not cause any of that.  Please tell me what to apologize for?  Once upon a time I was just an innocent child begging and desperate for my mother’s love and acceptance.  I suppose I could apologize for stopping the begging?  Only, I never stopped begging or trying.  My mother decided at my second pregnancy that I no longer existed.  I begged for a few weeks after that and finally had to stop begging because I was trying to raise two children with a handicap all on my own.  I had to accept that nothing I ever did would make me worthy of her love or else I would have killed myself and left my two children with no mother at all.

In spite of the hatred you had toward me, I remember wanting my children to have the chance at you loving them. I remember Christmases and Thanksgivings alone so that you could be a grandma even though I didn’t have a mother.  I remember my dad suddenly and unexpectedly dying and thinking she would care about me maybe then. I remember trusting her out of desperation again (like when I was a helpless child) and her filling my children’s heads not only full of shit, but fabricated half-truth shit…not even shit that was mine to own and take responsibility for.   I remember meeting your first husband at the funeral (the one you told me all my life “beat you”) and feeling uncomfortable that after hating and punishing me for accepting and allowing myself to be abused by men all my life, that she would bring this man who “beat” her to my dad’s funeral.  If I punched him would she love me?  or would she hate me more?

I remember her hating everyone who made me feel loved.  I remember her hating anyone who made me feel hated.  I never understood what I needed to do/be/say/feel to be loved.  I still don’t.

But most of all, I don’t see where all these horrible things I supposedly did ruined her life? Or even hurt her?  Or how I knew what might hurt or upset her on any given day, as it changed so fast and often, I could not make sense of it.  I would like to apologize and own my mistakes because I acknowledge I’m fucked up and worthless, but I honest to fucking god don’t know how I caused damage, except for being born, being a child, being confused,  being desperate for love….  I wasn’t born with those things and I didn’t want them, how do I apologize for them?  And if I do, will I finally deserve your love?

To the father of my children:  What did I do to destroy your life?  Please dear God tell me because knowing you has ruined everything I ever dreamed of.  I lost my hopes, my dreams, my dignity, my health, my possibilities, my house, my lifetime memorabilia, and ultimately my children…. Because?  What was it I took from you?  What did I destroy and damage so much for your life?  I gave you two children.  I gave you 24/7 total access to them.  I gave you holidays with them.  I gave you carte blanche to their lives and their hearts. I gave you good stories to them about our past (which were lies).  I gave you my last hope of my childhood innocence.  I gave you my health.  You took my house and every happy memory I had from before or since I knew you.

What was it I took from you?  Where is the misery I caused?  What did I do to you?  Yes, I left you.  I left you after you destroyed (what I then thought was total destruction at least) and tried to save my children from growing up watching their mother be treated like a worthless, useless piece of shit.  Yes, I did do that.  And I still gave you 24/7 carte blanche access to their lives, their love, their time.

Please tell me what I took from you?  Please tell me how I’m an awful person? Please tell me where the damage I did is that destroyed your hopes and dreams, your health, your past, present, or future?  PLEASE????? Please tell me???????????

Because I’m not prideful or stubborn about being wrong or making mistakes like some I know.  I actually prefer to address and acknowledge my errors, and apologize, especially if they’ve hurt someone or damaged their life in any way.  I would love to apologize for all the things I did but I can’t bring myself to apologize for trying to live, for breathing, feeling, or wishing to be loved rather than abused.  I would love to say I deserve every bit of what I’ve gotten.  The strange thing is, these people can’t seem to tell me what cruel, awful, unforgivable things I’ve done to them.  Not a single thing.  Not now and not in my entire life.  Yet their hatred flows and flows…and no one seems to think that’s abnormal except for me.  Apparently, I’m the awful person because I can name what’s been done to me…to my children…to my health…to my life…  I can name every single thing.

To the father of my children:  you were lucky after all you had done to me that I even was willing to move to Vegas with our children and give you that chance.  From the first week, our children were crying about your treatment of me and them.  They hated it and I wasn’t going to subject them to everything I left you to protect them from.  You didn’t pay for our house in advance.  You didn’t lose any money.  We lost all of our lifetime belongings, the innocence my children had for what kind of man they’d been raised to believe their father was, our car, and our home when you stole it “for our own good” in spite of the fact that you hadn’t been paying for it.

So if my big “crime” against you was leaving you back in 1997, again in 1998, and a third time in 2009 in Vegas after “only 3 months”, that’s bullshit.  The third time my youngest came home from a day with you bawling and putting herself down was the final straw for me. That, after my oldest had cried her heart out the first weekend we’d arrived and was devastated we came all that way and you’d planned a weekend rendezvous with your latest flavor of the month for the day after we arrived from moving our lives literally across the country, leaving the only home and friends and family and foundation we’d ever know in our lives,  because “you wanted your children closer”.  Then told me “her heart was NOT broken” and that she could just “get the fuck over it” and she’d cried her heart out nearly every single day after that, hurt and miserable at how you treated us and at moving away from her friends and family at your whim just to be treated this badly by you , as well as watched you insult and belittle me, her mother,  for what I wore inside my own house to clean on a 102 degree day in the desert, even though you’d entered our home unexpected and uninvited…apparently just to hurl insults at me and our daughters for the type of clothes I was wearing to clean in.

I will never apologize for your choices.  You had choices to hurt us or not to.  You had choices to treat us with the respect we deserved for uprooting our entire lives for you or not to.   You, on the other hand, gave us only two choices: the choice to stay and put up with being disregarded, devalued, and mistreated or leave and protect ourselves from more.

That was on you and I will not apologize for it or own responsibility for how much it “hurt you” that we left.  You gave us no choice.  None.  You cared only about your latest girlfriend and having all of us in your control at your beckon call or whim to play daddy…or not to play daddy.  I didn’t do that “to you”.  You did that to us.  All three of us.  Savannah and I definitely got the worst of it, but it hurt Lexi too, watching you do that to us

Although you like to play neurologist and tell people why I had a stroke when you’ve no clue why I had the stroke because even my actual neurologist couldn’t discover why I had the stroke, you know nothing.  And you surely didn’t step up to the plate afterward when I was severely handicapped and rehabilitating so I could give birth to a healthy child and be well enough raise our children while you climbed the ladder to your success.  You didn’t step up to the p[late to lend a hand with our children.  You were too busy chasing money and women.   Darlene didn’t step up to the plate.  Only my dad stepped up to the plate to help us.

And for the record, the cause technically given for my stroke was stress.  I’m sure in no small measure stress which stemmed from years of abuse at the hands of the very people who run around crying what an awful person I am.  Stress from the fear of having to tell Darlene who hated your guts that I was having a second child with you.  Stress at once again not having a mother to hold my hand through my pregnancy.  Stress at being dependent on you as the co-parent to my two children.  Stress at the disappointment of not giving my children or myself the one thing I most wanted for them: a mother and father raising them together in their home…a happy, loving home with both their parents for my children.  Again, due to your choices of sex addiction, cheating, and abuse.  Darlene’s hatred of you and shunning me from her life because of my relationship with you in addition to your abuse, lies, and cheating in our relationship was the stress I had that caused me to have a stroke and become disabled for the rest of my life.  I do not owe you an apology for that.  I did not do that “to you”.  Once again rather, you assisted in doing that to me.  Leaving me with two options only:  to stay with you and let my children grow up watching their mother treated horribly or to leave and protect myself and my children from growing up in that environment.   As usual, you were the one with the ample choices.  I will not take responsibility for how that “hurt you”.

Stress from a literal lifetime of abuse at your hand and the hand of my mother are what caused my stroke.  I do not owe you or anyone an apology for that.

I have to wonder how your life is exactly what you wanted.  Darlene’s life is exactly what she wanted.  Yet, I’m the bad guy who’s worthless and awful, with some string of alleged “crimes” done against you people…the very people who have taken everything I ever worked to have.  My family, my health, love, jobs, future, hopes, and dreams.

Please do help me to understand how I’ve done any damage whatsoever to your lives?  Where is the abuse I heaped upon you?  Where is the place where I screwed you over to get better for myself?  Where is the fucking place that you needed or wanted me for anything and I did not show up?  Where in the fuck is it?  Where in the fuck are these damages done for my plethora of heinous crimes against either of you that you claim as you ripped my heart from my body, my children’s love from my life, and my life belongings, my home, my happiness, my hope, and my only joy left out of the desolate destruction of life I had left in the wake of you both?

Where the fuck is it?

That filthy whore, hope.

 

She says she loves me, my precious, beloved Lexi.  She says, “I love you momma”.  And for a minute this week, I started to believe….started to let myself hope again.  I can even remember the very first time this very child first said these very words of joy and hope to me!!  I remember!! So, I take those words, blow them up, and surround them with the biggest beams of sunshine I can muster from below my pit of despair…pulling them up from that tiny child of innocence in this aging woman’s soul.  Pushing aside the despair, the years of abuse and cruelty, past the desperation for death, past the hundreds of hopeless nights of tears, past the fucking wasteland that is me, holy fuck, I grabbed onto these words.

I fluff the words up like pillows I can hold tightly to my body, desperately holding that pillow against my broken soul, waiting to feel a moment of peace or joy maybe after all these years the words and the sentiments behind them were ripped from me.  These fucking words, I clung to like a drowning man gasping for just a whimsical random flash of oxygen to fuel his life for just another fraction of a second…

I breathed those four words in so deeply, it sparked my life-long fantasy that these words have value…have meaning…have substance.  The very same ridiculous fantasy which will be the death of me.  Well, that fantasy isn’t merciful enough to literally cause death; it only makes one so fucking pathetically desperate for death.

Last night I realized all my life I’ve been clinging to the very god damned thing that’s been slowly killing me all my life.  Me… my memory flashes back to millions of moments in time, clutching, clinging, scratching, and furiously begging for the mother fucking thing that would ultimately destroy me once and for all.

Oh hope is a false prophet, a mirage of water to a wandering soul lost in the desert.  Hope is a mother fucking whore.

I love you momma.  I love you momma and my friend is in the car, so I can’t stay long.  I love you momma and I don’t want to hear your feelings.  I love you momma and I love the people who’ve abused and destroyed you too, just as much.  I love you momma and  I don’t know who to believe.  I love you momma and I’m leaving because I can live without you in my life.  I love you momma and I need you to shut up about what’s been done to you by the people I love and want in my life.  I love you but I will let you spend another holiday alone without your dad or your children.   I love you momma as long as you shut up and smile.  I love you momma as long as you don’t speak to me of your struggles, your loneliness, your damage, or your destruction because I haven’t yet decided who’s telling the truth…but I love you momma.   I love you momma and Memaw and daddy don’t keep talking when I ask them not to.  They don’t need to keep telling me awful made-up fabrications about how you’ve been the worst, most useless person ever.  Thus, I don’t want you to keep talking about how they’ve destroyed you.  I love you momma and I love them.

Are daddy and Memaw destroyed?  Where is this damage to their lives I’ve caused with my worthlessness?  Where is it?  Where is their reason to be angry at me?  their reason for destroying the only thing that I had in my life that was mine..mine to love, mine to be loved, my only light in the darkness of the horrors they intentionally created?  Where is their destruction, baby?  If I knew it or understood how I destroyed their lives, maybe I could better suck up the damage they’ve done to my whole life…past, present, and future.  Where is the suffering I caused them?  I need to know it so I can shut up and take the medicine I deserve of the final, ultimate blow they delivered when my daddy died and they ripped me from the hearts of my babies.  I need to see it or at least know what/where/how it is, this horrifying pain I dished out to these people.

I love you momma.  I feel horrible about how I’ve treated you and how I treated my dad when he stole our house for our “own good”.  I won’t shut you out of my life again, but my friend is in the car and your words no, your tone, make me angry.

I love you momma but I’m going to spend this holiday with my sister and my dad and my grandma.  I love you momma but spending a holiday with you since your dad died just isn’t something that I want to do. I love you though momma. I won’t shut you out again.  Or anyone in my family… Well, I won’t shun you again as long as you SHUT UP about the abuse memaw and daddy have heaped upon you before me or how they’ve destroyed you completely at last using me to finish you off.

I mean it Momma, SHUT UP about it or I WILL shun you completely out of my life again.  This time not with lies as my excuse but because you’re insisting on speaking truths I don’t want to hear…Truths, I WILL NOT hear.  Or you shall  be shunned again.  The 4 times a year or so that I actually talk to your or answer your texts now after nearly four years of ignoring you, those WILL stop if you don’t SHUT UP.

I love you momma and I won’t listen to your feelings no matter how carefully you say them.  Your tone frustrates me, even when your words don’t.  I love you momma but not knowing who to believe frustrates me.  So I love you momma but my friend is waiting in the car and your feelings bother me so I’m leaving.  I love you momma but your truths bothers me too much and create too much confusion.  I won’t have them.  I listened to all the lies and ugliness about you from these people for four years and I’m done with listening to ugly things, so YOU don’t get to talk…  If you want me to be your daughter, you don’t.

I love you momma but my friend is waiting in the car and I don’t want the truths of your life.  I don’t want the devastation of your destruction at the hands of the other people who said they loved you because I love them too.

I love you momma but three holidays alone…three years ignored, abandoned, cruelly destroyed wasn’t enough. I love you momma but this holiday will be the same as the others.  I momma but you deserve all the fucking holidays alone until you finally die and make our lives, living with lies,  easier.  I know we destroyed your life, but for God’s sake, how can you be so selfish as to want to discuss  LET THOSE LIES STAND.

I love you momma but my friend is waiting in the car.

Love does not exist for people whose truth bothers other people too much to bother with.  I love you momma but you need to deny your truth.  I love you momma but I don’t care what the actual truth is.  I love you momma but I love the people who destroyed you and that’s where I’m going. Those are the people I choose for my life.  But, I will love you across the country while I’m with those people… if you’ll shut up.

Words are fucking shit.

Hope is a filthy lying whore.

The Unbearable Powder of Nostalgia

Powder

I look at the pink container, flashing back to what feels like 30 lifetimes ago or perhaps even not my life at all…  Today it feels like it was all a dream that never happened. I can see it in my hand as I knelt over the sweet eyes of my child lying flat on her back waiting patiently or otherwise for her diaper to be changed.

Then, as though that flash isn’t a deep enough dagger, my mind then flashes to my dad’s weathered, spotted, chubby hands holding it up to me as he did the dirty deed changing my daughter’s diaper, that big beaming grin on his face which he’s well known for, and saying, “Baby, this stuff sure is worth its weight in gold, huh?  We can’t have our baby’s’ little bottom not protected, huh?”

And although this silly little pink canister of (what feels like) gold from ancient days of another lifetime who’s existence, truth, and nostalgia, I have been tortured to question, causes me an inordinate amount of pain, still I hold it in my hand…

I push the well-worn top open, lower my nose to it and breathe deeply as though I will still smell my precious child… as though I might be transported back in time, even if only to verify my reality that I ever was a momma, that I ever had those ocean blue eyes gaze up to me with fascination, love, and adoration…

I breathe in the memories, the olfactory ones that no one can take or alter against my will as long as I’m still able to breathe this scent in.

It is the scent of freshness, dewy, just-bathed, just changed, just belly-zerberted, baby of mine.

It is the scent of hope, strength to overcome handicaps physical and mental, emotional.

It is the scent of new-found freedom tainted with boldness of security ; security that my dad would always have my back, always lift me up when I couldn’t stand, always hold my hand when I lost my way..

It is the smell of light leading my way when I was scared to move and blind from abuse.  The smell of unconditional love that breeds the knowing that all will be well…always…  As long as I have my daddy and my babies…

As long as I have this near-ancient pink canister of baby-bottom gold and can breathe deeply of the pillows and blankets I sniffed nightly upon their absence, everything will be ok.

As I look at it today, I wonder when was the exact day it was no longer necessary?  When was the very last time, my daddy or I laid a baby down to powder her delicate bottom?  When was the last time we reached back into the bathroom closet to put it away, not knowing that would be its final golden day?  From that point forward, it would gather dust in the bathroom closet.

How can I throw this in the garbage?  As useless as it is today, as painful as it is to remember that my memories haven’t ALL been poisoned, altered, or out-right negated, how could I ever imagine throwing this away?

Today, it’s the only thing I have that smells like love, trust, faith, and hope – this ridiculous little pink canister of powder.

It smells like both a reason to live and an excellent reason not to.