A Father’s Grace

Tags

Daddy, family, grace

Awhile back, I was sharing memories of my dad with someone and they said something that deeply bothered me. She said, You just exaggerate your dad’s good qualities. No one is that perfect. You’re romanticizing him now because he’s dead. For fuck’s sake, no one’s perfect!

I’m not sure why that person was so frustrated with me sharing a few of my dad’s most admirable qualities, but this was out of line for so many reasons.

I admire and cherish so many things about my dad, but I’m fully aware that he was not perfect by any means.

He was wonderful in many ways, but he could be a real son of a bitch once in awhile too. He also could be a serious pain in the ass.

I choose not to share many of those stories. Yeah, partly because he’s dead and I prefer to focus and share the good stuff.

But also because I can count on one hand the times my dad was a jerk and I can say with complete honesty that not once did my dad act like a jerk or do something hurtful, or make a grievous mistake without apologizing. He fucked up like anyone does, but unlike narcissists like my mother and my ex, he always admitted when he was wrong, apologized and then always followed through on his apologies by not repeating that error.

Holding grudges and retaining anger are not natural states for me. By nature, I’m eager to forgive. Few people in my life have ever apologized or even admitted their mistakes or hurtful actions. So, in my world, when someone apologizes and deliberately doesn’t repeat the hurt, the wrong is corrected in my heart. I might still remember the hurt or disappointment of it all… and my dad did hurt me a few times in my life…. but I forgave him and I just don’t dwell on people’s mistakes.

God knows I’ve made enough mistakes of my own! And I’ve rarely been graced with true forgiveness…except from my dad.

I learned real forgiveness from my dad; because my dad showed me (and many others) such beautiful amazing grace

I confess, once in awhile, I recall a few hurtful things my dad did in my lifetime, and they still hurt a little, but then I only become immediately grateful that I had someone teach me the grace of true forgiveness and the integrity to honestly admit my mistakes and imperfections, face up to them… learn from them who and what I don’t want to be.

If not for this man as my father, his easy grace and natural integrity, I’d never have known anything but anger, blame, and infinite punishment for my own numerous flaws and imperfections. The narcissists in my life showed me plenty of that nasty, soul demeaning, perfection-demanding impossible shit.

How could I ever choose to be anything but eternally grateful? Even for the few hurtful things he did….?

How could I ever not embrace the beautiful qualities I learned and acquired from those very things?

And why would I ever? How could I be like a narcissist and bitterly spread his few imperfections and mistakes around? Why would I ever take a handful of this man’s imperfections and use them to slander and belittle him like narcissists do?

In my mind, every hurtful thing my dad did to me is truly irrelevant and unimportant. And it was irrelevant even before he died. In my heart, his beauty and grace that came directly from those things outshine any lingering hurt or resentment I could ever feel.

I’ve forgiven him the way he demonstrated forgiveness. Grace and integrity make true forgiveness easy.

I will forever focus on his beautiful qualities. I will forever honor this man’s memory. That’s not exaggerating. That’s not romanticizing?!

Dammit.

That’s truth.

The truth of my dad; who was amazing,

incredible,

imperfect,

and so very easy to forgive.

Existential Chicken Noodle

Tags

cooking, Daddy, despair, grief

Digging through cabinets, I think chicken noodles, maybe?

“Yes, chicken noodles”, I answer myself.

I glance at my own hands, pulling the chicken from the freezer.  I think of my daddy’s hands.  There aren’t words in any language to define how much I suddenly want to make chicken noodles for him and my daughters. I think of a zillion times he cooked for me, how happy that made him, how he loved cooking.  …and how I’d so much loved cooking for my daughters too.

I wish I had counted every meal he made for me in my lifetime.  I couldn’t ever begin to count them.  Suddenly, I ferociously want a number…I want the exact fucking number!  I want the number and I want to race through the house screaming that number at the walls…

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT!

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT!

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT!

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT…….TAKE THAT, ALL YOU HATEFUL PEOPLE WHO WANT ME TO BELIEVE I’M WORTHLESS AND UNLOVABLE!  TAKE THAT, YOU LIARS – YOU NASTY DECEIVERS!

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT —– AND YOU’LL NEVER EVER BE ABLE TO TAKE THAT FROM ME!

I’m angry at how easily I could count the times I cooked for him.  I’m not going to let myself stop and count those, though.  Not in my head, not on my fingers, not today…not ever. No.

…spilt milk and all…

Why did I not cook for him more? I angrily ask myself as I wash my hands. I need to tell him.  He needs to know these things.  He must know them.  It’d be too unfair if he never knew.  And my life overflows with futile, senseless, non-budging, disgusting unfairness already.

This simply cannot be one more.

I walk into the living room, lean against the entryway, and look directly where his chair always sat.  I can’t look in that spot and not see his gigantic grin, his unstoppable energy to do for others, how genuinely delighted he was when I was happy, how he beamed with pride at watching me succeed at a job or just watching me be a momma to his grandbabies.  He effortlessly defined joy.  And I don’t know where he went from me.  I don’t know how I’ve lost him from my soul.  Once upon a time, I was so much like him in that way…

I briefly wonder when was the precise moment I stopped being who I was and became who I am.  I ponder who it is I am today and how he would have hated seeing me be this.   I reflect on how his entire last 30 years were spent encouraging my happiness, supporting my struggles, lifting me up from the daily battles of physical handicaps, balancing my single-mother struggles, assisting me with impossible financial situations….

He had fought so tirelessly hard, yet so cheerfully, for me in all of it.  He would be devastated to see this – all of this… now.  Everything he’d devoted himself to – everything – up in existential smoke.  He’d dedicated so much of himself to not this. And, I realize I never once saw him devastated or beaten…not once.

Not. Even. Once.

I tearfully apologize to him. My heart spilling over with the ache of regret, missed chances, missed conversations, missed opportunities to cook for him, and the tragic lack of even one final I love you before there would never be another.  Ever.

I look back down at my hands.  Things like manicures and pretty fingers have become so senseless, yet I’m appalled at the rapid aging of my hands from just the past six years.  Are these even my hands?  I’ve not accomplished a fraction of what he did and my hands look hideous.   I hear him smiling saying, “Heyyyyy bay-bah…?  Let’s go get you a manicure!” with that confident excitement of an innocent child he always had when he knew he could fix something…make it better…bring joy and Band-Aids to someone he loved.

And he always loved me. Always.  So great big and so out loud that its absence is an indescribably painful emptiness.

I think of his hands and how aged they’d seemed the last we spoke…and how deeply it had bothered me I hadn’t had any lotion in my handbag that day to moisturize those loving, worn and wearier-than-I even-knew hands.

I tell him he deserved better from me; he deserved more somehow.

He deserved so fucking much better than that and far, far, FAR better than this.

I’m making chicken noodles on a cold and dreary day, Daddy.

I can’t wait to see your smile when I bring you a plate.

No Apology Necessary

Tags

birthdays, death, memories, parental alienation

John M. Profitt, USAF Nov. 1959

Dear Daddy,

You would have turned 81 today and I would give almost anything to be sharing this day with you…

I’ve contemplated so much about your life, your character, your loves, and your death over the past five years.

I didn’t only lose the greatest dad ever on the day you died.  I lost my entire family.  I lost my faith in the world. I lost the only safe haven I’d ever had or ever known.  I lost my best friend.  I lost my only life advocate.  I lost my only support system. I lost my heart. My spirit withered and my soul grew bleak.  I lost my children.  I lost the last shred of innocence I had clung desperately to for so long, in spite of so much. 

And far worse than any of that, in the midst of that mass pain and confusion, my children lost their truth.

Evil disguised as “family” stepped in and wreaked utter chaos on what was left of my life after you died. Ripped our little family…shredded our truth…stole my spirit and stomped on my heart.

It aches inside my chest that our last face-to-face conversation was you apologizing to me.  You owning the mistakes you made talking behind my back, exaggerating things that bothered you.  No apology was necessary.  I know you truly were just concerned and scared for me.  You…you, who had seen first hand my struggles.  You, who had watched me fight to overcome more adversity and abuse than anyone should ever have to face in one lifetime.  You, my last touchstone of  truth and its irrefutable proof.

You overreacted and you grossly exaggerated, but I knew it was only because you sincerely cared.  I knew it stemmed from genuine concern and a deep desire to protect me from myself and the inner battles which still raged on inside me long after I escaped the actual abuse.

You knew it all.  The lies couldn’t have worked their total destruction on my children and the life we’d built as long as you were alive.  Evil saw its opportunity and pounced- destroying me and taking our beloveds prisoner.

I owe you an apology.  A million apologies.

I’m sorry I allowed them to lie and deny you the veteran’s burial you deserved.  I’m sorry I let my guard down and fell so totally apart that their evil was able to destroy what meant everything to you in your lifetime- our little family network. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stop them.  I’m sorry my children can’t acknowledge truth anymore.  I’m sorry I allowed the family built on the strength of your back and good character to be demolished by greed and evil.

You deserved a veteran’s burial.  The Air Force was so important to you. Your time serving this country meant so much to you and shaped you into exactly you – the man who would some day become father and best friend to his youngest child. I can only surmise they lied to me about that because it was more expensive. Ironically, I paid personally for your entire burial and funeral and wouldn’t have cared the extra cost, had I known they were lying. I wanted so much to give you the exact burial you always told me you’d wanted. 

I just couldn’t fathom they’d lie…even then.

I’m sorry I didn’t have the sense to fact check their claims regarding the circumstances of your death or the details of your funeral. I’m sorry I believed their lies and false claims of love for you (and me) and allowed them to compromise you having the burial you always wanted.

Daddy, they lied to me about where you died. They lied about what time you died. They lied about the veteran’s service information. They lied about the estate laws. I’m sure I haven’t scratched the surface of all the lies they told me after you were gone…

Literally from the minute they called to inform me you’d died, their lies began.  In hindsight, I imagine that’s why they waited 5 hours to even tell me you’d died. It must have been a race for them to prepare their stories and agree on what lies to tell me and why. 

Then, in my shock, they started using my grief and confused state to start lying to my children- your grandchildren…

You deserved me to hold myself together at least enough that I could have combatted their evil, using the strength you’d shown me all my life.  I should have known to fact check every word they said. 

I should’ve known better than to trust them  alone with the children we’d spent 15 years protecting and loving and teaching to be good people.

I’m sorry your grandchildren chose to believe lies, chose to tell lies, and were pawns and victims of such unmitigated evil.  I’m sorry that I’ll never be able to share all the truths of how deep those lies went over my life…and over your entire life even.

Everything you did for me and for my children in your lifetime, you certainly deserved better…so very much better.

Daddy with his beloved grandbabies

It’s your birthday.  I miss you. 

 I’ll never stop wishing the truth mattered or still stood even a chance. You were the one who kept me believing that integrity and truth was important no matter what choices others make when I was surrounded by liars and abusers.

I know if you can see what’s happened and is still happening every day, that your happy heart is broken; that your easy smile has vanished. I know you cry at what they’ve done and your unwitting part in it.

I forgave you before you ever apologized.  You were a pawn in it all too.  This became more apparent after you were gone, that they’d played you too…and I know you must regret that more than anything, if you can see what’s happened from beyond this realm.

And I have to believe you can see.

I’m sorry I allowed them to break your heart and my life even after yours had ceased beating. .  I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger when you died.  I’m sorry I, as usual, expected to be safe with the very people who’d already shown you and I repeatedly who and what they really were.  You always warned me to watch my back after they’d shown their true faces, but I never wanted to fully believe such depth of evil could exist on top of the evil they’d shown me all my life…. not during a crisis like your sudden and unexpected death. 

I couldn’t have imagined their evil would extend that far. Not then. Not at that horrific time for your grandchildren and me.

I should’ve understood that they would see your death and my vulnerability as nothings but an opportunity to advance their hateful ulterior motives.

I should have known they’d not suddenly have a heart or conscience or genuine compassion even then…

I don’t know what happens to us after we leave this life.  I only hope you’re able to some day get the truth that matters delivered into the hearts of the two girls who mattered to us the most.

I’m playing your music all day and honoring your memory.

I hope to see you very soon.

All my love always,

Me

My daddy & me

 

 

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?