Unacceptable death

Tags

Daddy, death, love

My dad ❤

It’s a rainy, reflective Saturday afternoon here in my dad’s big old house and I can’t help but think of the many rainy Saturday afternoons my dad probably sat here, watching golf or westerns or gospel videos on his big tv.  It’s a safe bet that he’d call me or the girls at least once (or maybe 5?) times to just say, “Hey bayyybeee” in that deep southern baritone voice of his.  I’d guess these would be the rare days when one of the three of us hadn’t asked him to do something for us, take us somewhere or buy us some desperately wanted thing we “direly needed”.

I feel sad when I think of how many of those times I wasn’t really doing anything important, but I’d hurry off the phone after a few minutes of chit chat.  I really don’t believe my dad knew lonely though.  He stayed so busy golfing and taking care of us til the very last end that he never could have felt unwanted or very much alone.  We needed him too much.  I believe he felt sad when mother left him for her boyfriend.  I’d imagine he might have felt lonely then, but I’d guess it was more sad and heartbroken than actual loneliness.

The last few months of his life though, in hindsight it was almost as though he knew it was almost time to go.  He wasn’t sick or anything, he just started seeming more eager for company. And he suddenly started being irrationally worried about me.  Almost as though he feared I might get in trouble somehow and need him and he might not be able to be there this time…

My dad was not a perfect man by any means. There were a few times in my life he really disappointed me.  We only saw him once a month or so growing up, but often he’d get a babysitter and go on a date… And I’d be bummed because I wanted every second possible with him.  Sometimes my dad would drink too much, usually while playing old country music songs and reminiscing about mother. This made me uncomfortable because mother talked so horribly about him that it broke my heart to see how much pain he was in about their divorce.  In hindsight, I realize my mother was leading him on and sleeping with him long after she left him to marry my step-dad, so no wonder he was so torn apart for so long about it.

Once, he took us to one of his clubs where he socialized and drank frequently and got rip-roaring drunk.  He got so very drunk that around 10 pm when we got in his car, he just sat there with his head slumped over the steering wheel – not saying anything.  I was scared.  I’d seen my daddy a bit drunk a few times but never slumped over his steering wheel in total silence!  After awhile, I felt so scared I said, Daddy are you okay? He didn’t reply.  Daddy?  Daddy??!?  Finally he mumbled, “go back in there and get Bob for me, ok?”

Now, I was really scared!  I ran as fast as I could back inside to get his best friend and drinking buddy, Bob Taylor.  Bob was also very drunk and started teasing me, laughing “What’s wrong? Your dad too drunk to drive y’all home?”

I didn’t think it was very funny and I didn’t think that was very nice to say.

But Bob’s girlfriend got us home and daddy apologized the next day.  You couldn’t have given me a million dollars to tell mother that had happened!  I would have bit my own tongue off before I told her anything she could possibly exaggerate and run around putting my dad down about.

No, my dad said he was sorry and I never thought of it again.  It never happened again either.  Unlike mother, my dad wasn’t ever afraid to apologize or admit when he was wrong.

My dad was an imperfectly perfect human being.   He never made me feel bad when I made a mistake.  instead, he made me feel loved by forgiving me and never bringing it up again. He didn’t throw things in my face repeatedly or act as though he was beyond reproach because he was my dad.  He was human.  He was wonderful.  He was patient (usually!).  He was generous, kind, loving, and forgiving.

My dad never once made me feel like he didn’t have the time for me…not even when I was being ridiculous or when I was depressed and talking nonsense.  He never shamed me or made me feel ashamed to be me.

Toward the end though, I treated him like I didn’t have the time.   And look at me now, with not a single person in the world who has the time for me.  All those important friends I had…catering to my children…too worried about this or too busy with that….

Where’s all that stuff now?What did those “important” things add up to be? Nothing.  And certainly nothing of any importance compared to precious time with my dad. I’d give anything for 5 more minutes to just hear his voice, to sit and drink a beer with him, watching tv and chatting about this or that…

I suppose I deserve to know what it feels like to be treated by the world as though I don’t exist at all or as though everyone’s just too busy for me.  I did treat my dad like that sometimes and he, of anyone in my entire life, did not deserve that.

My dad was most incredibly amazing.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to accept or reconcile that he’s gone.

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.

Sonia Leigh song

Tags

music, Sonia Leigh

 

Photo borrowed from Sonialeigh.com

 

Here is a link to Sonia singing this terrific song.  It’s badly recorded by a cell phone, but I’m so grateful I have that recording since I can’t find this song anywhere!

She came in on a Greyhound

a sight for sore eyes

gave me a smile

then threw her luggage down

and stood there

like a song without a sound.

 

They both always had a travelin bone

she roamed from town to town

she don’t ask for nothing and she never stays too long

but it’s a good time every time she rolls around

 

Use my shower

Sleep on my couch

you can keep my old blue jeans with the bottoms all worn out

rest here a while I hate to see you go

but remember me when you’re out on the road

all the colors you leave behind
we got stoned on a Sunday afternoon

just watching the trains roll by

I had my chance and somehow it fell too soon

so I just threw salt at the sky

 

She showed me freedom

she made me wild

and all I knew seemed so small that day

we hitchhiked down town

and that’s the last time that I saw her

but I whispered before she flew away…
Use my shower

Sleep on my couch

you can keep my old blue jeans with the bottoms all worn out

rest here a while I hate to see you go

but remember me when you’re out on the road

all the colors you leave behind
…of the places you know I’ll find

….and the colors you leave behind…
She came in on a Greyhound

a sight for sore eyes…

By the water

Tags

laughing, Momma, playing

I used to take you to the beach when you were a baby. This was before I had a stroke, so we would play and twirl around in the sand and swing for hours. 

One game we played that you especially loved was I’d push you on the swing and then as you came forward toward me, I’d let your feet hit me and pretend you’d kicked me over. I’d fall backward in the sand and moan, ohhhhhhhh Lexi! You knocked momma down!! 

And you would throw back you head and shriek with laughter. You’d laugh so hardthe longer we played this, that sometimes you couldn’t catch your breath and I’d have to stop for a few minutes and let you catch your breath. 

Then I’d push your swing again .. and let your feet kick me down.. and tumble back in the sand….

Ohhhhhh Lexi! You knocked momma down!! 

and you’d laugh hysterically all over again. 

So maybe I taught you to laugh at me as you knocked me down..? … because you’re still doing this only it’s not a game anymore… 

It’s my heart and my whole life you’re kicking and then laughing because I’m so, so, so far beaten down. 

Angel vs. Devil / Nature vs. Nurture?

Tags

Cluster B Personality, evil, monsters, narcissistic personality disorder, nature vs nurture, parental alienation, Pathological Liars, senseless cruelty

I read an article that made sense of my specific experience with parental alienation. My children were turned against me at 13 and 15 and while quite vulnerable due to the recent sudden loss of their beloved Papa. I know the level of pathological narcissistic qualities my mother and their father have. I realized while pregnant with my first child that I had indeed gotten into a relationship with the male version of my mother. They are cunning and confusingly efficient narcissists.

I grew up in desperate fear of turning into my mother or of sharing any similar traits as she. For many years I vowed not to even have children when I grew up because the fear inside me of being a mother like she had been was not worth the risk. I would rather die than treat any child the way I had been treated! For many years, I wanted to be a nun, thinking if I devoted my life to serving God, I could never hurt anyone like I’d been destroyed by her. 

I’ve pondered so often if sociopathy is genetic. How much of narcissistic personality disorder is narure versus nurture. When I become unexpectedly pregnant and realized my baby’s father was pathological like my mother, I really worried. I worried that I would have a narcissistic child. I vowed daily that I would love and protect my child at all cost; that my child would know joy and understanding, fun, compassion, kindness, security, self esteem, encouragement, and love, love, LOVE. 

So although the sequence of events was more horrific and painful than I have words to describe even, I have never once blamed my children for their cruelty and lies intent on destroying, demeaning, and tearing every single thing about me to shreds. I know the evil that was pulling them to do such things. I know it personally and I know it well. 

I also know my children after raising them alone for 13 and 15 years. I know their hearts and their souls, their struggles and their loves. Or so I thought…

After the extent to which they have gone to assist in crucifying me, my character, my parenting, my career, and even my own childhood, I’ve had terrible moments when I wondered if I created monsters. Had I loved them too much?!?  Was that even possible?!?? No. I just can’t believe you can love a child too much. You can’t possibly give children too much understanding or compassion. They’re children! Perfect, innocent, loving, amazing children whom are entitled to all the love, compassion, and understanding in the world! 

Maybe the vicious streak was severe parental alienation and narcissistic brainwashing? Maybe it was genetically predisposed for them to be cruel and discompassionate? Maybe all the love in the world wouldn’t have been able to soften their souls when they got old enough to think like their father and grandmother that kindness and emotion are nothing but weaknesses to prey upon? Mere vulnerabilities of “weaker” people who are to be destroyed if possible and perhaps for no other reason than that you can destroy them because if they’re foolish enough to trust and weak enough to love another more than they love themselves, then they get what they deserve when you stomp on them and laugh in their face as they cry in pain? 

That’s how narcissists certainly think. I’ve researched a great deal on nature versus nurture with narcissistic personality disorder, but I’ve come to no definitive answer. I only know my children weren’t abused or ever shown anything but love and compassion and accepting their actions against me has been the bitterest pill I could have fathomed ever having to choke down. I’ve rather believed it was brainwashing and survival mechanisms for them. That they were victims of this abuse exactly as I and maybe worse.

It’s hard to fully accept that when I see that my oldest is possibly a pathological liar with a vicious streak of cruelty that I’ve only seen in her dad and my mother before in my life. A hateful, punishing, extremely selfish nature combined with a quick and easy willingness to lie to get whatever she wants. 

It’s painful to realize the level of this. And it’s been much easier to blame the narcissists that abused me in my past for her ugly behaviors than it is to blame her and allow myself to wonder if she is a sociopath as well. 

I’m just not so sure anymore though. She has embraced cruelty and manipulation and lying at a rapid and efficient rate as to actually be frightening and deeply unsettling to my soul and wrenching in my heart when I picture her the first 15 years of her life… so precious, so kind, so sweet and loving, so easy going and sweet natured that I literally thought of her many times as an actual angel on earth and I couldn’t believe after so much abuse and terror and heartbreak all my life that God had deemed me fit to raise a child so perfect and precious and angelic like this one. And then one day a few weeks after burying my daddy, she was my abuser. 

This beautiful, amazing sweet child of grace and love like I’d never known in my entire life, lies without conscience for no purpose other than to hurt and smear me as a human being, as a mother, and as a daughter. She is cruel and vicious and literally laughs at my pain. She seems to actually think watching me suffer loss as a mother is funny. She has crucified me like Jesus and burned me at the stake like a witch in Salem without a trial or even honest accusations. The more I hurt it’s almost like the more it feeds her fury and cruelty!! I’ve known two people like that in my life… two sociopaths… her father and my mother. 

Then I read this article and suddenly it all became painfully clear. 

http://flyingmonkeysdenied.com/2016/04/26/adult-children-with-cluster-b-personalities-socially-abuse-and-scapegoat-parents/

Toxic Air

Tags

art, evil, innocence, Jean-Baptiste Mouton, narcissists, nature, no win situations, photography, punishment, scapegoat child, sociopaths, solitude

Photo by Jean-Baptiste Mouton

Since it is Mommie Dearest’s birthday week, I’ve decided to focus on sharing some experiences of growing up with a Narcissistic Personality Disordered mother. 

I’ve fallen in love with the artwork of Jean-Baptiste Mouton. He is a talented genius! So many of his photos resonate deeply for me in depicting the sense of grace with horror in a way that makes me feel as though he can see the defining conflict and depth of misery of a life with a pathological narcissist. I get the sense of innocence defiled and a horrific mental hell that is the playground of  narcissistic sociopaths. I think of the innocence of children living in times of war where the very nature of it all goes against all things  childlike and sweet, portraying a definite contradiction that simply is no place an innocent mind and heart can function or survive in tact.

The need to breathe. The desperation for safety when the very air you must breathe every day is toxic with confusion and bitterness. 

For 16 years, I lived in toxicity, desperate for fresh air, love, and security to just be…. to be me.. to be silly…to be happy… to feel what I felt, whatever it was… to like whatever color I liked best in any given moment without snide comments about being a liar because yesterday I liked a different color best. 

Once around the age of 7, I had gotten in serious trouble for not closing the kitchen cabinets all the way. I had left them just barely open, as close to shut as I could get them without them making a clicking sound and waking up Mommie because the Saturday prior, I had gotten a pretty severe spanking for closing the cabinets after taking out cereal, a bowl, and a spoon to eat it with. I hadn’t tried to be noisy. The cabinets had magnetic closures which pulled them to shut when the door was at all close to the frame and the click they made was inevitable. 

Mommie always slept in so it was up to me to get my own breakfast in the mornings, I would never dare to wake her just because I was hungry!! So after getting a spanking for the sounds the cabinets made when the magnetic piece clicked against its frame, I was scared to close the cabinets all the way at all this morning.  I very carefully closed them as close as possible without getting in range for the magnet to pull it shut the rest of the way. This took some effort, but I was happy to do it and felt proud of myself  that I was being so quiet getting my breakfast for myself.

It backfired though. As I was finishing my  cereal, Mommie woke up anyway and came into the kitchen. Feeling confident I had been the perfect angel of quietness, I smiled my most cheerful smile and said, Good morning, mommy! 

Mommie was furious! You left every GOD DAMN cabinet in the kitchen open! What the hell is the matter with you?  And she yanked me up from the chair by my arm and started spanking me as she screamed this at me. At 7, I already knew better than to answer her furious questions. I knew that I never answered them right and somehow I always made it worse by trying. I said nothing about how I’d learned my lesson the Saturday prior about how noisy the magnetic cabinet closures were. 

I cried though. I wouldn’t learn not to cry at being spanked or being frustrated or being scared until I was exactly 14. I didn’t yet understand how my tears fed her fury like a steak thrown into a pit of ravenous wolves. So yes, I was 7 and I cried while she spanked me. 

A few hours later when she was back in her room applying her makeup and I had calmed down from crying, I ventured cautiously into her bedroom to ask if I could go for a walk outside in the woods behind our house.  Even as a very young child I was drawn to the serenity of nature and solitude. And I knew it was a good idea to reflect on the error of my existence and my every choice in order to try to understand and hopefully realize wisdoms and how to make good choices that might make Mommie smile and be happy with me.  Nature and solitude were like my gas masks of safety, the only place I knew where I could breathe easily.

This was my intent today now. To spend my Saturday quietly in nature, alone, where I couldn’t make mistakes or annoy Mommie  at all, so I bravely asked her even though I knew she was furious with me and my stupidity,  if I could go for a walk in the woods. 

Mommie flipped out again. Screaming at me that she WASN’T STUPID!, she HADN’T BEEN BORN YESTERDAY!, and she demanded to know WHAT BOY I WAS MEETING IN THE WOODS?!

These questions really scared me because I didn’t have any plans to meet any boys in the woods. And I also was wise enough to know that denying the accusation was equally dangerous because it would be considered the same as “calling her stupid”. 

There was no right answer to this line of accusatory questioning where she “already knew” the answer/the truth / whatever.  So I said, I’m not meeting a boy Mommie. I just want to go for a walk outside by myself because I’m sad that I didn’t close the cabinets this morning. 

Ohhhh the rage! I was not allowed to go for a walk, I would go “STRAIGHT TO MY ROOM “ because I was “giving attitude ” and “insulting her intelligence ” and she was just “tired of looking at my face already”. 

I went to my room and wished I could be like my older sister and sleep til noon so that I could have avoided making Mommie so mad twice already before 11 AM.  At least I didn’t usually provoke and infuriate her while I was sleeping… not usually at least. 

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. 

 

 

Because

Because I don’t believe in love anymore, or dating, or even trying to find love.  Or God, or words, or hope, or reading, or romance, or putting on makeup to feel pretty, or showering, or wearing cute clothes, or sex, or drinking to numb the pain and prolong the inevitable.

Because I don’t believe in happy endings, or good defeating evil in the end, or that telling the truth matters, or that people actually care about others.

Because I don’t believe in life, or being forced to suffer emotional anguish for 42 years then to be ripped of the only thing from those 42 years that mattered enough to keep you going.

Because I don’t believe in innocence, or music killing the pain, or cooking, or eating.

Because I don’t believe in writing, or talking, or watching movies.

Because I don’t believe in buying your dad’s house to feel love that is no longer there and probably never existed really anyway, or believe in the beauty of nostalgia, or laughter, or even the memories of laughter.

Because I don’t even believe in my memories anymore.  They have been raped, pillaged, and destroyed by the same mother fuckers who shit on the first ones I had. Because their lies trump my truths, and because their abuse doesn’t count any more today than it ever did.

Because I don’t believe in reaching out, or the fleeting hope that a stupid astrological forecast might even bring some hope or good news.

Because I don’t believe in mothers, or children, or protecting those who can’t protect themselves.

Because I don’t believe in art soothing a broken soul, or art for beauty, or beauty at all.

Because I don’t believe in anything.

Because I feel more stupid than ever that it took me 45 fucking years to face how stupid believing in anything ever was while living with the life I was given, which has done nothing but repeatedly prove that hoping for better is a fantasy as silly as unicorns and Santa Claus.

Because I don’t believe in rebuilding hope from the rubble again…a-mother-fucking-again.

Because I don’t even have the pictures or letters or memories of once-upon-a-time believing I was loved.

Because I don’t have the precious artwork and baby photos of me as a momma with my children…the artwork I could never bear to throw away…because anything made with even the possibility of loving me was fucking precious, even if it was a scribble of pen on scrap paper…

Because even those were taken from me…taken from me because I did not protect myself from the monsters who took all of this from me before I rebuilt, and rebuilt, and rebuilt again.

Because every love I carried for 9 months in my body to protect, hug, hold hands, feed, bathe, and love for always was taken too.

Because every evidence of that love even maybe being real at some point is gone. Gone for our “own good” along with the home we created with it, taken from us with lies and deceit for our “own good”.

Because my every love and every hope for love and every fucking memory of love I had saved for my whole fucking life was taken from me “for my own good”, by a monster who’s never had a fucking thing taken from him his entire life. A selfish fucking monster who has to have EVERYTHING for his mother fucking self…ALL of it.  Even the tiny threads of hope that I had, the tiny momentary precious memories I had amassed, the love I thought I would really have at last from my children, the love I thought God gave me for my own with my children. Because the fucking monsters had to have that too.

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.