If I could go back to visit the child I once was. . .
I am next to a busy highway, in front of a floral shop. I know this place. Beside the brick floral shop is a gravel driveway. Behind the shop is a box-like red brick house. Steep stairs lead to a wood door on the narrow side closest to me. There are no windows on this side, only the door.
The door opens and a little girl carefully steps down. The top step is extremely narrow. She stops on the second to the last stair and shuts the door. She has honey colored hair, cut short with bangs. She is wearing a pleated dress of a lightweight plaid of rust and browns, with mustard colored tie-like thing under the collar. Her tights are also mustard color and she is wearing black shoes. She looks up at me with emotionless eyes, her hands clasped in front of her. I walk over to her and crouch down to her eye level.
"Hello, little one," I say.
"Hi," she says.
"I was hoping to see you today."
"Why?" she asks.
"Because I came from your future," I tell her, "and I know what you have gone through. I know about the time you broke the cookie jar lid. I know about your mother sticking you with the diaper pin. I know that no one cares that you've been getting sick from cleaning out the cat box. I know how scared you feel most of the time. You try so hard to be a good girl, but it never seems to be enough. I know you don't think you deserve to be loved, but I do love you. Of all the people you will ever know, I am the one who never leaves you. I am you."
She watches me with furrowed brows as tears come from my eyes. She frowns and looks around.
"Will you come home with me?" I ask. "I really want you to be with me."
There is hesitation in her face, as she looks back at the door.
"Don't worry about your siblings," I tell her. "I have seen your future and they will be all right without you." It is a small lie, but I know her - she will not leave her siblings unprotected. She would even sacrifice herself for them. I put my hand out to her. "Please, come with me," I plead.
She bites her lip and with tears in her eyes, she finally puts her hand in mine. I gently squeeze her hand.
"Are you sure they'll be okay?" she asks.
"Someone will come from their future and take them away, too," I tell her. This, at least, is partly true. A shudder goes through her small body and she gives me a small smile.
"They won't wait too long to get them, will they?"
I am shaking as I look into her eyes. "I hope not."
I had four younger siblings to take care of and protect from my mother's rages. Sometimes I try to tell myself that it really wasn't that bad, but if that was so, then why do I understand other abused people so well? I know my life could have been worse, but one does not ignore a cut just because it's not a severed limb, does one?
It is still hard to accept how weird my childhood actually was. Strange to think that not every eldest child is a surrogate parent to their younger siblings. Yet that was what I was told, and I know my father filled the same position in his own family - I suspect that my paternal grandmother also has a personality disorder. I don't know for sure, she doesn't care to have much to do with her granddaughters and I see no reason to force a relationship that is obviously not wanted. I only have a few memories of the woman and none of them are fond ones.
My first few years were mostly spent near my mother’s family. My maternal grandfather died before I was a year old. He stayed on this earth long enough to help my mother deal with my colic. Her stepmother, his second wife, was the one who changed my diet to where I was no longer suffering. I miss her. She died when I was in college. I still have the card she sent me for my graduation from high school. In it, she told me how my grandfather spent hours rocking and holding me while I was sick. She also expressed the regret that my maternal grandmother had not lived long enough to know me. She had died of cancer when my mother was still a young child. I have mixed feelings on this front, because had not my grandmother died, my grandfather would have never married the wonderful woman who was my mother’s stepmother.
I had another ally in my mother’s family – her maternal grandmother. Great Grandma was as ornery and as irascible as they come, but she was on my side in a very strange way. It seemed to be her goal in life to irritate my mother. Perhaps because she knew that my mother only talked to her because she was rich and Mom hoped to get a larger inheritance by playing up to her. Great Grandma supposedly hated my given name and would refer to me by every possible permutation of it whenever she talked to my mother. But she never did it directly to me. Although I know she was probably a major reason why my mother was so screwed up in the first place, I only have pleasant memories of her. I don’t know if it was because I inherited her daughter’s eyes or because I was the first great grandchild or for some other reason, but I do know that she was very fond of me. I can still remember the concerned look she gave me when she saw me taking of my siblings, during her visit to our house when I was twelve.
I have always been much closer to my mother’s family. My great aunt called me just to talk once, when my own children were going through teething. We chatted pleasantly for awhile. Then we got on the subject of my children and their current fussiness. "Well, children are like that," she told me. "You used to cry whenever your mom tried to feed you. You were okay when someone else fed you, but, boy, did you ever holler when your mom tried! You really gave her a rough time."
I was shaking when I sat the phone down. I couldn’t imagine a child being more willing to eat from a stranger than her own mother – unless the mother was so incompetent to learn how or did not care enough to modify the way she feed the child. Mom had more children after me and although I did a lot of feeding and taking care of my younger siblings, she did have some competence in that area by my earliest memories. I honestly can’t give you a solid explanation for the behavior my great aunt described. I have some very plausible theories – many which would explain my intense fear of abandonment – but nothing to really back them up. All I know is that even though my mother did not have a job, her family babysat me a great deal.
During that time, my father received a six-month assignment that literally sent us to the opposite side of the country. I hate to think what it was like when we were hundreds of miles from the nearest relative. The rash I had all that time probably had more to do with neglect than the humidity. We move back to the other coast and my mother gave birth to another daughter, my sister Sarah. Then my father left his job due to unacceptable conditions there and we moved across the country again, to be near his family.
Though my paternal grandmother was not interested in me, her father adored me. He use to babysit me, while he ran his pharmacy. It is painful to think that a busy man running a business could take care of me better than my parents could. Yet, though I can't remember his face clearly, I feel a sense of fondness whenever I think of him. It was terrible when I found out about his death. I would have liked to have gone to his funeral, but we lived far away from both sides of the family at that time. No one seemed to understand how much this man, who I hadn't seen since I was six, meant to me. He was the only source of unconditional love that I can remember having as a child. I miss him even now, but I wasn't allowed to grieve for him. Even my sixth grade teacher thought it was ridiculous for me to be so upset about someone I hadn't seen on a regular basis since I was four. He didn't realize that it's the first three years of life that are the most important for a child.
I do have one memory of him. We were at his house. I was wearing brown corduroy pants and a maroon turtleneck shirt with mustard and brown geometric shapes. He crouched down to my level and gave me Cheetos from a big bag. He smiled when he saw how much I liked them. I remember brushing the bright orange crumbs onto my pants as he chuckled.
He use to set me up on the stool and lets me watch him as he worked. He would sometimes sit me in the back and give me two soda pop bottles. One would be filled with water and I would literally spend hours pour the water from one bottle to the other without spilling a drop. Until the fifth grade, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I got older, I would have told you a pharmacist.
Almost two decades later, I had my own memorial service for my great grandfather. Just me and God and a fragrant flowering tree in my backyard. I read the following poem:
My Great-Grandpa
Does one ever forget love?
I don't believe so.
For the love you gave me
Was so pure, so sweet,
That it warms my heart still.
Even though I can barely remember
Your face, your voice,
Or your smile,
I feel loved whenever
You are mentioned to me.
To others, I am klutz,
But when I am among
The test tubes and ringstands,
I have the grace
Of a ballerina -
The reflexes of
A seasoned athlete -
And I feel completely
In my element
And alive.
I know this confidence
Was born behind the counter
Of your pharmacy,
Where a toddler
Poured H2O from
One soda bottle to another,
Under your watchful eye,
Without spilling a drop,
As you beamed with pride.
I have been told
The stories of your
Charity and kindness,
But they were not needed,
Because that truth
Was already engraved
Onto the pages of my heart.
I still love you
Because of the love you gave me.
My only brother was born in the town next to the one my father had been born in. By the time I started school, we were several states away from my paternal relatives, with only one of my mother’s aunts close enough for monthly visits. She worked for a candy factory and always had a huge sack of candy for us to take home. What she didn’t know was we kids almost never saw a piece of it. My mother usually ate all of it herself.
My earliest memory of my mother
beating me was during this time of my life.
I got up from a nap, after a morning of dealing with a very moody
mother, and went to the bathroom, muttering to myself. I finally announced out loud to myself that
my mother was a grouch. The next thing
I knew, my mother, who I thought was sleeping still, came flying into the
bathroom in a rage and beat me into the floor.
I learned then that saying the wrong thing was a horrible offense. Saying anything that was not complimentary
was punishable by physical abuse.
A few months later, the most
vicious beating occurred. I was only
five, thin and scrawny, without any hint of baby fat. In fact, I was often described as looking more like a doll than a
child. I had pushed a chair up to the
kitchen counter to get a cookie out of the jar my mom had made in one of her
ceramics classes. It was a rather
simple design, I believe I have seen similar cookie jars as greenware, during
my own ceramic endeavors. It was glazed
with a specialty glaze that had green and red bursts on a white
background. Anyhow, as I took the lid
off the jar, it slipped out of my hand and broke in two. I don't remember if Mom came in and found me
picking up the pieces or if I went and told her what I did. I do remember that it was in the kitchen
that she freaked out. I was slapped
across the face a few times, knocked to the floor, and then she jumped on top
of me. (She probably weighed between 200 and 250 lbs. at the time.) I remember my face being slammed against the
floor several times. I remember being
hit repeatedly, as she yelled incoherently at me, and my hair being practically
pulled out by the roots, all while this large woman sat on top of me. I didn't think she was ever going to
stop. Later, the lid was glued back
together, with only a thin line to testify of my misdeed.
Another incident of physical abuse that happened when I was six, sticks out in my memory because of its total stupidity. I was very bored, so I took a diaper pin and started to carve a design into a small bar of soap. My mother caught me and screamed, "You shouldn't play with that! You'll hurt yourself!" Which sounded well and good, until she took the pin from me, grabbed my hand, and STABBED me seven or eight times in my arm to make her point. I couldn't believe how stupid this act was, as I watched her draw blood from two of the wounds. She did more damage to me than I would have ever done to myself. I would have at least stopped after the first time I accidentally poked myself--I sure wouldn't have repeated the experience seven times. I'm not an idiot.
My mother did not indulge in physical abuse on a regular basis. You could never tell when Mom would go off. She could walk past a pile of junk for three months without saying a word, then one day she would lose it and go off the deep end. And once she started on one person, she would find something wrong with the rest of us. I guess it was her idea of fairness. It might happen just as you walked in the door after school or you could even be dragged out of your bed at night. I could identify my mother’s footsteps and breathing during sound sleep and wake up in a state of anxiety.
I still have dreams of my mother trying to destroy me. I sometimes think the only thing that had stop her from actually killing in the past was the fear that everyone would think that she wasn't a neat person. She once told me that in ancient days parents were allowed to stone their children to death for being disrespectful. Of course her idea of disrespect was not catering to her every whim. I always remind myself that the Bible says to "honor" your parents, not "humor" them. Of course, honor and trust are things one must earn, not demand. The Bible also warns parents against provoking their children to anger.
I was often beaten for minor offenses. My upper back would take the hardest blows. Since I never really knew what would set off a beating and I kept my back constantly tensed in anticipation of one. The pain would travel from between my shoulder blades to the center of my back. Then I would feel it travel downward along my backbone and ribs. This may be why I find loud noises with a heavy bass sound so painful to be around. Even with my ears covered, I can feel the vibrations in my spine and it is all I can do to keep from crying.
Of course, by this time I was indoctrinated with certain rules to ensure my duty to the family. I was the eldest – the example. I have worker’s hands, according to my mother, and that was nature’s way of letting me know my purpose in life. Though I took dancing lessons, my mother considered the creative world beyond my capabilities. It must have frustrated her greatly to see that I actually had a talent for poetry and written expression at a young age. I also showed some promise at art, but since that was her area of expertise, along with music, I did not bother to develop my talents in those areas until I was an adult. There was always the unspoken rule that you could not overshadow Mom in her areas of expertise and I saw no reason to endanger my life just to get some smug satisfaction.
My first priority was my siblings. If they fought, it was my fault. If they didn’t get their chores done, it was my fault. It wasn’t until I was a preteen that I managed to talk myself out of being punished for what my siblings did. You would think since the same thing happened to my father, another oldest child, I would have been spared this. Though, Dad may not have known, he worked a lot of overtime and when I did bring the subject up to him, being punished for what my siblings did finally stopped. Ironically, it is my mother who moans about how my grandparents treated my father and informed me that he was also punished for what his brothers did. Why she thought I deserved the same treatment is a mystery.
There were only two places I felt safe growing up: church and when I was on a swing. Mom cared too much about her image to act up at church. She tried to force us into inactivity, but I use to shame my parents into going to church by being already dressed and ready on Sundays by the time they woke up. Sometimes I would even wake them up and ask them if we were going to church. My parents thought they had me when they pointed out that my siblings weren’t ready for church. After that, I made sure they were dressed and ready too. Church was the only thing I was militant about.
I know a lot of people who twist religion to gain unrighteous dominion over other people. I was lucky. When my mom was a teenager, her family became members of a religion where children are considered to be precious gifts from God and that "authority" should be maintained with kindness and patience. At a very young age, I saw that my mom really didn't believe in our religion.
So I became a student of religion, so to speak, and it drove my mom nuts. She would declare some "truth" and I would ask where she found it. After a while she would just shut up, because she knew I would look it up and challenge it. When it became apparent that I had chosen God over her, she started to bad mouth people she thought I respected at church - trying to prove, I guess, that she was better than them. While she accused me of being "holier than thou", she would berate my siblings for not being religious.
Once in therapy, I described our conversations as "scripture destructions". My therapist nearly fell out of his chair laughing. "Do you realized what you just said?" he asked. I paused and replayed the comment in my head and started to chuckle. It was a classic Freudian slip.
Even though she lost influencing me on the religious front, my mother still had a lot of control over what clothes I wore and what toys I got. Luckily, she did have some sense of color, being a painter and all, but even to this day she is obsessed with polyester knits. I tried to explain recently that the fabric she adores irritates my skin and always has. She went on to tell me excitedly how certain fabrics bother her skin also and how we both have sensitive skin, despite the fact I have medically proven skin allergies and she doesn’t. I repeated my statement, specifying the polyester knits she loves so well. She became disappointed and changed the subject.
As for toys, I was constantly given dolls. Luckily my dad was big on giving us science toys, or I would have been one miserable child. The biggest problem with dolls was that Mom always picked them for us. We were sometimes given a choice of what color of clothes they wore, but she always picked out the type. I remember one set of dolls she once picked out for me and Sarah. They had really big eyes and black hair and wore go-go clothes with white boots. Mom kept telling us how cute they were. I said something about the eyes, but she told me in an angry voice that they were very expressive. I hated them, but I was afraid to say anything more, because she would get mad when I disagreed with her taste in things. I wanted to cry because I didn't want that doll, but I bit my lip and kept my eyes looking out of the car window, so no one would notice.
I resolved this conflict as an adult by finally getting a doll I wanted. I went to a really big toy store and took a look at the dolls. I turned down one aisle, and there she was, Elizabeth. She so closely resembled a woman I use to dream about when I was younger, that it shocked me to my heels. Her face was just a tad thinner than the other dolls and her expression a little more subtle. She was just beautiful and right in front. I hadn't planned to buy her right then, so I checked to see if there was another one just like her on the shelves. There wasn't. I couldn't take a chance of losing her, so I charged her on a credit card, so I wouldn't cause problems with our budget.
What is really strange is that a friend I have gone back to that store and even though I could find all the other dolls that were there before, there wasn't another one like mine. And I still think the other dolls are ugly.
I don't play with her. I just stroke her hair and hold her sometimes. It has a rather calming effect on me. The human psyche is a strange place. Until I went through therapy, I hated nativity sets. Here I was - a faithful Christian, who could not stand nativity scenes. My therapist was surprised when I brought the matter up. He asked me to close my eyes and try to remember an incident in my past that may explain the rage I felt when I saw a nativity set.
And remember I did. The memory came rushing up to me, without sound, but I could feel everything that touched me and I knew what was being said, even though I didn’t hear the voices saying. It was as if I was lip reading.
I was nine, I think. We were getting the Christmas ornaments out of the storage boxes. Mom was setting up the nativity set. I was searching through the boxes for the pieces. I could feel the garland and the occasionally stray hook. I had found every piece of the nativity set, except one wise man. My mother became upset and nasty. I told her that it was okay, it was only a wise man. We had the Christ Child and that was the most important piece. She slapped my face - I could feel my cheek burn as I told the therapist of the memory – and told me how horrible and evil I was.
The therapist asked me what I thought would help me get over that anger from that incidence. I thought it over and then told him about how I use to not care for primitive art until I made a ceramic piece for my mother as a gift. By painting that piece, it became mine and I was able to appreciate it. So, I made myself a ceramic nativity set and painted each piece in detail. I even gave the shepherds and Joseph yamalkas to show that they had been faithful to the Law of Moses. The set no longer exists, but it served its purpose. I am able to enjoy nativity sets now.
About the same age of the nativity incident, my mother came bursting out of the house and marched over to where I was, near the mailbox. I could tell from her face that I was in trouble, but the life of me I couldn't figure out what I had done. In a very menacing voice, she began to inform me that some things were family matters and should never be discussed to people outside of the family. She then went on to explain that she would never do such a thing, because good family members didn't discuss family things with strangers. I stood there in total shock, because I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Finally, she asked if I understood and I nodded, because I was sure her going through the whole speech a second time wasn't going to clarify things for me.
It wasn't until two decades later that I realized what had triggered that verbal brow beating. I was telling my therapist about an assignment I had done in fourth grade. I was supposed to write about the worst day of my life, so I wrote about the time I broke the lid of the cookie jar. I remember writing almost a whole page, so I must have gone into some detail about that beating. It had never occurred to me at the time that this was not normal behavior for a parent. Anyway, in the middle of telling this to my therapist, I burst out laughing. I had suddenly realized I had done this assignment a few months before the mailbox incident. The school must have questioned my mother about it. My mystery was solved.
I knew very little protection as a child. My only real protection was myself. I had a paper route when I was 12. I had been warned that the customer living at this house was a bit difficult, but I squared my shoulders and rung the doorbell. He talked to me through the window of the lower level of his house. It was strange enough, but when I came closer and he saw that I was a young girl (I was wearing a coat), he started saying things about needing to give young ladies encouragement. Didn’t give me any trouble for over a year, but I still didn't feel comfortable with him. Then one day, he asked me what I would do if - "for example" - he were to jump over his back fence and grabbed me. I looked him straight in the eye and informed him that he would be landing in the backyard of a family I went to church with, and that across the street from them was another church member’s family that I babysat for. A few houses up from them was another family from church with children near my age. Three houses from them was an older couple, who also went to the same church, who sometimes babysat us when we were little, and three house from them was my own house. As he stepped back from me, I silently thanked God that I knew every church member on my block and could easily zigzag back to my own house.
I was very disappointed when I told my mother about it. Her only reaction was "Oh, well, you and Sarah should have someone go with you." Sarah had just recently got her own newspaper route. It sounded good to me, until she said that my brother should go with Sarah and our seven-year-old little sister Jenny would go with me. I spent most of my route trying to figure the best way to ensure the safety of my little sister and myself. Luckily, the man's house was near the end of my route and by the time we got there, I had my plan. I introduced Jenny to several of the other families on that street that I trusted. The man usually made me walk into his garage to talk with me or pay me. I told her that under no circumstances was she suppose to step into that garage, and if anything happened, she was to run to one of the houses I had introduced her to and ask for help. He never said a word about Jenny and never said anything strange to me again either. It was a great relief to give up that route when we moved to another state.
It would probably shock you, but I didn't think I was an abused child when I first entered therapy because I wasn't beaten every day or week. After all, there are others who have gone through so much worse, how could I see myself as abused. So, I wanted my mom committed by the time I was twelve and lived in terror waiting for her to blow up - I was normal.
The things we tell ourselves to quiet our inner torture. By the time I was 12, I was doing the laundry for our large family, while 10 year-old Sarah took care of the kitchen. Sometimes we would switch chores to get a break. By the time my sister and I entered high school, we were also cooking most of the family meals as well. We were expected to put housework before homework. When I tried hard my junior year in HS to make good grades in my classes (I was taking Physics, Latin II, Chemistry, and Trig.), my mother got jealous of my time and actually pulled me out of my Latin class because I had decided, after cleaning almost the whole kitchen, that I would skip wiping down the appliances and do my Latin homework.
Imagine being called to the principal's office and having your mom sneering at you, saying that she was taking you home because you didn't do your chores. Imagine that you had actually done a better job on said chore than you normally do. It took me maybe 45 minutes to finish the task, because I was shaking so hard with frustration.
The rest of Latin was a bust. I couldn't concentrate in there to save my life. I spent a great deal of time pacing the front of the room, while my classmates worked on their translations. My teacher was very understanding, she let me pace since I wasn't really disturbing anything, and gave me a passing grade. I don't think she ever asked what was wrong, but she did know that I honestly was trying to learn the stuff.
I got my only two failing grades in high school that year: Physics and Grammar. The Grammar was because I didn't finish enough of my homework. I retook both classes the following year and passed them with high enough grades to keep me in the upper 20 percent on my graduating class. Homework was my greatest obstacle. Basically, if it didn’t get done on the bus or during pass periods, it wouldn’t get done at all. I think a few of my teachers did figure this out, but I know my counselor and many other teachers were completely baffled by my inability to finish homework in light of my dedication and quickness in the classroom. I just didn’t have the energy to do housework and homework. I didn’t even have the energy to be a typical teenager. Someone once told me that the reason I was such a good kid back then was because I didn’t have the time or the energy to be anything else.
I hardly ever engaged in extracurricular activities, outside of church. My senior year, my chemistry teacher talked me into entering to a UIL science competition. Mom drove one of my classmates and I to it. Lane was by far the best student in my honors chemistry class and between our competitions we did the little mind-benders contest they had on-going between the schools.
Lane brought one back to the table where Mom and I were chatting and read it out loud. Mom gave the correct answer immediately. Lane looked at her in disbelief and proved it to himself mathematically. Then he looked at her and asked her how she got the answer so fast.
She gave him an explanation, but it made absolutely no sense to him until I translated. Then he saw it. He ran and got another mind-bender (you could only have one to work on at a time) and between him, Mom and myself, we did about eight of them in about thirty minutes, with Lane doing the running from the judges’ table and back.
I was shocked. I realized then, that when all four wheels hit reality, that my mother is an extremely intelligent woman and if I knew what was good for me, I would never forget that fact - even if she does act like a complete idiot most of the time. And for what it’s worth, you do not want to play chess with her. She will convince you that she is psychic. She watches your eyes to see what moves you are planning. The only game I have won against her, I did by making random moves and waiting until she was completely confused before I started to play real chess. To be honest, I’m not a very good chess player, but just try and beat me at checkers.
So, I spent most of my life terrified of an intelligent mother with a vicious temper and an emotional age of six. Is it any wonder that I develop Generalized Anxiety Disorder? I have had only one actual panic attack in my life. It happened when I cleaned my apartment to perfection. I thought I was going to be crushed and suffocated to death. Panicked, I messed up the top of my dresser, threw my pillow to the other side of the bed, went into the front closet, pulled out a coat and threw it on the couch. Then I took a clean glass out of the cupboard and set it on the kitchen counter. It wasn't until then that I could breathe again.
Have you ever heard anything so absolutely pathetic in your life? Even now when I get overwhelmed, the first thing that goes is the house cleaning. When I was 18, my mother stormed into my room and told me if I ever kept my house cleaner than I kept hers, she would come and destroy it. My ex-husband said that she had said similar things to me in his presence, but I must have blocks those out, because I don't remember them.
My mother’s need for attention is more important than even her children’s health or even her own. Mom is a drama queen. You would be hard pressed to find another individual as melodramatic as she is. Though she feels that no one has suffered as much as she has, she is not above using the tragedy of others. She constantly tells people about other people's problem and expects them to express mounds of sympathy - first for the person and then for her for being so wonderful to stand by this poor individual during their time of need.
When I had major re-constructive oral surgery at 19, Sarah was having severe headaches. Her CAT scan showed that she had an area of swelling in her head. Before I went back to college, Mom and I went to my old high school to pick up my sister's assignments and ran into some of my former science teachers in the hall.
My mouth was wired shut, though Mom takes over conversations anyway, so I just stood there as she told them about my eleven hour surgery and how my oral surgeon joked about my head being so hard that if I fell head first, I'd do more damage to the ground. (This was true, by the way.) Of course, that wasn't the type of thing to generate a great deal of pity, so she quickly went on to describe my sister's "pitiful" state. I don't know if Sarah appreciated being described in such a way, but at least Mom talking about her instead of me.
The only problem was I had lost over 3 pints of blood during my surgery without a transfusion and as Mom went into emotionally charged detail about Sarah's problem, the hall began to spin around me. I tried to get my mother's attention a few times, but she was too enrapt in describing the angst she was going through over my sister's condition. I looked around for a place to sit, but there wasn't anything nearby.
My teachers noticed my distress and began to look at my mother and back towards to me and back again, with panic in their eyes. While I was anticipating how ironic it would be if one of my mother's daughters actually fainted next to her, while she was milking sympathy for another daughter, one of my teachers finally managed to interrupt my mother and pointed out that I was looking almost gray.
One the way out, my mother scolded me for not telling her I was getting dizzy and then went on how I made her look bad. It was a good thing my mouth was wired shut. I don't think she would have appreciated the maniacal laughter I was thinking.
During college, my mother would call me frequently, but would not let me talked to the rest of the family. She would actually get upset if someone else called me and didn’t hand the phone immediately over to her. At the airport, she would fuss over me as if she would never see me again. I would sometimes have to extract myself from her to get on the plane. When my mouth was unwired, my dad and I spent the day together, just the two of us. My mother was so angry at us that she refused to even come out of her room to tell me good bye when I left to go back to college.
I had no idea the hell that had broken loose at home while I was away. Sarah had to take over my duties as surrogate parent and it was taking its toll on her. My mother’s moods had become so unstable that she chased our brother, her favorite child, around the house with a knife, twice. Dysfunctional families work because every family member is a cog with a specific task. I had been a lynchpin and in my absence, my mother had to deal directly with my siblings, instead of having me pass along her requests. Sarah did her best, but she resented the position and didn’t have the insight I did when it came to handling Mom.
Spring break was my first real clue that things had become nightmarish. The day before I came home, my mother had lost the election for PTA president at the junior high school. Mom was so engrossed with getting sympathy from her friends that she didn’t even seem to notice Dad and Jenny’s presence. Jenny asked Dad if he wanted to see her classrooms, while Mom was surrounded by all these people. I don’t think she realized that they had left the area until after they came back.
My father was awaken at 3 a.m. by being hit with a pillow. My mother then berated him and Jenny for abandoning her in her hour of need. Then she locked herself in the bedroom and refused to come out. My father had to take care of the other obligations my siblings had and was over two hours late picking me up from the small town I had gotten a ride to from some other college students. About an hour after I got home, my mother finally came out of the room.
The next day she took Jenny to the department store to get some clothes. She came back without Jenny. Apparently Jenny had not been repentant enough about Thursday night on the way home and Mom abandoned her on the side of the road. Dad went immediately to retrieve her.
While Dad was gone, I began to dish ice cream for the rest of the family. My mom began to rant about how horrible my father was to her. I said nothing and kept scooping out the ice cream. She screamed and went on and on. Then she came up to me and expected me to validate her accusations. She wouldn’t leave it alone and I knew I had to do something or she was going to start hitting me. I stomped my foot, turned around, and walked towards the living room. As I left the kitchen, my mother screamed, “You better keep on walking, you bitch!”
Since it was right before me anyway, I went out the front door with nothing but the clothes I was wearing. I wasn’t sure where I was going to go, but I knew I wasn’t going to go back into that house. I first thought of going to one friend’s house, but realized that Cassie would never understand what was going on. Her own mother had died when she was twelve and she considered all mothers to be saints. I went instead to the house of the guy I went to the prom with. Gary wasn’t there, which was fine. I only wanted to use the phone. His father let me in. I did my best to stay composed as I looked up the number of a family I knew would take me in. After I arranged for someone to pick me up at a public place, Gary’s father tried to get me to stay a little longer, but I wouldn’t consider it.
As I waited for my friend Shelly to pick me up, I saw my dad looking for me and I ducked behind a mailbox. I just couldn’t go back home with that insane woman. When Shelly finally showed up, I was crying and beyond terrified.
She took me back to her house and I told her mother everything. That night I talked to a church leader over the phone and he arranged a meeting that Sunday for my parents and I to talk. I sat in his office for almost thirty minutes, waiting for my parents to show. I told him what had happened. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and bolted out of his office so I could go home with Shelly’s family.
What I did not know, was that Gary’s dad had told him that he thought I was in trouble and while my dad was trying to find me the night before, Gary was tracking down other friends to find me. He didn’t know about Shelly. Shelly went to a different school than ours. He did get a hold of Cassie about the same time my dad did. She didn’t know Shelly either. And I hadn’t known that Shelly been raped two months before until later that summer. I felt bad when I finally did find out, but she told me that she was actually glad I had problems of my own to deal with back then, because she hadn’t been ready to talk about it at that time anyway. I was just glad that she was still alive and able to talk about it with me eventually.
Anyway, when I didn’t stay at church for him to get me, Dad asked the church leader to send me a message. I had a doctor’s appointment the next day, which I really needed to go to, and Cassie’s house was on the way. He asked me to call Cassie and let her and Gary take me to her house, so Dad could pick me up and take me to the appointment on his way to work. I relented and gave Cassie directions to Shelly’s house. They came in Gary’s car.
While I was at Cassie’s, everyone fussed over me, including her father. There has been only one friend of mine whose parents did not think I was the most wonderful thing around. As far as these people are concerned, I am evil personified and I feel the same way about them – and my case is stronger. Cassie’s father, however, calls me his sweetheart. He even interrogated one of my dates. If I had moved in, he would have been delighted.
Meanwhile, I just wanted a quiet corner to retreat to. After they got me settled down, Cassie called my dad. It didn’t take long for him to come over and talk me into coming back home. My mother and I ignored each other for almost three days. Monday, I went to the doctor’s appointment and then spent the day at my father’s work. Tuesday, I worked on the kitchen with the radio blaring. I even took everything out of the cabinets and wiped them down. Wednesday, I pulled out the appliances and cleaned them. When lunchtime came, my mother spoke her first words to me since telling me to keep walking. She asked me if I wanted to share lunch with her. The tension between us eased, until the next Saturday, when she told our Avon lady that I thought I was too good for our family. Since I was leaving the next day, I just gave her a dirty look and left it alone.
That summer, after my freshman year in college, was nothing short of a nightmare. To be honest, I’ve blocked most of it out. All I remember clearly was working as summer help at my dad’s work and Shelly telling me of her rape. I do know after that conversation, I walked to yet another friend’s house and talked with her mother. When I came back, I had written down eight statements about life and personal safety. I don’t remember them all now. Basically I realized that I couldn’t spend my life in a box, but there was no reason to take stupid chances. I shared my list with my mother. She did what she always did, try to get me to move to one extreme or another. The middle ground has never been a comfortable place for her. That August, she and Dad drove me back to college, while she talked loud and did peacock impersonations for six hours. I was never so relieved to see a dorm room in my life.
My sophomore year was horrible. My parents were paying less for my room and board because my mother felt it was my fault I got less of a student loan. I did what I could to make up the difference. On top of the financial worries, I dreaded going home and worried about what my siblings were going through. I swore to myself that I was not going to spend another summer like the last one and found a place near the university. I looked hard, but couldn’t find a long-term job. I did a bunch of odd jobs and paid for my rent by cleaning other apartments in the building I lived in. One week all I had to eat was cornmeal, but it was better than going back home.
I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Sarah moved out that summer. We both soon realized we couldn’t live on our own yet. That February, Sarah went into the army and I moved back home. Then I was able to find a real job and go to night school. Things were still very rocky though and I did move out a couple years later. By this time, my mother decided she could only eat chocolate and stopped buying groceries. My dad was very busy at work and didn’t always have the time to get to the store. More than once, my two youngest sisters came over to my apartment to have some real food to eat. Macaroni and cheese, grapefruits – it didn’t matter, as long as it was not chocolate.
The most frustrating part about talking about my mother is trying to get people to understand that I’m not exaggerating. Most people believe I am a level headed and accurate person until they hear me talk about my mother. They just don't want to believe that someone they know could be related to a nutcase. Sometime ago, my mom sent me an abusive and highly hypocritical email. I forwarded it to a friend of mine, who I had been telling about my woes. The next time she talked to me, she very gently, with a great deal of worry in her voice, pointed out that I didn't have to have any contact with my mom, or the rest of my family for that matter. I laughed and told her not to worry. My sisters are still more or less sane. Whenever we get overwhelm, we talk to each other and remind ourselves of the truth and how hard it is for someone who hasn't lived through it to comprehend.
In her book Toxic Parents, Susan Forward makes the following statement: “You are not responsible for what was done to you as a defenseless child! You are responsible for taking positive steps to do something about it now!”
It is a very true statement. I only wish I had gone into therapy before I had married the male version of my mother.