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Untitled Conversation

September 11th, 2007

The following is part of a recent phone conversation I had with the father. I’m not sure how this subject arose on this particular day, perhaps he felt the need to relieve himself of it, and it had nothing to do with me.

“I know your mother says that I raped her, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. When we separated, I lived in an apartment we would occasionally “see” each other. I did wake up one time and she was giving me a blow job. But, I never raped her. Ever.”

I was unsure on how to respond, and for some reason this popped out, “I’ve been told that was how I was conceived.”

He responded with “I know I was doing a lot of drinking back then, but… (He trails off)”.

Me thinking to myself, “why must he bring this up with me?”

For many years, things like this were openly discussed in my family due to lack of boundaries. I thought it was normal. I had to be told by an outsider that it is inappropriate conversation between parents and children.

Today, I feel the error that exists in the lack of boundaries. I feel it in my heart, my insides, and my mind.

The process of putting names and/or labels on certain issues helps to reduce my anxiety and to let them go more easily.

When I started going through my bag of funk, I was confused about what everything was and how to sort it all out. One of the first symptoms I noticed was that being in the company of certain people made me feel icky. It’s been a long process of learning to listen to that voice inside.

Not only were the feelings overwhelming, but also I had no idea of how to put words to what I felt. I was my own mobster tying a cement block to my leg and throwing myself in the river repeatedly, never knowing why.

I cannot control other people, god forbid. What I can control, is my thoughts, and how I allow outside things effect me.

The Phone Rings

September 7th, 2007

By Deezee

The phone rings, the olive green push button phone sitting upon the antique dark wood corner table in the room we call ‘library,’ and I reach to answer it with ten-year-old hands.

“Hello?” I say. At the other end of the line is my grandmother, my mother’s mother. She tells me that my mom is coming home that day.

“Be good for your mother,” she injects somewhere in the conversation.

Essentially, I’m to take care of my mom, to not cause any trouble, to not be ten. I hang up the phone and call my father. I tell him about the phone call, and he gets angry. He steps in to intercede, to put my grandmother in her place, but I’ve already been given my role. I may resent it, I may note that something is off, but life has been off for a few years. I imagine my mom back at home, my mom who’s been off mending for two months, my mom who had to disappear into a mental hospital and not be a mom.

Now that she’s coming home, she’s not really coming home as a mom. I am the sole person living with her. My siblings are away at school. My dad will return to the apartment he’s had since their separation. My grandparents live down the road. At ten I become a parent.

Don’t make waves. Others can’t handle what you can. Everyone else is fragile, on the brink, at risk. I become a rock needing nothing, demanding nothing, voicing nothing. My path in the world is set. I can handle more so I become nursemaid to the wounded. And suddenly I see everyone as wounded or at least I see everyone’s wounds. And they see me as protector, as trouble free, as caregiver. My own vulnerability disappears beneath my layers of iron. I proudly wear the label of self-sufficient, low maintenance, non-neurotic. In a land of neuroses I beam. That is until I realize that I tell no one anything. I am such a tight and tough fortress that no one would ever know if I hurt. I barely acknowledge my own ailments, for I still see myself as tougher, more solid.

My mother arrives home. She is bone thin. She speaks softly. She looks glazed. I don’t know how to navigate around this shell of a person, but I do as I was told. I don’t make waves.

Identity

September 7th, 2007

By Saviabella

My father died twenty years ago today. The date usually passes without notice, but my mother and I had a funny conversation the other day in which he was mentioned (which is rare, as we never talk about him), and it got me thinking. I started thinking about the characteristics that I share with him, which is also rare, because I have always defined myself negatively against him.

What happens to your identity when half of your genetic material comes from someone who you watched drink himself to death for the first ten years of your life? When the majority of what you remember is yelling, physical violence, and just feeling terrified to do anything that would wake the beast?

I’ve spent a lot of my life being angry at him. Angry at the way he treated my mother. Angry that he loved my brother more than me because he was “the boy.” Angry that he continued to drink and smoke even when the doctors told him that he would die if he didn’t quit. Angry that I had to watch him hemorrhage and waste away in a hospital bed for ten days. Angry that he left us to struggle in poverty after he was gone.

Then, a few years ago, I started feeling sorry for him. I wondered what made him the way he was. Was he severely depressed and self-medicating? Did living in a foreign culture and speaking a language that wasn’t his make him feel alienated and alone? What makes someone so miserable that he would drink himself to death at the age of 38? I don’t know. But it makes me feel sad for him. And for me. Because I never really had a father.

God, I think this is only the second time that I’ve cried while writing an entry. Give me a minute.

So, yes, it makes me sad. And there are times in my life that I feel the loss more than others. Like when I graduated from high school and university. I wanted him to be there. I wanted him to be proud that I was the first person in my entire family to get a degree, against all the odds. After everything, I still long for his approval and love.

This loss leaves a big hole that never goes away. It affects my relationships with men, it affects my ability to sip more than one glass of wine in a night, and it even affects my life choices. At one point, I dedicated a huge chunk of my life, almost obsessively, to an organization that he had supported when he was alive. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was doing it because it made me feel close to him, and because I knew he would be proud.

If it affects me that much, then I can’t just focus on his negatives. I can’t be living my life to please someone who was nothing more than an abusive alcoholic. So, I have to think about the things he left me that are good.

I kind of look like him. We have the same Roman nose and full lips, and big almond-shaped eyes. We also have the same hands, with long fingers and strong nails that can grow as long as we want them.

He was incredibly smart and could pick up foreign languages easily. Even though English wasn’t his first language, he spoke it perfectly, without a trace of an accent. French, too.

He was a charismatic public speaker and loved to be in front of a crowd.

He wanted a better life, so he left his home country, family and friends to move to a foreign country. He followed his dream here.

He loved old Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and Clint Eastwood movies. We used to watch them together. Some people told him he kind of looked like Elvis.

He had a love for authentic Italian food and taught my mother how to make it all – fettuccine, lasagna, chicken parmesan – you name it, from scratch. She then taught me.

He was incredibly attractive and women used to hit on him all the time. As far as I know, he never took them up on it.

In the end, he realized everything my mother had gone through for him. When he was in the hospital dying, he said to her with tears in his eyes, “You know that song, ‘Stand by your man’? You really did that.” She’s carried that with her ever since.

Rest in peace, Babbo. I’ll have you know that I successfully convinced mom not to make the homemade fettuccine and meatballs with condensed tomato soup. (Apparently, the folks at the care home like it just fine like that. Um, hello? We’re not care home residents: we’re Italian!) She claimed not to remember how to make tomato sauce. I taught her again – just the way you would have. It turned out really nice. I think you would have been proud.

Originally posted on September 27, 2006 at Saviabella

Pattern Dissection

September 6th, 2007

I’m working on dissecting a pattern. My head is still pretty wrapped up in it, so please excuse my circle talking.

It goes like this:
1) something is difficult
2) I start thinking about it a lot
3) I start trying to problem solve it
4) I notice that Joe and I aren’t talking much
5) I start to feel like he’s mad at me
6) I feel alone
7) I can’t talk about it because it’s too hard
8) I stop thinking about it because it’s too hard
9) I get angry and feel hurt and unsupported and hole up in my head
fast forward a few days
10) I feel like the only answer is to get a divorce
11) I tell Joe
12) within 48 hours, I’m back to being able to see how to cope and would never EVER think of seperating or divorcing.

Joe’s reaction at step 11 is to allow me to be in this crazy place and keep telling me he supports me and loves me. But I know it leaves some lasting effects. It has to.

The last two times this has happened, I’ve seen my self leading up to step 10 and comparing it to how I felt the last time. Both times I felt totally justified in thinking divorcing was the only answer, that this time was different, that there was no other way. And both times, within 48 hours, I’m totally back to ‘normal’, whatever that is, and can’t believe I thought that.

This happens about every 3 months or so. I don’t know if it’s something I can cope my way out of, given that I’ve been trying to get a clear scope on it and I get so completely turned around and in too deep while still feeling like I’m thinking clearly. But, it’s hard to see how some kind of medication would be helpful since it happens so infrequently, compared to symptoms in my past that came at me daily, weekly or hourly.

Knowing rationally what I do about co-dependency, I think there is something going on that I don’t know about yet. I create an environment of dis-ease because I need him to express his commitment to me? It’s depression on a cycle that hits a low I’m not used to? I need to feel unattached in order to feel strong enough to pull myself out of the funk?

All this and more tonight at 11.

Etched Memories

September 5th, 2007

I have been pregnant three times in my life. I have only one real person to show for those pregnancies. The first was aborted, the second was miscarried, and the third is the child that I was blessed with.

For many years after the abortion, I would feel guilty for being able to become pregnant when there are so many women in the world that were a better fit for parenthood than myself at the time. I was 21 years old.

This is the story about the first pregnancy.

There was a man that was to be my lover off an on for 10 plus years. We had years of celibacy between us with just the friendship to pass the time. For years I thought he was my one and only soul mate and we were destined to be together. I still believe he was one of my soul mates. Age has given me the knowledge and belief that we can have more than one soul mate in our life time.

I remember the night I went to tell him that I was pregnant. He was working late at the studio. He was a photographer you see, all artsy and hip and chic and cool. He was anything but hip, yet talent dripped from his fingertips like rain water.

I walked into the old red brick, four story studio building that I saw every day as I arrived and departed from my place of employment.

As luck would have it, he got a job that was the street over from the street in which my office building was. Purely coincidence. We had a lot of those “coincidences” over the course of those 10 plus years.

He knew I had something serious to discuss so we walked up to the top floor of the studio which was the attic. The windows were dusty as was the floor and everything stored up there.

The scene is forever etched in my mind as if I am watching a movie. We stood far apart as I struggled to find the words to tell him.

My first reaction was not to tell him, but I was there and I had to have my say. I explained the situation and I got the feeling he already knew. We were like that, not always needing words to know what the other was experiencing.

I quickly let him know that I did not plan to carry the pregnancy to full term. I was not ready, I had been drinking and using drugs very heavily although at this point, I was newly sober and terrified.

I remember exactly what I was wearing the day he picked me up at my mother’s house for the procedure. A blue sweater knit top with thin white stripes, and matching skirt with my sexy boots. I thought I was hot stuff when I wore those boots. Not that day though. That is what got me into this mess and I felt like the lowest creature on the planet.

As I mentioned before, this man has talent. While waiting for him to arrive, my mother suggested that maybe, I should not have the abortion because he could be famous one day. You can imagine my jaw dropping to the floor. She was the one that taught me to see people from the inside out, and certainly never to use other people as collateral.

I think she was trying to say anything she could think of to have me not go through with this. We were Catholic, and maybe just maybe she didn’t want me to spend my afterlife in eternal fire.

I tried to explain to her that I would be doing the child an injustice if I were to try and bring it into the world right now. I would have a child when I could live right by that child.

The down side to this man that was my soul mate is he had trouble with emotions. He was unsure on how to express them, talk about them, and probably even feel them. We had that in common; I was not capable of those things myself back then.

This trait of his made my experience a little less than stellar. I mean, I wasn’t expecting the abortion to be a party. Nothing about it is supposed to be positive. It isn’t. And it wasn’t.

It was horrible and there are permanent scars from the experience. I have not ever regretted it, but I have experienced deep emotional pain that was my due. It is the most unnatural act that I can think of. Aside from killing your live children.

Many years later that man and I would finally be able to talk about it, but only a little. He thought the baby would be a girl and I thought it would be a boy. We both have children of our own now and we are married to different people.

To know us then, you never would have anticipated either of us giving up being single and all the freedom that comes with that, nor either of us having children. Yet, here we are.

I am not proud of what led me to the abortion, but it isn’t hiding out in the shame box anymore. By allowing myself to be human and forgiving myself, I am a better person. My errors in judgment are fewer and far between.

A very wise nun told me once, “the mistake isn’t in the falling down. it’s in the not getting back up.”

The Weight

August 31st, 2007

by Kelliqua

Some days the load is too heavy. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep and the pressure bearing down on my shoulders drives my body, like a wooden peg, into the ground. The sadness is all consuming, the fear overwhelming. I don’t want to think, but the thoughts rampage unstoppable through my brain. I am frustrated that I am powerless and that no amount of physical or mental exertion will conquer the greater forces at hand.

I am not bipolar. I am not clinically depressed. I don’t have unspecified mental disorders. My beautiful, intelligent, twenty year old son wears the label, but the burden that he lives with emanates outward and is carried by all of us – myself, the Husband, and his siblings.

Weeks, maybe months pass when he is employed, looks forward to attending an apprenticeship course at the VoTech school, is seeing a nice girl. He is holding steady, striving to sort out his mind, to be comfortable in his own skin. He has goals, dreams and is optimistic. Family dinners and evenings are a laughing, teasing riot. The husband comes home from work and doesn’t feel the crush of walking into a war zone or a fog of heavy emotion. I can sleep at night, the worry-meter quietly humming on Low.

Then the hostage crisis occurs. Our household is enveloped in the black cloud of tension, rage, despair and/or irrationality. On the front lines, husband and I are taxed to the limit counseling, coaxing, searching out treatment centers and therapies. We try to ensure as little disruption as possible to the siblings’ lives, but we all know that the true ruler of our kingdom isn’t any one of us individually or as a group, it is bipolar.

The teens sigh at the “Crazy” brought on by the most minor of upsets (in their eyes), or often, from seemingly out of the blue. They cancel plans, advising friends that spending time at our house is not an option for awhile. When the resulting withdrawal of self-medication attempts make sharing a bedroom an uncomfortable predicament the Other Son stays over at friends’ houses – in essence kicked out of his own room. Girl retreats to the sanctity of her bedroom, escaping into the world of teen-aged romance novels, text messages and music.

Years of high dose psycho-tropic medications have rendered his liver swiss cheese. There is no pharmaceutical “cure” for him.

We are left to our own devices.

Some days we are all so, so tired.

Preparations

August 29th, 2007

Today was the first day of school. Over the past few weeks, my kids went shopping for new clothes, for backpacks and pencils and other supplies. They filled out all their paperwork and went to orientation and got nervous and met all their new teachers. And this morning, they got up, went to their classes, reconnected with all their friends and then came home and decompressed, sharing what happened and turning in lists of supplies that they didn’t even know they needed. And all of that was done without me.

I feel like I’m dying inside. Every time I know that something is happening and there is no place for me, I shrivel a little more. Yes, I know they are just at this age. And yes, I know it’s totally normal for them to be separating from their parents. But in the small amount of time they are willing to share, I am not included.

This hurts more than anything I can recall. And I gotta tell you, I’ve been through some pretty rough things. I know that someday, things are going to work out and there will be some place for me in their lives. My job is to be patient until that happens. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

My goal is to prepare like they have for school. I need to prepare to have a life without them in it the way I imagined. I need to find a full-time job, get busy and not sit around waiting and wishing they would want to come over and spend time with me. I need to get passionate about something that earns money and makes me feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. But mostly, I think I need to put some distance between me and them, which is so ironic after all I’ve done to get this close.

They know I’m sitting over here, thinking about them over there, and wishing they would come over. How icky is that? To feel guilty that your mom wishes you’d come over to her house but you don’t want to? I think if I can think of them how people think of their kids when they move away to college, that would be more healthy. Only, I need to be the one to move away, physically at first and them maybe just emotionally. Not love them less, just with less strings attached.

This is one of those things that will get figured out in time. Now, we just need the time.