This Time of Year-Mom

I feel what I am about to say is important.  Maybe it will help someone.  Maybe it will make someone not feel like they are not the only one.  Maybe it will help me heal some of the trauma by speaking publicly.  Also, it speaks to the cycle of family dysfunction and how important it is to break the chain.

This is a particularly hard time of year for me.  I used to do crazy things like move, leave people, hook up with people, quit jobs, go on road trips never really understanding why.  I would become very depressed and emotionally unstable.  It still affects me but now that I know why, I have learned better coping skills and know that this too shall pass.  It's hard though.

My father was a severe alcoholic.  He physically abused my mom and sexually abused me from the ages 3 to 6 or 7-hard to remember exactly when he left.  I loved my father.  He would keep me up after my mom and brother's went to bed and sing songs to me.  I got a little knitting kit for Christmas one year and he taught me how to knit (I was probably 4).  He would take me out on the boat to islands in the vicinity (we lived in a small town in AK).  He would wake me up late at night and take me to the midnight movies.  He would take me to get pie at the local restaurant.  I was like his best friend.  I got so much attention.  When I started kindergarten, he would keep me home from school and teach me to dance.  Those are the things I remembered for most of my adult life-the only things.  When he left, my goal in life was to find my father-then everything would be okay and I would not feel so lost inside.  I did find him when I was 32 and he lived with us for about 3 months-my husband and I.  Then I started having nightmares and falling apart on every level and the memories started.  Bad memories-horrible memories.

My mother, on the other hand, was emotionally unavailable and dealing with her own issues and abuse.  She did not love me.  That is how I felt as a child.  She told me I was stupid and ugly and that no one would ever love me.  That was her mantra to me.  She would be very nice one minute, then push me away the next.  I was always afraid of her.  She always seemed larger than life.  I was afraid of her almost my entire adult life which seems kind of crazy now.  We mended our relationship, for the most part, a couple of years before she passed and I have a lot of compassion and empathy for my mom now.  She had her own difficult crosses to bear which she never shared but which became obvious.  She wanted the best for all of us.

Writing this is harder than I thought it would be.  I have never shared it in a public forum and I am starting to feel a mixture of shame, guilt and sadness.  Weird.

So, my father sexually abused me.  Most of the memories I have blocked out-do I really want that rattling around in my brain to revisit.  I am grateful I don't remember everything.  One night he kept me up late and put me in bed with him and mom to watch Kraft Mystery Theater.  I was between them and he started touching me "down there" and I was so worried that mom would notice.  He would keep me home from school and bring his drunken friends over-men and women and make me do sexual things with them.  We were really poor so I don't know if they paid him in alcohol or money or if anything changed hands at all but something nudges me in that direction.  He had me watch him have sex with women.  He never worked.  Mom was always the one working.

I remember one night when I was about 5, I was in bed and I heard them arguing and I just knew he was going to come into my bed.  That seemed to be the pattern.  It was in the fall I think.  I grabbed my blanket and a stuffed animal and I snuck out of the apartment.  I went behind the building and there was a crate there and I put the crate over me and tried to fall asleep.  Then he came out yelling my name, looking for me.  He never knew I was under the crate.  And in the morning I went back into the apartment and no one said anything.  I often wonder why he didn't keep looking, why she didn't look for me-maybe she didn't know.  A 5 year-old out in the cold.  No one came.  No one cared.

So getting to this time of year.  On Christmas Eve day, we were all home and my father wanted me to take a nap with him.  He tried to have anal intercourse with me and I thought he was trying to kill me it hurt so bad.  I ran out and told my mom.  She locked my brother's in the bedroom.  My Dad denied it and went into the bathroom and slit his wrists.  Blood everywhere.  The paramedics came but it must not have been that bad because they wrapped his wrists in bandages and left.  Then we had Christmas.  We opened our presents like nothing had ever happened.  I got a Tiny Tears doll that Christmas with a little playpen and some clothes.  The next day I was out on the bridge that led to a poor part of the native housing and there was a little girl who came on the bridge.  I asked her what she got for Christmas and she said they didn't have Christmas, not even a tree.  I felt so bad for her that I gave her my Tiny Tears doll and all her things.  The most unselfish act I have ever done in my life.  That is when I started to realize there are people who have it worse than you do. 

Now I know why I would get crazy this time of year.  When I was 5, I wanted to get away but I couldn't.  I wanted to run, but I couldn't.  So, in my adult life I would take off, move, road trips-anything to keep my mind occupied.  I hurt a lot of people in doing that.  It was a compulsion.

So, my Dad ended up leaving town and an older neighbor who lived in the same apartment complex named Ernie Eggers befriended my mom.  He used to give us kids money and I would go to his apartment for treats and watch him and his friends play cards and soon the abuse started all over again.  He would babysit us and I used to pretend that I was so small that he could not see me. 

So, I became a very problem child.  First attempted suicide at 12.  I would run away.  I was sexually promiscuous at a young age.  I was sent to boarding school on a train by myself from Seattle to South Dakota at 13.  Can you imagine?  Never having been out of that small town. 

My young adult life was one of depression, drinking, promiscuity, suicidal ideation and the forever feeling of worthlessness and that I was too damaged to deserve anything good in my life.  I never had anyone to help me through any of it.  I was the black sheep of the family-the problem child.  I got married at 16, had a baby at 17 and moved to Washington with my husband-one of 5 husbands to come.

When I was about 25, I had decided to end my life.  I was in a continuous deep, dark depression that I could never seem to overcome for any length of time.  I felt like I was hurting my children, my husband at the time and that life was not worth living anymore.
I did not believe in God.  I had written my good-bye letters and the night before I asked whomever to help me-that I was on my way out and if there was anything-anything at all that I needed to know and that I needed to know now.  The next day that prayer was answered by Prem Rawat and Knowledge and my journey began.

I have tried to be the mother to my children that I never had but because of my own trauma and craziness, I failed miserably.  My son tells me, "we always knew you loved us mom".  I have told them how important it is to break this chain of dysfunction for their children.  My children have suffered because of my own suffering.  It has taken me a long time to become overcome my own trauma-which is always an ongoing process.  The good thing is that I am in a good place with my children.  We love and care for each other deeply and I try to be supportive and helpful.  It is a work in progress.  I have lost my youngest daughter to heroin and meth addiction (she is out there somewhere).  My heart goes out to all mothers who have lost a child to addiction. 

So you see, Sadie comes by her issues honesty.  All of my children have had their own crosses to bear because of their childhoods.  They have been very loving and forgiving towards me which I am so grateful for, but I wish things could have been different for them.