I?ve been on this site since last June, I think, and never wrote out a ?My Story.? Thinking of doing so now I realize that the particular time which one chooses to write their story does a lot to shape the story. If I had written in June, for example, I might have talked about myself in reference to the relationship I was in at the time. In September, I would have written from that vantage point of getting through the end of said relationship. Today I write with aloneness being not only my perspective but also my impetus.
As the ?Big O? of the holiday season nears, my aloneness becomes more acute each day. It also is giving me reason and space to query as to why I am so alone. I used to obsess on my childhood, my past, the reasons I?m this way or that. But the past few years I have been more removed from my history (I consider that the result of some sort of growth and allow myself some congratulations for it). These days, however, I?m revisiting old haunts, watching old movies play in my head, feeling ancient wounds in a removed sort of way ? so that I might be able to understand why it is that, here at the age of 42 I am so alone.
My mom was the wife of two horrible men and a mother to seven kids. But first she was a little girl living in the Deep South who suffered the loss of her own mother when she was two. Her father was a wretch. He was in and out of her life; she spent time in foster homes and with her grandmother, who made her dresses out of flour sacks. (Really.) The times she lived with her father tortured her the rest of her days. He had sex with her sisters, and because she was more resistant to such atrocities than were her two sisters, she was treated like a slave. He eventually made her drop out of school (which was her haven) in the sixth grade to work. She married the first boy available when she was 18, and had four babies in fewer than four years. He abused her terribly. She got away finally, and when those kids were young in puberty she married my father.
He was raised above a bar in New York (where he began to drink when he was 13). I?ve always tried to understand how one?s childhood shapes them. I can easily understand how being raised above a bar by parents who, by his accounts, were uncaring, can produce an alcoholic. But I?ve never understood what happened in his early years that shaped him into a monster.
My mom had three children with my father. I?m the middle kid. My dad was a very mean drunk, but in my mother?s mind he wasn?t so bad. Her father and first husband were drunks, but at least my father was able to put food on the table.
I was ?daddy?s little girl? and I hated it. He regarded my brothers as though they were dog shit, and my mother as though she were an ignorant maid. But he sat me up on his lap and drowned my senses with his beer breath and told me stories about the war, and his parents, and told me inappropriate jokes? while my mom had to hear him talk about other women he had loved and my brothers were compared to me. He shat upon my brothers and my mom daily (emotionally speaking). Although I didn?t endure the beatings that my brothers did, nor the blatant disrespect that my mom did, my torture was deep and seething. I remember crying as I would be so tired and wanted to turn the TV off at night, but was filled with hatred and dread at the thought of having to go to the kitchen (drinking) table to say goodnight ( a ritual my brothers were spared, because he couldn?t stand the sight of them, but I was required to do) . I hated him as I sat there and forced a smile until my face hurt, hating every word he spoke in criticism of my brothers and my mother, of his talk of how his parents had hurt him while not acknowledging the hell he was creating for his own children. His stench of beer, his stubble that he ran across my baby cheeks and laughed as I cringed in disgust and fear ? it was a ritual I had to play the puppet to night after night. I was a little girl of four, seven, ten, and hated that man with every fiber of my being, yet I sat on his lap each night and forced smiles and giggles.
When I was six, my 11 year old brother asked me if I knew how babies were made. That day and most others, for the next three or four years, he showed me. He did such while I buried myself in a crypt of shame those afternoons after school, a few hours after which I?d sit upon that nasty man?s lap. My big brother also was the one who protected me from the kids who made fun of me for being a ?fat girl? or weird, because I barely spoke a word to anyone, or because I was the smart kid in school. He stopped coming to my room eventually, and so I was left alone, but for the monsters in the closet and under the bed. A month before his seventeenth birthday he killed himself.
My father was absolutely serious when he said ?children are to be seen, not heard.? The most evident and dramatic story of this belief of his was a night that likely has the most to do with a therapist telling me I had post-traumatic stress syndrome. My little brother and I were washing dishes as my parents watched TV. I used to play a game with him to get him to do the chore with me, and it made it fun. ?Shut UP!? came from the living room whenever our laughter could be overheard. We shushed, fearing that man, but eventually our voices rose again. We were lost in being little kids, playing with soap bubbles and getting through a mundane chore when SMASH ? our heads were slammed together from behind. It was probably the most pain I?d ever experienced until that day, but what I felt most was shock and humiliation. My little brother and I were reeling from the pain, and as tears streamed steadily into the dishwater we continued washing the dishes in silences, hushing our sobs in fear like you can?t imagine.
After my older brother killed himself my parents began to wonder about their parenting. So together we endured the years of hopes rising with quitting the booze, and an escalation of abuse and trauma with every relapse. Like the night they were fighting in the kitchen (well there were many of those, but this is one in particular that likely contributed to my PTSS diagnosis). I always listened from my bedroom window to those fights, because usually my father would leave, and afterward I?d spend a couple hours in the kitchen holding my mom while she cried and talking to her. I?d use what I?d heard in the fights as evidence to convince her to leave him, to get a divorce, to get us all away from that monster. So this night I was listening intently from my bedroom window, and as often he did when it got terribly loud and scary, my little brother came to my room in fear. I held him and tried to cover his ears so he wouldn?t hear, shushing him and telling him it would be okay, while still listening as best I could to the shit spewing from my parents? mouths. Then words caught us both in fear. ?Kill me then!!? ?No ? you shoot me!!? over and over and over and over, knowing they held the shot gun between them, struggling with it as each tempted the other to kill. And then the shot gun blast paralyzed fear, paralyzed time. Time did stop, as did our breaths, as we, my little brother and I waited, and waited, for the silence to end. To hear whose voice would be heard again, and whose would not. Eventually, both voices rose, and that shameful, awful moment of hope that only my mother?s voice would be heard, and that life with him would be over, died as shatteringly as the gun?s blast.
Over the few years of quitting and relapse, my parents would separate. I remember those days, of him away, being the only happy times of my childhood. We went to the movies ? I was 14 and went to the movies for the first time, I?ll never forget? we saw Tootsie.
But there always came a day when Mom was in her car waiting for us at the bus stop, and we always knew what that meant. Dad was back. And my little brother and I would cry the whole way home.
When I was a senior in high school I told my mom, during one of those separations, when we were living with one of my older sisters, that if she went back I wasn?t going. She did, and I stuck with my word. I was an excellent student, had even some friends, and I was done with living with those people.
When I was 14, during the early years of my parents? attempts to quit drinking, we went to family therapy. The therapist told me that I had like a 90% chance of becoming an alcoholic by the time I was 30. HELL NO!!! raged in every fiber of my soul. Looking back, I realize that the fight was over before it began. I started drinking heavily when I was 18 and never slowed until I got pregnant at 31.
Years are gone. Moments, experiences, friendships ? all in that ?could have been? realm as I drank and partied and sexed my way through my twenties. I spent ten years getting in three years of college. I had passions rise for this interest or that, but not much ever became of anything because I nothing superseded my interest in getting trashed every night.
My thirtieth year I moved thousands of miles away from my family, from that messed up bunch of drunks that revolted me because I loved and hated them all at the same time. I had watched my nieces and nephews, who were not much younger than me, get screwed up in booze, drugs, promiscuity, become abusive parents themselves? and I had to escape. I came here. I did some pretty great things, for me, a drunk gal from a nightmare of a childhood. One of which was to become a mother.
Now, ten years into motherhood and a billion miles away from the past, I?m afraid to have conversations with people, and I yearn for friendship yet fear it like the plague. I am in poor health. Having released myself from my first and last relationship (the last man I was with happened to be my high school sweetheart, and there have been many, many in between) I have no desire for and am in fact terrified of becoming intimate with someone again because I now know that I choose the wrong men and become a wreck within relationships. But I just wish I knew how to call someone up and talk to them when I need to talk. How to ask a friend to have coffee with me. How to be just me without so much fear of being revealed as one who tried mightily to overcome, but failed nonetheless.
My parents are dead, and my other older brother died of liver disease a few years ago. I have little or no contact with my three older sisters, not sure why. And my little brother, that little boy whom I used to hold on those scary nights? he has had multiple DUIs, drug problems, been in jail, has been beat up many times. Aside from my daughter, he is probably the only person who needs me. But I?m afraid to have contact with him. I?m afraid of it all coming to life, of proving to be real, all that which I have cast into a ?story? and as not really mine. I?m afraid of feeling the pain of not having adequately saved him from hell. And, I suppose, of letting it be known that I haven?t quite saved myself from hell either.
As the ?Big O? of the holiday season nears, my aloneness becomes more acute each day. It also is giving me reason and space to query as to why I am so alone. I used to obsess on my childhood, my past, the reasons I?m this way or that. But the past few years I have been more removed from my history (I consider that the result of some sort of growth and allow myself some congratulations for it). These days, however, I?m revisiting old haunts, watching old movies play in my head, feeling ancient wounds in a removed sort of way ? so that I might be able to understand why it is that, here at the age of 42 I am so alone.
My mom was the wife of two horrible men and a mother to seven kids. But first she was a little girl living in the Deep South who suffered the loss of her own mother when she was two. Her father was a wretch. He was in and out of her life; she spent time in foster homes and with her grandmother, who made her dresses out of flour sacks. (Really.) The times she lived with her father tortured her the rest of her days. He had sex with her sisters, and because she was more resistant to such atrocities than were her two sisters, she was treated like a slave. He eventually made her drop out of school (which was her haven) in the sixth grade to work. She married the first boy available when she was 18, and had four babies in fewer than four years. He abused her terribly. She got away finally, and when those kids were young in puberty she married my father.
He was raised above a bar in New York (where he began to drink when he was 13). I?ve always tried to understand how one?s childhood shapes them. I can easily understand how being raised above a bar by parents who, by his accounts, were uncaring, can produce an alcoholic. But I?ve never understood what happened in his early years that shaped him into a monster.
My mom had three children with my father. I?m the middle kid. My dad was a very mean drunk, but in my mother?s mind he wasn?t so bad. Her father and first husband were drunks, but at least my father was able to put food on the table.
I was ?daddy?s little girl? and I hated it. He regarded my brothers as though they were dog shit, and my mother as though she were an ignorant maid. But he sat me up on his lap and drowned my senses with his beer breath and told me stories about the war, and his parents, and told me inappropriate jokes? while my mom had to hear him talk about other women he had loved and my brothers were compared to me. He shat upon my brothers and my mom daily (emotionally speaking). Although I didn?t endure the beatings that my brothers did, nor the blatant disrespect that my mom did, my torture was deep and seething. I remember crying as I would be so tired and wanted to turn the TV off at night, but was filled with hatred and dread at the thought of having to go to the kitchen (drinking) table to say goodnight ( a ritual my brothers were spared, because he couldn?t stand the sight of them, but I was required to do) . I hated him as I sat there and forced a smile until my face hurt, hating every word he spoke in criticism of my brothers and my mother, of his talk of how his parents had hurt him while not acknowledging the hell he was creating for his own children. His stench of beer, his stubble that he ran across my baby cheeks and laughed as I cringed in disgust and fear ? it was a ritual I had to play the puppet to night after night. I was a little girl of four, seven, ten, and hated that man with every fiber of my being, yet I sat on his lap each night and forced smiles and giggles.
When I was six, my 11 year old brother asked me if I knew how babies were made. That day and most others, for the next three or four years, he showed me. He did such while I buried myself in a crypt of shame those afternoons after school, a few hours after which I?d sit upon that nasty man?s lap. My big brother also was the one who protected me from the kids who made fun of me for being a ?fat girl? or weird, because I barely spoke a word to anyone, or because I was the smart kid in school. He stopped coming to my room eventually, and so I was left alone, but for the monsters in the closet and under the bed. A month before his seventeenth birthday he killed himself.
My father was absolutely serious when he said ?children are to be seen, not heard.? The most evident and dramatic story of this belief of his was a night that likely has the most to do with a therapist telling me I had post-traumatic stress syndrome. My little brother and I were washing dishes as my parents watched TV. I used to play a game with him to get him to do the chore with me, and it made it fun. ?Shut UP!? came from the living room whenever our laughter could be overheard. We shushed, fearing that man, but eventually our voices rose again. We were lost in being little kids, playing with soap bubbles and getting through a mundane chore when SMASH ? our heads were slammed together from behind. It was probably the most pain I?d ever experienced until that day, but what I felt most was shock and humiliation. My little brother and I were reeling from the pain, and as tears streamed steadily into the dishwater we continued washing the dishes in silences, hushing our sobs in fear like you can?t imagine.
After my older brother killed himself my parents began to wonder about their parenting. So together we endured the years of hopes rising with quitting the booze, and an escalation of abuse and trauma with every relapse. Like the night they were fighting in the kitchen (well there were many of those, but this is one in particular that likely contributed to my PTSS diagnosis). I always listened from my bedroom window to those fights, because usually my father would leave, and afterward I?d spend a couple hours in the kitchen holding my mom while she cried and talking to her. I?d use what I?d heard in the fights as evidence to convince her to leave him, to get a divorce, to get us all away from that monster. So this night I was listening intently from my bedroom window, and as often he did when it got terribly loud and scary, my little brother came to my room in fear. I held him and tried to cover his ears so he wouldn?t hear, shushing him and telling him it would be okay, while still listening as best I could to the shit spewing from my parents? mouths. Then words caught us both in fear. ?Kill me then!!? ?No ? you shoot me!!? over and over and over and over, knowing they held the shot gun between them, struggling with it as each tempted the other to kill. And then the shot gun blast paralyzed fear, paralyzed time. Time did stop, as did our breaths, as we, my little brother and I waited, and waited, for the silence to end. To hear whose voice would be heard again, and whose would not. Eventually, both voices rose, and that shameful, awful moment of hope that only my mother?s voice would be heard, and that life with him would be over, died as shatteringly as the gun?s blast.
Over the few years of quitting and relapse, my parents would separate. I remember those days, of him away, being the only happy times of my childhood. We went to the movies ? I was 14 and went to the movies for the first time, I?ll never forget? we saw Tootsie.
But there always came a day when Mom was in her car waiting for us at the bus stop, and we always knew what that meant. Dad was back. And my little brother and I would cry the whole way home.
When I was a senior in high school I told my mom, during one of those separations, when we were living with one of my older sisters, that if she went back I wasn?t going. She did, and I stuck with my word. I was an excellent student, had even some friends, and I was done with living with those people.
When I was 14, during the early years of my parents? attempts to quit drinking, we went to family therapy. The therapist told me that I had like a 90% chance of becoming an alcoholic by the time I was 30. HELL NO!!! raged in every fiber of my soul. Looking back, I realize that the fight was over before it began. I started drinking heavily when I was 18 and never slowed until I got pregnant at 31.
Years are gone. Moments, experiences, friendships ? all in that ?could have been? realm as I drank and partied and sexed my way through my twenties. I spent ten years getting in three years of college. I had passions rise for this interest or that, but not much ever became of anything because I nothing superseded my interest in getting trashed every night.
My thirtieth year I moved thousands of miles away from my family, from that messed up bunch of drunks that revolted me because I loved and hated them all at the same time. I had watched my nieces and nephews, who were not much younger than me, get screwed up in booze, drugs, promiscuity, become abusive parents themselves? and I had to escape. I came here. I did some pretty great things, for me, a drunk gal from a nightmare of a childhood. One of which was to become a mother.
Now, ten years into motherhood and a billion miles away from the past, I?m afraid to have conversations with people, and I yearn for friendship yet fear it like the plague. I am in poor health. Having released myself from my first and last relationship (the last man I was with happened to be my high school sweetheart, and there have been many, many in between) I have no desire for and am in fact terrified of becoming intimate with someone again because I now know that I choose the wrong men and become a wreck within relationships. But I just wish I knew how to call someone up and talk to them when I need to talk. How to ask a friend to have coffee with me. How to be just me without so much fear of being revealed as one who tried mightily to overcome, but failed nonetheless.
My parents are dead, and my other older brother died of liver disease a few years ago. I have little or no contact with my three older sisters, not sure why. And my little brother, that little boy whom I used to hold on those scary nights? he has had multiple DUIs, drug problems, been in jail, has been beat up many times. Aside from my daughter, he is probably the only person who needs me. But I?m afraid to have contact with him. I?m afraid of it all coming to life, of proving to be real, all that which I have cast into a ?story? and as not really mine. I?m afraid of feeling the pain of not having adequately saved him from hell. And, I suppose, of letting it be known that I haven?t quite saved myself from hell either.
c: :heart:
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