Tangled Web

I couldn’t put my finger on why I was upset. It was just another phone call to soothe my mother’s nerves. But, my father had answered. His tone was upbeat, and he shared that he was excited about buying a new bicycle. He is 74, and is in better shape and spirit than most people twenty years younger. He tells me he has signed up for a 10-mile bike trek and sightseeing adventure along the Gulf Coast. It’s just his voice—there is something pleading in it. He is trying.

Over a lifetime of calls with him, the effort has been lacking. The calls ranged from the normal quick calls back and forth when I lived at home, apprising him or my mother of my whereabouts, to violent, angry calls, filling me in on all of my flaws, lashing out at the latest disappointment he had been dealt in life, courtesy of me, his youngest daughter. There really was no in between, except perhaps, for the years that he wouldn’t come to the phone if I called, even if I pleaded. Sometimes he would answer, and knowing it was me, he would pick up the phone without a word and slam it on the nearest table our counter. He would call to my mother, saying “It’s her,” in a tone that let me know he couldn’t muster the energy to say my name.

This latest version of our calls is harder to understand. While we don’t talk about anything that happened over the years, there is something there in his voice, asking me to connect. Is this his version of an apology? My emotional response is one I recognize—guilt. I feel guilty for not giving more, for not just coming out and telling him I hear this in his voice, that it’s all ok. I am angry and confused that I somehow still feel guilty, that the repetition of the calls over the years has left me this way. No matter what our calls were about over the years, I ended up hanging up the phone and feeling awful. More often than not, I ended up sobbing. I don’t know how to react or feel any other way. After I talk to my father, my knee- jerk reaction is to examine what I am doing wrong, what is wrong with me. 

That has never been a challenge.

The voice I hear in my head is his. Second-guessing every single decision I make in life, constantly putting myself down, thinking the worst. I have to battle to hear the faint whisper of my own voice, trying in vain to protect me. Years of therapy finally helped me adjust the volume so that on my best days, I hear my own voice clearly. But try as I might, I can’t mute his completely. It will always be an echo, or a drumbeat, and at times it still thunders so loud that it takes all of my energy to drown it out.

To keep myself from becoming lost yet again in guilt and worry, I make myself remember everything over the years that has gotten me to this point. I cannot connect any deeper with him because of all of those things--very real things--that my mother and father both choose to place in their world of denial. Drudging all of that up is necessary, but it takes its own toll. Being raised in a family that chooses to not only deny the truth, but bury and forget it altogether, can make you feel the need to return again and again to your memories, to ensure that you, too, don’t get lost and buried.

There’s a nagging tug in hearing his voice age and my mother’s become more frail. I watch as friends lose their parents and I debate in my head if I am doing what I should. I stare down a rabbit hole that I have fallen into many times, too deeply—worrying more about my mother’s or father’s happiness than my own. I stare long and hard, and make myself back away. It is not a simple decision, it is a battle. I think it will always be.

Even though it is hard, I have kept communication with them. Most of this I have done for my mother, who needs the connection with me. I love her, and I know that nothing that has happened was intentional on either of their parts. My mother did not set out to marry an alcoholic, unfaithful man. My father did not set out to be a bad husband or father. But they both made choices that impacted my life and theirs. Those choices paved the way for a very painful life for me, and incredibly poor self-esteem. Each time I go through these feelings of guilt, I have to connect to a particular memory to remind me why I have to keep my distance and take care of myself.

The one this week that helped was fairly recent, back in 2009, when I was living in Charlotte and working for a women’s magazine. I had just gotten back on my feet after a really horrible time with deep depression, that had me still shaky at times. My mother and father were driving through town, back to their home in Florida. Charlotte was merely going to be a pit stop, to see me. My father’s birthday was coming up, so I had put together a gift for him, trying hard to do something nice. It took me hours just to pick the wrapping paper. We were to meet for breakfast, near my office, so I could go into work right after.

I got there early, not wanting to disappoint anyone. Soon after I arrived, my father called my cell phone, obviously angry, demanding directions. His anger, as always, panicked me, and I scrambled to think of street names and exits off the interstate. He wasn’t clearly explaining where he was, and was cursing –every other word was “fuck” or “shit”. I was sitting at a table in an Einstein’s Bagel’s restaurant, breathing heavily, trying to calm my father down, and figure out where he was and how to get him to my location. After ten minutes of back and forth, he angrily growled that I “didn’t know fucking anything, and had ruined every fucking thing…just like always”. The line went dead. I hadn’t looked up from my table during the call, and realized that people were staring. I was still breathing hard, and somehow didn’t realize I was crying. A woman next to me reached over from her table and put her hand on my arm. As is my usual response, I apologized. She looked me square in the eyes and said, “Please stop. Stop apologizing.” I just shook my head, for a minute back to being five years old and in my father’s shadow. “I could hear every word he was saying,” she continued, “stop. You aren’t the one in the wrong.”

I managed to thank her and then got into my car and fell to pieces. Somehow, I was able to walk into my office 30 minutes later and no one was the wiser. I have had a lifetime of experience in covering my emotions.

This, in comparison to many other incidents with my father, was minor. This was nothing but words. I remember telling myself that on that morning, over and over. Nothing but words, nothing but words. But words have meaning. I believed he meant it when he said I ruined every fucking thing—always. Hearing things like that your whole life makes an impact. I still have to remind myself—daily—that I am not someone who ruins things. I am someone of worth.

It took me 38 years to begin to speak out loud and really begin to tackle my depression and the reality behind it. I slipped during the process and barely regained my footing. More than anything during all of the therapy, the tears, the hard conversations, and reliving things too painful to endure once--much less countless times in my therapists office--the thing I gained that is most valuable is the realization that I had to save myself. Actions I was taking, that I thought were the choices that made me a good person--a good daughter, were actually weighing me down more and more, and eventually pulling me under. The people around me, who were supposed to love me unconditionally, who I should have been able to rely on no matter what, were actually helping me drown.

I almost did drown. It was a very close call.

There are moments today when I feel the weight, I feel the water rushing over me. After a lifetime of fighting this, of battling constantly to feel better about myself, to hear and trust MY voice, I sometimes feel exhausted. I want to just settle in and let it all go. Just let the water take me.

Then I remember how far I have come, and that once I saved myself not too many years ago, I came out of the water, gasping and barely alive, but I made it. I survived. It was a long, hard fight, but I did it. So many beautiful things came after—that wouldn’t have unless I had freed myself to allow them.

Unfortunately, guilt still lingers and my heart still questions things. I have to go through this process—even after a simple 5 minute phone call-- to remind myself what it takes to be free, and how much I can invest before it’s too much. It’s still a hard long process, but it is worth it.

I am worth it.

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Finally Found You, Part 2

From the moment her information appeared in front of me, glowing on my computer screen, I knew that I would call her. I knew I would hear her voice, and learn things, whether she answered my questions or not. My mother’s best friend and my aunt were both shocked that I was prepared to be so brazen; concerned about who this woman was, and what I would learn. There was no choice for me. I had to contact her.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous. My hands shook and I paced in my tiny apartment for almost a half hour before I got to courage to sit on my bed, pull the phone from my nightstand, and dial the numbers. My heart was pounding. I didn’t know what to expect, but I had to know something.

Someone once told me that it’s the unknown things that tear you apart. You can deal with what you know- good, bad, horrible- you can find a way to make it through. The unknown leaves you no path, no light at the end of the tunnel. That made sense. The need to know. The need to fill in the missing pieces of my father’s life, the mysteries of his anger and dependence on alcohol. Dialing those numbers felt like I was turning the dial on a safe, getting ready to pull open a heavy door that would help me understand.

What I didn’t know was that I was opening a door to 30 some-odd years of existing on secrets, lies, and facades. I didn’t know that opening the door to the truth could shatter my foundation instead of strengthening it. I had no idea.

I was ready for her to answer the phone. His mistress. One of many, I suspected, but the only one I knew of for sure. The only one that was real to me. The phone rang three times and the voice on the other end was not at all what I was suspecting. A small child sang the word hello to me, dragging out the multiple syllables while rustling the receiver. I froze. I asked if his mommy was named her name. He answered yes, and told me she was in the next room. Should he get her? Yes, I answered, listening to his clomping footsteps carry the phone to her. In that moment, I was counting the years back to Atlanta and the years in between, trying to see if the age was right. Trying to reconcile the fact that I might have been speaking to a half brother. Still digesting that, I heard her voice.

“Hello?”

Very southern. The unmistakable drawl of well-bred, old money Atlanta. Now in Florida.

“This is (I said his name)’s daughter.”

Her response was all I needed. It told me everything.

In a panicked voice she asked, “Is he alright?!? Is he OK??”

Not the response I expected. But what had I wanted, really?

Did I want her to say Who? Whose daughter? Who is this? Who is he?

Did I want to then wonder if she was just a good liar? Or did I really not want it all to be true? In theory, that would be great, but then, what would that mean to everything I thought I knew? All the hunches, suspicions… and all the fallout of living with a father who had chosen someone else and something else instead of being with his family. Really with his family.

No one asks if someone is alright like that unless they care, unless they are involved.

I assured her he was just fine. So was his wife.

She was momentarily stunned, which didn’t seem to be a far distance for her to travel. Not speaking out of ill will, just the facts, she was not the sharpest tool in the shed. I remember picturing a younger Rose Nyland from the Golden Girls in my head as I talked to her. Only maybe not so innocent. Or maybe she was.

I clarified a few things for her. He had another daughter (she only knew about me). He was not single, he was still married. He was not the age she thought he was, he was about 10 years older than that. That seemed to be the thing that concerned her most of all, but none of it seemed to really be getting through. It just seemed like new information, nothing damning to her, nothing that really changed anything.

The damning things came from her direction.

How he spoiled her. How he drove to her house to pick her up and wouldn’t ever let her walk to the car, he had to carry her. How gentlemanly he was, opening doors for her, taking her places. I had to lay down. I was nauseous. This man she was describing, at great length, was a man I had never met. And my mother for damn sure had never met him. Never once, ever in my life would I describe any of his actions toward my mother as spoiling her. This was a man for whom I had to buy my mother’s birthday and Christmas gifts, handing the greeting cards to him for his signature. This was a man that never, ever, thought of my mother first, or celebrated anniversaries or special occasions unless friends prompted and arranged everything. I was seething and sick at the same time. She continued to blather on, Rose-Nylund style, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was giving details to the daughter of a married man she was sleeping with, details she shouldn't be sharing. Details that were turning my insides and breaking my heart.

“STOP!” I said, louder than I meant to.

She did. Sensing I was now upset, she began backpedaling, saying it was over now, and had been for some time. I told her I found that a little hard to believe since my father was now moving to Florida, her state of residence. She stumbled and made explanations, assured me I was wrong.  When I asked when it had ended, she couldn’t answer, laughing nervously and changing the subject. She wasn’t quick enough to answer my accusations. She didn’t need to be.

I ended the call, hung up the receiver and stumbled to the bathroom to throw up.

My mother’s face kept flashing before me. I should have told her years ago, back in Atlanta. It had gone on forever. I never imagined he was having relationships with these women, real relationships. I didn’t know he was capable of it. Only, he was. Just not with his wife. Not with his family.

Not with us. Not with me.

My mother’s best friend reassured me about my decision not to tell my mom years ago. She knew why I had made the decision back in Atlanta. Even though others didn’t know for sure about my father’s infidelities, there had been suspicions. My mother was always so fragile and innocent, so dependent on my father. I had tried in the past to ask her about their relationship, even broached the subject of him cheating. She would not discuss it. Not in an angry way, she just changed the subject and slipped into the comfort of denial. It was maddening. No matter how you pushed, she blankly stared back, refusing to acknowledge any words she didn’t want to hear.

I had a new decision to make now.

It was one thing to live in denial, to make choices based on turning a blind eye, but it was another to be pulled from everyone and everything you know and be taken somewhere strange and new for someone else’s selfish reasons. I imagined her withering away, being abandoned even worse than before. I had to tell her. I had to make her listen to these words, to what was happening. Jolting my mother into reality wasn’t going to be easy. Or without pain.

I took a few personal days from work and made the seven hour drive home, practicing my speech along the way. My father was going to be out of town working, and she and I would be alone. No plans, just a visit, I told her. She was thrilled that I was coming to see her, to spend time with her. She always was. It broke my heart.

I was struggling with everything, but at the same time, I felt so strong. I thought that maybe, for that for the first time in my life, I might be able to change the family dynamic- extract some of of the dysfunction somehow.

I imagined my mom on her own, finding strength she never knew she had, surrounded by friends who would support her and love her and help her build a life she could count on. I saw her living in the present instead of in denial…nothing to hide or be ashamed of, no secrets or betrayals.

But, I knew her, I knew how emotionally frail she was. I knew how devastating it would be to hear this from her daughter. I knew how private she was and how this would feel so invasive.

Usually, the seven hour drive home seemed endless. This time, it was too short. I was pulling into the driveway before I knew it. Sitting in my car, hesitating to go inside.

How do you begin the conversation that will change your mother’s life?


For Part 1 in this series of posts, click here.

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Finally Found You, Part 1

For most of my life, my mother’s happiness was my main concern. I have fretted over what she doesn’t have, what she has lost, and what I wished for her. So much so, that I ended up sacrificing my own happiness at times. In the mixed-up maze of my family background, I felt the only way I could come out safely on the other side was to see her happy.

It’s not her fault. She didn’t set out for that, it wasn’t her goal. At times, she has asked too much of me, but only because she has felt so little true love in her lifetime. She cried out for me from a place of great loneliness and disappointment.

I have always tried to answer. Only when the weight of everything threatened to drown me did I finally realize that the balance was truly off. I always thought making your mother happy couldn’t be wrong. It wasn’t wrong, it was just overwhelming. Too much. Too much from a person whose own sense of being was hanging from very delicate threads.

My mother married at 16. In the photos I remember of her wedding, the photographer is too close to the bride and groom, obviously cramped in a tight space--the tiny living room of a relative. Their faces are blurred, too indistinct to see their expressions. My mother wears a simple dress, my father in something like a suit. The flash is too bright, the images overexposed.  They are figures in a room of onlookers, taking part in a sweet ceremony somewhere in the hills of rural Kentucky—coal mining country—where marrying at 16 wasn’t unheard of, or even unusual. They had no money, no idea what was next.  My father was 20 years old and became my mother’s future in that moment. For better or worse.

My destiny was also carved in that tiny living room. Their paths created mine, setting in motion years of pain they couldn’t imagine, standing there taking vows, ready to escape their own histories and lives of poverty and longing.

None of the pain was planned. No one like this sets out to hurt everyone, to abandon their vows and promises. No one strives for alcoholism or regrets. Yet, choices are made and the line between destiny and choice grows blurry. What kind of fate has this kind of outcome? Whose destiny does this all benefit?

My mother is now heading into her seventies. Her hands look frail; her eyes look tired to me. She still carries a beauty with her that I would be grateful to see at her age. She still sees only what she wants to, deals only with the superficial, and somehow looks the other way when something too painful to handle occurs. I marvel at her denial, and at times rage against it, demanding that she admit to me that she remembers things that haunt me in dreams and waking hours. These things truly happened, but somewhere in the world she lives in, they are locked away permanently. It took me so many more years to heal because of her locked away secrets. But, it is also the only way she knows to survive.

In my first years out of college, I finally landed in Atlanta, Georgia with a real job and hopes of a career future. The distance from my family-about a five hour drive- had honestly been good for me. I was finding my own way, still uncertain, so much more to figure out, but I had a little space to clear my own path. My father’s job led him to Atlanta from time to time, and he called while he was in town, and occasionally, we would meet somewhere for dinner, usually under my mother’s encouragement, both of us only getting together because it made my mother happy, and quieted her demands for it to happen.

A new feature was being introduced in the market where I lived for residential phone service. It was called Caller ID. My apartment complex was taking part in being one area of a test market. The little cumbersome box sat next to my phone in the bedroom, the readout offering the end of the mystery of who was calling. The phone rang, and instantly, the caller’s name and number appeared.

My father had arrived in town one week, and my mother had let me know he would be calling me on a Friday morning. Around 8am that morning, I was still in bed, and the phone rang. I picked it up, and heard my father’s voice, but saw a woman’s name scroll across the caller ID screen. I was distracted, and my father’s words pulled me back to the conversation. I hadn’t heard a word he had said, and I interrupted. “Where are you?” I asked. There was a pause. “I am at the Holiday Inn in Buckhead”. My turn to pause. “Can you call me right back?” I asked.  He agreed.

Maybe this Caller ID thing was faulty. Maybe it was a glitch.

The phone rang. The same woman’s name appeared. I picked up the phone and acted as if nothing was wrong. He planned to come by my apartment that day. Mom had sent some things for him to deliver to me. We settled on a time, and hung up.

I laid in bed for a moment, and then went searching for my phone book. First, I scoured the hotel listings and called every hotel in Buckhead, GA after not finding him at the Holiday Inn. No one with my father’s name at any one of them.

Then, I grabbed the Caller ID box and scrolled through the names of recent callers. I settled on the woman’s name, and scribbled it down on a piece of paper along with her phone number.

I turned to the residential listings in the phone book and found her. Right there, staring back at me. Her name, her address.

When the time came for my father to visit, I was ready. Palms sweating, heart racing, but I was ready. It was no secret to me that my father wasn’t faithful to my mother, but I had never had any kind of proof. It was always just something I sensed, even when I was little. Even before I really understood what it all meant, something in me just knew it. It was never spoken about or discussed. But I knew.

Even though a large part of me still felt fearful of my father, I felt a need to do this—to confront him. To hear his answers. I was ready for a fight. I was ready to remind him that the betrayal went beyond his marriage. He was also betraying me—our family.

He arrived and I didn’t even let him set the bag down that my mother had sent. I asked him where he was staying. He responded with the same hotel. I told him I had called there, and everywhere else in Buckhead. He didn’t miss a beat. He almost looked amused. His response was that he traveled so much in this area that sometimes he forgot where he was. He said it was a Holiday Inn in a different location.

I said her name.

I asked who she was.

I expected an explosion. I expected him to be defiant and tell me what was and wasn’t my business. Instead, he fell into an abyss of a million excuses. She was the girlfriend of a friend, he was staying at her house with this friend to save money. He asked me to please not tell my mother, she didn’t like when he and his friend did things like this.

I bet not.

He had only stayed there last night and would get a hotel tonight, he promised.

This new side of my father was hard to take in. I had never seen him weak before me, but my ambush and information had caught him off guard.

He mumbled a few other excuses and promises and got out of my apartment as soon as he could.

I remember that I had a date that night. A second date with someone I liked.  I had contemplated cancelling, but had waited too long to decide. He showed up a few hours after all of this had taken place and I was in a fog. In a weird (for him) scenario, he showed up to take me on a second date, and I blurted out everything that has just happened, warning him I might not be myself for the evening. Great set up, I know. Predictably, the evening was short, and I was home, still in my fog, by 9:30pm.

I called a close friend and updated him on the events of the day. I told him I wanted to go and drive by the woman’s house. Just to see, I wasn’t sure why. He offered to go with me. I told him I wanted to go by very late, like 2 or 3am. He was in.

We took the phone book page with us in the car, and drove around, finally finding the neighborhood she lived in. My hopes were dashed when I realized she lived in a gated community. We sat in the car, staring at the gate, with an attendant inside. Somehow, my friend came up with a story to tell, and a few fibs later, we were through the gate.

Her house was on the back end of a cul-de-sac. It was massive-- a huge, gorgeous house in one of the most exclusive areas of Atlanta. And there, at 2:30am in the morning, in her driveway, sat my father’s car. The house lights were dark. No other cars but hers (with Georgia plates) were parked near the house. I knew the friend my father had spoken of, the one who supposedly was the real reason he had stayed at this house. I knew his car. It was nowhere in sight.

My friend reached over and took my hand. “I am sorry, Kim”.

Me too.

In the strangeness that is my mother’s mode of survival, in the weirdness that you can only understand if you come from a family where alcoholism, codependence, and denial are considered “normal”, I didn’t say a thing to my mother. Or to anyone else in my family. I knew my mother probably already knew. If she didn’t, it wouldn’t change anything. She wouldn’t leave. And to be honest, I didn’t know if she could handle knowing that I knew. It may sound bizarre reading those words. I can promise you that it is even more bizarre writing them.

Years passed and I moved a few dozen times—all across the country and back. Every time I unpacked, I came across an antique wooden box where I kept a few special papers and mementos. The page from the phone book was folded neatly and tucked inside. Every now and then, I would pull it out and look at her name. It wasn’t circled or marked, but I was drawn to her name every time. That phone book page was a symbol to me of all the things I had guessed but never been sure of, all of the things and people my father chose over my mother and our family. At least I wasn’t crazy; I hadn’t imagined these things were happening.

Fast forward seven years. Abruptly, out of nowhere, my mother and father announce they are moving to Florida. What might have seemed like a normal migration after retirement rang false with me and my mother’s sister and closest friends. It was normal for my mother to follow suit and do whatever my father said, but my father’s choice to move was odd. He was desperately close to his two grandsons, my nephews, really playing the role of doting father in their lives. My mother had a job and a close, protective circle of friends. It was hard for my mother to make friends due to her shyness and insecurity, so the few close friends she trusted were precious.

I spoke with my mom’s best friend, whom I was also close to, and we fretted together. We worried about the real reasons behind the move, about how my mother would fare in a place where she knew no one and had no real outlet to meet and befriend people. We worried about her moving to a place far away from everything and everyone she knew-and where my father was truly her only lifeline.

Something in my gut told me there was more to the story. And somehow, instinctively, I went to the antique wooden box and pulled out the yellowing, tattered phone book page. I went to my computer, navigated to Google search and typed in her name. Her name from all those years ago in Georgia. Her name and information magically popped up. Her new phone number and address, readily available on the screen.

It was too easy. It was too awful.

She now lived in Florida.

To view Part 2 in this series of posts, click here.

The artwork featured in this post if from the Family Chic blog. To see this piece in more detail, visit Camilla Fabbri's blog by clicking here.

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Chasing Memories

A few months will go by and I will realize that the images haven’t invaded my mind—a sort of remission. It’s a relief and then a reminder. Some sensory thing will bring it back to me, a misstep on concrete, looking over a railing in a shopping mall and feeling the familiar stomach drop, or brushing against peeling paint on a window sill. Then, I am there.

It was summer, I was 7 or 8. Annoyingly, the specifics of some parts of that day are lost to me…my exact age, the city we were in, the name of the hotel. I want to know, I want to physically go back there for some reason. But I can’t. The rest of the details, for a span of probably 10 minutes or so, are terribly clear. Vivid. I wake to those details many nights, sweating and with my heart pounding visibly through my nightgown. There have been several nights when I have had to get up and change the sheets after waking to find I have been sweating terribly for most of the night. I wake to a damp, hot and cold cocoon, and peel myself out of it. The last two nights have been that way.

It is ten minutes of my life. But it won’t leave me.

My mother, father and I were on a vacation somewhere. I am fairly sure we were at a beach (maybe Florida?). I think we were there for a short time, maybe traveling with my father while he worked somewhere. I remember wearing a yellow bathing suit, and that our room was small, but opened to a balcony. Our view looked straight across a courtyard to rows and levels of rooms and balconies just like ours, a mirror reflection of middle-income weekend-getaway style. Many floors below (maybe 8, maybe 10?) and to the left, a turquoise swimming pool shimmered and made reflections on the ceiling of our balcony- little glimmers of light thrown from far below, beckoning me to the water.

The TV was on, I was bored, nothing was out of the ordinary. I heard the familiar clunking sound of the cooler being opened, and then my father immersing his hand into the icy water and melted ice, finding one of the colder cans of beer in the bottom. My whole life, anytime we have stayed in a hotel, and long before mini-fridges were the norm in each room, my father’s first order of business was to fill the large orange Igloo cooler with ice at the automatic machine to chill the innumerable beers he had just purchased somewhere nearby.

So, today was no different than any other time, any other trip. My memories of my father almost always include a beer in his hand, for years and years, a Pabst Blue Ribbon can. That image, that red white and blue logo and lettering, is part of my childhood. What is odd is that he hid the effects so well. My estimation is that he was almost constantly buzzed or drunk—all the time. But, he wasn’t a stumbling, jobless, word-slurring drunk. He had somehow managed to conquer the tell-tale signs for the public. At home we saw longer stretches of inebriation and violent outbursts, but to be honest, over my whole life living in the house with him and my mother, and for the many years I tried to go home for holidays and have a normal life, more often than not, he seemed fine. If someone dropped in to visit, nothing seemed amiss. The flipside of that, though, was that we could all be sitting around the dinner table and something…nothing… would cause a reaction from him so unexpected, so shocking, that the rest of the evening blurred afterwards for me.

So this day, in this hotel, was just that way. There were no loud voices, no provocations, just all of the sudden the air in the room was different. He was different.

I was sitting on the bed in my bathing suit, watching TV, and in what seemed like a split second, my father had picked me up off the bed by my wrists, and spun me around. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t upset, he was actually laughing.

What might have been normal father-daughter interactions were always laced with trepidation for me. Today, in particular, I noticed his grip on me was weak, faltering. It turned a light hearted moment into one of me assessing how close he was spinning me to the glass door and the corner of the nightstand.

He then carried me out onto the balcony and before I could think or protest, flung me over the railing of the balcony, dangling me, eight or so stories up. He was laughing and joking with me. At first, I struggled, but then became paralyzed with fear, especially as he seemed oblivious to the danger of the situation.

He pulled me up over the edge, back onto the balcony, and looked puzzled at the expression on my face, and my tears. He began teasing me for crying. He was still laughing, and looked absolutely shocked at my reaction. My mother was standing near the open door of the patio, but said nothing. She had a distant, faraway look.  She never said anything. To me or to him.

As if to prove it was all in fun, my father scooped me up again and again, repeating the same steps, holding me over the railing longer and longer. I scraped the back of my heels against the peeling, painted concrete, trying to somehow climb backwards onto the safety of the balcony. I looked down and tried to will the pool to move underneath where I was hanging, instead of the patches of grass and sidewalk that were directly below me. I felt his grip slipping a few times, and I was terrified he was going to drop me, let me slip away.

Each time I was finally back safe in the room, I was a wreck, and crying loudly for my mother to make him stop—pleading with him-- telling him he was scaring me. In his drunken haze, he was just more confused. In my mother’s life-saving veil of denial, she couldn’t be in that room. She was there, but not there. It wasn’t happening.

Those last two sentences did not come easily to me. Over the years, I remembered that episode in my life with so much bitterness. I remembered a drunken, uncaring man who saw his little girl terrified and wanted to keep scaring her. I saw a mother in that room who didn’t care and did nothing. Those statements are both true and untrue. There is reality and then there is the whole picture.

As it is with all occurrences like this from my past, I have no one I can go to and say—“do you remember this? Can you tell me more about that day?” These things simply didn’t happen in the world my parents live in. My father, in truth, can’t remember a lot of things in his alcohol-soaked past. My mother may remember somewhere in her lost soul, but she can’t let herself.

All of this realization came after years of therapy, and in particular, one night in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Washington DC. It has been over a decade now since I sat in the floor of the self-help aisle in that bookstore and pulled book after book off the shelf about living with an alcoholic parent. At that point, I wanted to understand my father more, I was trying to solve the mystery of it all. I had just started admitting the reality of my life to myself. I wanted to know how my father came to be this person, and what kind of person it was making me.

What I found instead was words on a page that described my mother in such intricate and perfect detail that I was frozen in that spot. Her denial, her absolute inability to look back and help me piece things together. Over the years, I had tried desperately to shake answers from her, questioning her, reminding her of dates, holidays, what I was wearing on a particular night—trying to jog her memory to give me the answers to all the whys I had for so many incidents. She would reply with a blank stare, a confused expression, and finally exasperation that I was “misremembering” or worse, making up things.

It had haunted me. Was I crazy?

Did I imagine these nights, these outbursts?

No, I hadn’t. And as I read the words through my tears that night at Barnes & Noble, I knew that what I was reading was true. No one could write about what I was living with such accuracy unless it was happening to others, unless it was real, unless one thing led to another. My father was an alcoholic, my mother was a typical spouse of an alcoholic. I was also on my way to becoming a statistic. Depression was ruling my life at that point, I had broken down more than a few times. I had been in therapy, but I hadn’t been honest. Secrets were a way of life in our house, and they were kept with an unspoken promise. I hadn’t told anyone the truth of my life, the truth of it all. The main reason I hadn’t was that I felt I was somehow the reason for it all. I had always felt that way. I felt if I had been a better child, a better daughter, my father wouldn’t be the way he was, and my mother wouldn’t be the way she was. If only I had been better, our lives would have been different.

That night in the bookstore was a turning point for me. Many more years of therapy, truth telling, and realizations lay ahead of me. If I had known how many, I might not have kept going. It was a long road from there to here, just to understand days like the one in that hotel. And I do understand it, I do. But it still haunts me.

Tonight it hit me that I have so much uncertainty in my life right now, and I feel so out of control. Maybe the reason this dream has visited me the last few nights is that feeling of being out of control was so present in that moment. Maybe it is one of the first times I remember feeling that way. Maybe the two are connected.

Maybe not.

In my dream, all the details of that day are the same except the end. In my dream, he loses his grip, and I am falling and falling…it seems like forever. And just before I hit the ground, I wake up, gasping for air.

A part of me wishes I could remember where it all happened so I could go to that hotel, find that exact room, and step out on that balcony. I want to look over the railing and sigh with relief that it was only a floor or two up, not a long drop at all. I want to realize that he hadn’t put me in as much danger as I thought, that I was just being a child, being scared, seeing things as worse than they were in my mind. He didn’t nearly let me slip away. I always wonder if that would put this memory to rest once and for all.

But like so many things in my past, so many similar memories, I won’t get that type of closure. I would likely get something worse- that it was all just as I remember it, just as scary, just as bad.

I would just be chasing memories, going in circles, getting nowhere. There is nothing deeper in that ten minutes than what I know it to be. I believe I am at peace with that, but for whatever reason, that day still has a hold on me.

And I will be here, waiting, until it lets me go.

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Band of Gold

This past Christmas was special for many reasons. It was my first Christmas with my husband as his wife. We married on the one year anniversary of our first date, Nov 13. Holidays have always been a tough time in my family, and although I loved the traditions and spirit of Christmas, I was on my own during that time of year a lot before meeting my husband. Christmas with my family became a boiling point of emotions, and almost always, a showcase for my father’s alcoholism and anger. My mother desperately wanted me home each year, and I tried for many years to be there for her. But finally I realized that my self esteem was getting battered each December so much so that it took me months to recover. I quit going home and took solo trips or stayed on my own for Christmas for the last dozen years or so.

For our first Christmas together, my husband and I planned to enjoy it with each other and then spend time with his aunt and cousins who live here locally. It was special for both of us. Then, my parents announced they were traveling from their home in Florida to NC to visit our old hometown and to spend Christmas with my sister and her family. They said they would like to stop in for the night to see us on the way.

My husband marveled as I was immediately in knots after the phone call. I was worried about how they would interact with us for an extended period of time. I was almost sure the time would be uneventful, as it was only in private amongst our family that my father let loose on me—and a great source of his anger and my mother’s disappointment always seemed to be because I wasn’t married yet. It was odd that they so wanted me to enter into an institution that had seemed to have almost ruined their lives. Their marriage, for both of them, seemed both suffocating and a façade—in different ways. My father was unfaithful and kept our house in a state of tension and fear growing up. My mother lived in denial of all of his faults, but was also utterly dependent on him.

But the fact that they would behave and put on a front (as I saw it) around my husband was almost as upsetting as the alternative. While I have been so honest with my husband about my childhood, my history with my father, and their history together, it always seems so surreal to sit with them when they are on their best behavior, acting like the happiest couple in the world.

My mother later called back to clarify that they would be staying in a hotel nearby and would only really have time for a late dinner as they passed through. I was relieved, but still on an emotional roller coaster until they arrived the day before Christmas Eve.

We met at our house and then drove to a local restaurant. My father, as he always is in situations like this, was utterly charming, engaging and funny. He shared funny anecdotes about my childhood, and lovingly joked with my mother about her growing obsession with germ avoidance, a level of OCD that is quite startling. As he gestured with his hands, imitating my mother trying to avoid a public restroom doorknob, I saw it. A wedding band. On his finger. For the first time in my life.

My parents, astonishingly, have been married 50 years. When their last anniversary rolled around, I remember staring at the number in my mother’s email announcing it with much pride. Fifty years. I would never, ever have described my parents as being happy or well matched, or even in love. It has been quite the opposite, watching the fighting, the days and weeks of silence, and the violence on my father’s part. My father has also been unfaithful. Many times. I don’t let myself think how many times or with whom. I fully expect there may be half sisters or brothers out there that I don’t know and might never meet.

But in all the time I have known my parents, from the time I toddled around and inspected my mother’s necklaces and jewelry while being held, until the Christmas of last year, I have never seen my father wear his wedding band.

I knew he had one. I would often sit and rifle through my mother’s jewelry boxes-- she loved jewelry and had tons of costume jewelry as well as nice gold and diamond pieces that she often saved up for herself. I remember several times coming across his band and asking her why he didn’t wear it. I have tried to remember her exact answers. I know she seemed to always give a different one—it didn’t fit right, it hurt his hand, he just didn’t like jewelry—until I felt sad asking her, as I could see it bothered her.

About 10 years ago, my sister found out about a company that would take men’s wedding bands and stretch and mold them into the shape of a heart for the wife to wear as a pendant. Oddly enough, the company most often did this for the wives of deceased husbands, as a way for them to carry that part of him next to their heart, dangling on a gold chain. Although she had the best intentions, my stomach dropped when she told me what she had done. She had told my father about it, sneaked into the house when my mom was at work, and swiped his band to send it off. She thought that my mother would love it as a birthday present, a way to make use of a band that meant so much to her, but that my father never wore.

My mother’s reaction was not what she had hoped or expected. My mother called to talk to me later, and touched only a little on the gift- in her usual way of skirting around anything painful. She only said, I wish she had asked me first. But, to me, my mother’s voice was saying- “he will never wear it now”.  

Even when I was little, five or six, I remember knowing it was wrong that my father didn’t wear his wedding band. I didn’t fully understand the easily identifiable adult reasons for not wearing the band, but somehow, even then, I knew it was wrong. It was false. It was somehow lying.

What no one that cheats ever seems to understand is that you don’t just cheat on your spouse. Not wearing that wedding band was saying to the world—“I am connected to no one”. It was a betrayal of my mother, but also our family as a whole. As I grew up, I quickly learned the bigger reason he didn’t wear his ring, even though no one ever explained it to me- and my mother certainly never shared anything. If I believed her and her level of denial, my father was the best husband and father in the world. And I knew differently. On both counts.

So, as my father finished telling his story, I got lost across the table, and my husband took my hand and looked at me. I snapped back to reality and we finished our dinner with no outbursts or uneasiness. It was a perfectly normal dinner…from the outside.

My mother called on Christmas Day to wish us a good holiday and I asked her about the ring. She joyfully explained that she had bought it for him as a gift for their 50^th anniversary. She had been so excited by the tiny engraving on it, the style of the band, and the sale price she had found. She ignored my initial question of why he was suddenly wearing a wedding band now. 

And I am happy for her, that 49 years into her marriage, her husband, who has caused her a great deal of pain, is finally, in some way, honoring their union. I know that in their own way they have settled into getting older and realizing that they have reached the time of their lives where no one is leaving anyone and they are what they are.

But I hate that he has chosen only now to wear his wedding band. It took really having no other options for him to place a band of gold on his finger and say—this is my wife—this is my family. 

And for me, it will always be 49 years too late.

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This Day

For years,

I stood in front of

racks of paper sentiments-

trying to make them ring true;

trying to find you and me.

I read each word

hoping somehow

this day would change everything-

I would wake to find

wise words, devotion…love.

 

I waited

Year after year…
 
buying gifts with all my hope

all my heart, and the last of my worth—

Costing me everything.

 

I sealed my heart

in each envelope

along with a card I didn’t believe...

someone else’s words

that I knew you wouldn’t even read.

 

The waiting

took its toll.

I lost myself more

and more of myself

each moment, each year, on this day.

So this year

On this day

I won’t stand in front of

an array of meaningless cards

and someone else’s prose.

I will stand

on my own

waiting for nothing from you

as I finally know--

you aren’t there.

You are

like this day-

just another Sunday

in a sea of Sundays

made special in name only.

 

My waiting

has been my burden.

Not yours, just mine.

And I let go, finally...

On this day.

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Finding Home

Over the past few weeks, my husband and I have had to navigate more than a few twists and turns. He has started a new job- a new career path- and I am so proud as I watch him work outside of his comfort zones and find success, one step at a time. That is never easy at any age or stage in life.

We have been preparing for a move into a new place that we have been so excited about. When we first moved to the beach area where we live, we were in a mad rush. I had just gotten a new job and we literally had only a few days to find somewhere to live. We were so lucky to find a place close to my office, and only a few blocks from the beach—and also within our budget. To top it all off, the place was furnished (one of the benefits of moving to a vacation area). We signed the year lease and moved in and started a life here.

Within six months of moving here last year, we were married in a small local church with all of our family and friends. After the ceremony and reception, we went with our photographers to a quiet area of the beach for some photos by the ocean. It was November 13^th and the day was spectacular. It was 70 degrees out and I didn’t see a cloud in the sky all day. That was unusual even for this area—and there wasn’t another day like it that fall. We both felt there was something magical and perfect about that day, and that we were meant to be together, and be married right then, right there, in that moment.

Then, last week, I got laid off from my job. We have had a few little bumps here and the days leading up to that, and I think both of us wondered if our luck was changing. Just a week before I found out I was getting laid off, we had bought some furniture for our new place (which is unfurnished), and recently had to buy a car, so our finances already felt tight. For a few days we both discussed quietly what we had to do to make things work, and what changes we needed to make.

We knew we needed to go forward with the move, and we had already signed one lease and ended the previous one. We had to have furniture, and had a ridiculously long time to pay off what we had purchased, without finance charges or fees. We made excel spreadsheets and budget plans. I have been down this road a few more times than my husband, and have been in some seriously dire financial straits. Even though you can’t help but worry, I have learned that these situations can cause you to sink—not feeling like getting out of bed or facing the world—and that is the last place you need to be when money is tight.

After a few days, we shook ourselves out of the funk we were in and rolled forward—giving thanks for what we DO have—that we can eat and pay the bills—and most of all- we can make each other laugh. I am so thankful for that part of our relationship. We laugh so much—even in tough times. We know each other’s funny bones so well, and there are times I almost can’t breathe when Shea says something too witty at just the right moment. There is a saving grace in that kind of laughter, a kind of safety net for when things seem too dark or serious.

So today, I stayed home and waited for the delivery of our furniture. I had a million thoughts in my head, thinking of where we are right now money-wise, and how excited I was to see how our place would look filled with the pieces we had chosen. The delivery men carted our living room pieces up flights of stairs and unwrapped each piece. Our bedroom furniture fit into the room as if I had planned and measured carefully (which I had not).

Gathering up the plastic wrap and moving blankets, the movers left and I walked back upstairs. I stood in my living room and took it all in. To me, this was not just furniture. This was a home I had been waiting for thirty-some odd years. This was the start of a life I had dreamed of for so long, and had given up on having a long time ago.

As dramatic and sappy as it sounds, I stood in this room, quiet with only the whir of the ceiling fan in the background. I closed my eyes and let a thousand scenes play in my head. I remembered walking to the end of the dirt road we lived on when I was 10 years old and staring into the field that spread out beyond our neighborhood. I remembered wishing out loud to just be on my way in the world and find to find love and hope and a good, happy life.

I remembered moments with my father that made me stop believing in myself—moments I wish I could forget.

I remembered nights during my college years, feeling like I was slipping into an abyss that would engulf me—out in the world on my own for the first time and having no family or support to tether me and wanting more than anything to feel better, feel happy, feel loved.

I remembered stupid choices, failed ventures, lost love, and battling depression for the better part of my life. I remembered finding a therapist who finally saw the truth behind everything and lit a path for me to follow and find my way back to the living.

Most of all, I remembered sitting in a parking lot in California over three years ago. A mixture of a toxic work environment, a huge heartbreak and betrayal and ongoing, painful family issues had overwhelmed me. I was out there by myself and had just had the final blow hit me. I remembered how absolutely alone I felt in the world and how hopeless. I remember vividly that I did not want to be here, there, or anywhere anymore.

More than anything, I remembered how much I believed, with all of my heart and soul, that things would not get any better.

And then, I opened my eyes in my home, our home. I looked around at the beautiful furniture, and the life we are building. And despite money worries, work stress, life changes and everything else, I am so grateful. So grateful, that somehow I made it through, that somehow Shea and I found each other and that somehow, today I can’t imagine being anywhere else but here.

The money will work itself out. We have everything we need.

The fabric collage featured here "My Home, My Heart" is by Marty Mason. Click here to see more of her beautiful work.

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Parts of a Whole: The Collage of Who we Are

I have written a great deal about the struggle I have with the relationship with my parents, my father in particular. A lot of the words I have written were almost therapy, a way for me to explore things I remembered, turn them over and over and try to make sense of them. It is easy in an overview to see things as black and white, with a hero and a victim. There are many reasons I have struggled over the years, battled depression, and questioned myself. I do believe with all of my heart that the foundation I was given led me to a struggle with my self esteem and gave me more obstacles to overcome at a young age. However, I do know I can’t blame everything on my upbringing or my father’s alcoholism. I know that I am still responsible for choices I have made, and paths I have chosen.

I have never been good with money. I can remember so vividly being in Mrs. McCune’s math class in middle school crying my eyes out because I could not balance my imaginary checkbook that was given to us as a class assignment. This wasn’t Algebra or Calculus. It was addition and subtraction. And I wasn’t a stupid kid. Outside of the checkbook register, addition and subtraction were easy. Put in the context of paying bills and shopping, I couldn’t make it work.

Some of my struggles over the years with money have been just not having enough of it, working three jobs trying to make ends meet, eating spaghettios almost every night to survive. But as I found career success and made a great salary, I still had issues. Some of it was due to retail therapy and comforting myself because other things were lacking, and some of it was just my lack of money management skills.

My relationship choices did have a predestination quality, we learn what we live—how we are taught to love. But at some point, you have to say to yourself people who hurt me are bad, those who don’t are good, and learn from it. I was a slow learner to say the least.

So, yes, I know that my childhood shaped me, maybe more than I would have liked. But even amidst the pain and at times, bitterness, I know I gained some things from my parents that are the better parts of me.

I have my mother’s heart. My mother’s compassion is a gift I am thankful for, even though it causes me to feel things 100 times more deeply than I should, causes me to cry over small injustices every day. I sometimes wish I didn’t feel things so deeply, and have, over the years, wished I didn’t form such intense strong attachments to people, but I know that the opposite would be worse. I have watched my mother love without worrying about anything in return for much of her life. Although I know it isn’t healthy, it is at times still amazing to watch.

I have my father’s wit and sense of comic timing. In times of stress, I learned to borrow this gift from him to ease tension, or divert everyone away from the negative forces in our lives. Though shy outside the house when I was younger, I could be a clown and a performer at home when I needed to be. Although the circumstances may not have been ideal to grow this trait, I am thankful I have honed my sarcasm over the years, and my ability to always laugh at myself. I think that in particular has helped save me at times.

The weird thing is, all of us grow up in completely different circumstances, some good, some bad, and you can’t ever completely predict how any one person will turn out. There are some psychological profiles that we can expect given certain things, but truthfully, it all seems like a weird lottery to me. Someone who grows up in a family of abuse, neglect, and horror can grow up to be successful, warm, giving, and healthy, while someone from a seemingly healthy, loving home can grow up and lose their way or worse, find a life of crime.

The best and worst of the two people who raised me is the collage of the person I have become. While some people deal with pain by withdrawing, I have expressed it openly in various ways including writing. And writing is like breathing to me. I cannot imagine my life without this need and love for words. I don’t know if I was born to write, or if my circumstances carved this notion into me. Probably a little bit of both. Out of everything I have and am, and even if I never find true success at it, I would not want to lose my love of writing or the ability to do so. Do I wish there were things I didn’t have to see, endure, learn or know to get where I am? Definitely. Are there things I regret and wish I could have handled differently? God yes.

But there is no way to pick and choose the parts you can delete and still remain yourself. Even in my lowest times, when the world seemed so dark to me—I would ask myself—do you wish you were someone else? And I could never answer that question affirmatively. I knew I didn’t want to be in the pain I was in, battling what I was battling, but at the core of it all, I didn’t want to change who I was. Sometimes that still amazes me. That even as flawed and hopeless as I have felt, I wanted this heart, this mind, this body, this face, these gifts, these burdens.

And today as I try to reconcile so many things, I still do. All the pieces, flawed and unblemished, broken and repaired, silent and screaming, loved and forgotten...are why I am here today, finally happy and whole. Loved by myself and others for all those reasons.

What a gift that is.

~~~
The amazing collage pictured above was done by Gloria Martin at
 http://barefootmuse.blogspot.com/2010/01/paper-collage-portrait.html.

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Crumbs

I can barely begin to explain the tumble of emotions I have been through over the last three weeks. There is first and foremost the utter and complete happiness of being with my fiancé and making wedding plans. Plans I thought I would never make with a man I thought I would never meet. The only certainty in my life for so many years was sadness and the belief that it wasn’t going to get any better. I can honestly say that a day does not go by where I don’t stop for a moment at some point during the day and give thanks. I waited a long time for this happiness, and so did he. I sometimes think (and worry) that all brides and grooms must feel this way at the beginning when they walk down the aisle. No one knows for sure if they will last- if they won’t make it. How do I know my situation is different? All I can worry about is the now, and the now is wonderful. And after that, I know I can’t take one second for granted.

Planning my wedding has been more than I ever bargained for. Finding the florist, the photographer, and picking a caterer…all those details are daunting enough. Add a full time job and anything else into the mix and it gets overwhelming quickly. In the past, I have helped friends plan their weddings, have worn more bridesmaid dresses than I care to count, but nothing can compare to planning your own. It is more than picking out a white dress and asking friends to stand up for you. It is more than choosing colors and selecting flowers. There is so much emotion tied to your own wedding. Not just the love and commitment, but all the family decisions and involvement can complicate (or deepen) everything to a place you never imagined.

I have struggled with the situation over whether or not to have my father walk me down the aisle. My mother has been terribly hurt and completely unable to understand why I wouldn’t want him to accompany me at the church in November. Her level of denial still astounds me. She cannot go to a place where she has to see the reality of what my father’s alcoholism has done to our family, and the lasting effect it has had on me. Since I brought up the issue and expressed what I wanted, it has caused weeks of arguing, awkward conversations and tears on both ends. It would be easier, it seems, to give in. Again, it is only 30 feet and maybe 5 minutes, right?

I keep telling myself that. And even though I know it seems to my mother and maybe to everyone else that I am trying to punish or hurt my father, I can honestly say that is far from the truth. My decision is for me. I didn't truly realize it until all the talks with my mother recently. I also believe it won’t really hurt him- except maybe his pride. Maybe no one understands my reasons, and I have a difficult time expressing them. There is bitterness from me towards him, I think that is apparent in my past blog entries. There is pain and anger. A lot of that comes from the years I have spent in therapy and trying to heal. Years I feel that I ‘lost’ in my life because of it all. Going through the pain was enough, but losing time made it all seem to last forever.

But my reason for this decision is apart from that. I made promises to myself growing up—things I would do and have—things I would be one day. The love I would find, the life I would lead. And it has taken me so long to even begin to fulfill those promises. I feel as though now I am leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the little girl I was, leading her to where I am now. Finally, I am here. All of the pain was worth it. We made it. I made it.

I am proud of myself for getting through everything I have gotten through. I survived. Just barely. I am so thankful I did. And emotionally, I did that myself. I had friends and a therapist who helped me with the tools I needed to be able to fight, who held me up so I could walk through the door. But emotionally I had to get there myself. And I fought hard. I want to walk down that aisle knowing that in order for me to be here, to be in that church and say those vows, and find the peace and joy I have waited so long for, I did it. In spite of my father, in spite of setbacks and heartbreak. Somehow, I did it. And those steps down that aisle belong to me, each one of them.

To me, and the little girl I was, the little girl I made promises to- promises that have finally come true.

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