Her Favorite Store

 “Her Favorite Store”

“She shrieked and shrieked for her mother, but her mother was already there. Her mother was the monster.” – Holly Black

I was sitting in group therapy the other day listening to someone else share when I had a memory resurface out of nowhere. It hit me like a wave and knocked me over as if I were standing, wading by the shore and was taken down by the undertow.  The previous day I had gone with Wren and her good friend shoe shopping.  

Wren wanted to get a pair of thigh-high boots.  She asked me if I would help her pick them out, so off we went to shop for shoes.  We strutted into the store and stalked through the aisles of DSW looking for what she wanted.  We found some options in the sale section in the back and she plopped down to try on options while I pulled more boots out for her to try. She rejected some until she found the pair she liked.  She put them on and knew they were the right ones.  She knew because they made her feel herself and they changed the way she walked.  I knew what she meant.  I have a pair of cowboy boots that do that for me.  When I wear them I walk differently, like I own the room.  I had her walk the length of the room and she looked like a runway model, sashaying her way around, all boss-like and confident.  It was a great shopping experience capped off by lunch.

Fast-forward to group the next day and the tidal wave of repressed memory resurfacing… I am having a very different shopping experience with my own mother.  I am maybe eleven years old and we are in Al-Khobar in Saudi Arabia.  There were no stores in my own town of Dhahran apart from the commissary so we had to shop in Al-Khobar for everything else like clothes etc..

We had gone to buy shoes.  Because we were out of the main camp we had to cover up.  I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a skirt that went to my ankles.  I needed new shoes and as my mother browsed for shoes for herself among the aisles she had me get my feet measured by the Lebanese salesman.  He began measuring my feet, but as he was doing so his hand reached up under my skirt and it began moving up my leg.  He kept his eye on my mother and began to fondle me under my skirt.  I froze.  I did not know what was happening and I did not know what to do so I did nothing.  I was terrified, disgusted and confused.  My mother did not notice.  Eventually we bought shoes and left.

Once outside, I began to cry and my mother asked what was wrong.  I told her what had happened.  Her immediate response was to tell me to not tell my father.  She told me that he would “do something stupid and end up in jail” and it would “ruin all our lives”.  She made me promise over and over all the way home.  She didn’t comfort me or ask me if I was alright or hug me.  

The next time we went shopping in Al-Khobar, she steered me toward the shoe store and tried to go inside.  I refused and she became angry.  She insisted we go inside but I again refused.  She told me it was her favorite store and I was ruining her shopping trip.  I continued to refuse and she didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.  She would continue to try and force me to go back to that store every time we went shopping in Al-Khobar and I refused every time.  Every time she would get angry and stop talking to me.

I never told my father.

Betrayal

 

“Betrayal”

“Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”

― Mineko Iwasaki

Years ago, I watched a movie with John Travolta. It was called “The General’s Daughter,” and it wasn’t all that great.  Basically, Travolta is an undercover army detective tasked with solving the murder of a general’s daughter on an army base.  During the course of the movie, it is revealed that she had been raped years earlier, and her mentor tells Travolta that there is something worse than rape. Travolta asks what could possibly be worse than rape, and by the end of the movie, he understands that the betrayal of her father, who covers up the rape, is worse.  I remember watching this movie and feeling punched in the gut as I understood this on a molecular level.

On February 6th of this year, the alarm went off in our bedroom to let us know we needed to get ready for work.  But instead of getting up for work, I turned to Tony and told him I had relapsed and had been drinking for a while.  I then told him he needed to take me to the psych ward because I was suicidal and I had a plan.  He drove me to the hospital, and I stayed on the psych ward for ten days before transferring to rehab for a further thirty.  I make no excuses for drinking again, but I had begun to remember things; horrific things.  I will tell you that even as a therapist, I wasn’t sure about repressed memories until I experienced them for myself.  I always knew I was molested and by whom, but the details were fuzzy.  When I spoke at meetings and told my story, I would say that there was a lot about my childhood I did not remember, and I considered that a blessing.  But now it seems the memories are surfacing, and I cannot stop them.

I talked to a trauma therapist at the rehab and asked her why I pick up drinking when it is the last thing that I want to do.  She told me that because the memories are returning, she believes the little girl inside is seeking oblivion and doesn’t know of a better way to cope.  I don’t know how I feel about that, but I am exploring it.  What she said next has impacted me greatly.  She told me to stop chasing forgiveness.  She said, “Fuck forgiveness.  You can’t forgive an unforgivable act.”  She talked about allowing myself to get angry at my abuser, and then she said, “And now we have to talk about your parents”.  She told me they were supposed to protect me, and they didn’t.  They were supposed to defend me and, at the very least, help me after I told them, and they failed at every turn.  She told me not to let them off the hook with excuses like, “they were from a different time”, or, “they did the best they could”, or, “it was an impossible situation”.

I had never really looked at it that way before.  I had always been told by other therapists that I would never heal unless I could forgive.  Well, I don’t think I have ever truly been able to forgive.  Not him, and especially not them.

When I broke down and finally told them, my mother’s first words were, “Well, at least he never hit you”.  Let.  That.  Sink.  In.

We travelled extensively as a family living overseas.  They continued to put us in the same room in hotels.  Once, the hotel made a mistake with the reservation and gave us a room with a queen bed instead of two twins.  My dad’s solution to this was to put pillows down the middle of the bed as a vain attempt to separate us for the night.  Looking back at these examples now, I cannot fathom what they were thinking.  There was no humanity in these actions at all.  I was just a sacrificial lamb.  Did they care about me at all?

Ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you that I am very emotional.  I am a crier.  I cry in empathy.  I cry when I am happy, when I am sad, I cry when I am frustrated, I cry when I am watching commercials, and sometimes just because it is Thursday.  When my father died, I went to his funeral and sat through the whole thing dry-eyed.  When my mother died, I did not shed a tear.  There is a lot of anger there.  I just don’t know how to access it yet, but I am working on it.  I no longer want to misdirect it at myself.  I deserve better than that.

The Scratching on the Wall

“The Scratching on the Wall”

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." — Alfred Hitchcock

I am so tired.  I am tired all the time.  I tried to lock the door to my room earlier tonight

but my mother caught me and yelled at me again.  She shrieks every time she catches

me.  I don’t fully understand why it angers her when I lock my bedroom door but it isn’t

allowed.  On the nights when I can manage it I get uninterrupted sleep and it is so

glorious.  I worry that tonight will be one of those nights.

I am about to fall asleep when I hear it.  We share a wall.  His bedroom is next to mine. 

He scratches on the wall with his fingernails.  He does this on the nights that he comes. 

I don’t know why, but it is a forewarning of sorts.  It’s his way of telling me to get ready. 

“I’m on my way” it says.  The scratching is almost worse than what comes after.  My

gut clenches and I begin to go numb because I know what this will entail.  It means I

will suffer and my mind begins to blessedly drift and my body starts to shut down.

There have been countless nights like this one.  Countless nights of terror.  Countless

nights of no sleep.  Countless nights of being an object of perversion.  Countless nights

being left feeling empty and disgusted.  Countless nights being left to feel dirty and

unloved.  Countless nights to build up walls and tear down my self-esteem.  I already

feel I have no worth and at fourteen I no longer feel I have the right to dream of a future

that has any light.

On this night, when it is over, I have had enough.  I am angry and disgusted and

exhausted.  I wait until I am sure he is asleep and the house is quiet.  I am fueled by

rage.  I leave my room and go to the kitchen.  I stand in the light of the moon and search

for the largest knife I can find.  I creep to his room and up to his bed.  I stand over his

sleeping form.  My face is twitching with rage - murderous rage.  I hold the knife above

my head for ten seconds, twenty, thirty - I lose count.  It feels like an eternity.  He sleeps

on unknowing.  No one is aware of what I am doing but me and God.  And maybe it is

God who stops me, I don’t know.  I have a moment of clarity.  If I do this, this suffering

will stop, but a different suffering will follow.  My life will change forever and it won’t

be for good.  

I bring the knife back down to my side.  I stand there for a long time watching him

breathe and I cry silently.  Eventually I walk back to the kitchen and, with hands

shaking I return the knife to where I found it.  I stand there asking myself in disbelief

what I was thinking.  I am horrified by myself.  I could have killed someone.  I was fully

capable and had every intention of doing so.  The rage I felt was oceanic and I am

petrified.  I go back to bed disgusted by myself on a whole new level.

This is the night that I shut the door on anger.  I turn it in on myself rather than risk

hurting others.  This leads to stuffing my feelings with food.  It leads to drinking and

other forms of self-harm.  I often have suicidal thoughts and I begin to actively hate

myself.  I hurt myself over and over throughout the years, denying myself the grace I

so freely give to others.  This marks the beginning of most of the problems I cause

myself.

The abuse will continue for two more years.

Through the Blue Glass

“Through the Blue Glass”

“We've been shattered and reconstructed, told to make an effort every single day to pretend we

still function the way we're supposed to. But it's a lie, it's all a lie; every person, place, thing

and idea is a lie. I do not function properly. I am nothing more than the consequence of

catastrophe.”

― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

    I lay on the couch in the front room.  On the couch, we are not allowed to sit on -

in the front room, which we are not allowed to use.  It’s the middle of the night, and

I am watching the cars that occasionally drive by our house.  I’m catching the

reflection of the headlights through the blue Yemeni glass bottles in the front windows.

    My mother has been collecting these glass bottles for years, and the light that reflects

from the headlights calms me.  I do this on the nights he comes to my room and cuts

away at my innocence over and over again.  He then leaves me there, goes to his room,

and falls asleep as though nothing has happened, as though I don’t matter, have no

consequence, and my existence is just an extension of his perverted desires.  

    I am left to pick up my pieces.  I lay there on the forbidden couch, catching the pretty

blue rays, trying desperately to lull myself back into my own body.  I am trying to put

my pieces back together like a jigsaw puzzle.  Over time, though, more and more pieces

go missing, and the puzzle looks less and less like me.  

    On the forbidden couch in the room we aren’t allowed to use through the blue glass.

Ann

 

“Ann”

“The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, is that which rages in the place of dearest love.”

• Euripides

I found out on Labor Day that my mother passed away earlier that afternoon.

I didn’t know how to feel about it. My mother and I had not been in contact for nine years and all the things I feel are roiling around inside me, mixed together and brawling with each other.

I have been trying to write this piece since then. I have started it and stopped it several times. I spent a long time trying to find a quote that would fit and I settled on one that was very forgiving and kind. Then I could not keep writing and I was stuck. I realized that I was trying to make this piece more palatable for others to read. I don’t know if I wanted others to see me as less angry or if I wanted to spare people discomfort or what, but I couldn’t write because I wasn’t writing the truth.

The truth is that I am full of rage. I am so angry and bitter and I don’t do anger very well. I don’t like how anger feels and when I get angry I get scared. Not only am I angry, but I am angry with myself for being angry so I am all over the place.

When I was in graduate school we did an exercise where we did a family genogram. I dug deep into the stories I had been told and put down on paper the traumas, the addiction, the domestic violence, the sexual abuse and neglect as far back as I could remember. I discovered a pattern of sadness that went back several generations and I cried when I had to present it to the class. My thoughts were a scrambled mess and all I could think was, “this stops here”. 

After I came out of rehab the second time, I did extensive step-work and therapy. Forgive me, but at the time I thought I had everything all figured out. That turned out not to be true as I went back to rehab for a third time and have had to do even more trauma work. But at the time I thought I was essentially cured of all things and I was floating along on a fluffy cloud of pretty colors while my ego slowly inflated and I didn’t even notice. 

I remember getting a call from my brother one afternoon while I was working and my body started to shake. I asked my therapist why this continued to happen after I had come to a place of forgiveness and relative calm in my life. So why did I panic whenever I heard from my brother or my mother? My therapist explained that even though my mind had reached a place of acceptance, my body still remembered the traumas. 

I grew up wanting for nothing in terms of material things. I traveled around the world and went to an expensive boarding school but there was verbal abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and neglect. There are large portions of my childhood I don’t remember and I have to think that may be a blessing in the end.

My mother was mentally ill. I know that she was molested by her older brother. I know that she had OCD and severe anxiety and she could not cope with many things in her life. I know that her mental health or lack thereof, ruled our household. My father never challenged her and stood back and let things unfold around him. My brother had anxiety as well and he molested me. The ripples of sickness had staggering consequences.

I know that I have mental illness as well. I have depression, anxiety and substance use disorder along with severe PTSD. I have not been a model parent either. I have been absent from my own childrens’ lives at times while I have been away trying to get well. What I will give myself grace about however is the fact that I have gone away to try and get well and I have shared with my children what is wrong. I want the cycle to end with me and I want them to have a chance at a life free of the generational abuse and “sweep it under the carpet” mentality that has cast such a large shadow over my family tree.

I am now fifty years old and both my parents are now gone but I would say I haven’t really had them for years now. I want to be able to say forgiving things like “they did the best they could” but I’m not sure that I am there yet and I can’t say that I ever will be. What I can say is that I am grateful that my mother is no longer suffering from the crushing anxiety that plagued her all her life.

There are people who will read this and feel I am being unkind. There is pressure for people like me to remain in the role of the “good daughter”, “good sister” because “society says” we should. Forgive me once again, but fuck that. Just because someone holds the title of family member, that does not mean they are automatically kind and loving.  It does not mean that they earned the right to love you the way you deserve to be loved.

 And that is just it. I deserve to be loved. I always did and I didn’t get that as a child. Not as a daughter and not as a sister. I was used and abused and belittled and demeaned. I grew up in a fog of despair and secrecy that taught me I had no worth and I acted accordingly. I treated myself abominably for years and sometimes I still do. I have to remind myself of my worthiness often and it is hard and it is counter-intuitive and it shouldn’t be like this - not for anyone.

So my mother died on Labor Day and I am angry. I am angry she did not fight harder to overcome her demons. I am angry she wasn’t capable of being what I needed and deserved. I am angry she lost out on being what she could have been. I am angry my children did not get a grandmother worthy of their love. I am angry that I did not get to resolve these wounds. And I am angry that I am angry. I am also angry that I still love her.

Biscuit

 

 

“Biscuit”

 

“When someone is walking beside us, we have more courage to walk into the unknown and to risk the dark and messy places in our journey.” ― Henry Kimsey (House)

 

 

 

 

This week has been a little challenging for me.  I recognize that in the past, it would have been the kind of week that would have sent me into a tailspin, but today it caused some bumps and discomfort rather than a complete derailment.  I was talking to Joe this morning and was able to see I need to allow myself props for how far I have come. I don’t give myself credit enough and have to make it an intentional exercise.

I got some news about my mother this week that threw me off.  To be honest, any news about my mother throws me off.  I haven’t been in contact with her for years and so any contact with or about her is jarring at best.  I have a lot of mixed feelings about her to say the least. I also carry a lot of societal expectations about what a good daughter “should” do and perceive judgement from others about not being in contact with her. Of course others don’t know our story and don’t live inside my head and didn’t live my childhood and I can tell myself over and over again that I don’t owe anyone an explanation for my actions or lack thereof.  Yet the baggage of the “good girls should” still weighs me down from time-to-time. Understand I wish her no harm, in fact I hope she is well and I still love her on some primal level.  I just can’t be around her because it causes me physical and emotional distress of epic proportion.  I deserve to be happy and I couldn’t do that when we were in contact and I also saw that having her in my children’s lives was not going to be healthy for them at all.

Beyond this news about my mother, I had a few instances at work where I began to feel like an imposter. I was challenged by a few clients and this week it stung.  I wasn’t as able to not take it personally and I began to question my capabilities as a therapist.  My insecurities grew inside my head and crowded out the work I know I have done with clients who have made progress or whose lives have improved.  Momentarily blinded by my affect, I made it through the rest of the week by leaning on my colleagues in peer supervision and talking through what I was feeling. In fact, I made it through the week in general by leaning on others.  I went to meetings, I talked to my best friend, Tony, Frank and of course Joe. 

This is what brings me to Biscuit.  Biscuit is the family dog.  She is a golden retriever we got in 2011.  She lives at Frank’s house even though I was the one who bought her at a charity auction (when I was drunk – long story for another day). Frank is her person and she follows him everywhere. She is loving and sweet if not too bright. She is an old girl now and you can see from the picture, her muzzle is lovely and frosted. She is going deaf and she has some trouble with her joints that makes it hard for her to get up and down the stairs now. Frank bought some carpeted stair runners for her so it’s easier for her to get a good footing and she has an orthopedic dog bed on a platform.         

What happens with Biscuit now is that she will come down the stairs in the morning when Wren feeds her and lets her outside.  When she has finished this part of her routine she wants to go back upstairs to be with Frank but she gets stuck at the bottom of the stairs.  She sits in the hallway and barks and complains until someone comes down and gets her.  You don’t have to carry or lift her, you just have to give her words of encouragement, walk up the stairs beside her and sometimes place your hand on her back or pat her and then she can do it.    

I realized that if nothing else, I do this week in and week out for my clients and I do this really well.  If I never get to evidence-based practices in a session, or work on a skill or confront a fear or process a trauma… I ALWAYS walk beside them.  I always give them words of encouragement and show them they can do more than they think they can. 

All Biscuit needs is moral support and it is what everyone needs in life – it’s what I needed this week.

Halfway There

 

 

“Halfway There”

 

“Knowledge will give you power, but character, respect.” ― Bruce Lee

 

 

 

I just got home from karate.  Tonight was a belt test night.  I can’t say that I enjoy belt testing.  It is a night of intense work-out and we don’t get a break.  We are constantly on the move: punching, kicking, running, flutter kicks, planking, self-defense tests, katas and it goes in rotations over and over again.  You have to remember nine self-defenses that you have learned since the last belt test three months ago and this round we did a12-count bo staff kata. Right now everything hurts… seriously, my hair hurts.

But, what I can tell you is that I passed.  I feel a great sense of accomplishment and a little bit of bewilderment at the same time.  Dermot was there tonight as well.  He tested last night and passed and tested again tonight and passed but is one class short of having the required attendance to earn his belt and move up so will have to wait until next week to receive his actual belt.  I was able to get my blue belt (pictured atop my bo staff) and Dermot pointed out to me that the blue belt means I am halfway to getting my black belt now.

The fact that I have made it this far honestly astounds me.  There are nights I don’t want to go to karate.  There are times I have to talk myself into it and times I don’t manage it.  There are times on Saturday mornings I would really rather not be heading out the door for a three-hour stint at the studio but I do it anyway (for the most part).  I can tell you though that even if I may not always feel good going to the studio, I ALWAYS feel better leaving.

Dermot got me involved in karate.  I started with a free month for parents a couple of years ago.  I had some time off during a relapse but came back and got involved again once I got back into recovery.  Once Dermot had been instructing for a while, he convinced me to take a training certification class and now I’m an instructor for the 3 to 6 year olds and I love it.  If a few years ago you would have told me I would be exercising regularly, part of an extended family of inclusive and supportive people and feeling as though my self-respect was getting an infusion each week I would not have believed you. 

See it isn’t easy.  I have to work at it.  I have to set goals and attain them.  I have to fail and get back up and try again.  I have to accept constructive criticism and learn from it.  One of the people I have to accept that constructive criticism from is my own son – AND I have to call him sir.  But things that aren’t easy and things you have to work for are all the sweeter once attained.

The blue belt represents respect and that is one of the things karate is teaching me.  I have respect for myself again and that is a priceless gift to re-gain.