Nighttime

Nighttime. A time to say goodbye to the day. An ending with a promise of a new  beginning of a tomorrow. A clean slate to begin again. A chance to make things new. To get through it with mistakes. To love and be loved.
Nighttime, when the day light slowly slips away and leaves you in total darkness. Not unlike our lives, the life slipping away from us with every tick of the clock. For some they face the unknown darkness, and for others it is the promise of a different kind of day. A day when you really won’t make mistakes and you will be loved in an unimaginable way. A way we are loved now, but don’t always feel it.

Nighttime, when the shadows come out and the fear with them. Sometimes it is a game of “This Is Your Life” and you relive things you would rather forget. Yet every night the same re-run plays. It is because of the OCD. Obsessive thoughts brought about by extreme anxiety, which gets triggered by my C-PTSD, which was caused by abuse that many times I would call torture.

The night and the shadows scare me. The re-runs terrify me. They haunt me constantly and I want to find the off switch. Perhaps it will take until the day I stand before my Saviour for him to reach in and switch it off. I don’t know. I do know that I have taken every course, therapy, self-help, prayer, and then some to get rid of it. Exercise, medications, and diet but yet it remains. I have been informed many times that it will likely not go away. I will improve but not get better. The PTSD will remain and as I get into the emotional parts of my injuries it will become harder. What could possibly be harder? Those words scare the bones out of my flesh and leave me a bowl of jelly on the floor. Harder? I don’t know if I have any more “harder” in me.

Nighttime. Quiet. Peaceful. A time of rest. I lie in bed, still; and thoughts race around like a tornado in my brain. For hours I try to still them, but they come faster than I can pack them away. Like Lucy trying to pack chocolates on a conveyor belt. They come too fast and overwhelm me. Tears flow, my heart feels like it will either pop out of my chest or stop beating. I want a hug and to be held but I don’t want to upset and concern my husband who has his own heart trouble. This is not his battle, it is mine. He gets enough of the collateral damage of my life.

When I become exhausted, usually as the light starts to come up I start to drop off. That very moment when you cross that conscious state from being awake to sleep, everything in my body jumps. My arms, legs, and heart and I wake up with the fear that I am about to die or am dying. I have to bite my tongue not to scream. My MNM used to send me to bed and tell me to think of a good reason why she shouldn’t kill me in the morning since I was of no use to anyone. Give her a reason why I should live. I would lie in bed and think and all I could think of was all the bad things she told me and I knew that tomorrow I would die. That is what I believed. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t know any good in me that I could tell her. I would cry and eventually fall asleep. Then I would suddenly and shockingly be yanked out bed by my hair with her screaming at me that I obviously didn’t want to live. I would cry and beg her “Yes I do mommy, Yes, I want to live, please don’t hurt me, please mommy don’t hurt me!” She would shout at me and slap me and yell at me “Liar! You are such a liar! If you really wanted to live you would be thinking of a reason. Instead you are sleeping. You obviously don’t care. If YOU don’t care, why should I?” This conversation, if you can call it that; would go on for what seemed forever, with her slapping me, pulling my hair, and asking these crazy double bind questions that would get me in trouble no matter what I answered.

“If you wanted you live you wouldn’t be sleeping.”

    - yes, I want to live

“Then why are you sleeping. It must be that you don’t care or you don’t give a s*** about me?

    I care, I just fell asleep.

“So you care, then you don’t give a s*** about me! You should be proud of yourself. How can you say that to your mother!”   

    I do care. I love you.

“If you cared about me, if you loved me, you would listen to what I ask you. I asked you to stay awake and think of a reason why you should live and you couldn’t even do that. Why should I care about your life if you don’t? Huh? Tell me!”

    Mom, I just got tired and fell asleep. I don’t know why. I tried really hard.

Well, you obviously didn’t try hard enough. If you don’t care, I don’t care. You don’t care s*** about me since you couldn’t do one simple thing I asked you, so why should I care about you. Get back into bed and you know what will happen in the morning. And shut the f*** up or I’ll do it now. The choice is yours. What do you want? Now or in the morning.





The double bind questions kept coming. I didn't know what was real, or unreal. Day after day. Unrelenting. Fear. Confusion. Totally Controlled. Gail Meyer wrote a great article on double-binds.

These are the memories that come in my sleep. Sometimes I do fall asleep, deeply; and will wake up screaming, and in absolute terror. I’m surprised the neighbours haven’t called the police. My honey grabs and holds me and then I wake up and know where I am. I’m good. I can fall right back to sleep exhausted, but the house is in an uproar. These emotions are the ones I need to look at and they scare the spit out of me.

Last therapy I learned an interesting thing, and a very frightening one. It is the next door on the road. The emotional one. When I talk about my past I dissociate. I try very hard to be in the present but I go up to the right corner of the room. The left brain apparently controls cognitive thought, so by looking to the right I can access that memory vocally. The therapist mentioned that I always look to the left, but asked where “I” was. She said that my thought were there (where I looked) but where was I? I know that sounds all very freaky and strange but it eventually made sense. I stopped and thought about it, because I always thought that was where I was. Slowly the realization came that I was in the other corner. Laurel asked me if I could look at her and my heart stopped and my tears came. I had no voice. I put my hand up to block my vision from that corner of the room and turned my head completely away.

Later I tried to turn that way, but my hand stayed to block my vision and I shook, and swallowed and blinked back the tears that came faster than I could stop them. For the rest of that session I kept my left hand up blocking my vision from the left side of the room.

My therapist told me that the left brain contains the emotions, and the emotional me, with all the buried emotions was in the corner on the left. The thought of looking at her terrifies me. I have tried a number of times and I am awash in tears, fear, panic, and things I know I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to go there. I don’t know if I can do it. It was so hard to live it that I don’t know if I can or are willing to relive it. I am really struggling with this part, but I do know I will go forward. Only because God is on my side.

If God brings you to it, he Will bring you through it.
Happy moments, praise God.
Difficult moments, seek God.
Quiet moments worship God.
Painful moments, trust God.
Every moment, thank God.

And tomorrow will be another day in God’s kingdom. Either my temporary home or my permanent home. Either way, I am a winner.

Forgiving the Unforgivable

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is such a big word. Not just in the number of letters, but the conscious and purposeful decision to do something for someone else that you think they don't deserve. To forgive someone who has done something that you believe with your entire being is unforgivable is an almost insurmountable task.

I have heard it said many times that some things are not forgivable. They just aren't. Well, that may be true for some folks but for me it was not an option. I had to forgive the unforgivable for my own sanity. To be free of the woman who haunted my every breath, my very being. She made me want to die, and to attempt suicide. She barricaded us in rooms and threatened to kill us with knives, with rifles. She tied us to chairs and built fires on the floor. She beat us until we bled, and locked us in cellars. Unforgivable. I wanted her to pay and I wanted to be free. The only way I knew to be free was to set her free. To do the unforgivable and forgive.

I started to pray to God and ask him to help me to forgive her. I would feel physically ill and immediately tell God that I didn't mean a word I had said to him. That I didn't want what I had asked. That I wanted her to suffer and to pay for what she did. And then I would ask Him to make me willing to forgive her. I would clench me teeth and spit the words out. I would throw up. I would shout that I was telling him lies and would never forgive her, but always end with "Help me even though I don't mean it and don't want you to."

For years I prayed like this. It seemed like God wasn't taking me seriously, but how could he? How serious was my prayer? For me, it was serious. Deadly serious. I knew that God could forgive everything and that included me, who could not forgive. I read that we would be forgiven according to the measure that we forgave. Well now, that was interesting. I wanted to be completely forgiven of all I had ever done wrong, so I had to forgive just as he forgave.

I wrote poems, meditated, prayed, pleaded, bargained, and had tantrums. Somewhere along the way I began to soften. I didn't feel sick anymore. I could say that I meant it and I believed it. I would still get angry that I couldn't just forget about her. To lock her away where no body would be touched by the evil in her again, but I didn't really want that. I wanted to have peace in my life and to be happy, and I wanted the same for her. I really wanted that. Eventually I thought I had come to the place where I could honestly say that I forgave her. Most of the anger had gone and I didn't have that horrible bitterness and rage filled moments when I wanted to hurt her or worse. I had made tremendous progress.

One day, while in my car and listening to Praise Radio they were talking about forgiveness. The person being interviewed was asked how you knew that you had forgiven someone.  He replied that you would know when you no longer had the desire to talk about them in order to bring them shame. WOW! That was some food for thought. I still talked about my mom. I wore the stories like badges of honor. I still had some work to do. Back on my knees.

More years go by and my life hit some very bad bumps. I became estranged from my children. They were angry about my writing and the attention I had got. They felt I was just as bad as my mom and didn't deserve friends. They really have no idea, and they had no desire to hear my story. There life was not good. There father and I were alcoholics, and I had my undiagnosed anxiety, OCD, and C-PTSD. Not a good environment to raise children. I yelled a lot because of the anxiety. I quit drinking in 1989 and spent the next 20+ years doing everything I could to make it up. Everything. I apologized, wrote letters, spoke publicly, let them rage at me, whatever it took, I would take it, because they had deserved better. Until 2010 when I wrote my first story of my life and then my world went upside down.

It was at this lowest point of my life mourning and grieving the relationship of my children that I had given my life. I would have done anything to take the hurt away from them and make it better, but nothing I did was enough. They kept taking more and more. My psychiatrist said that sometimes children who grow up in less than perfect homes and one parent or the other sees the error of their ways and tries to make it up, well; it does something to the children. He said sometimes they become like loan sharks. They don't ever want the debt paid because they like living off the interest. Hmmm... He said close the bank.

From his words I see that I had started a pattern. Whatever they said or did that was hurtful, I let it be; because I thought I deserved it. Over 20 years it became a way of life. A very unhealthy way of life. I had to let them go. I wasn't willing to pay that price any longer. It still hurts very much.

So while in this place of deep hurt and deep pain, of feeling the loss of my babies, my children I heard God. Through my sobs of pain I heard God say to me that my mother was His child and he was crying for her, just as I was crying for mine. I felt his tears mingle with mine on my cheek and I cried for my mom. I cried because I really loved her. I cried and prayed that she would come home to her father, just as I wanted my children to come to their mother. I loved her like I loved my babies. I was free. Really free. Through my guilt and my deep pain God taught me love and real forgiveness. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Yes, all things are forgivable. You have to work at it. Even when you don't believe it and don't want it, because God makes all things possible.

You see, I was a slave to hatred, but now I have been freed to walk in love and forgiveness.

"You have been called to live in freedom. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. Walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." (Galatians 5:13-14,16)

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matthew 6:14-15)

A Delusional Mind and Truth

Truth. Didn't Pilate ask Claudia "What is truth?"  Is truth what we see in front of our eyes, or is truth something that awaits us in the future. Or is it both. Now and later. But what is truth if two people look at the same thing and see different things. Which of the two is viewing the truth. They are both experiencing their own truth, but only one is real. How do you let the one who experiences the lie know that they are not experiencing truth. I think it is so complicated.

My mom was talking to me on the phone yesterday. She has been in a great deal of pain with her heart and back and was an emotional wreck. Or at least that is how it sounded. With a malignant narcissist psychopath, you never know what is real and not real so I tread very cautiously. The previous week she had been in a similar state but had been talking about ending her life because she is so F****** tired of this she'd rather be dead. I reminded her that she had said she wanted to be with her daughters for a long time now that we were together. She paused for a split second to recover and tossed back "Well, of course I do, but would you want to live like this?" Of course no one wants to live in pain and mom's pain would be a lot less if she was in a home where nurses would help her. But she would rather play the martyr and get the attention for being a long suffering woman. To get the strokes that she equates with love "How do you manage?", "You are such a strong woman." She gloats in the light of the praising words. What they don't know is how abusive my MNM is when they leave. The air is filled with filty words screamed between clenched teeth. "Do that, do this, not that! This! Go here, go there, go get that."  It never stops. I told her she had to stop cursing. That she had wonderful people who are trying to move heaven and heart for her and she says the F word at them. She says, "I know, they just make me mad." How do they make her mad, how could they possibly make her mad I inquire. "Well, they just don't do the things they way I want them done and I get mad." That's her world. She has gone through 3 housekeepers in 8 weeks. They only come every 2 weeks, so that is an indication of how demanding she is.

So back to the phone call. And truth. She starts to sob an academy award performance of devastation and pain. I almost fell for it until she said "Now that I have found my daughters I don't want them to leave. I am so afraid you'll go away again." Then the floor fell out from under my feet. That whole statement was a lie. Anyone listening would have thought, "Oh that poor woman. How could her family leave her alone like that? Thank goodness she found them!" Anyone in hearing distance would be recruited as a flying monkey in my mother life of delusions. I wanted to pick up a pillow and smother her lying manipulating lips that sound like they speak truth.

The truth:

1 Now that I have found my daughters - She did not find us. A long-time flying monkey friend of my mom's get asking for numbers and addresses of her kids so she could contact us and mom kept saying no. This woman went through my mother's drawers and found an address book and was able to get in touch with my sister. My sister called me and I called my mom.

2. I'm so afraid you'll go away again - We never went anywhere. My mother moved and had an unlisted number. We knew the area she lived but did not know where. We looked and tried to find her but had no luck.

3. I don't want them to leave - Only when it suits her. I have phoned and her refuse my calls for up to 7 days. When I told he she was acting like a child she refused to call me for 3 weeks. She only wants us if we dance to her wants and needs.

To my mom, he statement is the truth. It is the truth because of her malignant narcissism. We are an extension of her being, her emotions, her thoughts, her brains. What she is thinking or feeling must be what we are thinking and feeling. If it is not the same, she is mad. Angry. She suffers narcissistic injury which manifests in huge, out of control rages. But to her it is real. She looks into her broken mirror and she sees the warped reflections of her brokenness and it is real. The rest of us look at the world and everything in and around it. We include others in our reflections of life and thereby come to a more comprehensive conclusion of life and situations. My mom's world is only her broken reflection, and to her I don't even exist. I am hidden behind the broken mirror of her life.

I went through the above with her. I sat beside her and held her hand and told her it was I who called her, that it was she who moved away. I waited for her to say something, and she said "Anyway, we're here now." Just a dismissal of the facts. Always the truth gets discounted, dismissed, argued, or raged away. Anyway, what is truth?

What is truth?
It is a hard question to answer, but Jesus said "I am the way the truth, and the life". Know Him and you will come to know the truth. Jesus also came to set the prisoners free. I was a prisoner of lies and deception for a very long time. The veils are being lifted and the scales are falling from eyes. I see my mom and who she is and I love more than I ever have. I have to. She is God's child too. Just like me. We are both in need of healing.

Hands of Harm, and Hands of Beauty

Hands are the unspoken voice of a life and they leave memories in the recipient’s brain just as words do. Strong words and soft words. Evil words and comforting words.

Hands that touch with the softest feel of a slow exhaled breath. Hands that touch and strike with a fury that was not unlike Katrina. Items flying through the air and striking the body willy-nilly. Big and small objects, let them strike where they may. Hands that they say can squeeze blood from a stone.

Hands with fingers that gently catch a falling tear, then those same hands striking the eye and turning it ugly colors not found in rainbows. How we, the wounded; prayed for rainbows on those stormy days.

Hands that are soft and delicate and can pull a needle through the finest, most delicate lace. A surgeon with hands so gentle and firm that can sew a vein, the size of a hair; back together again.

Hands, hard and weathered, full of callouses after years of hard physical labour. Strong hands. Kind hands.

Old hand, withered and twisted with arthritis, yet still able to express love and gentleness, or bitterness.

All it takes is one finger to come up and point or shake at your direction and no words need to be spoken. I have them memorized.  They all start with “YOU!”

YOU caused this!
YOU did this!
YOU make me mad!
YOU are a waste of space!
YOU are going to get it, pay for it, wish you dead, wish you were never born, wish you had done what I told you.
YOU are no good, worthless, a waste of good air, unlovable, unwanted, a disappointment, a shame, an embarrassment.

The negatives go on ad nauseum. They never stop. OCD with its obsessive thoughts make sure I never forget. They go around and around, day and night, night and day. Never ceasing, never ending.

The hands, that reach out to hold a tiny baby and cradle it with love. Hands that reach out to brush a lock of hair from your face. Hands that reach out in comfort when in pain. Hands that hold yours and keep you safe and unafraid. Hands that tuck you in and take care of you. How I longed for them.

My memories of hands are painful. They struck at me and hurt me. They would fly when my back was turned and knock me across the room. They struck me in the mouth, the face, the head, the stomach, my back, my butt, and my legs. They pulled out my hair and knocked out a tooth. They left bruises and wounds all over my body. But most of all they struck me deep in my heart. My physical wounds healed a long time ago, but the wounds of my heart remain. It is a painful process to heal from a fear center that is on all the time. That part of my primal cortex that should have made connections that told me the world was safe, did not form. Instead, my fear center grew bigger with every assault made on my soul, my heart, and my body. Now I am trying to repair it which is not an easy fear. At 60 years of age I am trying to rewire my brain in the way it should have been done when I came wet and wailing into the world. I’m afraid abuse is not something you “get over”. I don’t dwell on it, and I certainly don’t try to think about it, but the chemicals that flow let me know it exists. It exists and it is taking my life. I want to stop that and reverse that. I want to win this battle. I don’t want to die over something I did not choose to have done to me. I don’t want my mother to win. I don’t want to be destroyed by her.

So hands pull out they tiny crying infant and hands place the old and tired, once tiny child; in the ground when their day is done. What did that child do with their hands?

My hands were uncertain. I was afraid of them. Afraid that they would be like my mom’s. Oh my mom did have some good in her hands. She was great cook, baker, and a great canner. Second to none. Yet I had none of that desire in me. My desire to not be like her included her kitchen skills. Cooking causes emotional flashbacks which are painful and difficult to deal with, so I try not to cook.

Instead, I create beauty. From a life that was so ugly, I wanted beauty. I played the trumpet. Made music, got toes tapping. I taught myself guitar and autoharp. I play badly but it sounds beautiful to me. It calms my heart. It brings peace to my soul. Some have made fun of my singing and playing but they have no idea what it does for me. The majority of people encourage me so I can’t be that bad. The fingers that gently caress the strings which then vibrate in such beautiful harmony transport me to heaven. There are few things more beautiful.

Then I create things. I do needle point, petit point, cross stitch, sew, crochet, and knit. I made things. All kinds of things. For friends and enemies, for people I don’t know. I give it away. It makes them happy and it makes me even happier. I love seeing the intricate doilies or lace patterns coming together. Sometimes they are so yummy looking it’s like looking at chocolate and I want to eat them! Oh, the adorable little hats for the preemie babies. I want to hold and cuddle them all and think I could manage at least a dozen at one time. Love goes in every stitch. The hats I have made for cancer patients. Oh those dear ladies are so brave. Prayers go with every one and I am so happy to see the smiling faces of those that made it.

Yes, I lived with evil and come out the other side. A little battered and bruised but I made it. She did not make me like her. I want to love the world. Did I mess up along the way and make mistakes. You bet I did. How could I not? If it took almost 60 years for the doctors to diagnose me, how could I be expected to know when I had my first child at 19. I knew what I wanted. I just didn’t know how to get there, and the harder I tried, the further away it got. Now I understand. That is exactly the ways c-PTSD, Anxiety, and OCD, along with panic disorder work. I didn’t know what it was to feel good until I felt good.

If you are in a relationship with an MNPD please seek help. Even if they have left, please get help. You need it and you owe it to yourself. They leave seeds of doubt that will grow and flourish and they need to be weeded out and it calls for a professional. You really cannot do it on your own.

Be good to yourselves my fellow world travellers. You are worth it.

“Let us think of the hands of Jesus,” he said, “when he touched the sick and would cure them. … They are the hands of God: They cure us. I can’t imagine God slapping us. I can’t imagine it.”

He added, “Reproaching us, yes, I can imagine, because he does that! But he never, never hurts us. Never. He caresses us.”  - Pope Francis

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-francis-entrust-yourself-to-the-loving-hands-that-formed-you#ixzz3BGUEBpym

My Life

This is a reprint of an article that I wrote in 2010. At that time, after I posted it; my family was outraged. How dare I air our "shit" in public. How dare I speak of the bad things done to me without telling of the bad things I had done. When told I was doing it on the recommendation of a therapist the comment was "Your therapist is an ass."  After that my family decided to publically ridicule me. They said I deserved it for putting my crap out there. It was "MY" crap. I should be able to tell my own story without fear. Without having to tell yours. What happened was I went into a pretty severe depression for more than 2 years. I don't know how I survived.. It had to be God and I give him the glory as nothing else was able to reach my mind. It was Him and I in a battle for my life. I reprint it below.

Me at Four, even then I never smiled

 I would look at my brother with love and encouragement “you can do it”. My eyes, brimming with tears so heavy that I didn’t dare blink unless a tear would stray down my face and it would all start again. I couldn’t swallow because of the enormous lump in my throat. I think that lump was full of the tears I couldn’t cry that got collected on the inside. My hand would reach out to hold his and comfort him, but then I wonder if I did it because I wanted to live. If he lost it, we were doomed. If I lost it we were doomed. I didn’t want to die, but today could be they day. Then there were the days when I really hoped that line would be crossed so I never had to go through that hurt, the pain of the beatings, the screaming, the terror and the fear.

My profile picture shows a little girl that already knew what her life would be and she’s sad and she is vigilante. I want to rescue her! Shortly after this photo was taken we moved to a tiny mountain town. We had an airstream trailer that dad was working on. We heard the biggest explosion and it was like the air was sucked out of the room. My dad came to the door and he was badly burned. My dad was in shock, he didn’t speak, his eyes were wide, and he stood like Jesus with his arms outstreached with his skin all pink, red, and black, and falling off. My brother and I started to cry.

Later my mom came home without my dad and my brother and I start to cry again. I was just 3 (almost 4) and he was only 1 (almost 2). Well, she started to scream at us for crying. That she wasn’t going to get stuck with a bunch of crybabies and we better hope that he gets better, because if he didn’t, we didn’t have a mom either. We really started to cry and she hit us and pulled out hair and told us to shut up. We ended up on the floor in a corner, clinging to each other. I was whispering to my baby brother that it was okay and that I wouldn’t let her hurt him and I would take care of him. I told him that I loved him and he didn’t have to cry. He nodded his head, and his finger came up to take away a tear that rolled down my face. She told us to come out of the corner and come eat our dinner. As we got close to her she yanked us by the arms and we started to cry again. Then it started. She told us she warned us and obviously we didn’t want her for a mother. She tied us to the kitchen chairs and then built a fire in middle of the kitchen and then left the house. I can’t tell you the depth of our fear, the screams and screams, that wouldn’t stop. The fear I had for my brother, who was just a tiny baby. I was supposed to protect him. She eventually came back because she “loved us”. If we promised to be good and not cry, she would put out the fire. This is the first memory I have of my life on earth.

Later ended up being abandoned in a hotel room in Calgary. I don’t know how long we were there until the police came. They took us the Calgary Creche orphanage and when they tried to take my brother from my arms I screamed and fought and they decided to let us stay together. By morning, we were in separate rooms. More people telling us lies. There was a plate glass window that separated boys from girls, and I could see my brother crying. I went over there and climbed in the crib with him so he wouldn’t be afraid . The nuns found me and beat my butt and made me feel so ashamed, because “Girls don’t sleep with boys”.  Are you kidding me? I was 4 and he was 2. We were siblings! I had orders from the “Punisher” to take care of him. Do you have any idea what she can do to me? Eventually we went back home with her. I don’t know how or why. I had just turned 5.

We moved into the house in small prairie town. It had a dirt cellar which became our place of terror. We would get pushed into the cellar and the trap door closed. There was no light as the bulb had been removed and we would stand there in the dark. We knew there were salamanders and spiders and were too afraid to sit on the steps, because there were webs behind them, and possibly even mice. Hours and hours and hours. Our legs would ache. We’d have to pee!! We’d be hungry, tired, and sometimes terrified. Something would brush you leg, or arm, face and the fear was bigger than anything you could imagine. The screams were primal and came from somewhere so deep within our souls. And no one heard them. Not a single person. The next favourite place was the coal shed. I would have to stand in the coal shed with my shoes, and white socks. I’d be told to not move and if I got dirty, well...The slightest move caused coal dust to rise up in the air. I never won this one. From the shed to a beating. That’s the way it went. I learned to disassociate from the beatings and the horror. It was like I was watching it from somewhere else and they couldn’t get me. A verse from a poem I wrote:

You never touched that little girl

She’s safe somewhere in a another world

I kept her safe from your evil hands

And the things that she can’t understand
I taught her how to run and hide
And locked her somewhere safe inside

Many bad things happened in that house. We then moved to the big house. Let’s see. In that house my mother stabbed my father with a knife. We then moved to another province and life was even worse if you can imagine.

There is a story that has been in our family about me pinching my sister. It was blown way out of proportion to what actually happened. Yes, I pinched her. What sibling hasn’t pinched, poked, or done something to their sibling? But this pinching has been heaped on me by mother about what a horrible nasty person and related and embellished to my sister. It was a Pinch!! One Pinch!! My sister was were really annoying that day, and I pinched her! End of story. I am sorry. What wasn’t told was another day, that dreadful horrible day, when I didn’t clean the kitchen to her specification. You know how she could always find a finger print, a hair. She told me that day that if I didn’t do it proper she would kill me. Well, it wasn’t proper. I’m now bargaining for my life, but she has other plans. Since it was my fault, and since I would be dead, then she didn’t want any of her kids and would kill them all. Since it was my fault, I would get to watch her. She picked up my sister who was just a few months old and the knife was above her head and I started screaming and sceaming and screaming.  I could not stop and I pushed her. She yelled at me to stop, but I couldn’t, then she said she would kill me first and shut me up and she grabbed me and the knife was above me and still I scream. I scream until everything goes black and I don’t remember. Then there were the days with guns when she was going to kill our stepfather. “Don’t let him in” she says. If you let him in, I will have to kill you too.” We were beaten so hard with the belt and the piece of conveyor belt, that not only were there welts, but the skin would break and we would bleed. During those times we would be kept home from school. When she did send us back to school, the punishment would continue. We weren’t allowed to bath, or change our clothes. We wore the same things day after day. She would do spot visits to school, with “I forget to give them their lunch”, “They forgot a book”, etc., so she could check if we changed on the way to school.

Then there was the day when I was nine, when she made me watch her die. I was a few minutes late coming home from school, so therefore I didn’t love her. If I loved her I would do what she said. If I didn’t love her, then she didn’t want to live. She told me to sit on the chair and not leave it. She had a knife and told me if I got off the chair she would kill me instead. She reclined on the couch and took a bunch of pills and started to die. I pleaded with her, I wanted to get help and every time I went to stand up, she raised the knife.  My dad got home in time to take her to the hospital. She spent a long time in the hospital

My dad worked out of town a lot. He built roads, dams, worked on oil rigs, logged, farmed. We didn’t see him often, so I don’t think he had any clue. He was always good to us. We loved him very much. Our parents divorced when I as 10 and only saw my dad once more before died when I was 13. My mother hid us from him.

My brother and I shared some really hard things. There were six of us who were severely abused, but it was a little different with the two of us. We were the eldest and the first. We shared secrets that we have never told to the world, for we were sure that no person would believe us. He was 11 and I was 13 when we were told it appeared that we had PTSD. When I was 17 and he was 15 we were told that we did had PTSD. That is when we both left our house of horror. What led up to that event was a particularly bad day for me. I wasn’t allowed to go to school, and there was screaming and the proverbial “mopping of the floor” with me. Right at 9 she told me to get my sorry butt off to school and to get out of her sight. I opened the cupboard and saw her pills and took every one of them and left for school, but instead went into the bush to die. My brother Lawrence had had a bad feeling when he left for school and waited for me. He knew. He got me to help, came with me to the hospital. The doctor talked to us and told us of PTSD. We knew our lives would never be the same. I went into the foster system, and he went to grandmas. He no longer would be beaten every singe morning. Every day he had the crap beaten out of him. I am grateful that he knew what would happen that morning, as I didn’t. We always had a close and spiritual connection, and I really miss him.

Years later I was cleaning my basement and I wanted to watch a show at 5 pm. Right about that time I got really sick. I don’t know what came over me, but I was really sick and had terrible pain in my stomach. It lasted for about 2.5 hours. About 30 minutes later the phone rang. It was a doctor in Lethbridge who called to say 3 hours earlier, my brother had been in a motorcycle accident and had died on the operating room table about ½ hour before. That spiritual connection was always there. He was 27 years old.

I have done the counseling, the psychiatrists, whatever has been suggested. I have overcome. I have moved on. I made it!! They didn’t win. Those that did the beatings, those that molested me, didn’t succeed. Now it seems the effects of Child Abuse are far reaching. If you have PTSD, it apparently never goes away. I never knew that. You can learn to control the emotional aspects, but the physical ones, you can’t. The dizziness, rapid heart rate, stomach, colon, inability to sleep is all PTSD and they were able to measure the amounts of chemical produced by me. They said when you experience a severe trauma, sometimes a switch gets turned on your DNA and it doesn’t get turned off. My body is so used to the flight or flight and it can not differentiate between good stress or bad stress. Other chemicals as well are all out of balance, that’s why the tremors and the dizziness, among others.  I am stunned that still goes on 40 years after I was set free. Is there such a thing a freedom?

The proof of some of it. My mom would take pictures of us. Here I am dressed in a diaper and pair of rubber paints after having a bed wetting accident. She was making fun of me in my princess headband with the rhinestones and wearing a diaper. She was asking me if she thought I was pretty. She said she was sending it to my teacher, and to the kids at school. She was sending to my grandma and grandpa, my aunts and my uncles, and all my cousins to show them what a beautiful crybaby princess I was in my diaper and rubber pants. A princess who "pissed the bed." I should be so proud of myself. Later on she sent me out the door just like that to go to school. I fighting and screaming to get back in the house. After a while she relents and lets me in to dress in proper clothes, but the horror for me, remained.

My beloved brother washing his clothes and blankets after his bed wetting accident. He must have been sick this day as he messed his pajamas. Later, my mother smeared the feces over his face. There is a photo of that but it is to disgusting to post. Just writing the words is disgusting enough. He is crying his poor heart out. How this could happen is beyond me. I am on the chair in the background with me feet up. I must have been "bad" as the only time my feet were up and on the chair is when I had to sleep on the chair. I tended to swing my legs and would bang the rungs, so I had to keep my feet up. To those in the world who claim it wasn't so bad, this is just a tiny peek at our lives. It was so much worse than this.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I will overcome this too. The abusers have no power over me. None!! I have forgiven them, it now between them and God. I am praying for healing for my body that remembers the abuse. The things I cannot control.

“They have greatly oppressed me from my youth, but they have not gained the victory over me.  Plowmen have plowed my back and made their furrows long.  But the Lord is righteous; he has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.”  Psalm 129:2-4