We're All Lost

I was talking to my MNPD mother on the phone yesterday. Our relationship has had another bump or mountain in our road. I say “our” because we really are on this road together to find a place of healing and love. My mom received the devastating news last week (I think it was) that she has bone mets. She survived a bout of thyroid cancer in the late 1980’s and the doctor’s believe it has metastasized to her bones. The prognosis is not good. She was put on time release morphine which she takes 4 times a day, and 2 days ago they doubled her dose. She sounds pretty loopy when I talk to her, but much calmer. So now I have this difficult mom, who has been dying with her heart problems, and now definitely is dying with this new glitch. Her time is likely short and it will be painful for her. A real contradiction of feelings for me. Part of me is glad she will have pain like she caused us, but the empathetic person in me can’t bear the thought of her suffering. I cannot bear anyone suffering or being in pain. I have had thought such as “Karma is a bitch”. Yeah, it is, but who am I to talk when God’s word clearly states that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory that is Christ Jesus. I am certain that the word “all” includes me. You see, I have sinful, unkind thoughts directed to my mother as I still have unresolved anger.

Perhaps my anger is justified, but what does that mean? By holding on to it, it diminishes me as a person and causes me to feel and sometimes act hateful. I have come to understand my mom a little better and I am sad for her. She holds on to so much bitterness about how things should have been, or as she says “That’s not the way it was supposed to be.” She would say that over and over about anything and everything we talked about. Finally, one day I asked, “Well, how was it supposed to be?” Her answer both surprised me and saddened me. At the age of 79 she was still angry about her first husband and her dreams for their life together. In her words, “We were supposed to be a family. We were supposed to have a house, and celebrate birthdays, and Christmases. We were supposed to have happy memories of vacations together.” My dad and her broke up when I was 10 years old. My mom was 28 years old. So for 50 years she has been angry that things weren’t the way they were supposed to be.

In addition, she is angry at her mom. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Well, she does have every right to be angry at her. Her mother failed her in many ways, just as she failed me and I failed my children. You live what you know and what you have learned. That is why I am smarter now than when I was 20. She is angry that her mom treated her the way she did and failed her. When I ask why the answer is, “because, that’s not way it was supposed to be”. I felt her deep emotional pain and understood what she was saying, but at the same time it was so sad because she has never been able to move from that pain.

I got a little annoyed at hearing her say repeatedly that she wished things had been different because it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be that I reminded her of what my despised stepfather used to say all the time. I used to say, “I wish you weren’t so mad all the time”, “I wish I was better”, “I wish I was perfect”, “I wish I could make you happy”, and the list goes on. His reply was always “If wishes were horses beggars would ride.” That made me so angry. What did beggars have to do with my wishes to not be beaten or abused.

So, I reminded my mother of this, so I could be as kind as my stepfather had been. I was angry and was feeling as sympathetic as she and he had been in my childhood. She sounded wistful and replied “Yes, he did say that didn’t he? He was so cute.”

Cute? Really? I blurted out “Really? I wish the freaking horse would step on his head and crush it! I hated him and I hated him more when he said that!”

Mom, for the first time in my entire lifetime of knowledge of her was very calm. It must have been due to the morphine coursing through her veins. So very calmly she says, “You will not talk about my husband in that way. You will not disrespect him in my presence. He was a good man who provided for you and gave you kids many things you would not have had. You will respect him.”

I sat in stunned disbelief at what I just heard. My MNPD mother, even with her morphine had shown her true colors again. It wasn’t about me. It was about what she wanted in life. She wanted a provider, she wanted a house, she wanted things. She got them through this person, even if it wasn’t the way it was “supposed to be”.  I again felt beaten and humiliated. My mother had just told me to respect a man that molested me. I was nothing. I was lost. She was lost in the ‘supposed to be’; in her dreams that she never realized. My pain was nothing because hers was greater and she was so lost in it.

I retorted, “He molested me! I have a right to be angry at him! You should be angry at him! He touched your daughter. It should not have happened and I will not speak kindly of him. Not ever. How dare you even ask me to respect him. He was a child molester!”

She said, “I know, because you told me, but you should have told me then.”

So it was my fault. A beaten, abused, intimidated, broken child who was threatened almost daily with death was at fault for not telling she was being sexually abused. I know my mother. At that point in time she would not have believed me. She never did. She would have beaten me until I told her the truth she wanted to hear and then she would have made me apologize to him and hug him and kiss like I meant it. I want to be physically ill. I want to scream at the heavens for my justice. Yet I am not sick, and heaven sometimes feels silent.

We are both so incredibly lost in our pain and our suffering. May God reach out and heal us both.

But even though we all have strayed and lost our way at times, we can live in the knowledge that our sins are forgiven.

Isaiah 53:6 (NIV)
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

And he will find all of us who are lost.

Luke 19:10 (ESV)
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

Ghostly memories

For three days I have been troubled I have been tortured by not knowing. In front of me things are clear, but my past, which I thought was clear; is now shrouded in foggy shadows. Foggy indistinct shadows, silent, or with unintelligible whispers. It's like a scene from the Twilight Zones. Who are these people and what are they doing in my head. What are they saying and why can't I make it out or see them?

For years I prided myself on my memory. My siblings had great lapses in theirs and I could proudly fill it in for them. I thought I had it all. I was the eldest, the scapegoat, and the story teller. The truth teller. It didn't matter that I don't remember being eight. I don't even like the number of 8. It reminds me of orange and I don't like the color orange either. Strange connections and perhaps they are clues to the shadows in my mind.

In the wonderful blog Sanctuary for the Abused, she writes:

Almost all Victims report impaired memory; this may be partly due to suppressing horrific memories, and partly due to damage to the hippocampus, an area of the brain linked to learning and memory.

Not only do I have that, but every single item on the page. Our abuse was severe, prolonged, horrific, and it changed all of us as human beings. I often wonder who I might have been had I not had this to deal with.

So, how did this happen. Well my MNM was on the phone with and quite skillfully and insidiously eroded my defenses until I was a quivering ball of clay in her hands, to do with what she wanted. What I had forgotten was that I had God on MY side. He is my potter and I am his clay. He reclaimed me and I was able to pull back and end the conversation. Wow! That was close! In the meantime I was crying like I hadn't since I was a child. Deep wracking sobs that came from some wear deep, dark, and hidden. I could almost hear the echoes of years of hidden sobs. I was shocked and unprepared.

While I was crying I saw people in my sobs. Shadowy figures. I could reach out and almost touch them. I could hear psst, psst sounds of their speaking and the whispery words disappeared like vapor. They were familiar, but I didn't know them. Who were they? And I became distresses. More and more distressed. Who are these people in my head. My heart pounded and raced. Who are you? It seems I was invisible to them.

I visited with my counselor on Thursday and told her about this new  experience. We talked about it a bit and I started to cry. Very emotional tears for me. I KNOW I don't remember. WHY can't I remember? WHAT is it that I don't want to remember. WHY is it blocked. WHAT is so frightening?

At the same time I tremble and shake and want to put my hands in my face and cry "Oh God, please don't make me remember. I don't want to remember. I can't do it God. Oh God please help me. I don't want to remember". I am absolutely petrified. More than terrified. Petrified. Frozen. Crazy with fear of what I don't remember.

It may have something to do with the sexual abuse, or it may have something to do with the violence. My MNM would do despicable things while being violent. Like making us be all naked in front of one another. Calling our body parts by filthy names. Telling us all to "LOOK AT IT!!" to "PUT YOUR HANDS DOWN IF YOU WANT TO KEEP THEM!" I'd feel so bad for my siblings. I just wanted to cover them up. For me, I felt humiliation and shame. I felt guilt if it was something I had done that brought this one, or if I could have done something to stop it and didn't. I was embarrassed and I felt rage. I wanted to hurt some people very badly, and instead I would pray to God and ask him to help me to be a better girl so my mom would love me. Then I have my sort of bad prayer when I asked god to not let me wake up in the morning. I would as "God can you make me die in the night or maybe just put my in a coma until I'm old enough to leave home." Then my mixed prayer, good with really bad, "God, came you my my mom love us? and if you can't god could you make her die tonight? I know that is a sin god but we just don't want to be beaten any more. Help us god."

I also asked God for strength to not kill her, as I really wanted to. In fact, at times she even dared me to. She would hand me the knife and scream and scream and scream "Stick it in me! Stick it in me!" Then call me a coward, a baby, a crying sniveling good-for-nothing. Then she said that if I really wanted her dead that I would have killed her, therefore; because I didn't, then I knew she was right and I was wrong. Otherwise I would have killed her. Her crazy making logic at work. Right now I want to scream. I want to scream at this memory, I want to scream at the injustice, I want to scream for the tears  never cried, I want to scream because now I know I too have memory blanks. Part of me is missing. What did she steal? What happened to me! I don't know if I can bear this.

One of my night terrors, which is about one of her murder attempts, I wake up screaming because I am about to die as the knife comes to me (which happened in real), and then it is all blank. I don't remember. I wake up sobbing, I don't remember, I don't remember, why can't I remember. Oh God, I just DON'T remember. Obviously she didn't take out life that day, but what happened to causes me to wake up to this day in the middle of the night, holding my head, screaming, and shouting "I don't remember!"

I am grateful for Psalm 139. I will remember when the Lord thinks the time is right and he will be with me. In the meantime I will take comfort in these words.

Psalm 139
1 Lord, you have examined me
    and know all about me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I get up.
    You know my thoughts before I think them.
3 You know where I go and where I lie down.
    You know everything I do.
4 Lord, even before I say a word,
    you already know it.
5 You are all around me—in front and in back—
    and have put your hand on me.
6 Your knowledge is amazing to me;
    it is more than I can understand.