The beginning of New

Today is the day after my 33rd birthday. "Talking Back" is wrapped up, finished, now in book form and available on my Novels page.

And now this blog becomes something different, something new.

My existential crisis is far from over, and one of the things I learned is that I cannot wait for conditions to be right to do things that I love: spending time with my children, cuddling with my husband, writing. As hard as it is to balance real-life/work-life/second career, this is what I must do.

I must fight for every day.

So, as this blog transforms from an online diary to an actual writing function, the diary portion will move to my Eudaimonia Project, and the writing site will become about. . .writing.

About the tips I find useful on the internet as I continue to learn more and more about a subject I care about deeply.

Now, on to new things, now that the old things have been completed. . .

The End

1997-Thurs, April 28 (Night)

Here I am, just back from 5 days on 3 East after overdosing on Mon. night (last week). Nobody found me until Wed night (Don’t tell me I don’t mean a lot to my family) Anyway, 911 got called. I got taken to Penrose Main ER (don’t remember this) I do remember drinking 2 glasses of activated charcoal. Then I was at 3 East (don’t remember that, either) Got fired Thurs. morning (I guess it wouldn’t do too much good to tell an unconscious person you were firing them..

There are a few more entries, 1 in 1997 and 3 in 1998, but not many. An undated slip of paper, from sometime in 1997, is printed with hot-air balloons. She says she needs to blow off some hot air. At the end of the entry, she says her therapist wanted her to promise her (the therapist) and me that she’d never try to kill herself again. She promised her therapist, but couldn’t promise me.

At least two more times my mother went into the hospital. I know there were more attempts; she told me about them when she was compromised, perhaps confession-prone, before she died.

And when I came home from work that day, to her white and gray and cool (too fast, far too fast, like she had been dying before she actually died), I told myself she did not kill herself.

She did not kill herself.

She wasn’t taking her pain meds (I had them, anyway). She was making plans for the future. She was eating and drinking OK. Maybe she skipped her insulin or shot up with too much.

It was a possibility.

And all of the years and years—almost 20—from the first time she tried to kill herself and now, I waited and waited –and always received—the call that she had tried again, or had gone into the hospital for trying.  In fact, the Monday before she passed, I had to “rescue” her from conditions eerily similar to the ones in this entry: she was in bed for days.

Back then, I was so angry with her that even though I knew she was in bed for days, I went to work Wednesday anyway after school. Mom’s friend called me at work and told me she had called 911 because of the smell in Mom’s room and because the door was locked. I made arrangements to stay with a friend.

That was when DSS wanted to take me away from her, and send me with my abusive father.

I told them I’d run and they backed off. I had my own car, a job, a place to live. I was OK.

But I was never OK.

I was always waiting for that call.

For three months after she died, I waited for the call. The call from the Coroner saying she had killed herself.

But she didn’t. Her death was natural.

Mom,

You didn’t kill yourself.

I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is. I can’t describe what it was like, first knowing you couldn’t hold your suicide over us anymore. I was—and continue to be—devastated by losing  you. You were my friend as well as my Mom. Someone I could always talk to, once we got through the emotional fallout of your suicide career. But I am relieved to be out of one kind of pain.

I am glad you didn’t kill yourself, that you went out on a high note. That you were finally planning things you wanted to do in the future. That you had killed the woman in this journal by confronting some of your fears. I remember the day I visited  you, and you came out of your bedroom crying. “Was I bad mother?” you asked me, and my heart broke.

I can’t answer that. Only you can answer that. I know I love my Mom, even now. I know she had real problems. We all do. I spent so many years angry at her. But everything I love about myself comes from her.

My creativity, humor, intelligence, kindness. Even some of my weaknesses and strengths, they all come from her.

And her battles prevented some of my battles.

I’m ready to let it go, Mom.  Your family does care about you, and you do mean a lot. You did then, you do now, you did in between. I have always loved you, like you always loved me, even when you thought I was a burden, even when you were too sick and selfish to see how much pain I was in, or what your actions did to me. If you would have been able to see me, you would have cared. If I had been able to see some of this back then, I might have been at least a companion in your darkness. I could have said, “Hey, Mom, you sure sound like a molestation survivor like me.”

Our secrets are our pain. I think you knew this, and that’s why you were so adamant I read these journals when you died.

No more secrets. No more waiting for life to start. I hear you.

I love you.

Peak Experiences

Hospitalization--Again

You have a lot of good entries, where you are feeling OK, getting involved, doing better.

Until April 20, 1996.

April 20th (I think)
This last 2 weeks have been hard. On Monday, April 8th, I called Scott and asked for Ron--He said he didn't know if he'd be back. I asked him if Ron was still living there--he said no and he had a phone #, did I want it? I said no. I cried that night but mostly I felt numb an dmy mind wanted to scream no, oh no! Tues. morning I tried to get my mind on work but then at noon I was talking to Edwina and Cathy. I asked them if I should try to know who this woman was or if I was better off not knowing. I started to cry and then I left to go to St. Francis [Hospital to work] but couldn't quit crying. I drove around and tried to stop but couldn't. I wanted to get on the highway and keep running. I went to Lydia's and and sobbed & sobbed. I didn't go back to work or call. I know G. called while I was at Lydia's. When I got home I cried more. I started throwing up, I called G. and she took me to the Emergency Room (1st I called the 24-hr line but no one called back). They gave me a shot to help me stop throwing up. I slept until we went to St. Francis [Mental ward]. I wanted to go there to be safe.

Sun May 5th
I did feel safe at St. Francis because it was a locked ward and no one could get in unless I OK'd it at the front desk. They took away belts, shoelaces, pens and pencils-anything we could use to hurt people with (or hurt ourselves with) I felt a strong urge to kill myself or kill Ron and then myself. At the same time I didn't want to hurt myself or Ron. The guy seemed disgusted by me--he said Biodyne had already seen me for a year and here I was in the hospital again. I got really mad at him and drew pictures of him lecturing me.

I got out of St. Fancis 1 1/2 days later. . .I just can't get any interest going in the future. I know this is not healthy. I still just want out--away from the pain of life.



I don't even remember this. This one, in the line of hospitalizations and attempts, didn't even make my radar.

Past Hauntings

Fracturing

Sat, Nov 11 DREAMS: I dreamed I was at my Mom's house --(no house we've ever lived in) and we were cooking turkey and I was making potato salad. Mom handed me a big bunch of onions that looked overgrown and rough like the tops had been in a wind storm--They had iris-like flower remains on their stems which I cut off. Mom was talking about she "always" used fresh products and field grown versus cultivated. I felt in shock as I chopping up the onions for the potato salad. I didn't remember her ever saying any of that or doing it either. But I had the feeling that she was right and I hadn't remembered correctly. She was washing the turkey (one that had been free to range) and I moved my stuff to another sink in the kitchen. I kept watching my Mom and Dad as I peeled boilded potatoes. Even my Dad was carrying on about liking fresh fruit and vegetables. I couldn't believe what I was hearing! I looked down and I had the whole turkey roaster full of peeled and quartered potatoes. I started mixing in the mayonnaise but the pan was so full that it was very difficult to keep it all in and not let it fall out. Then I realized my Mom was about ready to bring the turkey over to put in the roasting pan and I had it all filled up with potato salad so I asked her if she had another big bowl or container and she said to put it all in a metal bowl. I didn't think it would all fit but it did. I told Mom I didn't remember her always wanting "fresh" and "organic" food and she looked at me strangely and said yes--she always had. I felt disoriented and sad.

...It's hard to live sometimes. I wish people understood how hard it was.

(Tuesday, Nov. 14th)
I am afraid of running out of money. I am afraid to be the strong one. I want to be sheltered.
I try to be normal but I can't quite remember how. How did I use to buy groceries? Get clothes ready for work? How did I manage money? How did I get ready for the holidays?

Sun. Nov 19.
I am still sleepy and down. I went to Lydia's to get some Xanax after I was at the library and looked at a book on childhood abuse--it had listed symptoms that I have. It made me feel very anxious and odd and I put it down. Linda wasn't home so I have no pills. I feel like this: FRACTURED or like this: a fractured child or a a fractured pyramid. I don't particularly understand these images bu these are the images that come to mind. A child--vulnerable--shattered yet stying together--
A pyramid--a place of piritual energy--shattered. a tomb of kings--shattered yet still holding together. A pyramid is also a place that protects dead people. I'm the pyramid--am I protecting a dead person? My father, my uncles, my cousings? Women? Friends of the family? I don't know.
Maybe I'm protecting the dead part of me and I'm facturing--the protection is fracturing.

Dear Mom,

Wow, this part is hard. This is, in fact, the part you didn't want to face; you just kept putting the potatoes in the bowl, knowing that the image presented by your parents was complete crud, but internalizing it into you "remembering it wrong".

Your parents were not who you thought they were, that is what this dream is telling you. You can keep it all "in", but you can't do what you need to do (roast the turkey), with all of this inside of you. You transfer your pain, and it fits! but it doesn't change what happened.

Indeed, you are protecting the dead. And that protection was shattering, but it was still holding. Mom, I wish you trusted your mind. You were so bright, so imaginative, so creative. If only you could have listened to the little girl. The adult had to die because the little girl was dying, would rather die, than face what was "remembered wrong".

You are right, too, that *you* were shattering. Your image of yourself was based in this "protection", and when it shattered, so did you.

When I was a child I thought I was telepathic. Come on, we all believe we are special as children. I felt I could lift my mind through the layers of mental static, like cloud-layers, and go up and up until I reached other minds strung out like veins and arteries across the sky. I met some very interesting people this way. The image was always the same: layers of clouds I floated through, up or down, and veins and arteries of thought. I could open one up and place a thought into it, or I could touch the vessel and communicate with its owner.

When grandpa--your father-in-law--was dying, even though I was 30 years old, I closed my eyes and went through the clouds and the layers to find his vein. It was still strong, the vein, even though, when I entered it, the thoughts were fuzzy and unclear. And I spoke with him, as he lay dying. I told him about the relationship he could have had with me, ruined by his molestation and inappropriate touching and his thinly veiled desires to do more sexual violence to me. I talked to him about how we could have been so close, how I loved him so much, but that we could never be close, and he could never be around my sons, his great-grandchildren, because he had chosen to behave like a monster. I mourned the loss of a potential friend, the potential relationship. I showed him how it could have been, and I realized that this was Hell for him: in this moment of death, he would see how he screwed up his one and only life.

And then, I could let him rest. I could even wish him peaceful rest, because all I had wanted--ever--was for him to understand what he had lost by choosing his actions. I felt him die, so it was no shock when my father called me and told me he had passed. I knew because I was right there with him when he died.

Does it matter that this was all in my head? No. We live in our heads, mother. Our reality is what we say it is, what it is inside our minds. And your mind was screaming at you: your memory is a lie you told yourself! But the little girl is still there, in your mind, and she needs to speak with you!

I am glad you told me details you knew of my molestation. It must have been so hard for you, when you could not face what happened in  your life. I am convinced, Mom, that you were molested, too. And you turned a blind eye and "forgot" about it, which is why you were able to deny, even to yourself, that I was still in danger as a child. You learned to deal with it by denying it, by re-remembering, by maintaining the image that the only way your family ever hurt you was by making you feel plain. But that wasn't it. You were trying to be invisible.

Your protection was fracturing, Mom. We'll see it in a few more entries from now. But it held up. It held up your whole life, the denial and the protection of the dead. I think it had a hand in killing you.

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