Step-Devil and 8 year old me

Dear Reader,

This recounting is one of several I will share with you. I open up so you might know you are not the only one. To the teen or the young adult with similar backgrounds, I got through it, and so will you- if you fight for yourself. Don’t take on the inheritance they have given you. Create your own, change the meaning and the outcome of your story. It is not easy, but breaking those chains is one of the most liberating and validating victories you will experience. All my love. N.

“She’s a drinker”. “I’m a drinker”. “He is a drinker.” All these phrases are said with a tone of reverence in my family. We do not use the word alcoholic, but being a drinker is a badge of honor. Unfortunately for my brothers and I, the affect of the drinkers in our family didn’t bequeath us any sense of pride or honor. What we received instead was uncertainty, dysfunction, and pain.

__

Step-devil was drunk in the dining room. My mother was yelling for me. I hated when they did this. I hated when they fought and brought me into it. I hated when the cops came, and took one of them away, or escorted us to my grandmother’s. I hated the stuffed animals the officers gave us. This night didn’t end with the cops, but it ended up with a little blonde girl standing up for herself the best way she could.

I came out of my room. Telling myself to not make any faces. Faces are bad on nights like this. My eyes meet his. His face was angry, and he was cruel.
“Did your mom tell you she is a slut’? He spat with all the vengeance he could muster. “Did she tell you Robert is not your dad”?

“Yes, she told me”.

The acidic words rolled off his drunk breath with unbelievable ease. He took pleasure in making other people feel small and weak. What is worse, is she didn’t stop him. She allowed him to hurt me. As a mother now, I cannot fucking fathom standing by watching some asshole hurt my kids, but she did. She always chose him.

Much of that night has been faded with time. What remains crystal clear is how I stood up for myself. After he was done, I went into my room. I took down all the things he given me. My New Kids On The Block poster, and sleeping bag, various toys and things. I took all that shit, and I dropped it by his feet and told him, “I don’t want this stuff anymore”, and I walked into my room, head held high.

I believe this was a defining moment for me. It planted a seed in my heart to be a fighter, to stand up for what is right no matter how terrifying it may be.

Wrestling Pain

I sat with Max on my lap as my therapist and I covered the past weeks events. My sweet boy is struggling with his first season of basketball. His emotions get the better of him. He feels frustration and confusion so deeply, he often shuts down and cries.

“I don’t even know how to walk him out of this”, I told her.

She listens patiently as I describe how well he is improving, but how he can’t see it much of the time because the overwhelming sense of “not getting it” clouds his perception. How can I get him to persevere? How can this turn into a character building moment for him? How do I get him to balance his feelings with reality? Good or bad?

“Moving on, let’s talk about you”.

“I feel great this week”, I told my therapist.

It had been two months in this new place. This new place without friends, or family, and Tim’s work is keeping him in Seattle. Two months of figuring out a new rhythm, fumbling for a social life outside FB, and home school. All my support is 8 hours, or at best a Face Time call away. Finally I was feeling progress. Movement in the right direction. Just the week before, I felt totally lost, defeated and useless.

“Yeah, that concerns me”, Jill replied with a genuinely caring voice. “Your highs and lows are strong, how will you feel when Tim leaves again”?

My head shot up, recognizing the acute similarity in my son’s behavior to my own. Then the pain came. The pain of a mother who’s shortcomings have manifested in her sweet blue eyed boy. My heart wrestled- How can I possibly walk him through this, when in my thirties, I still am stumbling with waves of emotion fueling  my highs, and the depression breathing down my neck?

Too many questions and worries for a fifty minute session.

The Big Move

I planned on living in my little house forever. We had talked romantically about moving to other parts of the country. We talked fantasy-like, as if a move was like going on a cruise or winning the lottery. This dreamy chatter had sprinkled our marriage for years. In March, it became a real possibility. By June, we were looking at houses in Idaho. Suddenly, The Big Move was a reality. We were really talking to agents, painting, paring down, packing, and shifting.
When I tell you it went fast, I mean effing fast. Father’s Day weekend, we put a contingent offer on a home in Emmett, ID. That gave us from mid-June until September to have our home market ready, offer made, and closed.
EEEK.
We busted ass (along with loads of help from friends), got our home on market July 19th, and accepted an offer three days later.
We shared this home for 11 years. This is where I brought my babies home, learned how to cook, laughed, cried, labored with my children, and made love to my husband. I fought my depression, won, lost, discovered photography, had drinks with friends, and made my first cheesecake. We had dogs, sent them over the Rainbow Bridge, brought home puppies, and with Tim made a life worth being proud of.

The Big Move was exhilarating, scary, mournful, and bittersweet. It was full of painting 16 hour days, tears, panic attacks, conquered projects, and hard work. I got excited, and cried over loss. It was not the fantasy feeling of winning the lottery; it was quite the opposite.

My last night before the trek into the unknown, I had an epiphany. As Jessie and I were driving to the store it occurred to me, “I’ve done all the growing I can here; it is time to move on”.