Shameless Survivors

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Dear (children),

When you were little, a toddler and a baby, respectively, I sat one afternoon in the living room to record a video of things I thought would be important for you to know as you grew. I choose to write it now, not out of a fear I will not be here for you, rather out of a deep love.

As all the Christmas gifts of years passed are forgotten, I hope one day you will look at this as something I gave you that is a part of me, who I am, how I see the world, and part how I hope you will see the world. It is something to keep with you always so if time fades the day to day details, you will have this to remind you. 

Most importantly; I love you. I so wanted both of you, as I did  the baby between you that I miscarried at five months. I didn’t plan my entire life for you, but as my child bearing years waned I felt an indescribable desire for you. Not just a baby, but each of you, as individuals who I have the privilege of bearing, raising and knowing. I connected with each of your souls and loved you long before I saw your faces.

What ties us cannot be severed. I feel honored to have been chosen to be your mom. You were created by something beyond our limited imagination, and are much, much more than a scientific mass of cells. I am faithful and a believer a higher being, God, is in you and surrounds you. Respect it. Respect yourselves.

 As I write this you are teenagers trying to find your way in the world, where you fit, what works and what doesn’t, taking risks, pushing the limits, looking at others to find yourselves; all the while fighting against the emotional upheaval and enormous loss that violence inserted into all our lives. You think I am over-protective and don’t let you experience the world. As your mother I want to soften the jagged edges until you are mature enough to take it on. Some edges simply cannot be softened, so I work with what I can.

 It is a condition of youth to believe it goes on forever, but then you know differently, which saddens me greatly. There are no guarantees in life. It is best lived fully, yet reverently. It is too big an opportunity to waste or abuse. It was given you for a purpose and with a responsibility not to squander it.

 You can make different choices, but you can’t change or undo the choices you’ve made. Make them thoughtfully. Choose happiness and joy as much as possible. Sadness comes as part of the package. Just don’t give it too much power. It changes with time. Like the tide, it can be destructive eroding everything around it as it pulls, or it can flow out gently to expose beautiful things you have never noticed before.

 It’s okay to be sad and cry when something hurts. Fighting the process prolongs the pain. Keep your eye on the other side of it though. All things pass.

Life is neither fair nor unfair. There will be times when you feel you hold the world in your hand. Be humble. There will also be times you will feel the pressure of all the world on you.

Believe in yourself. Do your best. Believe your best is good enough. If it doesn’t feel good enough to you, you probably aren’t doing your best. Try again. When your confidence waivers, believe in yourself, again.

Care for others without losing yourself. Care for yourself without losing others. Give and love generously and without expectation. Be open to receiving and allow love to come back to you. What comes to you may take a different form and may not look like a gift initially, or look like the same love you gave. It is not always from who you wished it to be, but trust the universe in the process. Love will find you.

Be kind. I am challenged with impatience, shortness, and frustration and continually work on that. But at my core I have no malice, no animosity towards any person. When people are unkind to you, it is not about you. It is about them. Focusing on what is positive doesn’t leave room for negatives to flourish.

Respect other people. Disagreements are not a license to roll in the mud. Keep your end of things clean.

Play. Laugh a lot. Smile, at yourself, at others. Even strangers, which you know I do. It is the quickest way to make a friend, even if only for that brief moment. Smiling is a bridge from isolation. Connection is life.

Learn to cook. I cook as a language of love. Besides nourishment, it is comfort and you can extend yourself to others through it. Take time to sit and eat with others.

Take the right path which is many times the hardest path. You will sleep better at night.

Admit and apologize when you are wrong; don’t insist when you are right. You will sleep better at night.

I hope you will choose your partners, whoever they will be, wisely. Be whole in yourselves and come together with the idea of building something joint between you, but remain individuals who complement each other. You will never find something missing in you in someone else. Bring it with you. Honor one another. Focus on their best attributes, let them bring out yours. Be willing to do the work. It doesn’t come easy. The reward is worth the work.

I have not been perfect in any of these things. I accept my humanness is a terribly imperfect state. All the same I try to be a good person. I don’t look down on people, I don’t judge. I try to offer cheer and help as needed.

Remember you are never alone. You just think you are. Along with God, you are unaware just how many people love you and want only peace and happiness for you. I have been fortunate and grateful to be surrounded by people who lift me up when I am low. Despite periods of sadness, overall my life has been a happy one. I am stubborn and have not let anyone take what is mine. Sometimes that has required fighting for it. I consider happiness very much something I will gladly share but not give away.

Of all the things I have experienced in my life, being your mom has been the sole most awesome, rewarding, fulfilling and surprising… and sometime challenging…part of it. I am not your average mom, rather quirky and stubborn; sometimes irritable, most times yielding. I am just me.

I will leave you with the final sentiment my own parents left in a letter they wrote to my sisters and I: Be happy children, and live long and joyful lives.

Bless you and love you,

Mommy

I procrastinate on writing but it hovers, poised to cut me open like a cold knife against fragile skin. The promise to bleed, to release, is like a bizarre compulsion, an overpowering urge I wish to resist because it feels so safe here, away from it.

Reluctantly I open the box and peer in at the fragments, remnants of a life I strive to leave behind; attempting to piece an incongruous puzzle together, to make some sense of it. Of anything. Most days I quickly close it, as if to capture all the demons in one tidy corner of my mind before they can escape. Errant stray thoughts are thrown in to stay put with the other prisoners. Of course, they do not lie quietly. They rattle and rail and plot their freedom, hatching a plan to overpower the guard when she has taken a break from fighting the invisible enemy and the only writing left is to question if from this dungeon a small sliver of light can emerge.

©2013 LdJ

Following a Shameless Survivors facebook post which framed domestic violence being not just about physical violence, but also verbal violence, I received an offline response from a brave woman who shared her story with me. She has generously allowed me to share a portion of her journal that is very moving, and perfectly articulates how destructive (and in my case potentially lethal) verbal violence can be. It is violence that batters from the inside out and is as emotionally painful as being thrown against a wall or pushed down and kicked; an insidious violence from which healing takes tremendous effort and time.

“I could tell the night was going down quickly. Wes had been drinking heavily all day bourbon included. He kept ranting and raving about what an asshole his Dad was and how badly he had been treated as a child. My attempts to soften the blows were rebuffed so I thought it better to make a quick escape to the bedroom and call it a night for myself. I had considered having another drink myself but decided against it. Not with the mood Wes was in. So I slipped off and went to bed about 11:00.

Sometime around 1:00am he comes bursting into the room flipping the lights on and demanding to know where the dental floss was. I told him it was on the counter. No it’s not F’ing there Charlotte! Not wanting to anger him anymore I hopped out of bed and went to retrieve it for him. All the while he is behind me telling me how F’ckd up I am and why can’t I ever put things back where he left them. I’m always moving things around and forgetting where I put them. This is true of me, I know. In silence I hand him the floss and return to bed. He sits down in the living room. I figure I am in the clear.

Around 2:00am he bursts in the room again demanding to know where his underwear is. He starts screaming at me how I am such a piece of shit and am a poor excuse for a wife, I don’t clean, I don’t do laundry. (I have all his laundry done and it is all put away in his drawer but I don’t dare speak not wanting to enrage him further) “What you don’t have anything to say for yourself? What the F is wrong with you!” I fling the covers over my head. He tries to pull the covers off me. I hold on with a death grip he can’t get them off. I choke back hot tears. He comes around to the side of the bed and leans down to my ear and starts talking in almost a whisper. He says you know you really are a piece of shit. You can’t do anything. You are stupid. You are weak. So weak in fact you can’t even pull it together enough to go to work half the time. You can’t even take good care of our son. You have to take pills just to function. I don’t know why I ever bothered with you. I continue to say nothing hiding under the covers. Fine, you aren’t going to answer me – you weak piece of shit! Go ahead keep hiding like you always do and go crawl into that little hole you came from. (I hate when he talks in my ear like that, it makes me feel like he is right and that I am the smallest person in the world.) He walks out and slams the door.

I leap up out of bed and unscrew the light bulbs enough so he can’t turn them on suddenly again. And old trick I learned long ago. I lay back down and pull the covers back over my head. I feel the tears begin to burn and a deep despair and sobbing that moves from the tips of my toes up through my entire body. I lay there curled up in a ball wanting to puke. I feel so small and I wish I would just die. I think he is right, I am weak no other person would put up with this shit. I get just what I deserve. I want to just get up and run away from here and never look back sometimes. I do get up and sneak a peak down the hallway. Wes seems passed out in the chair listening to his headphones. I sneak across the hall way to my son’s room. By the grace of god Michael still sleeps. If I had any balls I’d pack him up in the car and run. But instead I sit on the floor next to him holding his little hand and just pray. For him, for me, for strength, for Wes.

I slip back into my room and go to the bathroom and write this event in my journal as a shrink once said I should keep a journal. No more tears fall. After reading this I don’t need any more entries. I have 5 years of journals with the same entries. Tomorrow will be the same. Wes and I will dance the familiar dance. Mine of being silent and angry. He won’t remember what he said to me much less apologize anymore. He may go a day without drinking but then we all start all over again. I am left to carry the weight of his words day after day. A counselor once said to me, Charlotte you have to accept that you are the wife of an alcoholic. That comment angered me for days. But it is my true reality. It is not the reality I show the rest of the world. To the world I’m intelligent ready to finish a college degree, I’m funny, an excellent mama, a good friend, role model, and am a dependable worker. At home I’m worth nothing. Because I can’t stand up to the madness that is destroying me. However, one day these worlds will collide, I’m sure. For now – This is ½ of me nearly every day.”

I feel powerfully connected to this writer. Her view of her world brings back the inescapable emptiness I felt too many nights to count, having experienced so many of the same types of exchanges. I didn’t believe it then, but I know now I did have a choice.  Was it a hard choice? Absolutely. It turned out to be a deadly choice in my case. But I had it and I finally made it and I will never look back to regret it.

I also know that while alcohol exacerbates abusive tendencies, it does not create an abuser. I feel the counselor, probably untrained in DV, did Charlotte a disservice by dismissing abusive behavior and leading her to believe her husband’s abuse was the result of alcoholism rather than his choice to abuse. None the less, our beliefs about ourselves within the relationship keep us tethered to it.

*names have been changed to repect anonymity

And thus begins another ending. I suppose it began two years ago and it was only me desperately trying to hold on; knowing the finality of it even then. Now it is done. Complete. I am no longer between. The days of organizing and packing are over; the        desk I loved, the contents of a home my basement held safe, on their way to Ireland.

I call to my son and hear no answer, so I go searching to find him sitting in the vacant basement. I ask why he is in the middle of a concrete floor in a dark basement with nothing in there. Asked why I sat there when it was full, we share a brief moment of understanding something has ended. Where I sat in sadness he sits in emptiness, contemplating how he will fill the void.

It is difficult thing to lose hope; to give up, to surrender to endings. Yet there it is. Done. No longer in sight. The magic eraser waived, the basement cleverly swept squeaky clean of anything that was ever there. And tomorrow we will begin again.

The Between

Each day I awake with a prayer of thanksgiving; gratitude that I awoke and that I can once again experience my children, my family, my friends, the world. I am blessed with renewed vision daily. I marvel at the delicacy of an orchid, how gently leaves flutter from the sky as they are released to drift leisurely to the earth, the purr of a soft warm cat on my lap, feelings of joy and even the sadness of loss. To hear my children’s laughter, a cardinal’s song. To sing. What privilege is this?

I consider myself to be uniquely fortunate to not only know, but feel connected to so many truly amazing people. People whose spirits are full of all that is good in this world and who share it freely. Yes, I have interacted with some who were not so well meaning, full of hate, but they do not stay. Perhaps like fire, I deprived them of the oxygen they need to consume me. I can only hope.

What a gift I have received to be so loved, and to feel that love follow me throughout my day. Although it is frequently expressed as admiration, I know at its core it is an appreciation that I am alive, and am affirmed that on whatever level, however small or large, I give something to others that makes them feel good and enhances their lives. From a smile to a stranger on what appears to be a rough day, a message of hope, or just a laugh; what I give comes to me tenfold.

To be accepted for who I am, including my shortcomings, flaws, and foibles defines love to me. Those very vulnerabilities were attacked, torn open and left raw in torturous mocking. You who touch me now are the healing salve on those wounds. How fortunate can one person be?

I will tell you I have loved this day, and you, in it.

A Moment

Oh how I have loved this day!
From the first hint of morning light
until the final shadows faded
You who I have loved,
who accompanied me on this path,
Shining in the brilliance of the day,
shared with me the jubilance of my world,
in the trials of betrayal in a searing midday heat.
Still, I have loved this day.
It was perfection reflected in the fading light
Who knows when tomorrow comes
So I lay down, comforted, leave the darkness,
to hear only the quietness
and I thank God for you
and this day, for I have loved it
and you.

©2013 LdJohnson