Sunday

Well I drank again last night. I am disappointed in myself but I am going to start my quest for sobriety anew today. If I can make it through today maybe I can make it through the whole week. Usually if I can get avoid drinking the day after I have had some drinks I don't crave it the day after.

I think I might order a book called "The Courage to Heal" that was suggested to me. My response to Ann's post the other day got me to thinking more about my childhood which I am not sure was a good idea. Sometimes I feel like everything seems so complicated. I have no idea why my parents treated us the way they did. Why have kids if you don't like kids? I mean my dad was from a relatively normal Irish Catholic family...his dad was abusive and alcoholic but it was within what is considered socially normal. My mother, on the other hand, was from a family that was so abusive and dysfunctional (well her mom anyway) that it's almost unbelievable. So why would she have kids? She told me once that she didn't want kids but my dad did so she pumped out 5 of them. I guess that kind of explains it but it is just so irresponsible.

I made a decision years ago not to have children because I figured that the cycle of abuse would continue with me. I am now 40 years old and I feel almost a sense of relief that accidental pregnancy is pretty unlikely now. I don't really like children very much anyway so it has worked out OK.

I read a blog the other day in which the author talked about the importance of feeling pain and not running from it. Specifically she was talking about pain associated with past sexual abuse. I guess I have always felt that my childhood was so nightmarish that I just want to do my best to have fun for the rest of my life. I can't think of any good reason to get into a therapy situation where I would have to relive all of what I went through again. I figure I have about 40 more years on this earth so why spend several years of it being miserable? I literally can't recall any pleasant or fun memories from my childhood. Mostly my siblings and I were scared, lonely, and on a constant state of alert to make sure we didn't upset my mother in any way. When my dad would get drunk and bad things would happen at night we weren't allowed to discuss or acknowledge them the next day.

Until I was about 13 I thought about suicide every single day and tried to think of a fool proof way to kill myself. Then one Sunday morning when I was sitting in church I thought through a suicide attempt and what the possible outcomes might be. I have always thought that God was guiding my thoughts that day because I figured that there were 2 outcomes to trying to kill myself: 1. I would be dead and everyone else in the world would just go on about their lives and I wouldn't have the chance to get away from that little town that I grew up in. 2. I would fail at the attempt and either permanently cripple myself or, worse yet, would attract unwanted attention to myself. I wasn't exactly sure what would happen but I was pretty sure that the outcome of a failed attempt would be bad.

So, I quit thinking about suicide and just thought about escape. I knew that if I ran away I would eventually be found and brought back which, again, involved unwanted attention and even fewer privileges than I already had. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to be invisible. Not surprisingly I was very shy and sad as a child. When I looked sad it seemed to make my mother even angrier at me so eventually I figured out that if I smiled and made jokes sometimes that it deflected attention from me. I used to watch kids at school to see what they talked about and laughed about and tried to integrate some of that into my persona so that she would ignore me. It worked too. My younger brother was so sullen and unhappy that she started to abuse him more than me. Its terrible though...she really destroyed him. He is almost 40 yeras old and hasn't worked in years, is overweight, has no friends, and is a very angry and bitter person. He is what I would call a non-functioning human being and I feel so sorry for him...its not his fault he is this way.

Man she hated us. It's hard to explain because it sounds so unbelievable if you grew up with a mother who had even a little love for her kids which most people did. When I was growing up I only had a couple of friends and they had seen what it was like at my house with their own eyes. I never tried to tell anyone else because I didn't think they would believe me.

Each day I would get up and get dressed, get my siblings dressed (oh did I mention one of my sisters is retarded...needed constant supervision, couldn't talk, couldn't dress herself, and needed help going to the toilet.) and make them breakfast and their lunches. I also had to make my mother coffee and when she whistled from her bedroom one of us would have to take her a cup of coffee.

We used to fight over who had to go up there and take her the coffee. It was like walking into a spider's web. Whoever went up there stood a decent chance of getting slapped but mostly she would look at whatever you were wearing and make you go change. Sounds like no big deal right? No. See my mother refused to let us wear jeans and shirts to school like the other kids. Oh no, she would shop for the cheapest double knit pants with elastic waistbands that were never even remotely in fashion and of course all the other kids made fun of us. I know that sounds so petty but for the same amount of money she could have gone to Wal Mart and let us get jeans and shirts but she refused. The thing is that my parents had money...its wasn't a financial issue. It was about the fact that she had to have complete and total control. We weren't allowed to make even the smallest decisions and if we did she would beat us or take away privileges. And by "privileges" I mean being allowed to check books out of the library or watch Little House on the Prairie. We didn't have privileges like normal kids who could go play in the neighborhood or ride bikes together.

Anyway, after delivering coffee to her she would make us beg her to take us to school. She actually went through various phases where for a few months she would want us to ride the school bus and then suddenly she would change her mind and tell us we weren't allowed and that she would take us to school. When she was in one of her "I will take you to school" phases she would take her own sweet time getting ready in the morning so that we were late to school all the time. It was so embarrassing because I used to get in trouble every morning from the principal at our middle school for being late. If we tried to rush her she would get angry and scream, take away privileges, or smack us around. After school she insisted on picking us up but she was always late for that too. And the worst part about riding home from school with her was that as soon as you got in the car she would either scream at us or slap us around for some kind of infraction that she had either been stewing about all day or something she just thought up as soon as she saw us. By the time we got home she would have thought of more things to take away from us or would just start spanking us when we got in the house.

Then when we got home we could do housework, yard work, or our homework. We weren't allowed to watch TV or sit and read in the living room. If you were caught looking like you were having fun or not working at something there was trouble. Then she would tell us what she was cooking for dinner and tell us what to prepare...we did all vegetable chopping and other preparations plus setting the table. And then we cleaned up after she cooked. It was like she was doing us all some huge favor by cooking for us. I tried to escape to my bedroom as soon as I could after dinner to read or do homework. And that was pretty much what life was like. Sometimes if you were in your room she would throw open the door and scream about something you hadn't cleaned properly or other infractions. My dad was at the office most of the time and when he came home he was often drunk but at least he was usually nice to us.

When I was about 7 I had this beautiful long blonde hair that I loved and one day she said it was too much trouble so she put it in a ponytail and cut off the ponytail. I cried and cried and cried. She made me wear short hair forever after that. As an adult I now have beautiful long blonde hair. I can't figure out why she hated all of us so much. It had to have taken a lot of energy to stay so mad and to continuously ambush us with accusations. You never knew what would set her off so you had to always listen carefully to see if you could hear her coming around a corner. There was this one spot in our backyard where we sort of hollowed out a cave in some of the bushes and that was a good place to hide. If my dad was drunk and doing who-knows-what to my mom in their bedroom late at night and she was screaming I used to get my siblings together and we would just hide out there until things got quiet again.

OK thats enough depressing crap for now. Even as I write this I think that no one would ever believe this happened to anyone because I dont know anyone else who had a mother like this.