The Dark Madness

he is a good man, the husband. back before he was the husband she was cautious. she was skittish. she hadn’t learned to trust. she felt something different with him, but wasn’t sure it was real. she couldn’t believe something so good could come her way.

he asked her to come live with him, back then. he asked her to bring her two children and leave the man she was married to. he asked her to be safe. with him. she was scared. hopeful, but scared. she wanted to protect her children. she needed to be sure.

she asked the man she was married to if he could keep the children. for a little while. just until she could get settled in the new town. get a job. find a place to live. for her. for the children. he agreed.

she moved to the new town. she lived with the man. he had a house. he had space. she began to trust. he had waited a long time. this was new. this was good. he began to believe this was really going to happen.

he took her out. she met his friends. they were curious. who was this woman who had come into his life so suddenly? where had she come from. he told them. they listened. they heard the part “she has two kids”. they heard the part “she’s going through a divorce”. they knew he’d been alone a long time. they knew he was kind. they knew he was good. they thought him naive. they feared for him.

she and the man had been together a month. they went to the fair with his friends. they went to the beer tent. it was dark. it was crowded. they were separated. he was talking with friends. she was trying to be inconspicuous. one of his friends came up to her. said hi. started talking about where she was from. who she was. how she’d met the man. she was honest. she spoke from her heart. he leaned toward her. he spoke softly. she had to strain to hear.

he said “where are your kids”.
he said “what kind of a mom leaves her kids”.
he said “why aren’t your kids with you”.
he said “you are a horrible mom”.

her head spins. the tears flow unchecked. she can’t see him. she only hears him. she hears his voice. getting louder. harsher. meaner. the words spit out at her. she can’t get away. there are people all around. she can’t see her man. where is he now? is he near? can he hear this? if he can, why isn’t he saying something. anything. stop this evil spewing all over her. flowing like icy rain. nothing but pain. no end in sight.

he says “don’t hurt my friend”.
he says “he doesn’t know what he’s doing”.
he says “he doesn’t know what you’re like”.
he says “he doesn’t know you”.
he says “don’t take him away from us”.

she says he’s wrong. he’s wrong. he’s wrong. he doesn’t know. he has no idea. she thinks it is love. she knows it is love. she loves. she loves him. she knows she does. she loves him. she loves her kids. she does. she does. more than life itself. she does.

she turns and somehow stumbles away. she hides in a dark corner. an hour. two. her man finally finds her. the others have gone. the night is ending. the nightmare continues.

a few months later the divorce is final. the custody battle has been resolved. she has her kids. the man is her new husband. there is peace. a tentative peace. peace on the outside.

the friend is on his second marriage. he has two children. he has been traveling. a hobby, not a job. he leaves his wife home. with the children. he hangs with the boys. he drinks. he cheats. he drinks more. he cheats more. now his wife cheats. again. and again. model family.

she wants to see him. she wants to hurt him. five years later he apologizes. five years too late. he still lives in a lie. she lives in a loving relationship. a caring man. a man who kicks himself for not knowing what was happening all those years ago in a tent at the fair. she accepts his apology, but she’ll never forgive. it touched the guilt she already felt. he tore out her heart and stomped it to pulp. he, who was better than her. she. the bad mother.

him. the bad friend.

Originally post May 22, 2004

denial

my mother died when i was a child. i was three. i only have one true memory of my mother. she had polio and was in an iron lung and i was taken to see her in the hospital. i remember riding on my father’s shoulders and laughing at the nurses. my father is very tall, so i had to duck not to hit the lights. i remember standing on a stool next to my mother’s face. she asked the nurses to adjust the mirror above her head so she could see me better. she was beautiful.

at some point after my mother went into the hospital, i was sent to live with my father’s family. i remember his older brother – my uncle – driving me many miles to my grandmother’s house. i liked living at my grandparents’. he was a manager of a supermarket who loved to fish and she was a lovely woman with a quick laugh who had raised four children and still had the youngest in high school. i remember the wedding photo of my mother in my grandmother’s bedroom setting on the cedar chest where i could go in and look at it. i remember one day it was gone and we never spoke of her again.

my father would come to my grandmother’s and visit me. one time he brought a lady with him who would become my stepmother. i was five. every year on memorial day we would make the two-hour drive to where my mother was buried. we’d take flowers and clean up the gravesite, but nothing was ever said about her. i’d learned early that to bring her up was to get scolded – i learned not to bring it up.

most families have photographs of their children around the house or at least in an album where they are produced for family events and memories are thoughtfully revisited. i never saw a picture of myself until my maternal grandmother gave me some photos when i was thirteen. i finally saw myself and my mother and a picture of a little girl standing on a stool next to a woman in an iron lung with a lovely smile.

in my thirties my husband had some deep conversations with my father. things i think he’d been waiting to say but couldn’t bring himself to say directly to me. knowing my husband would be the conduit. one of the most shocking things i was to find out was that my mother didn’t die of polio. she’d actually been getting better and had been in rehab and was going to be able to come home when she contracted pneumonia. it was the pneumonia that killed her. it explained a lot.

in my twenties i had pneumonia and was in the hospital for a week. my parents didn’t come. my parents didn’t call. they didn’t send flowers. they ignored me. this was highly unusual. when i finally got ahold of my father to let him know i was better and was going home from the hospital, his comment was, “i guess i won’t have to sent the flowers to the funeral home, then”. at the time i was shocked. even for my cynical father the comment seemed exceptionally cruel. it would not be clear to me what was going on for another ten years.

my grandmother always said i looked exactly like my mother. my maternal aunt who hadn’t seen me for many years finally saw me and told my grandmother that she couldn’t get over all the mannerisms i had that were just like my mother. i guess my father couldn’t handle it. i wish he had.

the denial hurt.

she is a good student. the best. always there. always on time. no sass. attentive. good grades. maybe a little too quiet. a little too shy. hidden in the back of the class. answers on the tip of her tongue, but not volunteered. nothing ever volunteered. things must be dragged out of her. she knows the answer. she aces the test. she writes in her journal. in her lonliness. in her sleep. she writes to escape. the teachers never suspect something is wrong. she’s a good girl. she never acts out. they are disturbing stories. she has a good imagination. they’re wrong. it’s not imagination. it’s real.

she has few friends. no enemies. not at school, anyway.

her parents put on a good show. middle class. middle age. middle of the road. dad works. never late. never weekends. never nights. always home on time.family vacations. together time.mom stays home. someone needs to be there when the girl gets home. it’s the right thing to do. the best for the girl. watches the clock. makes sure the girl is on time. she’s not on time. wait until your father gets home. you bad girl. you bad, bad girl. mom bakes cookies. goes to coffee with the neighbors. works in the garden. smiles. a lot. takes the valium the doctor gave her because the girl is such a problem. mom and dad. liquor in hand. every night. sometimes mom forgets to eat. too many martinis. she’s tired. she’s in the bathroom. leave your mother alone. he laughs. evil laugh. mean laugh. he’s not a nice drunk.

weekends start with alcohol. bloody marys. chores. house must be cleaned. the girl will clean. the parents will go. look at them. aren’t they sweet. neighbors smile. they are such a close couple. they do everything together. grocery shopping. laundry. cooking. errands. they leave her at home. to study. to clean. she runs. screaming. throwing herself down carpeted staircases. she hurts, but no bruises appear that can’t be covered. why? why? why? she screams over and over. she tries to make a phone call. a hotline. she can’t. her parents will call home. if the line is busy they will wonder why. she cries. she cries more. she washes her face and calms herself before they come home. she’s fine. she’s fine. she’s fine. she’s fine. a mantra she repeats in her head until she can make herself believe it. a little while.

the parents go to the school. go to the concerts. go to the conferences. they talk to the teachers. they bring home the report cards. they throw it on the table. they pick it up again. they wave it in her face. bitter words leave spittle on her face.

“you’ve got them faked out. they don’t know you at all.”

maybe not… maybe not.

most of us live in a black and white world. we believe in what our parents believed in. or not. we were dressed up in our sunday best and hustled to church to be precluded by sunday school and followed by fellowship. a fancy way of saying coffee and cookies and gossip. we were paraded out for christmas pagents and midnight mass and sunrise services. we sang hallalujah in a choir or rang bells in a balcony. we knelt. or not. we ate unleavened bread and drank grape juice. the body. the blood.

we confessed on saturday. went to church on sunday. stabbed our neighbor in the back doing business on monday and fucked our best friends’ wife on friday night. saturday we confessed and all was clean and holy again.

you were with ‘em or against ‘em. friend or foe. take ‘em or leave ‘em. one for all and all for… what? black and white.

they were different. they were niggers. nobody wants them in our neighborhood. oh… they’re the new minister. that’s different. we want to be friends. we’ll show them how we can all get along. we want the daughter to be our best friend. we like niggers.

we don’t drink in this county. this here is a dry county. you have to go across the state line iffin you’re going to get liquor. we don’t believe it to be a proper thing. here’s $20. bring me back some whisky.

black and white. as long as it suits us. right and wrong. do as i say, not as i do.

she lives in shadows. her world revolves in layers of gray. she sees things that aren’t exactly there. things that aren’t black. aren’t white. things that lay in the spaces between. things that aren’t supposed to be seen. she knows they are there. she sees them out of the corner of her eye. she senses them on the nape of her neck. her animals react with confirmation. she would like it to go now. it won’t. insanity or just another shade of gray?

originally post may 15, 2005

there was a time

there was a time when i was young and naive and believed the world was fair. i thought if you gave it all you had and treated everyone with kindness you would be in turn treated the same. years later i would realize how fucked up i truly was.

when you find yourself living in an apartment in the upstairs of a house where the heat is oppressive to the point you leave the window open next to your bed and find yourself covered with snow, shivering uncontrollably in the middle of a december blizzard three days after your eighteenth birthday. within 48 hours you are found huddled in the same apartment in the back of a walk-in closet high on nyquil by the fire department who have been called because you won’t answer the door and your family and serious boyfriend who will one day become your ex-husband are afraid you are dead.

i wished i was.
i’m glad i’m not.

go visit jay at kill the goat and read today’s post. she got it right. the post is titled “not any more”.

when goodness came, she didn’t know how to handle it. it was something to be fearful of, not to trust. she’d been fooled before. she didn’t believe entirely that this could be true. what was the saying… too good to be true, it probably is? she wondered if this was another cruel joke being played on her by the universe.

she wanted to take a chance. she wanted to believe in the goodness, the light. he asked her to come live with him. he asked her to bring her children, her meger possessions, her soul. he asked her to try to trust.

she didn’t want to risk it all. she didn’t want to put her children in a potentially harmful place. she just didn’t know. she talked to the man she called husband – in name only – and told him she was moving away to make a fresh start. would he keep the kids for a little while until she could find a job. find a home. he said yes.

he moved home with his parents, taking the children. she moved to another city. another life. she talked to her husband. she asked about the kids. he said they were fine. he told her she had a week to get her things out of the apartment. he’d taken what he wanted.

she got a job. she got her things. she was staying with him. it felt right. it felt good. it felt safe. he felt safe.

she called her husband. his mother answered. she said he wasn’t there. it was early in the morning. she heard his morning smoker’s cough in the background. she’d lived with it for five years. she’d know it anywhere. his mother denied it. his mother lied. she tried to let her talk to the kids. one four, one two. no. no. she could hear her little boy in the background, not much more than a baby. she heard him crying in rhythm to his rocking. she could picture him on his hands and knees. ma.ma.ma.ma.ma. her heart ripped out of her chest and fell to the floor. his mother hung up.

he held her as she sobbed. he promised her he’d do whatever it took to try and make it right.

she found out his parents were encouraging him to sue for full custody. the social worker came to investigate. they interviewed everyone she knew. they interviewed people she barely knew. when the report came back it said he should have the children. it said she took drugs. it said she was a bad mother. who said it? the people of the church where she tried to fit in. the people who claimed to love her. the people who were going on rumors and innuendo. the people who are supposed to reach out and help you up when you’re down. the people who were friends of his family. there was no one to speak for her.

weeks went by. she was allowed visitation. the first time she picked up the kids and brought them to her home they barely knew who she was. they were distant and cool. she burned to hold them. to smell them. to touch their baby fine hair and look into their beautiful little faces. one blue-eyed, one brown… one brown-haired, one blonde. her sweet babies. she put them on the kitchen counter and let them watch while she made spaghetti – their favorite. she tried to talk to them. they just looked at her. she choked down the tears that threatened to wash down her face. they mustn’t see her cry.

when they went home, once more she sobbed in his arms. knowing she’d done the right thing to leave and praying that she wouldn’t be punished for it for the rest of her life. he told her it would be fine. he told her he loved her.

more time passed. court dates came closer. the divorce was final, but the custody still hadn’t been resolved. she was seeing the children every couple of weeks and it was getting better. the day came. they went to court. standing outside of the courtroom, her husband comes to her. he’s been talking to his lawyer and they were wondering if she’d be interested in joint custody. something new. it hadn’t been used much before. she would have the kids during the week and he would have them on the weekends, alternating holidays. what did she think? what could she think? she was going to have her babies back again.

there isn’t a mother out there who won’t tell you the joy and peace of watching your babies sleep. she got that back. she never lost that joy. she treasures all of her children for all of their strengths… and weaknesses. she knows how close she came to losing them.

in case someone found this site without coming through The Torn Pages, i will post this here, too.

i just want to say something about the this site. my husband asked me last night why i want to keep going back to that dark time in my life? why not just move forward? i want people to know there is hope. there can be a happy life on the other side of the abyss. i’m not claiming to be “suzy sunshine” all the time, but because of the love of my husband and kids i’m not going back into that dark place again. having said that, some of this may come from losing my mother at such an early age and craving that knowlege of who was she and what was she like? to have the gift of being able to see inside her mind and know how she thought – maybe it would be disturbing, i’m not claiming this has not been disturbing for my family – but maybe it too will let them peek inside my head a bit. i also wrote, at least to this point, without any clue that anyone would ever read this blog… especially my family. there have therefore been no special concessions made for them. i did not write to pump them up or tear them down or rip out their hearts. i simply wrote the truth, and will continue to do so.

i read something once by David Pelzer the man who wrote “A Child Called It“. he was talking about all the criminals in the world who blamed their lives of crime on child abuse. he said he wanted to write his books to show that it wasn’t always the case. that it was an excuse, like anything else. he wanted people to know you could be abused and come out the other side a whole, loving, kind human being. i’m just trying to show that although i’m a bit quirky at times, i’m a whole, loving, kind human being who survived. Rejoice!

in the days before… the dark days…there were so many things she didn’t understand. she didn’t know why her parents hated her so. she didn’t know why she could do nothing right. she was never good enough. the grades were never good enough. the bathroom was never clean enough. the girl was never quiet enough. then she was too quiet.

in looking back the trail is clear. she can see the path as surely as blood dripping into newly fallen snow. one thing leading to another. the parents who couldn’t let her out of their site for a minute. then they did and something bad happened, but they didn’t believe. they couldn’t believe.

the awkwardness. the shyness. the gawky teen years overexposed by drunken jokes and lewd comments. the young adult treated as a young child treated as a thing. never talk to this girl. what do we say? nothing. requests. commands. lists. rules. do this. do that. don’t talk back. don’t talk.

she went from being shy to being non-existant. she would melt into the corner of the classroom. please don’t pick me. don’t pick me. i’ll write it down for you. don’t make me speak. don’t point me out. i’m here… i’m not here.

a teacher noticed her writing. another noticed her attitude. another noticed her mind. they were fleeting moments trapped in cinder block walls for six hours a day. then the real world came rushing back.

a job… a real job… a chance to get out of the house for a few hours a day more. a man, a boy really. he notices her. he sees past her silence. he sees her joy escaping day by day and growing as each passing hour flies by in the restaurant. could it be she is happy here?

they join and he becomes a crutch. a further escape into the night and the darkness. weeks go by and she is free in the darkness. free to be herself. free to have a voice. she doesn’t recognize the voice.

they run away and get married and hide from her parents. his parents are very ensconsed in the church. they are displeased with the idea of living together but happy they’ve married. she tries to fit into their world. she tries to learn about this god that she’s only heard about but never seen. the one she prayed to day after day and heard only echos of her own whispers in return.

children come. violence comes. small, but bitter. flash – quick. not sure why or where or when. forgiveness comes. hard.

jealousy. she has blossomed. she is a butterfly now…her cocoon has ruptured and set her free. she is coming into her own. she is starting to laugh. starting to feel some sense of …joy. he won’t let her. he is green. he sees her startling beauty. more so because she doesn’t see it herself. she still carries the ugly troll within her head.

he mistrusts. she is innocent. he becomes more controlling. she begins to feel the pull of her parents speaking in her mind. worthless. she fades. becomes fainter each day. he still resents. he’s angry and sad. she can’t help him. she rebels. they agree to disagree. they agree to live in the same space but not the same time.

she tries to live again. one, two, three, four… how many failed relationships must you have to feel less than a human being? does being raped make you less of a woman? did you ask for it? did you? they say you did. she falters. she slips. she hides in her space with a man she no longer knows and believes it is the lesser of two evils.

she gets pregnant. a third. it can’t happen. there isn’t enough. of anything. now she is losing a piece of herself. her body. her soul. she will never get it back. she is less than before.

how does she know god exists? because out of the darkness came a man with a pure soul. a man without a hint of anger or jealousy or hate or violence. a man who loved. simply loved. he took her in and loved her in a way no one ever had before. he held her gently. softly. a feral cat come tame at last. he nurtured her. he stroked her. he brought strength to make her strong. he brought hope to the hopeless. he cared for her children as his own. he helped her climb out of the abyss. no longer helpless.