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04-17-2012 03:49 PM |
Want Some Cheese With That Whine?
On a site, which shall remain nameless, one of the writers there issued a challenge, to write about ourselves and how our past had shaped who we are now. This is what I wrote (with a bit of editing):
I am butchiesmom, aka Mom, Grammy, Luv, and Sis. Those who don't like me (I'm sure there are a few people) call me...well...we won't go there. My friends call me Gail.
I thought of talking about how, even as a child, I felt like an outsider in my family. I remember going swimming with the family one day and watching as my father launched my sisters into the water. I wanted so much to be part of the fun, but could not force myself to join in. I've tried to remember why I didn't, but all I can remember from that day is watching them having fun and wishing I was part of it. Alone as I felt, I knew then, as now, no one attacks one of us without facing the rest. In-fighting aside, our struggles early on and as adults have made us stronger and bound us together. They are my siblings by birth, friends by choice.
Admittedly, I was different. Molested as a young child, it was difficult for me to interact with the opposite sex, so I said very little around them. Rejected and jeered at repeatedly, I became intensely shy, talking only when it was required. Eventually, I did make some friends, but was quiet and reserved even among them. One friend told me she thought I was a snob when we first met. I've lost touch with her over the years, but still consider her my best friend back then.
Normal is a cruel word. It implies one is unacceptable unless that person can conform to the standards set by the rest of the normal world. Children and teenagers use it to decide whether a person will or will not be accepted by them. An invitation to parties, playing together on the playground and after school depends on the "norm" they have come to accept as standard guidelines for friends.
As an adult, I've come to understand that "normal" varies from one person to another. I'd constantly heard I needed to love myself before others could love me but didn't understand it. Since then, I've learned to accept and embrace my uniqueness. Life isn't about living your life according to others' standards. It's about accepting who you are and finding your unique niche in this world.
I could live the rest of my life talking about how the taunting, molestation and shyness made my teen years miserable. Frankly, I'm tired of whining about it. As my Mom would say, "It's all water under the bridge," meaning that's the past, forget it and get on with your life.
My childhood had a part in shaping me but it didn't define the person I have become.
My severe breakdown, a few years ago, is another topic I thought to cover. How I completely lost the person I had been, shutdown emotionally, how I had to redefine myself and the struggle get back to "sanity." It's difficult to sum up in a few paragraphs a journey that lasted almost ten years.
There are no words to describe the turmoil of those years. I'm not just talking about my mind, but my life as well. I had been a confident, friendly and relatively happy person. After graduating with an Associates degree and marrying the next year, I felt well adjusted, loved and accepted for the first time in my life. I won't go into the circumstances that precipitated my breakdown, partly because it's an intensely private matter and because I do not want to step on the feelings of those with whom I have made peace. I will say, lies were told, agencies were involved and lives other than my own were changed because of it.
I can remember sitting in a quiet room off the ER, listening to the sobs of my daughter after the crib death of my three-month-old grandson wondering why I felt no sorrow. I shed no tears there or at the funeral. I wanted to cry, wanted to feel the bone-deep loss of that very special child, but couldn't. When my father-in-law died, I watched my husband and in-laws shed tears for a wonderful husband and father. For three days, his friends and acquaintances came to extend their sympathies with tears in their eyes and hearts. Again, I wanted to feel what they did, I wanted to feel the pain I saw on my husband's face just before they closed the coffin. Nothing. Nada. No emotion.
Inflicting self-injury in an effort to feel anything, helped only as long as the pain lasted. My arms still bear the scars from slicing my skin, not with thoughts of suicide, but in an effort to feel...anything. Voices, which started in my journal, urged more pain. They warned about those who would silence them and planned an end to my torment. Medication quieted the voices, but in the process, also silenced my creative voice. I couldn't explain the void it left to those who don't write.
It took the combined efforts of my husband, therapist, psychiatrist and more than a few other professionals to bring me back from the land of insanity. Painful memories from my childhood and shameful deeds were exhumed, dissected, examined logically, then laid to rest. I remember thinking I was just faking it and could stop the downward spiral anytime. It was only after admitting to myself I was not in control that the long climb to sanity began.
Though that journey through hell had a major role in my life, it doesn't define me.
Mom has often told me I could fall into a brick outhouse and come up smelling like a rose. I have to admit it did appear that way until October 15, 2003, the day of my diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. Nine words, "You're in the very early stages of Parkinson's Disease." That's all it took to rock my world. Sorry about the cliché but this time it fits. Bad as my life has been at times, no other words had such a profound effect on my psyche. Affected with increasing bad balance for two years, my doctor referred me to a neurologist.
At the first examination, it was soon apparent the neurologist knew what was wrong. With each task I "failed," he would nod his head and make that "doctor" sound. I can still hear his voice as he pronounced my life sentence. There's a vague memory of the rest of the visit and talking about tests, but until we walked out of the building toward our car, everything else is hazy.
The logic of the serenity prayer is what finally helped me to make sense of it all. Accept the things you cannot change, change those you can, learn the difference between the two. Early on, my husband and I decided we would fight this disease together. I could sit around and cry about the future, or I could face it and fight. I chose to fight. I could allow others to do things for me, or I could fight by doing for myself as long as I could. Again, I chose to fight. With each new obstacle, we would find a way to get over or around it. Our motto: Accept, adjust, adapt.
Groucho Marx once said, "I have Parkinson's disease and he has mine." Although it is part of my life, I am not my disease.
I thought of writing about my family. My husband, Ken, is the most important person in my life. He knows me better than anyone else does. His patience, though severely tested at times, helped in my struggle with insanity. He hid the knives, doled out medications and visited almost every day of my hospitalizations. After the diagnosis, he listened to my rants of anger, held me during the tears and stayed strong when I felt the weakest. We have supported each other throughout the years.
My sister says he has the best poker face she's ever seen. He doesn't show a lot of emotion but I saw his face contorted with grief as he said his last goodbye to his father. He rarely smiles, but when he does, it lights my world. Always outwardly calm, little gestures and tiny changes of expression signal emotions. Even when I'm angry and snapping at him, he just finds something else to do, then will come back later and ask if I'm through being grumpy.
I love him with a passion that has mellowed through the years we've been together. I asked him why he didn't just kick me out when I was at my worst. He said the wedding vows said for better or worse, that was worse. In the ER, after a bad panic attack, I said something to him about having a lemon for a wife. He replied, "Then I guess we'll just have to make lemonade."
My daughters and granddaughters are a source of delight, despair, frustration and love in my life. The oldest has a beautiful daughter and is still grieving over the loss of her infant son. It has taken her years to come to grips with the loss and in the process lost custody of her daughter to her father. Although I sometimes want to throttle her, I love her unconditionally.
The second one is married with two beautiful little girls. Gregarious, she has never met a stranger but I've heard her fears and dried the tears she's shed. The only one to live out of state, I miss having her around, but am sure I would be just as frustrated with her living here as I do her sisters.
For reasons I don't care to discuss, my youngest daughter and I were estranged for a few years. It took a long time for us to regain some semblance of the relationship we once had. Never married, or pregnant that I know of, she has given me two beautiful and playful grandkitties.
My granddaughters are also a great source of pleasure. As my daughters grew up, I gave them the mother's curse, "May you have children twice as bad as you are." One daughter gasped and asked me if I realized just how bad they really were. As they call me to complain, I've gotten a good laugh and reminded them of their own escapades as children. What goes around, comes around.
Though I love my family, they do not define who I am.
None of the above alone defines who I am. Together, though, they helped shape the person I have become.
I'm butchiesmom.
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