19 June 2013
I woke up this morning to two puppies jumping on my bed. And just now, the childhood song about monkey's jumping on the bed is running through my head. Anyway; I woke up to Laika and Bailee jumping on my bed. Not trying to wake me up. They were just playing. Unfortunately, I was apparently in the way of their "fun."
I proceeded to drag myself out of bed and shuffle towards the kitchen with a single purpose in my life. Coffee. I needed coffee. Lots and lots of the good java that my loving husband pays dearly for it to be shipped to me from a coffee shop in Kentucky. Yes, yes...I am spoiled. Blah, blah, blah. Don't be a hater. Nobody likes those.
Fast forward a few hours and you will see that I made it as far as the chair/ottoman in the family room, which is directly next to the kitchen and the closest area to the coffee maker. I have watched a couple episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and made a peanut butter & jelly sandwich as my lunch. I'm living large people. Y'all have no clue.
Phone rings a couple times. I've spoken to my mother, to a representative with the emergency clean up company who is coming out to make sure their equipment is still here (cause apparently someone has stolen it and sold it previously...I would just like to say that I wouldn't even know where to start on trying to do that. I don't even know what these things are actually called because I just call them "really big fans that make lots of noise".) Then my doctor had his nurse call me because they got the results back on some of my lab work. Now, I find out that I have blood in my urine and a really high WBC count. What the nurse didn't know was if my doctor wanted me to come back to his office so they can do a culture or if I was to go to the hospital for whatever reason.
My plans for going to the golf course with my brother has temporarily been sidetracked. Seriously...I don't even know what to say anymore. Apparently, my entire body and immune system are just shutting down simultaneously. All I can do is pray and just do what the doctor says.
Now? Now can I sleep until my love gets home?
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
Reflections
7 June 2013
I've had a few dreams lately, that while they confuse me, they also help me to realize that I have turned another corner in my life and those bonds that formerly frightened me have fallen away. I guess you could say that I have been set free. Yet, in another sense, I am still held in bondage. While some of those things have been freed, I still have work to do within myself before I can truly step away from the hurt that has festered and eaten away at my very soul.
Today I shall look back and try to make peace with a couple things. I don't expect that this journey will be completed today. No, today is simply the day that I will begin that journey. Although, journey tends to imply that this is a trip that will be pleasant. Maybe I should say we will begin the expedition and excavation. Which means that the journey will be long and arduous and it is going to require a lot of uncovering of shame, secrets and pain. I expect a lot of pain.
I think I need to share this with others, not so much for accountability, but more as a lesson in how things may happen in a life, but the life does not have to be defined by those things. Whatever they may be. I will start with a quick skim coat from the beginning of my life on this earth to present day. I'll dig into other things and will share the outcome once I have dealt with things and can speak about them without tears.
The beginning...
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...
Wait...wrong beginning. Actually, no..right beginning, but I didn't come along until 1976 A.D. Let's fast forward a few years.
I was born in December of 1976. I have been told that I was a little early due to a couple medical concerns with my mom. My mom had extremely high blood pressure and supposedly I was drowning within the womb. I don't know this for a fact, I was just along for the ride, but knowing my health history now I have a tendency to believe that. Cause what child drowns in utero? Me. This may explain my serious fear of dying from lack of oxygen. I don't care if my death is long, painful, short, whatever...just don't let me die from not being able to breathe. Okay, so back on topic. Upon my arrival via cesarean they said "She has a full head of red hair" and my mothers response was, "God, anything but red." I feel the love, don't you guys? However; my dad was over the moon that he had a daughter...although he slept through my birth in the waiting room. No matter. I could do no wrong through his eyes.
I don't remember much from my childhood. I have my first memory and then flashes of stuff throughout the rest of it. Do you know your first memory off the top of your head? Is it a happy memory? Something that makes you smile as you reflect on it? I hope so. That would make one of us. My first memory is of being molested...by my mothers father. I do not call him grandpa or grandfather. In my mind, he is deserving of neither of those titles, by which most should have many happy memories. I do not. I don't recall the exact age, but I do remember being left alone there while my parents worked. I don't want to remember this. However; it was the first thing in a long line of things that have molded me to the person I am today.
He was not the only abuser. I then remember two teenage girls that lived and played with all of us in the neighborhood. There were only three girls in the three blocks of neighborhood we were allowed to go anywhere within, I was the third. One was the daughter of my babysitter who lived in the apartment above ours. The other was the older sibling in a family of 7 kids. They liked to "experiment". I was always the guinea pig. Always. Between these two and the man who fathered my mother, I never actually got to be a child. My childhood was stolen from me. Now you know why I have almost zero recollection of that time.
At the age of 12, I attempted suicide, multiple times. I felt like a true failure because I was never able to succeed in my attempts. I can look back now and understand that God had other plans for me and THAT is why my attempts failed. At the time though, the only thing I could see was that I was a failure because I couldn't even kill myself correctly. By the age of 12, I had experienced things that adults had not. I was an expert at keeping people at arms length and never sharing anything. Today, I have essentially become a "secret keeper" for my friends. I have many things in my head that have been shared and not a soul on this planet other than myself and them and whoever else they told knows about.
I spent almost a year in and out of psychiatric hospitals and programs. I did not attend 8th grade with my friends. I completed the school year in a locked facility for children. I cannot tell you the number of times that I was strip searched, spent locked in a room made of "softer" material than drywall and was affectionately called "the pink room". Cause it was pink. Pink was supposed to be "soothing". Right. It looked like pepto bismol had been the paint. The door was 3 inch thick steel with 2 inch thick shatterproof glass window in the door so they could witness people beat the walls and floors with their arms, legs, feet, hands and head. My daily life consisted of hell. Medication monitoring, food intake monitoring, make sure the staff witnesses you throwing away your plastic utensils cause if they don't and you go back to your seat, your entire unit will all be strip searched and you will enter the unit one kid at a time until they make sure that nobody is sneaking anything back. The beatings that occur after an instant like that will make you NEVER forget to make sure you are seen tossing your items. When the beat downs occurred, not only did you get wailed on by your peers, you got the lovely opportunity to be slammed into walls and floors by adults, with adult force, have your hands and legs bound behind you, carried into your room, strapped down to your bed that had special handles built into them to accommodate the restraints and then, if you were super lucky, they shoved a needle into you and injected medication to knock you out. At no point in time were you allowed in your room unless you needed to get something and not before you asked, "Sir/Ma'am, may I enter my room to get *insert item here*?" If you were given permission, before you could LEAVE your room, you had to ask, "Sir/Ma'am, may I exit my room?" If you were told no, then you stayed, if you left without permission then you went through the same scenario I explained a couple sentences ago. IF you had items in your room, it's because you had EARNED it. Screw up, just once, and go all the way back to the beginning where you had NOTHING. You had to put in writing, before bed time, the request for all toiletry items and specific clothing requests because ALL your stuff was under lock and key on a separate unit. If you forgot to ask for something, like your hair dryer, then you were just out of luck. You'll only forget underwear and deoderant once. Trust me. While there, I was forced to attend teen AA and NA meetings. If you know those initials then you'll know WHY I had to. It was part of my "treatment".
At the age of 16, I met my former husband. By the age of 17, I was locked in an abusive relationship. At the age of 18, I could tell you the procedure for requesting an emergency protective order. I also had my first child. I married the abuser at the age of 19 because I feared for the life of myself and my child. At 20, I could tell you how it feels to be beaten with a claw hammer. By the age of 21, I could take a beating better than any man and not make the first inkling of a sound. At the age of 22, I had my second daughter and almost lost my children to social services because we were all being physically abused. At the age of 23, I started college, caught my former husband sleeping with another woman (by that time I had quit counting how many women he slept with), had a gun held to my head and told, "I believe in our marriage vows. Especially the Until death do we part." At 24, my divorce was final, I was a single mother with two children under the age of 5, working two part time jobs and going to college full time. I didn't date for almost 3 years.
Then, at the age of 26, I met James. He was an amazing friend and moved us in with him to escape the constant threat of physical harm that my former husband kept threatening. James was a wonderful man. He taught me how to ride a motorcycle. He loved my daughters like they were his own. My oldest daughter called him Daddy James. In August 2003, I drove to my hometown to bring up some additional items that I had in our townhouse. We were supposed to take the kids to a wrestling match that evening. I kept calling him and getting no response, but didn't worry too much because his phone had been on the fritz for about a week at that point. Finally, something in my gut said I needed to leave. I put the kids in their car seats and drove back to Shelbyville. When I pulled into our driveway I saw a note on the door. The note read, "Dee, James is in the University of Louisville hospital. He was in a motorcycle accident." I had to read that note 4 times before it clicked in my head. I wasted no time getting into downtown Louisville. He underwent surgery. I didn't leave the hospital for the first 9 days. James spoke for the first 3 days he was hospitalized. He slipped into a coma on day 4. 20 days after the accident, I held his hand as he took his last breath. I was with the man I loved wholeheartedly as he exited this world...and it was hauntingly beautiful. I watched as they tried to resuscitate him. I turned and walked blindly and numb to my mother who was watching my daughters sleep in the waiting room outside the ICU ward. I hit my knees. I had never felt such a deep, crushing pain as I did at that moment. Arrangements were made. Funeral was endured. Internment completed. I was once asked what it "felt" like. Here is how I describe it so you can try to gain understanding in a physical sense. "Imagine the biggest, hulking beast of a man, with strength immeasurable standing in front of you. He rears back and punches you as hard as he can right center mass in your gut. As you are doubled over, gasping for air, he slams a hole in your chest and RIPS everything out, leaving you with nothing but a giant, gaping hole and you can't fight back, you can't breathe, you are in pain that is indescribable and numb. You quit feeling everything."
At the age of 27, I started drinking and partying, trying to escape the pain of losing my partner.
14 months after the death of James, I met Patrick. The first time we talked it was as if we had known each other forever and were just catching up again. Pat was just as broken and damaged as I was, just in another sense. His story is his own to tell, but I will share only what I personally witnessed as it pertains to this. I met Pat upon returning from the war in Iraq in 2004. He was in Radcliffe, KY, and we were able to make each other laugh. It had been a long time since I had laughed or even smiled. Pat was a gentleman in every sense of the word. If he invited us out somewhere, it was his treat and I was never once allowed to pay for a single thing. Our daughters were close in age and they got along great. It was only AFTER his divorce was final that I even got a "one arm" hug. He was starting to set a pretty high bar for any other man. We had a lot of fun as friends and then he called me one day at work and asked if I wanted to go out to dinner. I said that would be great and that after I got home and picked up the kids we would meet him wherever. Then he said, "Um, well I was thinking, that we leave the kids out of this one. Just you and I. What do you say?" I haven't regretted a single day since saying, "Okay."
We had a long distant relationship from the beginning. He went to train in another state. I got to experience and endure the first of a few deployments. In 9 years together, we've lived together, a total of just a little over 3 years. Our marriage started just like everything else we've done together. We decided on a Friday night that we were going to wake up Saturday morning and drive to Reno because it was closer than Vegas. Told the kids to pack an overnight bag and off we went.
I've traveled across this country more times than a lot of people. I would follow my husband to the ends of the earth and back. I hold down the fort at home while he handles things for the military overseas. We are both strong and independent. And when we're together, it's like two puzzle pieces fitting together. We each show a picture, but together you see the entire painting.
The last couple of years has been interesting. I admitted that I was an alcoholic and an addict. I got myself clean. I've had several surgeries and was on the verge of death in July 2011. Again, my life was spared. I have witnessed and experienced the true grace of God. I can now look back on my life and KNOW that my purpose here is unfulfilled as of yet. I have been knocked to my knees and laid flat on my back by the hits that life has thrown at me. And yet, every single time, though I may complain and cry and wail, it's not long before I finish my pity party, laugh at the situation, say something along the lines of "You hit like a b****", grab my bootstraps, pull my tail up, bow my head and push my way forward. I don't mind getting knocked to my knees much anymore because it really does put me in the greatest position to pray.
There is so much more I could share, but my soul feels much lighter, just with sharing this. So, I am going to stop at this point.
Remember, no matter what happens to you in life, it's how we react that determines the outcome. It may not always happen how you want it to, but it ALWAYS turns out exactly as God planned it for you. Stop hating yourself. Love yourself and the love you receive will far outweigh any negative in your life.
I've had a few dreams lately, that while they confuse me, they also help me to realize that I have turned another corner in my life and those bonds that formerly frightened me have fallen away. I guess you could say that I have been set free. Yet, in another sense, I am still held in bondage. While some of those things have been freed, I still have work to do within myself before I can truly step away from the hurt that has festered and eaten away at my very soul.
Today I shall look back and try to make peace with a couple things. I don't expect that this journey will be completed today. No, today is simply the day that I will begin that journey. Although, journey tends to imply that this is a trip that will be pleasant. Maybe I should say we will begin the expedition and excavation. Which means that the journey will be long and arduous and it is going to require a lot of uncovering of shame, secrets and pain. I expect a lot of pain.
I think I need to share this with others, not so much for accountability, but more as a lesson in how things may happen in a life, but the life does not have to be defined by those things. Whatever they may be. I will start with a quick skim coat from the beginning of my life on this earth to present day. I'll dig into other things and will share the outcome once I have dealt with things and can speak about them without tears.
The beginning...
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...
Wait...wrong beginning. Actually, no..right beginning, but I didn't come along until 1976 A.D. Let's fast forward a few years.
I was born in December of 1976. I have been told that I was a little early due to a couple medical concerns with my mom. My mom had extremely high blood pressure and supposedly I was drowning within the womb. I don't know this for a fact, I was just along for the ride, but knowing my health history now I have a tendency to believe that. Cause what child drowns in utero? Me. This may explain my serious fear of dying from lack of oxygen. I don't care if my death is long, painful, short, whatever...just don't let me die from not being able to breathe. Okay, so back on topic. Upon my arrival via cesarean they said "She has a full head of red hair" and my mothers response was, "God, anything but red." I feel the love, don't you guys? However; my dad was over the moon that he had a daughter...although he slept through my birth in the waiting room. No matter. I could do no wrong through his eyes.
I don't remember much from my childhood. I have my first memory and then flashes of stuff throughout the rest of it. Do you know your first memory off the top of your head? Is it a happy memory? Something that makes you smile as you reflect on it? I hope so. That would make one of us. My first memory is of being molested...by my mothers father. I do not call him grandpa or grandfather. In my mind, he is deserving of neither of those titles, by which most should have many happy memories. I do not. I don't recall the exact age, but I do remember being left alone there while my parents worked. I don't want to remember this. However; it was the first thing in a long line of things that have molded me to the person I am today.
He was not the only abuser. I then remember two teenage girls that lived and played with all of us in the neighborhood. There were only three girls in the three blocks of neighborhood we were allowed to go anywhere within, I was the third. One was the daughter of my babysitter who lived in the apartment above ours. The other was the older sibling in a family of 7 kids. They liked to "experiment". I was always the guinea pig. Always. Between these two and the man who fathered my mother, I never actually got to be a child. My childhood was stolen from me. Now you know why I have almost zero recollection of that time.
At the age of 12, I attempted suicide, multiple times. I felt like a true failure because I was never able to succeed in my attempts. I can look back now and understand that God had other plans for me and THAT is why my attempts failed. At the time though, the only thing I could see was that I was a failure because I couldn't even kill myself correctly. By the age of 12, I had experienced things that adults had not. I was an expert at keeping people at arms length and never sharing anything. Today, I have essentially become a "secret keeper" for my friends. I have many things in my head that have been shared and not a soul on this planet other than myself and them and whoever else they told knows about.
I spent almost a year in and out of psychiatric hospitals and programs. I did not attend 8th grade with my friends. I completed the school year in a locked facility for children. I cannot tell you the number of times that I was strip searched, spent locked in a room made of "softer" material than drywall and was affectionately called "the pink room". Cause it was pink. Pink was supposed to be "soothing". Right. It looked like pepto bismol had been the paint. The door was 3 inch thick steel with 2 inch thick shatterproof glass window in the door so they could witness people beat the walls and floors with their arms, legs, feet, hands and head. My daily life consisted of hell. Medication monitoring, food intake monitoring, make sure the staff witnesses you throwing away your plastic utensils cause if they don't and you go back to your seat, your entire unit will all be strip searched and you will enter the unit one kid at a time until they make sure that nobody is sneaking anything back. The beatings that occur after an instant like that will make you NEVER forget to make sure you are seen tossing your items. When the beat downs occurred, not only did you get wailed on by your peers, you got the lovely opportunity to be slammed into walls and floors by adults, with adult force, have your hands and legs bound behind you, carried into your room, strapped down to your bed that had special handles built into them to accommodate the restraints and then, if you were super lucky, they shoved a needle into you and injected medication to knock you out. At no point in time were you allowed in your room unless you needed to get something and not before you asked, "Sir/Ma'am, may I enter my room to get *insert item here*?" If you were given permission, before you could LEAVE your room, you had to ask, "Sir/Ma'am, may I exit my room?" If you were told no, then you stayed, if you left without permission then you went through the same scenario I explained a couple sentences ago. IF you had items in your room, it's because you had EARNED it. Screw up, just once, and go all the way back to the beginning where you had NOTHING. You had to put in writing, before bed time, the request for all toiletry items and specific clothing requests because ALL your stuff was under lock and key on a separate unit. If you forgot to ask for something, like your hair dryer, then you were just out of luck. You'll only forget underwear and deoderant once. Trust me. While there, I was forced to attend teen AA and NA meetings. If you know those initials then you'll know WHY I had to. It was part of my "treatment".
At the age of 16, I met my former husband. By the age of 17, I was locked in an abusive relationship. At the age of 18, I could tell you the procedure for requesting an emergency protective order. I also had my first child. I married the abuser at the age of 19 because I feared for the life of myself and my child. At 20, I could tell you how it feels to be beaten with a claw hammer. By the age of 21, I could take a beating better than any man and not make the first inkling of a sound. At the age of 22, I had my second daughter and almost lost my children to social services because we were all being physically abused. At the age of 23, I started college, caught my former husband sleeping with another woman (by that time I had quit counting how many women he slept with), had a gun held to my head and told, "I believe in our marriage vows. Especially the Until death do we part." At 24, my divorce was final, I was a single mother with two children under the age of 5, working two part time jobs and going to college full time. I didn't date for almost 3 years.
Then, at the age of 26, I met James. He was an amazing friend and moved us in with him to escape the constant threat of physical harm that my former husband kept threatening. James was a wonderful man. He taught me how to ride a motorcycle. He loved my daughters like they were his own. My oldest daughter called him Daddy James. In August 2003, I drove to my hometown to bring up some additional items that I had in our townhouse. We were supposed to take the kids to a wrestling match that evening. I kept calling him and getting no response, but didn't worry too much because his phone had been on the fritz for about a week at that point. Finally, something in my gut said I needed to leave. I put the kids in their car seats and drove back to Shelbyville. When I pulled into our driveway I saw a note on the door. The note read, "Dee, James is in the University of Louisville hospital. He was in a motorcycle accident." I had to read that note 4 times before it clicked in my head. I wasted no time getting into downtown Louisville. He underwent surgery. I didn't leave the hospital for the first 9 days. James spoke for the first 3 days he was hospitalized. He slipped into a coma on day 4. 20 days after the accident, I held his hand as he took his last breath. I was with the man I loved wholeheartedly as he exited this world...and it was hauntingly beautiful. I watched as they tried to resuscitate him. I turned and walked blindly and numb to my mother who was watching my daughters sleep in the waiting room outside the ICU ward. I hit my knees. I had never felt such a deep, crushing pain as I did at that moment. Arrangements were made. Funeral was endured. Internment completed. I was once asked what it "felt" like. Here is how I describe it so you can try to gain understanding in a physical sense. "Imagine the biggest, hulking beast of a man, with strength immeasurable standing in front of you. He rears back and punches you as hard as he can right center mass in your gut. As you are doubled over, gasping for air, he slams a hole in your chest and RIPS everything out, leaving you with nothing but a giant, gaping hole and you can't fight back, you can't breathe, you are in pain that is indescribable and numb. You quit feeling everything."
At the age of 27, I started drinking and partying, trying to escape the pain of losing my partner.
14 months after the death of James, I met Patrick. The first time we talked it was as if we had known each other forever and were just catching up again. Pat was just as broken and damaged as I was, just in another sense. His story is his own to tell, but I will share only what I personally witnessed as it pertains to this. I met Pat upon returning from the war in Iraq in 2004. He was in Radcliffe, KY, and we were able to make each other laugh. It had been a long time since I had laughed or even smiled. Pat was a gentleman in every sense of the word. If he invited us out somewhere, it was his treat and I was never once allowed to pay for a single thing. Our daughters were close in age and they got along great. It was only AFTER his divorce was final that I even got a "one arm" hug. He was starting to set a pretty high bar for any other man. We had a lot of fun as friends and then he called me one day at work and asked if I wanted to go out to dinner. I said that would be great and that after I got home and picked up the kids we would meet him wherever. Then he said, "Um, well I was thinking, that we leave the kids out of this one. Just you and I. What do you say?" I haven't regretted a single day since saying, "Okay."
We had a long distant relationship from the beginning. He went to train in another state. I got to experience and endure the first of a few deployments. In 9 years together, we've lived together, a total of just a little over 3 years. Our marriage started just like everything else we've done together. We decided on a Friday night that we were going to wake up Saturday morning and drive to Reno because it was closer than Vegas. Told the kids to pack an overnight bag and off we went.
I've traveled across this country more times than a lot of people. I would follow my husband to the ends of the earth and back. I hold down the fort at home while he handles things for the military overseas. We are both strong and independent. And when we're together, it's like two puzzle pieces fitting together. We each show a picture, but together you see the entire painting.
The last couple of years has been interesting. I admitted that I was an alcoholic and an addict. I got myself clean. I've had several surgeries and was on the verge of death in July 2011. Again, my life was spared. I have witnessed and experienced the true grace of God. I can now look back on my life and KNOW that my purpose here is unfulfilled as of yet. I have been knocked to my knees and laid flat on my back by the hits that life has thrown at me. And yet, every single time, though I may complain and cry and wail, it's not long before I finish my pity party, laugh at the situation, say something along the lines of "You hit like a b****", grab my bootstraps, pull my tail up, bow my head and push my way forward. I don't mind getting knocked to my knees much anymore because it really does put me in the greatest position to pray.
There is so much more I could share, but my soul feels much lighter, just with sharing this. So, I am going to stop at this point.
Remember, no matter what happens to you in life, it's how we react that determines the outcome. It may not always happen how you want it to, but it ALWAYS turns out exactly as God planned it for you. Stop hating yourself. Love yourself and the love you receive will far outweigh any negative in your life.
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