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Tear necklace

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tears

Shortly after my parents died, I took to expressing myself primarily with beads. I had learned to work with beads when I was in my early 20s when I worked at the Kennedy Center. I had no idea that a few years later beads would be therapeutic for me.
Talking about my grief only seemed to make it worse. Nobody was around to help me know how to process my pain and loss. I was raised in a family that wasn’t very good at expressing feelings anyway. A lot of “friends” left after both my parents died, saying they didn’t know how to help me. It made an awful situation terrible.
I took to beads. Beads have their own rhythm and harmony and logic. Putting beads in order is like putting the world in order, one piece at a time. It gave my hands something to do and my mind something to focus on. One bead, then another, then another. Somehow I made it through. It wasn’t perfect – there was a lot still stuck in my head that I didn’t know how to deal with, but it there was less of it after I made jewelry. And, I made a little extra money by selling what I made.
Beads have a lot of symbolism. Sometimes it is because of the materials, sometimes where they were bought, and sometimes because of how they were made. A lot can be expressed with beads that isn’t obvious to the casual observer. They just see something pretty. Me, I see layers of meaning. A good necklace can tell a story to rival any piece of fiction. A good necklace can exorcise the demons like no crucifix can.
I don’t do this as often now. I’ve found that walking, writing, and yoga help keep me on an even keel. I make jewelry, sure, because I still enjoy it. I just don’t use the beads in the same way as often.
This weekend was hard. I made a necklace. Well, to be honest, I made the pendants on Sunday, and I made the necklace last night. The pendants are “tears”. I didn’t use my full complement of bead-symbolism tricks on this design.
I’d gotten a bag of beads a few weeks ago from a local bead store. The whole bag was only $3, and it had enough beads to make maybe 5 necklaces if you added in others to space them out. The bag was full of blue beads in different shapes – all Czech glass. Sure, I could have used just the beads from the bag to make necklaces, but all of one color in a necklace is a little much and the design tends to get lost.
The bag had lots of these little teardrop shaped beads in it, and I’d wondered what to do with them. I could create a pattern with two of them, round end facing each other, with a larger rounder bead in the center. That didn’t really appeal at the time. The beads were sitting in a saucer near me when I was having a down day on Sunday (hooray for the holidays!) so I started working with them. One of my favorite things to do is work with copper wire. I pulled it and the beads out and started making pendants. By the time I was done I felt better. Probably the fact that I was discussing how I felt with my husband at the same time had something to do with it. I still think the beads helped too. They are like a security blanket.
Last night I put it all together. The other blue beads are from the same bag. The tiny “11s”, the white beads, are from a separate purchase. I like how it came out. Some people turn lemons into lemonade. I turn pain into jewelry.

Victim beads part two – a month later.

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I made a victim bracelet after I went to visit my spiritual director last month. She wanted me to focus on my pain and those people who have harmed me. I’m opposed to this. I want to rush right ahead to the “forgive and forget” part.

Mostly the forget part.

But, she hasn’t steered me wrong yet, so I’m giving it a try. She didn’t recommend making a bracelet to help me remember. That is just something I do. This way, all day long I have a reminder to think about this. Beads are good tools for me.

I made it, with a bead for each person who came to mind. This was a month ago, and I’m discovering that I can’t remember who each bead refers to. A girl I went to high school with. My aunt. The former branch manager of the library I work at. My mom. A lady in a social group I was in. My brother, of course. But I’m having a hard time remembering everybody else. It isn’t easy.

Perhaps Jesus is getting on there and healing the broken bits.

I don’t want to focus on my pain, but I know it is important. You can’t heal what you don’t know is broken. Emotional pain is harder to work on. You can see a cut on your arm. It is easy to spot. Just put a bit of Neosporin on it and a Band-Aid and you are good.

But emotional hurts are harder to spot. The longer they aren’t tended to, the deeper they go. The deeper they go, the harder they are to dig up and get out. They tend to erupt in ugly ways. They tend to come up like privet in your yard, unwanted, unsightly, and well entrenched.

I want to forgive them. They didn’t know better. They didn’t know they were hurting me. I didn’t tell them. They didn’t mean to be mean and thoughtless and cruel. I want to let them off the hook and be done with it. I don’t want to wear this bracelet because it seems like I’m advertising my pain.

But I’m not, not really. Nobody knows what this bracelet is about. It is private. It is just a bunch of beads. Nobody knows they have meaning.

And why would I care what others think? When was I taught shame for these feelings? How much of this is the old idea of keeping the family name, the family honor clean, unbesmirched? Stiff upper lip, and all that. Don’t air your dirty laundry.

I always feel a sense of betrayal when I talk about these things. Not that I was betrayed, but that I am betraying them. This is especially true when I mention my parents. Don’t speak ill of the dead, you know.

How bad is it when the victim is the one blaming the victim?

So I wear this bracelet sometimes to work on these feelings, and ask Jesus into them. This is still a foreign idea. I wasn’t raised with the idea of Jesus as being real, and present, and my best friend. Jesus was a guy back then and out there, not somebody right now and right here.

I’m catching glimpses of this Jesus, and I think I like him.
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I got a letter from my brother.

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My brother wrote me a letter for my birthday. I got it on Tuesday. What is it about Tuesday right now? Last Tuesday is when I got another upsetting letter from a family member. I’m not happy about this chaos all at once. I’d like it to take a number and stand in line.

This is the same person who never remembered my birthday (45 years) and never remembered my address. He was constantly asking for it. I’m his sister. He should know these things. But I was an afterthought. I was always an afterthought.

This is the same person that I stopped talking to two and a half years ago. It was spring of 2011. I’d finally had enough, for the second time in my life, of dealing with him. He was constantly twisting my words, and constantly paranoid. He was constantly pushing me around, and treating me as a thing instead of a person. He called me “Sister” rather than by my name. He isn’t getting treatment for his psychopathic behavior, and he isn’t saying he is sorry now.

This is the same person who has abused me throughout my life. He wants to build a bridge, he says. I don’t trust him. I’ve learned that to trust him is like letting a thief in my house. Against my better judgment I’ve let him back into my life before, only to be hurt worse each time. Every time he steals something. Sometimes it is just material possessions. Sometimes it is my peace of mind.

He included a picture of him and his son, all gangly at 17 and sticking out his tongue, standing with a cousin of ours. From the picture it looks like they were in England. I had a brief moment of terror – he’s gotten to that side of the family and is telling them his version of the truth. I could go for damage control and write them, but it would just be my word against his. This is an echo of last Tuesday’s drama all over again. It is sad to see how people can be swayed to believe the words of someone who has ulterior motives. If people don’t get both sides, it shows they don’t really care about the relationship. Or the truth.

This is the same person who had to declare bankruptcy because he was a quarter of a million dollars in debt. I haven’t had to declare bankruptcy, yet I don’t have the money to afford a trip to England. It just doesn’t seem fair. His son looks cheeky in this shot, with his tongue sticking out. I’m thinking if this is the best picture Ian could have sent, then that is saying something about the attitude of his child. At least he is letting his attitude show on his face. With Ian you had to get really close to see how crazy he was.

The psychopaths are hard to spot sometimes. Sometimes they look like normal people. That’s the problem. You get lulled into a false sense of safety and then BAM! You are hurt, badly. Blindsided. I’m getting tired of being blindsided. There are too many people recently that I thought I could trust that have suddenly gone batshit crazy on me.

I don’t want him back in my life. I don’t want to deal with him. I feel that there is a slice of guilt cake I’m being served. He’s offering to “build a bridge” and I’m refusing to walk across it. That way I look like the bad guy. I don’t trust my brother’s bridge. I have played this game before and I always fall into the river, and I always drown. The stones get thrown at me. I always get hurt.

I gave him up the same way I gave up fried foods and pot. I gave them up because I needed to get healthy. I needed to be strong. I knew those things were pulling me down. But every now and then I feel like I want to try those things again. I forget how bad they really make me feel. It has been so long that I’ve felt well that I forget what it feels like to feel bad. I forget that once I start down that path again it takes a lot of energy to get off of it again. I’m reminding myself of this now to steel myself. I don’t want to get hurt again.

We have no good memories together, he and I. I look askance at people when they talk about how lovely their brothers are to them. It seems like a Disney story, a fairy tale. I can’t match it up with my reality. I think he wants a relationship with me only because I’m the only sister he’ll ever have. I think that he is in love with the IDEA of a sister, while he is not even “in like” with his actual sister. He doesn’t know anything about me. He never has cared enough to see me as a person. I was always a pawn in his games, and he was always winning.

He hasn’t come to realize that “family” isn’t just a word or an idea. It requires both people working together. It requires kindness and compassion. It isn’t about one person manipulating another person. It isn’t about debate but dialogue. He hasn’t come to realize that “family” means nothing – it is artificial. You don’t choose your family. It is all an accident. And like most accidents, it is very messy and there is a lot of pain. Worse, sometimes you don’t heal right and you walk with a limp for the rest of your life.

Thanksgiving, the other way.

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I hate the holidays. They always feel like a nasty game of musical chairs. If you end up without a chair at a table, you are the loser. So everybody tries to find a place to be, even if that place isn’t that nice. We’d rather spend the holiday with people we don’t really like and who don’t really like us than spend the holiday alone.

Thanksgiving is the first of the holidays. I dislike Thanksgiving. I love giving thanks, I just don’t like Thanksgiving. It is a trial run for Christmas. Both holidays are where you push yourself into a role that isn’t you, to please people you don’t like.

The holidays have left me cold for years. They always make me feel artificial. I’m expected to cook when I don’t cook. I’m expected to cook foods that are only cooked this time of year. I’m expected to wear nice clothes and act nice and play nice.

For twice a year we get together with people we don’t spend time with during the rest of the year because we really don’t like them. If we liked them, we’d spend more than twice a year with them.

Perhaps this is why so many people drink during the holidays. Perhaps this is why so many people go out to see movies or to the mall during the holidays. That way they don’t have to spend any time with each other that involves any semblance of having to communicate with each other. Perhaps this is why so many police get domestic disturbance calls during the holidays.

Nothing puts the “fun” in “dysfunctional” like the holidays.

I propose something different. Instead of doing the way that we’ve always done it, let’s do it differently. Let’s do it the way that we really want to do it. Let’s reinvent the holidays.

This year’s Thanksgiving could have gone really badly. I’d gotten into a huge disagreement with my sister in law. I’d realized that I’d been faking it going over to our parents in law’s anyway. Skip it. Skip it all. Why pretend anymore? I got tired of that gnawing feeling in my belly that says “something’s wrong!” I’d ignored it, suppressed it, hidden it. It was just part of dealing with the holidays. It was part of my childhood, ignoring that feeling. That sick feeling was just normal.

But this year I chose to do something different. Why spend time with people I don’t like? Why cook foods I don’t like, or that I only eat twice a year. I mean, I like sweet potatoes and all, but what about the fourth Thursday of November says I have to eat them? And why is there nothing healthy to eat on Thanksgiving? No fresh vegetables to be seen – everything is baked or broiled to within an inch of its life. It feels a little creepy to give thanks over food that is going to kill you.

It seems like the healthiest part about celebrating Thanksgiving means actually doing something to be thankful for.

This year was just my husband and I. This disagreement came just two days before Thanksgiving so there wasn’t enough time to wrangle an “Orphan’s Thanksgiving” like I’ve done in the past. We ate at the dining room table for the first time in a decade. We normally eat in the living room, while watching TV. This time, no TV. This time, candles. This time, just the two of us, facing each other, enjoying our meal, and spending time together.

It was very healing. It was exactly what I wanted. It was exactly what we needed. I caught a glimpse of what Sabbath is like.

We used special plates. We cooked what we wanted. There was turkey, sure. I don’t think it is possible for me to rewrite Thanksgiving without at least having turkey. But there was more, and it was healthy. It was all from scratch. Mashed potatoes made with purple potatoes, seasoned with cilantro and thyme. Sautéed carrots and snow peas, cooked in butter, white zinfandel, and turmeric. And crunchy bread – hoagie rolls, fresh from the bakery, heated up in the oven with a little butter. It was perfect. It was just enough, and not too much. I think we’ll do it again, and not wait a year to do it.

Maybe next week.

Today, I’m thankful for the courage to make new traditions. Today, I’m thankful for the desire to take care of myself. This was a good Thanksgiving.

Victim beads

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The last time I went to my spiritual director, we talked a lot about the people who have harmed me in my past. This wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about. I’d rather just jump right ahead into forgiving them. She wants me to pick open that wound and study it for a bit. She wants me to dig down to what I’m feeling. Then dig down below that.

Anger, sure. But beneath anger is sadness, and grief. It is a sense of loss, of not-having, of never-will. It is a sense of something that I think should be mine, isn’t.

This is a foreign feeling, and even more foreign that an expert is telling me to stay with this feeling. Surely I should “turn the other cheek,” right? Surely I should “forgive and forget,” right?

But she says to stick with it. Every month I come back and I’m ready to forgive and she thinks I’m not ready yet.

So, par the course for me I made a bracelet to help me remember. I put a bead to remind me of each person who has harmed me. I did this fairly fast, so there are some I’m forgetting, I’m sure, but fast work means that I don’t overanalyze it.

prayer victim

I’ve also been writing about how I was harmed by my parents, and also my brother. Writing about it is hard. I don’t want to dig up these old bones. She had me look at that feeling – why do I not want to talk about it? In part it is because I feel like I am betraying them. I feel like I’m being disloyal to them. We aren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead. Nothing is stronger than blood, right?

I say that they meant well, that they didn’t know any better, that they themselves were raised badly. She says those are covers. That there is something I’m not looking at. That I need to focus on how I was harmed. I need to focus on that I was harmed.

There is certainly a bit of shame that comes in the mix when using the word “victim.” Am I to blame for what happened to me? Is it my fault? Could I have stood up for myself? Was I too passive? By not speaking up for myself, I allowed it to happen. They couldn’t have known they were harming me unless I said something. To not speak up is to give acceptance.

I hate going to the spiritual director’s. Every month, about a week before, I start to dread it. I don’t want to talk about what she wants to talk about because it is going to be hard. I want to make a list and tell her what we are going to talk about and use up all the time so that I don’t have anything hard to talk about.

But then that wastes the whole point of going. It is like going to a personal trainer at the gym and saying all I want to do is jumping jacks for an hour. I’m not going to work on anything meaningful that way. I’ll have wasted my time and my money. She’s like a personal trainer for my soul. We dig down to uncover broken pieces and blockages.

I read once that the goal in life isn’t to learn how to love. It is to remove all the barriers we have put up against love. I think the person quoted Rumi. I’m sure he said it better.

But look, here I go, walking away from the topic again. I’m a wiggly one, always trying to get away from what bothers me. I guess that is normal human nature. We often try to anesthetize ourselves or run away.

Let’s try again.

It is important to acknowledge loss. It is important to admit that it happened. To heal it, you have to know it is there. And that means a lot of digging.

So while I’m constructing the victim bracelet, I’m realizing that these are all people who have sinned against me. And then I think – what about all the people I have sinned against?

Am I justifying? Am I putting the blame back on me? Am I letting them off the hook? Am I avoiding the problem? Sounds like it.

So I’m staying with this. I’m not through it. I certainly want to be. I want this to be over and done and healed and let’s go on to the next thing and make it a happy one, please.

And I’m running away again.

I’ve heard that grief takes a long time. I’ve heard that you grieve for half the amount of time that you’ve known the person. This is grief. This is going to take a long time. It has grown down deep. And just like digging out privet in the back yard, this is going to take a lot of work and some special tools to get all of it out. Leave just a little bit of privet root and it will come back next year. Cut it down at the top and it will get even stronger and root down further. The only way to get it out is to dig it up, all of it. And the only way to do that is to work on it patiently and thoroughly.

Death, or not.

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My mother-in-law is dying. Or isn’t.

She has pancreatic cancer. She was diagnosed in December of last year. It was stage three, possibly stage four. There is no stage five. She was given until about May. It is now late December. We are planning to have Thanksgiving at her house. We are talking about having Christmas this year too.

A year ago, just thinking about how that particular Christmas was going to be her last Christmas just tore her up. She was very teary. She didn’t think she’d even make it to another birthday, which was in November. She’s made it, and made it better than anybody expected. She’s still driving herself to her doctor’s appointments. She’s still at home, sleeping in her own bed. Hospice has not been called.

The trouble is, she has changed personality, and it really isn’t for the better. She was married young, and married to a very domineering man. She was very submissive. Her own personality was overshadowed by his. She grew up stunted, with all her energy being focused on one thing – the house.

She has spent her entire adult life playing house. She paints the rooms, again and again. She redecorates. She buys knickknacks. Decorating the house is all she talks about. All of her energy has gone into decorating her house. The results aren’t anything exciting. It is hard to believe her life energy has been spent in this way and there isn’t anything real to show for it. It is hard to believe that God put her on this earth to do this.

So she now has become assertive. She still works on the house, but she has gone from being passive to being pushy. She uses the fact that she has pancreatic cancer to push people around. She has cancer, so nobody else’s plans matter. Everyone else has to drop whatever they are doing and drive over and visit with her or do her bidding. She doesn’t ask, she commands. The fact that she has a limited lifespan is always part of it. You’d better do this, or else.

Or else what? She’ll die? You’ll feel guilty that you didn’t spend more time with her?

While I’m glad that she is starting to wake up to who she is, I wish she’d have gotten past the toddler stage a little sooner in life. Toddlers are always about me me me, and they never care about anybody else’s feelings or plans.

The problem is, she is in her 70s. She has had plenty of time to grow up, and she hasn’t. She has had plenty of time to be a productive person, and she hasn’t.

We all are dying. Being born is the beginning of death. None of us have any guarantees on how long we will live.

So there is nothing especially sad about a 70-plus year old woman getting cancer, even cancer that has a high rate of death. Death comes to us all. Many people don’t make it to her age.

What is tragic is that she didn’t wake up to the fact of her mortality sooner and do something useful with her life. What is tragic is that she didn’t stand up to her abusive, bullying husband earlier and leave him, taking their two sons with her. That would have saved them from years of being harmed in every way possible. What is tragic is that she is treating this time as a time to push other people around, when life isn’t ever about that. What is tragic is that when told she had cancer, she kept on decorating her house.

Maybe I’m reading this wrong. Or maybe I’m not. I’m angry at her acting hurt and put upon that she has a death sentence, when my own Mom died at 53. My mother in law has lived nearly 20 years longer than my Mom, and has nothing to show for it. My Mom volunteered all the time. She made the world better for other people. She wasn’t well educated, but she had an open heart and gave constantly. This woman, however, is a little child in an adult’s body.

I’m tired of her. I’m tired of her neediness. I’m tired of how shallow she is.

And I’m sick of myself for feeling this way. It isn’t very Christ-like. It isn’t very nice.

I wish she would have protected her son, my husband, when he was a child. To stand by while your child is being abused is to condone it. I don’t think she understands the depth of damage that caused. I don’t think she understood that her inaction was just as abusive because it translates to abandonment.

I wish she would have grown up sooner. I wish that she would have woken up to the truth of her mortality sooner. I wish that she would have become a human being sooner.

I guess late is better than never, but it still isn’t happening. She’s not blooming very well. She’s stunted and warped from her life, the life that she chose. There is nothing passive about this. She chose to marry him. She chose to continue to live with him. She chose to raise two boys when she herself was still a child. She chose to do what everybody else did rather than think for herself.

She chose to stay asleep.

She’s mirroring what she has seen her whole adult life, living with her husband. Her role model is a self-centered man who beats up on anyone he finds weaker than him. So she is blooming into a self-centered woman who pushes everybody around and expects them to drop whatever they are doing to take care of her.

God help us all.

Tidy

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I am a neatnik. My husband is a cluttermonster. God has a sense of humor.

While I feel that our small house has too much stuff in it, I also feel uncomfortable in a too tidy house. When I go over to a person’s house and there is nothing on the floor or nothing on the bathroom counter I begin to wonder. Do they really live there? Did they throw everything in the basement? Did they rent a storage unit just for this occasion?

I wonder if I have too much stuff or they are just better at hiding it.

When my mother in law first came over to our home, she actually said “Have you thought about getting a larger house?” This is one of those times where I got really angry yet somehow found the right thing to say. I answered “No, we’ve thought about getting less stuff.”

She should know better. She married a cluttermonster. My husband learned from him. She knows where this madness comes from. She’s lived with it for over 40 years.

I wanted to say “Hasn’t anyone taught you not to say everything you think?”

Write it out, and the yoke.

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Sometimes I write to get into a problem. Sometimes I write to run away from it.

I process information by writing. I learn a lot. It is paradoxical. I am not writing things down. I am pulling them down into a language I can understand. I will often write a question down and pry at it from different perspectives in order to find out the answer. It is always surprising to me.

But them sometimes I need to be quiet and just be with the question. I need to actually live through the experience rather than trying to document it as it happens.

I’m trying to do this with my abuse as a child. I’m tired of continually facing these doors and walls in my life. I’m tired of these trials. I’ve really worked hard recently, and I’m just tired right now. Sometimes I want to sit down and just cry rather than work on it and be brave. Sometimes I would rather be blissfully ignorant.

Sometimes when I do decide to work on a problem, I don’t know whether to lean into the problem or push at it really hard. So I wait and I pray and then I find myself doing whatever it is that I should be doing.

A little bit of the disease will heal you. That is how antibiotics work. This is how immunosuppressive therapy works. A controlled amount, administered with a healing intent, will build up a tolerance in you that will make you stronger. Avoidance is not the answer.

I’m tired of these doors. I’ve asked Jesus into it, and he says we can sit right here beside this door as long as I need. I don’t have to knock them all down right now. I don’t have to do this hard work all at once, or alone. I can take some time off and pace myself. It is ok to wait. And he will wait with me.

This is part of what Jesus means when He says “take up my yoke”.

Jesus says in Matthew 11:28-30
“28 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 All of you, take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

He’ll carry our burdens with us. He won’t carry them for us. We’ll work together. But it is heartening to know that when we are working with Jesus, we’ll get a lot further than we would alone.

In my face.

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I was at a buffet a few months ago and saw a brother playing with his baby sister. She was in a baby carrier, sitting on a chair. The brother kept leaning in, right up in her face. He would grab the sides of the carrier with his hands and pull in, speaking loudly to his sister, getting nose to nose with her.

I felt great anxiety at this. I guess it is triggering a memory. I felt for the little girl, unable to say that she didn’t like this, unable to get away from him. Again and again he was putting his face right up into hers. Again and again I felt that I should say something. He was so forceful that he was pushing her carrier further back each time.

The parents were there. I’m sure they thought he was just playing with her. I’m sure they didn’t think of the psychological trauma this might be causing. They were chatting with their friends and ignoring their children. They didn’t notice how forceful he was.

Perhaps the daughter enjoyed this. Perhaps I was overreacting. But every time I felt breathless and anxious. Every time I felt that someone should get him to think about how this would look from her perspective. She can’t back away – she’s trapped in her carrier. She can’t tell him no – she is an infant and cannot speak. Sure, she could make a noise to show her disapproval. But my concern is that she was being “taught” that being attacked is normal, that being pushed up against a wall is how she should be treated.

I’d also be concerned if this was a sister doing this to a baby brother. But I feel I’m more sensitive to this particular situation because I feel that I was treated like this. I feel that I was treated as a thing, an object, and not a person.

My brother was not my friend. He was my tormentor. He was my enemy. I don’t understand when people say how wonderful and protective their brothers are, how they can always call them for help and always count on them. It just sounds like a fairy tale.

I’m starting to understand that it isn’t my fault that I had a terrible relationship with my brother. I was taught by my culture and my religion that it was my responsibility to try harder to have a better relationship with him. Codependency comes free with a church membership. I’m starting to understand that he is just a narcissistic jerk, and I had the misfortune of having him as a big brother. I’m grateful that I severed all ties with him.

I wonder what our childhood would have been like if I had been born first?

After a while, I did say something to the boy. I felt like I had to. I asked him to be gentle with his sister. His father whipped around and stared at me. I’m sure he was thinking how dare this stranger tell his children what to do. I just smiled sweetly back. He turned back around to his plateful of food and his ball cap wearing friends.

So much for “It takes a village.”

Parenting license.

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I wear baggy clothes for the same reason some people gain weight. I do it to hide. Somehow in wearing something too large, shapeless and styleless, I’m hiding who I really am. I know, deep down, that even if I were naked, I’d still not be showing my true self. The soul is deeper than skin.

Perhaps my need to wear dull colors is also a self defense technique. It says don’t notice me. It is the same as camouflage for birds. The male cardinal is red. But the female is brown. She is the one who protects the young. Perhaps the child I am protecting is myself.

I know that lots of things were taken from me as a child. I know that I was not loved or cherished. I know that my room was gone into without my permission. I know that my money was stolen by my dad and my brother. My brother stole it from my room. My dad just took it out of my savings account. He saw it as a spare account for him. Much of my money as a child came from my grandmother. She was his mother. I know that he expected my Mom to give him the Christmas money that she got from his Mom. He saw any money from her as money for him. Money is a symbol. Perhaps he felt that she never gave him enough of anything. Perhaps he was jealous if she gave anything to anyone else.

He was greedy. He was selfish. He was a glutton. He did not care about other people’s feelings. If I told him that I had a headache, he would tell me about how he had a bigger headache once. Maybe he thought that by pointing out how it could be worse, I should get over it. Maybe he was just self centered and didn’t know how anything could be about anyone who wasn’t him.

If I told him about something emotional, something that made me sad or angry, he offered a pill. They were all prescription. But prescribed doesn’t mean healthy. Medicating your feelings is escaping them. I’m grateful I never took him up on it. I’m sad that I wasn’t taught how to deal with my feelings.

It is just like with alcohol. Just because it is legal doesn’t mean it is healthy. If you drink to deal with your feelings, you are abusing yourself and your children. You aren’t teaching them how to be human. You are teaching them how to escape. You are stunting their emotional growth.

You are supposed to trust your parents. They are supposed to look out for you. They aren’t supposed to get zonked out on substances, legal or otherwise. They aren’t supposed to just take up space on your childhood. They aren’t supposed to chain smoke themselves to death. They aren’t supposed to leave you high and dry.

My parents abandoned me before they died. They just weren’t there. Perhaps they did me a favor by dying. It meant that I got to learn that their normal wasn’t normal at all. I had to start looking out for myself and learning from others.

I find I get really angry when I see a family where the parents reek of cigarette smoke. They are poisoning their children every day. Even if they smoke outside of the house, they are shortening their lives day by day, and they are reducing their energy level bit by bit. Even before they die they have stopped being alive. Smoking is theft. It steals your health and your life from your children.

I find I get really angry when I see parents treating their children how I was treated. I want to yell at the Mom for treating her son like he is an embarrassment or an interruption. I get really angry when I see this same mom who growls at her child for doing things that are normal for children decides to have even more children.

I get really sad when I see these children look so sad. If eyes are the windows of the soul, his soul is screaming “Rescue me, someone, anyone. I am in hell.”

I asked three people what I could do. A minister. A teacher. A therapist. They said I can’t do anything. I just have to watch this happen.

Is it possible that there were people who saw me as a child and wondered the same thing?

Some people are simply not capable of being selfless enough to have children.

It isn’t fair. It isn’t right.

You have to pass a driver’s test to get a driver’s license. The theory is so you prove that you are safe. But amateurs get to have children. Sadly, the driver doesn’t get caught in the flaming wreckage. The passenger does.