So after our Lovely Christmas weekend I had realized something major! Living with and seeing my husband in the condition he had been maintaining lead me to flashbacks and remembering my childhood. I don’t even know where to start with it. OMG.. Lord give me guidance. Amen.
I guess it all starts with my mother. She married my father and someone before that and maybe before that too, ok. My father was an alcoholic among other things. She met him on the beach south of Pendleton, what did she expect?! Also he was in the Navy, hello! another indicator (sorry fellas, I’ve just stereotyped y’all). Any who, they were married had a fun time partying in the 80s and got pregnant with me. For my mother the party was over, for my father not so much. long story short they were divorced by the time I was 2 from most of what I listed in my last blog, if not more like physical abuse and long term absence. Needless to say the relationship was a bust and completely unhealthy and my father wasn’t ready to be different. We can NOT make people change! they have to be ready and come to the conclusion on their own terms! More than likely when they hit bottom and have no where else to go but UP.
So my mom met my step dad. He was different. He was a dad himself, and treated me as if I was his own.
Btw my father wasn’t absent in my life, he had me every other weekend and holidays so this new dad didn’t replace him it just gave me a daily dad instead of an every so often dad.
So new dad was exactly that. I called him dad and he took on the role like a champ, for many many years. I LOVED this man. He was so good to me, he really did treat me like I was his flesh and blood and adored me to no end.
However, all good things in my life I’m realizing come to and end. He too was an addict. Pain pills were his choice. Not something I was aware of as a child but when he bled over into the lifestyle of a crank user it was more and more apparent. He would take me to his dealers house where I was exposed to “tweekers”, seeing drugs and being exposed to an uncleanly lifestyle. I saw things children shouldn’t ever see. He ran with some rough people gang members and club members (id rather not list). Most of them were covered in scars and prison tattoos, they even gave each other tattoos in our kitchen when my mom (who had no idea what I was being exposed to) wasn’t home.
My step dad had gone so far into his habit and addiction with pills and drugs that when I was a preteen he decided to leave us. I remember being on the edge of my bed seeing him in the hallway with a duffel bag and hearing him tell my mom “I’m leaving” she thought he was just going to the store, He said “I’m leaving you both, its better this way”. He was gone, he didn’t even say good bye to me. Shame? Sadness? Regret? Maybe. I saw him a few times after that because I begged and begged my mom to see him. But he ended up dying when I was 16. He had a massive heart attack and that was it. He left too late though. The damage and exposure was already there. It had become normal to me to see the behavior, the habits and the lifestyle.
After a while my mom hit the dating scene again and fell for this guy who came from Oregon. He hauled trees for a nursery and she just LOVED that! (we had some property and we were always planting gardening and landscaping)
He was ok at first I didn’t notice his addiction for a couple years. He was an alcoholic. I watched him fall down in the kitchen with a plate of food in his hands, that was when I started noticing the signs. He never drove anywhere without a beer in his cup holder and a small ice chest in the back seat stocked with beer. THIS WAS NORMAL!!!
I’m currently having a flashback to my mothers father always having a beer in his hand! I was F’ed as far as my exposure to alcoholism, I was either doomed for it myself or going to marry an addict, here we are.
So I watch this new guy boyfriend for a few years just be drunk all the time and not know any different. It was normal to “earn that beer” at the end of a long day or drink beer just because it was hot outside, or to be social.
After I had enough of this I decided at 14 to move to my real dads. At this point he had 10 years of sobriety and we had a pretty solid loving relationship going. We were ready to try this new stage of life. When I move in I didn’t realize his wife was an alcoholic. Yep, another alcoholic. She was a mess and this alcoholic damaged me quite a bit. She was jealous of the relationship I had with my dad I still cuddled up to him in his oversized chair, this shit drover her nuts, but thats how my family on my dads side was, very close and we loved one another. She would stalk me at school to make sure I was going to my classes (mind you I was a good kid never tardy, or truant. yes I was average and never above it with my grades but I wasn’t a bad kid). She would often drive intoxicated with me, pick fights with my father and just be flat mean and demanding towards me. She even attacked me physically one night.
I had gotten home from volley ball practice and was sitting at the dining table doing my homework when she blew in from the back yard. She yelled at me “why are you at the table?! you should be doing this in your room” I explained the lighting wasn’t great in there. She scooped all my books up and threw them into my room and then demand that I clean my closet ( I admit I hid my messes in the closet and under the bed but this was a Monday, I feel she could have asked me to do this over the weekend if it were crucial) at this point I said “forget this, I’m tired of your shit!” and I left. I was still in gym clothes so I ran out the front door and started jogging. It was dark and I had no idea where to go so I ran a few blocks over to a friends house. I knocked on the door and told him what was going on. He told me he had a birthday party to get to and that I could stay for a little bit but that he would be leaving soon. so I stayed about an hour and when it was time I moseyed home awaiting and anticipating what would be in store.
When I got back I walked in and my dad and his wife were in his room, he called to me in a monotone voice “come in here we need to talk”. I walked in and said “about what?” I really didn’t know what I had done that was SO WRONG (nothing is the F’ing truth). She demand that I sit down, she’s 5’0″ I’m 5’9″ so I think it was intimidating for me to be standing, I said “no thank you id rather stand”. She then yanked my ponytail backwards in a direction of forcing me to sit and yelled “sit down” while doing it. Boy was it on from there. I wasn’t attacking back only slapping her hands and arms away from me and trying to shove her away from me she was attacking me as if she wanted to rip my eyes out, well she ripped most of my hair out that night and at one point held a pillow over my face saying “I never want to see your face again”. There was more, any way my mother was informed of the situation and came to get me, being that my father did not have sole custody and that I was brutally attacked by his wife (who I had no idea was a drunk) she was on her way immediately. So back with mom I went.
My transition wasn’t an easy one, its like when you rescue a beaten dog and the flinch snap and dodge you. Well I had a long path to recovering from this exposure. I was only there one year but it was a long painful year. She did the most damage.
While I was gone, my mother SOLD HER HOUSE and broke up with the drunk!! So we lived at grandmas who has a 5 acre farm and my uncle happens to live there too as a caretaker of the farm. It wasn’t a bad place to be I grew up there and absolutely loved it. Grandma and I get along fabulously too. I started going back to school and got a new routine, things were looking better. I rode my horse daily and enjoyed being “back home” so to speak. BTW grandma is an alcoholic too. she is a moderate cocktail hour drinker, screwdrivers at night kinda gal. No drama with her just her night cap routine. BUT something else I watched and became accustom to as a small child(she called it her medicine).
So moving onto my uncle. Just when things were starting to clear up for me and move forward my uncle FLIPPED out! One night he came storming into the house bloodied and yelling about people who killed my aunt and my mother and the horses and dogs that he was out of ammo and snatched my grandmas double barrel shot gun and crouched down in the corner of my bedroom. He had been on crank & crystal meth for over the past ten years as well as being a… you guessed it, ALCOHOLIC. It took a while to get him down from his ledge. He was strung out and hallucinating, I got to see it all first had. Yet another exposure.
Well, I moved. I was 16 and I left. I started living with friends and bouncing around from couch to couch living with who ever would have me in trade for house cleaning and cooking. It wasn’t that bad. I got a job and started supporting myself early. I haven’t been home since! But the exposure had happened, I was doomed one way or another to continue living this way because I didn’t know any better. Its whats familiar. Now that my eyes have been awakened its time to change the pattern so my children aren’t subject to the same history I have. It’s time to change the pattern.
So I’ve painted The new guest room A deep beautiful color called Poised Taupe by Sherwin Wiliams. I’ve painted the Bathroom an incredible happy color despite the name “Moody Blue” also Sherwin Williams (target the sales people! Their products can become quite costly). Its a work in progress and the carpet needs to be shampooed then I can move my furniture into the newly Reno-ed room and feel refreshed cleansed and recharged. Sometimes a good couple coats of paint is all it takes to wash away all the drama, memories and help to start fresh!
the life I keep choosing 