WalkingThrough the Fog By a Thread

It sits above my brows like a low level drift, thick, impenetrable, sometimes with a low level buzz that keeps me on the edge of irritation at all times and is most likely caused but an overabundance of caffeine sizzling through my bloodstream.  This is the fog in my head. I have been asking myself lately, “What the fuck were you thinking, going back to school in the fall semester instead of waiting for spring?”

I do this to myself periodically. I have some diabolical insane part of me that decides that life isn’t stressful enough trying to live the life of a modern pioneer, with children,  but I must further complicate it by going beyond the bounds of even my own oft times questioned sanity.

Sometimes I think I have two crazy people sharing my brain that are in a constant competition of one-upsmanship.

Then I reflect in a more relaxing moment that I went back to school after a lot of thought and prayer and after truly feeling as if that were the direction I were being guided in.  The challenge is to try and keep on top of it all.

Keeping on top of it is something I aspire to like a crack addict hoping for the next fix.  Problem is I have no supplier and me and organization is not something that goes together.  ‘Keeping on top of it’ implies that I should have (sh)it all together in a tidy pile to be able to surmount it.  Reality shows in fact, that it is in a constant state of cave-in and I am more like an ant scrambling madly up the perpetually sliding sand hill.

My husband has accused me of being a hummingbird, flitting from one thing to another and never finishing.  I do finish things….just not all together or all in the same day.  He doesn’t realize that I have many personality aspects vying for control in my head.  They don’t always agree on what should come first.  So I end up sabotaging myself in quite a few areas and productive turnout is pathetic.

Take my kitchen for example.  My hearth.  The center of health, communion and sustenance for my family.  The place that, traditionally, as a mother, should be warm and peaceful, a place of nourishment for mind, body and spirit.

What I have for a kitchen is a 15 foot camp trailer.  It has two bunks that are used as storage spots.   The regular table broke and I tried having a small coffee table in there.  It serves as a place to pile stuff.  Some useful, some not so.  The same can be said for the seats.  In fact, the seat by the door is piled with boxes from our storage unit and cases of canned goods from the case lot sale at B & B last month.  I have a small propane cookstove barely large enough for a cake pan and not tall enough to brave baking an actual loaf of bread.  I only have an icebox style fridge, so in the summer months there are things I just don’t buy.  Like mayonnaise, butter or milk.  They spoil too quickly.  We get either enriched rice or almond milk, which keeps longer, or powdered milk, which tastes disgusting but works for cooking.  We can’t keep ice long enough in the coolers.  If we buy fresh produce it needs to be eaten within one or two days max to prevent spoilage.  This does not always happen so I always have a gallon of white vinegar on hand to kill off the science experiment that grows inside dark moist coolers when vegetables or dairy products cross over to the other side.

It’s not like I don’t know what I should be doing.  I know there are things I could or should do.  Sometimes I even make lists.  Where I consistently fail is in the practical application.  Often I feel as if I am facing this maelstrom of ‘stuff that needs to be done’ and it hits me in the face as soon as I open my eyes.  I don’t know where to begin.  Or, if I begin, I am easily drawn into the next ‘important thing to do’.

Looking at those pictures of F’s filthy kitchen made me realize the only difference between our housekeeping styles at first glance is that I put all my food cans in a huge laundry hamper outside to take to recycling, and I have mouse poison under the trailer bed to discourage any would be tenant vermin.  Ok, probably there is a lot less animal filth too, though the level of food spillage my children and I seem to generate is horrifying.  Bunny, my now five year old daughter also has a penchant for conducting cupboard recon for the sole purpose of commandeering cereal.  There is now an amazing amount of Count Chocula in the potato and onion bucket from our meager garden harvest.

I have NO PLACE to store anything.  So things get piled on the bunks, on the table, on the counters.  Then it avalanches and I cuss and shuffle it around and try to form new stacks.  I swear I am cleaning the place up, but then I have kids who are hungry RIGHT NOW and will DIE OF STARVATION if they are not fed within ten minutes.  But now I need a cooking pot because we got home too late the previous night to heat the water and do the previous nights dishes and they are all sitting, dirty, in the huge purple wash bin outside.  An I can’t find my frying pan because there is still a bag of canned goods sitting on it from the groceries we bought two or three days ago that I have been meaning to get into the cupboard if only I could reach it because there are two coolers, a shallow pan of hand washing water and half a case of Coca-Cola sitting between me and the teeny tiny little cupboards I have to cram everything to feed six people in for two weeks.

I kick the case of Coca-Cola and curse the company for ever taking the coca out of it, because, having gotten to actually try chewing some coca a former employer brought back from her trip to Peru, I could sure use that kind of caffeine-without-the-jitters-or-irritability energy boost to get this shithole cleaned and I don’t think I am getting to South America anytime soon to lay in my own supply.

This is usually when I leave the trailer, step outside, right into the face of the entire full length trailer house GM used to live in that has completely collapsed, exposing its guts of moldering books, bed frames, clothes, car parts, tufts of hairy insulation, mouse shit, furniture and some appliances mixed with God only knows what else in a musty smelling carnage.  My only bright spot in that view is that there is a boreal toad that lives somewhere in it, possibly under that bed frame pedestal and he croaks briefly throughout the day.  Trailer trash habitat.  Adaptive species amaze me.

Then I go hide in my outhouse.

This is pathetically, one of the only places where I can invoke the “LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE” rights to privacy laws so scarce in a parent’s life.

Back when I lived in a house in civilization with actual running water I would lock myself in for either a library period or a hot bath.  I don’t have the bath luxury now, and the length of library period depends on the weather temperature and whether or not my enzymes are doing their job at odor control.  But for a time, it is a place where I can hide and they can’t come in.  Oh, I do take off up the mountain sometimes, and Boo, my foster dog turned family member will sniff me out every time.  But I can’t just leave the kids like they used to do in the olden days to go out and get wood or work the distant fields.  Not only is this frowned on now days, but modern kids aren’t equipped to deal with things on their own.  In fact, you can bet that as soon as I am out of the house Bunny gets it into her head that all former house rules about safety, respect of others property, and general rules of proper conduct have left on my heels and there will soon emanate from our humble domain such a shrieking, caterwauling, thumping, or worse, ominous and pregnant silence you have ever encountered.  Most times I will return to find my baby, Nunkee, with new war paint either in the medium of marker or biggest sister’s pillaged makeup, objects once high upon the shelves stomped into the floor, every toy box, jewelry box, container, or suitcase upended and scattered, and a five year old Bunny proclaiming in prim report, “Nunkee did it, I saw her!”

Which is usually where my voice maxes out at the sound barrier, children attempt to flee in terror or pick up as quickly as humanly possible, and I stomp back up to rail in vain at the general disarray of my life and kitchen space.

Then I kick that Coca-cola box again.

I know one thing that will help me maintain my sanity.  I can keep writing.  I will be making time every week, possibly more than once (baby steps!) to come into the college library and maintain my thread of communication with myself through this outlet.  That way GM won’t be trying to sneak peeks over my shoulder to read what horrible family secrets I may be spilling and I won’t have to minimize the damned screen every two minutes, breaking my thread of concentration.  That thread is the only way I have of finding my way through the fog.

I know there are few certainties I can count on in this life.  I am certain hanging on for dear life to this thread is my necessity.  My emotional sustenance and survival.  My way of seeing it through and maybe, just maybe having it make sense in the end.  It is my one, unbreakable link to sanity in the chaos.

Or so the voices tell me.

Hard Choices

I didn’t mind not having electricity. Hauling water was the bitch. I cooked and heated our bath water with propane in my little camp trailer.

The problem with living on the same property with Guitar Man’s Dad B was that B not only constantly contradicted or belittled everything GM said, he also seemed to like to argue just to have conflict. He thrived on it.

Then B started making inappropriate comments to me. If I had stayed late at my mother’s house or had to run errands after work and didn’t get home until after dinner, B would ask me if I had been “out tomcatting around.” implying that I had been out picking up men. He always acted as if this were some joke, but there was an underlying seriousness about it that pissed me off. Of course, I always had a ‘fuck you’ sort of reply, but it was constant and wearing.

Because of the twisted family dynamic of “Daddy can do no wrong“, Guitar Man never told him to knock it off. Guitar Man never, then or now, defended me to his father. Like living with a pack of starving wolves, if you were under any sort of attack, you’re on your own.

Guitar Man and I started to argue more. Constantly, it seemed. I knew B was saying things to GM about me, what I had no idea. Making nit picking comments, niggling away at GM about how he should ‘handle’ me, no doubt. Nothing good. Nothing positive ever came from that man’s mouth. B is at once extremely controlling and totally harmless to anyone not family. Outsiders seem to think he is so funny and nice. His family has been taught that ’Dad is just Dad’ and that all of B’s behaviors are acceptable and should just be tolerated. Outsiders never saw him beating his wife when he was drunk. There was a rumor in their small town that for $25 he would let you sleep with his wife. S told me that wasn’t accurate. He’d let them have sex with her for free if he could watch. She told me there were a lot worse things too, but she didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t ask.

So, things were rough at times between Guitar Man and me. There were still many good times though I know these blogs seemed focused all on the negative. I am purging here.

So we lived there, the five of us. That is, until Guitar Man’s youngest sister and her husband left their eastern Montana town and moved out there to stay with B. The whole family went over to help N and T and their three kids move. It was soon clear that neglect was what their parenting was all about. Not glaringly obvious at first. Soon enough.

Two boys and a girl, ages 4, 3 and almost 2. The kids were constantly wearing soaked diapers. On the few occasions I changed them, their little bottoms were covered in rashes and small, bloody sores. Laundry wasn’t a priority for GM’s sister. The kids slept on white sheets gone black with the dirt of the place. I heated water at the very least every other night, mostly every night with the dirt of summer at it’s height to bath myself and my kids. In the three months she was out there N borrowed my plastic tote tub twice to clean her kids up. Three meals a day seemed to be too much effort. Mostly the kids were given things to snack on constantly. Dry cereal. Crackers. Whatever was easy. they were constantly coming to my trailer to ask for food because they were hungry. I washed their hands and faces and fed them.

N’s oldest child was already exhibiting some severe signs of lasting emotional and mental trauma from early abuse and neglect at the hands of his parents . When you looked into his big blue eyes, you saw a child who was so turned inward he could barely see you looking back. Like he was trapped in his own head. (There is no doubt in my mind of some mental genetic disorder as well. Our own son exhibits some of the same symptoms, and so does one of GM’s other sister’s boys. N is the one girl of the family that has exhibited signs of mental illness. Neither her daughter nor mine have yet, but they are also still very young.)

N tuned her kids out with an ability that was rather spooky to watch. As if she didn’t even see or hear them though they could be screaming and fighting right beside her. T was there off and on. I can’t remember now if she was trying to leave him or what had been the deciding factor in the move. He was supposed to be looking for a job but managed to find booze instead.

Their daughter was still in a walker at the time. N seemed to think that the best way to feed a 1 1/2 year old was to give her mostly formula to drink and very little solid food. Later on, after all this, the WIC department turned her in for underfeeding the baby. I came up one time when N wasn’t there and Baby K was in her walker as usual. She was crying so hard and T was trying to give her probably her 5th bottle of formula that day while everyone else ate dinner. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. The baby was yelling and making grabbing motions at the plates of food. The solids N deigned to feed her would equal maybe a tablespoon or two. T was agitated that she wouldn’t be quiet. I took a scoop of mixed veggies and potatoes out of the pot on the stove and put them on her tray. Immediately she started shoveling the food into her little mouth. T seemed amazed. I was furious.

“She just keeps eating!” he said in amazement as I gave her a large second helping.

“She’s hungry, T!” I said, trying to keep my temper. “She’s old enough to be eating solid food EVERY meal! She wants to eat! She needs to eat solid food and not just be fed formula all day! She’s HUNGRY!” I said again as I gave her third helping. “You guys need to feed her!”

Baby K probably ate a whole cup or more of veggies and potatoes. She was finally satisfied and cooing happily in her seat.

Later I tried to have a discussion with Guitar Man about his sister and her husband’s neglect of their children. He took the, ” I can’t do anything to change them.” bullshit stance. Well, it’s not bullshit, you CAN’T change people unwilling to change. But there was an obligation to those kids to see that they were taken care of. I told him as much. He insisted they were taken care of. He also admitted they were not being cared for as they should be. Then I told him what it meant for me to be a mandatory reporter.

Since I worked as a case manager for a childcare assistance agency that was under government funding, I was, by law, obliged to report to the proper authorities any and all abuse and neglect that I observed in any children I had contact with. By law, I told GM, it was my duty to report his sister to Child Protective Services. Not only that, but I felt it was necessary.

The explosion that followed was un-fucking-believable. A lot of it was all just a raging blur of utter shit coming out of his mouth. Veiled threats, how I didn’t want to see what his Dad would do if someone tried to take HIS grandkids away. How it was nobody’s fucking business how they decided to take care of those kids.

I don’t believe, a this time, I had ever seen quite this level of insane fury coming out of Guitar Man’s mouth. It was insane and irrational. The furthest thing from his mind was the health and well being of those kids. Their father had grown up in foster homes, he raged. Look at how criminal and fucked up T was for it. All foster homes were places of neglect and abuse in his eyes. Where every child was raped.

That was the first time I think that I ever felt afraid of him. Afraid of his anger. He turned nothing but his verbal assault on me, yet the rage and vehemence and irrationality of it was terrifying. There was absolutely no reasoning with him.

Against my better judgment, I backed off. I didn’t tell him I wasn’t going to turn his sister in to Child Protective Services, but I needed to find the right time, after things had cooled. Why? Because he had put fear into me. And it infuriates me how he had. Still is in some ways. Fear is insidious. It can crawl inside you and poison the well of your being without you even knowing it.

Then it all came to a head. T spent more time out getting drunk than ever. N ignored her kids as usual and I tried to lessen that by being attentive to them. The older two boys, anyway. The baby was at the constant mercy of her mother and I didn’t go up to B’s cabin if I could help it. I never saw N beat the kids. That would have given them far too much attention. She is the type of abusive parent that tunes them out as completely as she can.

Seeing her behavior and the feel I get from her, there is something mentally unstable in N as well. GM and S put it down to the two times she had, as an infant and a c child, gotten head injuries. One, when her four year old sister, whom S had put in charge of her, ‘allowed’ N as an infant to roll off the Laundromat folding table onto the concrete floor as S was rotating laundry or something. They still blame M, who was FOUR for that accident. Not S, who was the idiot mother who put the baby on a high table then but a distractible toddler in charge of her. On that occasion, a circular portion of N’s skull was fractured and depressed and S had to take her to the hospital. S was outraged when the doctor questioned her about abuse. The other time, N fell from a horse and hit her head on a rock, getting knocked unconscious. To this day, Guitar Man claims N will tell you stories about her life that never happened. N has talked to me about dealing with stress in her life by “just focusing in on my own fantasy world!”. This fantasy world does not include her children. N has told me on two separate occasions that she has just ‘been so distracted’ she ‘completely forgot who those kids were’ and tells me of looking up a them and thinking ‘whose kids are these and where did they come from?’

I have had an interest in psychology and personality disorders though I am in no way a psychologist or able to diagnose personality disorders, I have often wondered about N’s ability to so disassociate from her children as well as her obsessive list taking and note leaving if more than one personality doesn’t exist in her little vapid head.

When N still lived over east of the mountains, she was turned into CPS. She and S both claim it was because the case worker wanted N’s son because he looked like her own little boy. They claimed she stalked N, trying to get Little JJ. N fled to Idaho to stay with an Aunt.

S and B both have conditioned their children in the ‘victim mentality’ system of belief. This means there is an ingrained and deeply held belief that they are and always will be the victims in any situation. That they have done nothing wrong and it is always someone else’s fault or someone else’s actions that have caused the negative repercussions. To admit wrong doing or fault on their part is impossible because to admit fault or even just admit to making a mistake means that they would have to take responsibility for consequence of actions and that is the last thing this family wants.

One night, I got my wake-up slap. Guitar Man and I were in his trailer. It was a Sunday night and we were up late, my two kids were sleeping soundly across the yard in our own trailer. It was June. Suddenly B was at the door with an ax handle in his hand.

“GM, get up there, T is trying to kill N and he’s gonna take the kids!”

At first, we were a bit confused. We hadn’t heard any yelling, but then again, we may not have.

“What the fuck?” was GM’s articulate reply.

“He threw her into the toy box and he says he’s gonna kill her and take the kids come help me!” B wheezed.

GM grabbed his 9mm pistol, checked the clip, then jacked a round into the chamber.

Aw, mother FUCK! I thought as I followed him out the door.

Before we got up the hill, T had torn out of the driveway in their red van. I breathed a sigh of relief. Guitar Man went into B’s house and proceeded to verbally cut loose on his sister, ironically enough, using the very same terms on her I had used to describe to him her treatment of her children. “Neglect”, “endangering the welfare of…” and then a general harangue about even letting her husband come out there or even marrying him in the first place.

I stood outside the cabin, not wanting to be part of this newest drama and knew that there had to be a stop put to this. It was then I heard the van coming back up the road. I met him on the path a few yards form the cabin.

“Leave, T.” I told him. “You need to get the hell out of here.” T wavered at first, he and I had never had any sort of confrontation. He came up the path and I could smell the booze breath before we stood toe to toe.

“I ain’t leaving without my kids!” the drunk asshole said. I heard GM come out of the house behind me.

Dear Lord, fucking help! I prayed. I don’t figure God’s a real stickler for propriety in a pinch.

“You’re not going anywhere with those kids, you’re fucking drunk. GM, is in there and you need to leave.” At this point I had my hands on his chest because he was beginning to do one of those twitchy dog-ready-to-attack maneuvers that guys in the height of insulted testosterone do in the presence of another male.

“He’s got a GUN you FUCKING MORON!” I yelled as T shoved me out of the way, yelling, “A gun? Oh YEAH? You gonna fucking shoot me?” as he stepped up toward the porch.

Guitar Man answered by pointing the 9mm point blank, right between T’s eyes. The muzzle was about a foot from in front of his face. In the brief pause of disbelief the hammer cocking made a statement all it’s own.

“If you try and come in this house or touch those kids or my sister I will fucking kill you.” Guitar Man told him. I could tell by the tight and focused fury that he meant every word he said. But I didn’t want him going to jail for blowing away this stupid piece of shit.

I began to walk up the path behind T, then realized if GM did pull the trigger I could very well take the bullet as it went through his skull as I had no doubt it would do at suck close range. I stepped more to the right of T so GM could see where I was as I walked up behind him.

In the meantime, GM and T were engaged in a verbal exchange bordering on potentially fatal for at least one of them. T claiming his lack of fear at dying, GM informing him he would get that if he chose to try and get in the house again. I could barely hear it for the screaming going on in my own head, most of which was just a blatant none-stop prayer.

Dear-Lord-Jesus-help-me-get-this-drunk-motherfucking-bastard-out-of-here-before-he-gets-his-dumb-ass-killed!

I stepped up on the porch beside them as they stood face to face, Guitar Man about six inches higher than T as T stood on the dirt. I put my arm across the doorframe in between the gun muzzle and T’s face. GM stayed in his frozen stance and I felt a flood of relief. Prayer answered. Things were still touchy but GM wasn’t determined to take this shitheel’s life.

“You need to get the fuck out of here, T, NOW.” I told him between the exchange he and GM were continuing to have. “If you try and get in this house, he will kill you. I know he will. You know it. Now leave. Just fucking go!”

Abruptly, T turned on his heel, stomped to the car and burned out of the driveway. I collapsed against the wall of the house and put my head in my hands, waiting for the nausea to pass. Somewhere in there I may have hugged Guitar Man, glad that we wouldn’t have to explain domestic defense killing to the Sheriff.

Guitar Man went into B’s cabin again, telling his sister to get her shit on, that they were driving to the police station in town to report it. He later told me that the officer he reported to shook his hand. Both for the willingness to defend his sister and her children, but also for having the clear headedness of NOT pulling the trigger as the first response. GM later told me he never would have shot T because he couldn’t see me behind him at all and didn’t want to risk shooting me as well. I knew he wouldn’t risk shooting me and that is why I never feared for my own safety.

I spoke to N and told her she needed to contact the Violence Free Crisis line and arrange to get into a shelter. GM and I weren’t always up there and with the place being so isolated with no phone should T decide to come out when we weren’t there she and the kids could be in serious danger. On a selfish note, I also just wanted her and all her bullshit the fuck off my mountain. I hoped they yanked those kids and got them into some semblance of a sane home.

I went to work Monday morning. Then I made the call I should have made earlier. I filled the CPS case worker in on all the details, up to and including the incident the night before. Because of the whole domestic aspect, they got right on thecae. Since N had pulled her head out of her ass long enough to take my advice and get into the shelter, they told her they would not remove the kids from her custody, but she needed to stay off her Dad’s property and find a place in town where she was capable of better caring for her children. To this day the family thinks it was T that reported her in an effort to get back at her. They don’t know it was me and I won’t be telling them.

While N was in the Safe House, whose location was to remain secret, she had GM and I pick her up at the church near it when she needed a ride somewhere. However, the church was right at the end of the alley and we were able to watch her walk out of the back yard of the second house up the alley, plain as anything.

N not only compromised the location of the Safe House by doing this, she also negated any chance I would ever have of being able to use should I need to.

 

 

Poverty to Live: Histories

My first two posts have disgorged a lot of fairly recent events. I suppose I should back up a little and explain the history of how I met my husband, as well as some of our personal history that has shaped who we are.  Perhaps this can help me figure out why we do what we do.

I was sixteen and going out with a guy six years older than myself. Young and ignorant, desperately wanting to be loved by someone, never interested in boys my own age who only wanted a piece of ass first. At least in an older man I found a degree of intellectual foreplay, not realizing how much I was manipulated at the time.

I met Guitar Man outside my boyfriends apartment. My best friend, Crazy V and I were sitting on the curb striking lit matches and extinguishing them by putting them between our teeth and closing our lips over the paper sticks. This was one of those pathetically defiant tough girl stunts I used to pull. I always had to act the Amazon Warrior. That act was the only armor I felt I had to conceal a surprisingly sensitive and easily hurt nature. That and outrageous humor.

He was wearing a booney hat and midcalf army trench coat. Naturally wavy shoulder length dark hair. His features were catlike and what stood out most about him were his almond shaped brown eyes. He looked quite serious, but when he smiled his face transformed. For someone who would later exhibit explosive temper, you could see his natural kindness in that smile. This is the duality of the man that is my husband. I did not know it then, of course. I had only just met him. A friend of my then-boyfriends best friend, he started to come around quite often and I got to know him.

Physically I always found him attractive, even though he was slight of frame. Five children later has done nothing to assist my own stocky frame, but I liked him and we got along well because we played well together. He would flip me shit and I would flip him shit and we would laugh.

Back then there were times that, though I never witnessed his more destructive smash-everything temper explosions, there would be times when he would not be his usual playful self, and if someone said something that he perceived to be directed at him, even if it was not, he would get angry and leave. This always confused me and made me sad. I didn’t want to see him go. I actually enjoyed spending time with him more than with my boyfriend. One time, Guitar Man, the boyfriend and Guitar Man’s best friend Elmo had come to visit me. I ran around a lot with Guitar and Elmo. We’d bomb all around town in that beat to shit Dodge Dart of Elmo’s. The whole time I had this huge secret crush on Guitar Man but never let on. I haven’t ever been the cheating type so I just held on to it all as an unattainable longing and left it at that.

Years passed and we lost touch. There were times I would think about him, sometimes often. Wonder how he was. If and when I saw Elmo I would always inquire about him. Yes, he was still playing jam night at the Bullet. Yes he was still around. He had spent some month in Oregon working on a friends cattle ranch.

Ten years and two kids later, single I began thinking about trying to contact him again. But I had no idea how. At least a year passed. It happened I was working for my landlords in their construction business. We had a meeting with all employees one day.  At this meeting was a young man named Isaac.  Isaac said he had grown up in my home town but I had never seen him in school.  He had been home schooled.  Lived up the line where I knew Guitar Man had grown up.  Not only that, but his family lived on the same mountain road Guitar Man and his father currently lived on.  He told me Guitar Man spent a lot of time at his sister’s place babysitting her kids while she worked.  He told me where it was and I even drove by.  I was reluctant to go to the door, though.  Would Guitar Man want to see me after all these years? I had always enjoyed our friendship, did he?

Six months again passed. I thought about Guitar Man off and on, wondering, praying. T hen I ran into Isaac again at Wal-Mart and figured it was a definite sign that I should contact him.  I arranged for Isaac to drive out and show me where on this mountain Guitar Man and his Dad lived. The day I followed him was a warm June day.  He drove me to the very end of a winding, rutted goat track of a mountain road.  There, at the bottom of the driveway parked in his blue Subaru was Guitar Man’s Dad, dozing in the summer sun.  I thought this was a bit odd.  He wasn’t drunk and hadn’t been drinking, but he was fast asleep.  I later came to find that things like this were what was considered ‘normal’ for this man to do.  In time I came to find out there were a lot of things what were considered ‘normal’ behavior for this man that really was not.

I was told where to locate Guitar Man’s sister’s house as that was where he was.  I was nervous driving back to town, but had wanted to see him for so long…

When I knocked on the door and his sister, who had been in my grade answered I asked if he was there, and there he was.  Ever the smartass, when I came in he was making the sign of the cross to ward me off, smiling ear to ear as I came in.  When I went over to hug him, his hug was so all encompassing and sincere I could tell he was really happy to see me too. He smelled clean and wonderful.

Over the next two weeks we got to re-familiarize ourselves with one another. He was more reserved, not as quick to laugh. Darker, maybe somehow. I chose to overlook this and focused on finding my old playmate.  He was still there, but felt different.  More calloused.

I have a girlfriend who has told me that I need to quit picking up strays. Maybe that’s what it was. I seem to have a knack for picking men who at the very least are emotionally stunted in some way.  With my husband, and seeing the relationship he had with his parents and family, it went deeper than that.  It seemed to be a family trait.

For the past ten years my now-husband and his father had lived on the five acres his father had purchased after his Mom had finally left them. They had no electricity, no running water. The place looked like a damned junkyard/garbage dump. Standing on the steps of Guitar Man’s trailer I once counted twenty-three junk cars. Those were only the ones I could see. There were many more I couldn’t.  Some date as far back as the 40s. Others are more modern. What struck me in this bacheloristic hellhole was the total disregard for the ground they were living on. Where they could have had vegetable gardens to feed themselves were scrap iron piles. Instead of working to have even a hand pump well put in, they drove to the nearest town twelve miles away to haul water.

I can’t lie that there weren’t warning signs of Bad Shit To Come. My own stubborn egotism at being able to ‘help’ him to improve his life and my arrogance at assuming he would want help or change of any kind. What I did was bring more forced change to this man’s life than he would ever want. We have spoken about it since and he claims no regrets but I often wonder.

The relationship I saw between Guitar Man and his father was very psychologically abusive. I would later learn the history of it from Guitar Man’s mom, but at this time all I could see was that any idea Guitar Man came up with for anything, no matter how small, his father had to jump in and tell him how it wouldn’t work, it was wrong, how dumb that was. There was no let up and this man never told his son he did a good job, at anything!

Guitar Man’s father grew up in Idaho and had left school in the eighth grade and possibly even earlier. I want to say third grade but that may not be correct. Regardless, he is illiterate and never went beyond manual labor. But there is also something mentally wrong with Guitar Man’s father. He is paranoid and suffers at times from anxiety attacks so severe he has in the past collapsed. Guitar Man’s grandmother went into the hospital when his father was twelve and died from something gynecological. His father refuses to go to a hospital or doctor. His health began to deteriorate severely two years ago and we would have driven him to the hospital. He adamantly refused to go until his daughter came to take him. He is obsessive about one of his daughters to a point which makes me uncomfortable. He is the same about Guitar Man’s mother who divorced him years ago but is still tied to him in a way that seems deeply psychological and co-dependant. She has told me herself that she doesn’t like him touching or hugging her and doesn’t like being around him, yet she is, constantly.

For a deeper understanding of the way Guitar Man’s family dynamics work…and honestly, I really don’t understand it, it is sick, twisted and just all ’round fucked up, even coming from a dysfunctional family such as my own, this is the history of Guitar Man’s parents as told to me by his mother.

His mother, S grew up in the same Idaho town as his father, B. S told me that she grew up in a family with a very chauvinistic father who didn’t’ believe women should go to college or do anything other than get married. S was molested for years by her own brother who was a born criminal that ruined the family name. In the era this happened of course, the ’40s and ’50s, you ‘kept it in the family’ and didn’t let anyone know about incestual sexual abuse. Besides, if it was happening, it was probably the girls fault for asking for it, because that’s the way the backwards bastards thought back then.

S told me she had gone out with B a few times, but he made her uncomfortable. As we talked she told me, “Every time I would go somewhere he was he would just sit there and stare at me the whole time. He would show up wherever I was if he knew I was going to be there. I think they have a name for it now…”

“You mean ’stalking’?” I asked her incredulously.

“Yeah! That’s it.”

Lovely. So, after awhile of this, I am not sure of what approach was taken, S wanted to go to school, her parents told her she needed to marry, S’s father told her she would be marrying B. S told me her parents made all the arrangements, including setting the wedding date. I don’t know if B went to her father to ask for her hand or not, but I would assume so. Frankly I was so blown away by someone’s parents telling them who they would marry and then making the arrangements that I didn’t think to ask.

Perhaps it was to marry off their ’soiled’ daughter to the first taker, thereby releasing themselves of the reminder her own brother had perpetrated on her, if they even were aware of it.

So S and B were married. They had one daughter, then Guitar Man seven years later. B was furious S had a boy. He only wanted daughters, he told her and B even went so far as to talk to the other woman that had just given birth in that ward to a baby girl. B tried to get this woman to trade her daughter for his son. He was serious about it. He pestered this woman to trade her daughter for his son. She told him she had five boys at home, there was no way she would trade because she had worked too hard for her daughter. Guitar Man’s family seems to treat this story as something quaint and humorous. They don’t seem to know or care how this would make Guitar Man feel.

S told me that B began pestering her about wanting to watch her have sex with other men. That’s his thing. He’s a voyeur. She told me he couldn’t get off unless he was seeing her having sex with another man. She resisted for a long time but then told me she gave in so he would just leave her alone. So the predator preys on the one who had been a victim. I firmly believe she gave in because she had already suffered at the hands of her brother and her conditioning permitted it.

Of course, he didn’t’ leave her alone. Why should he? His pestering had gotten him his sick and twisted reward. She told me he would get mad if any one guy came around too much and take it out on her.

I don’t know if the voyeuristic crap was going on before or after this major tragic incident, but I think perhaps it came after.

S and B had to take a day trip down to one of our larger Montana cities for something to do with the line of work they were in. Getting a chainsaw or something. S’s mother was going to watch Guitar Man and his older sister for them when they went. She was also caring for S’s sister’s two girls as well.

Guitar Man, however, at two years old, was being his typical rambunctious little shit self. S’s mother told her she didn’t want to take him that day, only his sister. It was in June of 1971. While crossing the tracks at train crossing with no lights or arms, the car was struck by a diesel train that was going 60-70 miles per hour. The engineer had been drinking. S’s mom, her 9 year old daughter and two nieces were killed instantly. They heard about the wreck on the radio coming back. S told me she told B, “That was Mother.”

Guitar Man remembers coming home and driving down the road seeing his favorite Aunt, mother to the two girls, walking down the road crying. He remembers, later, trying to talk to her, at two not understanding, and her screaming at him, “Get away from me you little shit!”

Guitar Man knew, at two years old that people were angry with him because he should have been in that car too. His father in particular.

S told me B refused to let her go see her daughter to identify her in the morgue because he was afraid she wouldn’t come back. She learned from her sister, who identified them that her daughter was not as mangled as the nieces. S told me it seemed very unreal and she never cried, not until twelve years later when it hit her and she cried for two days straight.

Guitar Man’s family seems to have been ruled by his father’s paranoia and phobias. Couple that with his mother’s own untreated issues and you have the perfect set up for abuse and neglect. There was domestic violence between B and S, S drank to get to sleep before B came home, B drank for his own reasons. Two more daughters followed Guitar Man in the family line. S did put her foot down with B about naming the next baby girl the same name as the big sister as he wanted to do.

All through his formative years, growing up in a home sewn with conflict and domestic strife, my husband was constantly told by his father how he couldn’t take care of himself. This seems to be B’s projection of his own life situation ever since his own mother had died when he was twelve.

By the time Guitar Man was 10 he had acquired his father’s porn mag collection. By the time he was 12 he had moved out of the house, tired of sharing a room with sisters four and eight years younger and moved into a camp trailer in the back of his mother’s house. His idea of home decor was wallpapering with nudie pics out of those magazines. Though that may have come later. That’s what it was like when I saw it when I was 16 and he was 19, anyway.

By the time I met him, Guitar Man’s mom had left B for a man, F. There is no real love lost between them, what S has alluded to was F was more for keeping B at bay than anything. F is an ex-Vietnam Green Beret who did two tours of duty on thing like night missions where the orders were to go into villages and slit throats. He has a steel plate in his head from a car accident and he is a fucking free-loading asshole because my mother-in-law enables him to be. He is also my next door neighbor on our mountain but I will get to that story later.

I grew up with a father that had no use for his daughters. I was a ‘nuisance’. I was not as valuable as a boy. This lent me a definite attitude of defiance. My father was a weaker personality than my mom yet belittled her whenever he could. My mother was a degreed college graduate, my father couldn’t pass high school. He always treated my mom like a second class citizen. He never beat her, he saved that for us girls, though the occasions weren’t often, they still stick out in my mind. Mostly it was severe emotional and verbal abuse. I grew up with a very ‘Fuck You!’ attitude toward men and authority. I have not been very successful in my life and struggle with not being my father or mother.

I cannot imagine what my husband has felt growing up. He is much more intelligent than his father, yet he cannot allow himself to feel that way. There is a bazaar and unhealthy clannishness about my husband’s mother, father and one of his sisters. The other sister married and moved to town and refuses to be part of the whole co-dependant weird bullshit my husband and his other sister get sucked into. Though his other sister recently left the state with her boyfriend, also another story I will get into later.

There is a truly fucked up habit in this family of either his mother or sister making decisions leading to a major crisis then calling my husband in to bail them out or fix it.

I know my husband doesn’t want to be part of this, yet the conditioning he grew up with is keeping him chained to it. This in turn is bringing out a nasty and volatile chemistry in our marriage. Not something I want my children to grow up with. But I also don’t want them growing up without their father.

I am looking with horror at the word count on this blog. So much to tell and no editor but myself! I needed to get this background and believe it or not I have only touched on the subject. There is a psychological dichotomy in any relationship and how we were raised has a huge impact on how we will not only raise our children, but react to our spouses.

Stresses are on the rise. My husband was laid off his job this week. Even when we had income we had ‘no money’ in his eyes. Now it’s ‘no money and no more comin’ even though he is eligible for unemployment and job retraining. I guess I should be grateful he isn’t a drinker and doesn’t do drugs. I may start to be though, with him home all the time!

Some days, more days than I would like, I think, “Is this worth it? Am I just fucking nuts? Will anything I have planned turn out? Will he support it?”

Sometimes I am afraid I know the answer.