A Hard Look Within, Part Ten

(Editor’s note: This post may seem disjointed and skip around a lot. That is the reality of my day-to-day existence most times. I hope this all makes some sort of sense at the end….)

Sixteen years this September it will be, since my son‘s presence in my life forever changed the paths I had known.  It has been thirteen years since the second most changing spiritual experiences of my life.   Yet in my mind it is still ringing as “Ten years ago…” Because it has taken me thirteen years to realize what those ten years were and it was three years prior to that, with the birth of Carter and the first three years of his life, that the journey of not only self discovery but divine discovery began.

This is the part I fear writing the most because what I wish to write about encompasses a touchy subject that I have a lot of misgivings about.  I am terrified.  That there could be consequences for writing it, that maybe, in light of some of the other shit I have read out there…and I mean shit,  that an idea could be formed about me that isn‘t who I am at all.  But as I have learned from a very brave woman named Crystal at http://www.mcknob.com, sometimes you have to say ‘fuck it’ and expose your tender underbelly all because someone out there somewhere may gain a bit of strength from the wisdom of your own mistakes and be helped by it.

And that by standing up and taking some hits you will be much stronger for it.

Of all the times in recent history this is the time the world needs anchors.  Chain breakers.  Warriors.  People who have learned to face their fears and lay them to rest so that we can build a stronger generation in the children we have nurtured at our breasts and knees.  This, I feel,  is sacred work.

My post-partum depression with Carter never seemed to end.  My days were bleak and held nothing new in them.  I didn’t realize what a miracle I had right before me, squalling, pooping, spitting up, depending, and relying on me. I have a very dear friend who just told me the other night that I am too hard on myself.  She says I am a good Mom.  I sure as hell hope so.  I struggle every day with the voices that try to tell me otherwise.  The voices I grew up with.  The voices that raised me.  The voices that were raised.

Back then I didn’t know how to bond with my baby.  He squalled.  I wasn’t sure he was actually human.  It felt like he was too loud to be a human. Too helpless.  I couldn’t understand how to feel about him.  He was cute.  I liked it when he slept.  He slept through the night by two months old.  Yet my heart didn’t know what to do with this scary little helpless creature.  I just didn’t fucking get it.

The situation with Cain left the always-present anger roiling constantly just under the surface.  Heating up like a pustule waiting to burst.  Only sometimes instead of bursting outward it would implode and that rage would lash back into me, whipping those barbs deep within my own self worth.

A few old friends stopped by.  It was good to see the company.  Big people.  With teeth.  Who could talk.  Who brought marijuana with them.

The me that is right now looks back on the me that was back then and I don’t know weather to love or hate her.  She needed slapped once or twice I think, likely more.  I wonder what the fuck I was thinking?

Then I remember how making those decisions, while some of them were so negative and destructive, some of the ones that would be judged, at first glance, to have the potential for the most destruction ended up being my saving grace.

I have never, when I have smoked marijuana been one who would smoke as much as I could just to see how wasted I could get.  That herb alters my perceptions of reality and I found out early on that if I went ahead and smoked as much as I could I had the potential to not only make myself physically very ill, but my own brain coming up with it’s ‘stoner ideas’ could pretty much send me ‘round the bend.  Also, I found,  if I used it on a daily basis within a month or two I reached burn out, turned into Bitchzilla and decided that shit is just not worth using anymore.  Well, at least until the next time I really felt the need to change my view of life, no matter how temporarily.

My friend left me a marijuana bud half the size of my thumb.  This was like a goldmine to me.   It would last me for five months. Regular smokers would have had it two days.

I realize marijuana is a drug and I do not condone it‘s use in an addictive way.  I also know from personal experience how easy it is to abuse in this manner. Sometimes, and for some, the risks outweigh the benefits.

Yet if it wasn’t for what this plant can do that is good, I would not have learned to bond with my baby, the depression would have deepened in stead of lessening, however temporarily and I believe I could have harmed myself or possibly my baby.

For the first time, I learned to see my baby as my son.  Seeing him as my son made him real to me.  He was a person now, not just a loud little pooping thing.  He was about five months old by this time.  Starting to actually turn from helpless baby to inquisitive infant.  He always had been inquisitive, but before I took up the once a week (sometimes two at first) ritual of smoking a couple puffs, I couldn’t see that.  Somehow that stuff helped me open and eye inside my heart and head that let me see him as a person.

I began to realize the hand and eye gestures meant something, they weren’t mindless flails.  There was purpose behind the intent.  I had not been able to get that those sounds he was making were attempts at engagement and communication.  I found out that I could make him laugh because I found out he liked it when I played with him.  Even then I couldn’t have told you or even really comprehended him  wanting to engage my attention.  Experience, growth and maturity helped light that bulb.

Yet to hear him giggle…that innocent, honest baby giggle made me want to do things to make him happier.  We played games.  We made loud music, with vocals, with his rattles, banging on anything we could find.  I would talk to him and tell him all about the world around him and what to expect and he would stare at me with those huge, cornflower blue eyes, drinking in the sounds of my voice and his own native tongue.

Back then I was just a lonely, inexperienced, ignorant first time Mom looking for a lifeline.  For something to help me make sense of things.  I found it.  For right or wrong, good or bad, in part or whole, I found it.

A Hard Look Within, Part Five

 

For about five months after I had broken up with Rich I drifted in this haze of aimless irresponsibility. After two months, Jessica moved back home with her parents. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I could drink a twelve pack of Keystone beer and not get a buzz. Wow. What an accomplishment.

 I was exhausted. Unemployed. I couldn’t see any point to my life or any hope in it. I was miserably lonely. My sleep schedule was so messed up I was staying up until after sunrise and sleeping all day. I felt wrung out, hollow and empty. My landlords had let me slide behind on my rent, but that time would be drawing to a close if I didn’t do something. That was the problem. I was sunk so low emotionally that I couldn’t see a way out.

 I spent my time wandering the streets of Kalispell while the town slept. There is a sacred stillness that descends in the wee hours between midnight and dawn. The quiet peace of a dreaming town. I always felt like I was looking for something unseen and impossible to lay physical hands on. I found some consolation in the night winds blowing through the branches of the giant willow in that yard on 3^rd Street on the west side where I lived. I called her the Grandmother Tree because she is over a hundred years old if not older. I would stand a her base, staring up at the huge branches, wind whispering among the leaves, feeling somehow that if something as huge as that tree had stood the test of time and man, I should somehow, some way, be able to as well. I would sometimes go into the yard to lay my hands on her bark, a nameless yearning tugging in my belly. I just couldn’t figure it out.

 I met a few cool cats out for their nocturnal wanders and we would stop an chat, their temporary companionship easing for a moment the hollow echoes in my heart and mind. Sometimes I would go down to Woodland Park to listen to the sleepy rustling of the ducks and geese at roost in the night. Listening to the night sounds in this sleeping mid-sized city, I could hear the whisper of possibility for something more. At the same time, those night winds blew through the heart of me leaving an empty, nameless ache.

 On particularly lonely nights I would wander to Finnegan’s restaurant to have coffee, flirt with the cute waiter and hope maybe someone I know would come in. Party buddies were better company than silence. Still, bars were never my thing. I seem to hold an unapproachable air about me when I do wander in to them. On the rare occasions that I found some main street dive with a blues band I would take up a table by myself and it would stay that way. On one or two occasions much older men asked me to dance. I danced, but I never invited company or conversation and always left soon after. I had seen the type of people that inhabited bars on a regular basis, and that wasn’t my thing. I never wanted to go into heavier drug use, and I had already reached the bottom as far as I was concerned.

 It was some faceless night. I was in my living room listening to Depeche Mode, which isn’t very uplifting music for happy people, much less people in the state of mind I was in. It was 3 a.m. and I wanted to die. My life was going nowhere. I hadn’t eaten in two days and I couldn’t seem to bring myself up out of this hole of despair. To top it all off, I was out of cigarettes.

 I had a small pistol my sister had given me in case Rich ever came back. A .22 Jennings. I had shells for it. I couldn’t stop crying and I just wanted it done.

 Get out of this house.

 That voice again. Call it intuition or Divine Guidance. I think of it as the latter. At least I do now.

 “I want to die! I hate this fucked up life! I can’t do anything right!” I said aloud, tears on constant leak.

 Call your Mom.“It’s three o’clock in the goddamned morning! She doesn’t need me calling! She‘ll be pissed.”

 

 I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things I had done wrong. I couldn’t even keep a job! I was a failure. I shouldn’t be alive.

 Get out of the house. Call your Mom.I should be dead! It’s not worth living, living like this!

 

 It’s not your time. Get out of the house. Call your Mom.There is nothing worse than being nagged by the voice in your head telling you to live when you are trying to find a way to die.

 

 I felt I had to do something, anything, and the voice was winning.

I left the house and walked across town to Finnegan’s. I had enough change to use the payphone.

 “Hello?” her voice was groggy. And concerned.

“It’s me.”

“What’s wrong?” fully awake now as only a mother whose kid calls in the middle of the night could be. I started to cry. That was such a loaded question.

“I’m sorry. I can’t explain right now. Could you just please come and get me?” I couldn’t keep the tears out of my voice.

“Where are you? Are you in Kalispell?”

“Yeah. Finnegan’s.”

“See you in a bit.”

 I picked a seat at the counter. Lit up the half smoked butt I’d dredged out of the ashtray outside the door. The graveyard waiter I normally flirted with cast me a few odd glances. I tried to smile and pretend nothing was wrong but I know I must have looked like train wreak. I know the smile on my face looked like it didn’t’ belong. It felt like it didn’t belong and I’ve never been a very good liar. I must have presented a fairly odd picture, pale, eyes red and bloodshot from crying. I stared into my water glass and stole a glance down the counter at the balding fat man four seats down from me. He looked like someone who had just crawled out from under a rock. I had the discomforting impression that we could have shared the same rock just then. Inward, I cringed. Another voice in my head, one that wasn’t so nice told me;

 

Look. That’s you. Different face, same broken interior design.

 

Fuck you, I thought.

Soon, the door of the restaurant opened. I was quite amazed, actually. Beside my mother stood my father. The man whom I knew didn’t even like me. My stomach lurched.

We rode in silence which was a second shock to me. I expected him to launch into a tirade at any moment. He didn’t. What was more is, I caught him glancing at me once and I was stunned by the expression in his eyes. Concern. I had seen many expressions on my father’s face before in life, concern was not one I recognized.

But I was never one to ask for help either. How could I? If I did I was either told I wasn’t trying hard enough or I was a lazy user.

 They didn’t smoke, but bum that I was then I must have gotten a couple bucks for a pack somewhere along the way. The nicotine helped me feel a little better for a moment.

 For a moment.

 For a moment I was safe. For a moment I was small again under my parents protection. For a moment time could stop it’s downward spiral.

For a moment, the demons were held at bay.

 

 

 

 

A Hard Look Within, Part Three

I dated a couple guys in early high school from a nearby town. I don‘t know if it was because of my antisocial ‘fuck you’ attitude or just the fact that I put off the hard ass vibe, but very few guys in my school asked me out. The ones that did either held absolutely no appeal to me or did so only after I was going out with my older boyfriend. And according to one of my best friends I scared the hell out of people.

 

My social life consisted of five hour coffee marathon’s at the local greasy spoon. Because my sisters had been hell raising partiers my parents over compensated by severely restricting my movements. I only rarely got to stay the night at girlfriends houses, and the few who braved staying at my house got to see first hand my father in sarcastic asshole mode. So it was the coffee shop. Coffee and cigarettes.

 

I met Rich through a mutual group of coffee drinking friends. Witty, older, smart. Black hair and blue eyes. Smoked the same brand. It was by chance I went into the restaurant alone and found him by himself at the counter. I took a seat to talk to him. We talked for three hours. Soon after started seeing each other. He had a job and soon got an apartment. His apartment turned into party central. They only let people in who brought their own beer. People came from other towns to party there. I would come in to wake him up and find strangers passed out on the living room floor. I met GM there and he and I got to be friends. I even had a secret crush on him while I was going out with Rich.

 

Rich had just turned twenty-one. My Mom knew his mother and had known him because she was a substitute teacher at the high school. While my parents didn’t necessarily approve of the relationship, they allowed it because he ‘seemed like a nice kid’. What they didn’t see too much was the complete imbalance of power in that relationship. My immaturity coupled with his ability to manipulate, an slowly awakening mental illness. I had never known about mind games. He soon lost both job and apartment and moved back in to his Mother’s house.

 

Time and again the scenario would unfold. In naïve ignorance and out of desperation for some kind of life, I threw myself mind body and soul into this relationship. Being denied healthy friendships with my own peer group I became completely obsessed with the idea of this relationship and with him. I didn’t understand that he probably didn’t really want me as much as I wanted him. After all, he told me he loved me, we talked about getting married someday and we had sex all the time. He wanted to go hang out with his buddies which I wouldn‘t have had a problem with if he would have kept his promises to me. His friends were my friends as well, but Rich didn’t have a car so I couldn’t go with them. GM and Elmo even came to visit me fairly often and there were times I would go places with them in Elmo‘s beat to shit Dodge Dart. My parents trusted them more than they trusted Rich, I think.

 

What got to me the most was being told by Rich that he would come see me then being constantly stood up. But I was in an emotionally desperate state at this time of my life and refused to cut ties and move on. Clingy doesn’t begin to describe it. I was more obsessed I think. If he told me he would come see me and stood me up I would go to every place I knew him to hang out until I found him. I was trying to force him to be accountable. This probably drove him as nuts as he drove me lying to me all the time! At the same time though, he never moved to break up with me. Never once told me we were through, not even at the end.

 

Another aspect began to emerge. If he told me he would come see me at 7 p.m. he wouldn’t show up until 9. That was how it first started. Then it would be midnight. Then 1 a.m. On school nights. When I confronted him with my anger the way he would twist and manipulate the argument, by the time it reached its end I would be the one apologizing! He made it clear time and again everything was all my fault. He would have me so upset I would be in crying hysterics, hyperventilating, literally pulling my hair out and thinking I was going out of my fucking mind. He never apologized.

 

One incident stands out. I wanted to have a romantic picnic and brought the idea up to him. He said it sounded cool. We made plans for a Saturday. I woke up early and started cooking all his favorite dishes plus desert. I cooked for half the day. I called him and he said he was going to run out to his friend Eric’s with them. Rich didn’t have his own car. Eric lived miles out of town. I asked him when he would be back and reminded him of the picnic. He told me he knew and he would only be gone a little while. Two hours later I called out there. Only a little while more. I called an hour later. And again. And Again. Soon they quit answering the phone. My sister and mother were furious on my behalf. My sister, G was calling him everything but dirty white trash. They had seen all the effort I put in. He finally showed up at 10:30 pm. Full of apologies. It wasn’t his fault. Eric’s Mom didn’t give him a ride. Like a naïve idiot I bought it, so desperate I was for affection and to just have him there.

 

This went on for three years. I was obsessed with making him be honest with me. In the winter time I could track him in the snow around town.

 

There is a morbid, pathetic piece of very dark humor here. I stalked him, yet he never tried to break off the relationship. That was what really confused me. If he would have told me he didn’t want a relationship I would have got it and moved on with life. But he always told me he wanted to be with me and loved me. Then he would avoid me and get angry when I tried to make him be accountable to me.

 

During this time, my one saving grace is a job I got working for a woman named Carellen. In exchange for cleaning horse corrals and stalls she would give me riding lessons. This was my one bright spot of saving grace through those dark times. I even took an after school job, babysitting two boys while their mom went to school. Over the course of the school year I saved every penny to buy my horse Steele for $350.00. A full blood Arabian gelding. Working with the horses was the one time I could just be myself. Be in my body. Working with the horses I was secure in what I was doing. I wasn’t some freaky little fuck up. I was strong and right in what I did there and I was good with horses. I helped break them to ride. I worked them in the arenas. I could go home carrying that horse smell on my clothes, and the part of me that knows how to survive took that into her and held onto it for all she was worth.

 

Rich’s best friend Eric got sick. He had a form of cancer so rare only four or five other people in the whole country had it. He fought it for five months. He died a month after his seventeenth birthday.

 

Eric was the second friend he had lost in the time we had been together. One of his other friends had committed suicide. Rich had been struggling some time with depression. Rich’s father, Frank, had it. In fact, we sat with his father for HOURS at the restaurant, day after day sometimes, listening to Frank go on and on and on about his depression. His medication. How his divorce from Rich’s mother had triggered it. What he had to do every single day to deal with His Depression. It was like a soul sucking litany this man relayed to us. Eventually, Rich’s mother, Nancy moved to Livingston and the house had been foreclosed on. Rich’s siblings either went with his other or moved out of the house. Rich lived in the house for two or three months with no running water and no electricity, not even trying to get a job.

 

For me, high school was going no where. I was still too short of math credits to graduate. I mulled it over and let my parent’s know I was thinking about quitting school. My parents told me if I dropped out I could no longer live in their house.

 

Praise God and hallelujah, I finally found my ticket to freedom! School let out for Christmas vacation my senior year, 1989. I never went back.

 

I found a small one bedroom house renting for $200, a month, utilities included plus $100 deposit. My father, since he had retired with dependants under 18 was receiving $200 a month for me being there. They decided to use that to pay my rent. I got a job working for $400 a month under the table at a local dairy. My parents cashed in some savings bonds of mine my maternal grandmother had purchased for me to buy me a better car.

 

I knew nothing of budgeting or saving money or establishing credit. I didn’t even know about paying bills! Rich moved in with me. After a time, I started badgering him about getting a job. He couldn’t he said, because all the jobs were in Kalispell. He had no ride to Kalispell. Couldn’t get a car because he had no drivers license. Then he got a job at a Kalispell fast food restaurant and went in to Kalispell to live with our friend Tom while he worked. I never saw any of the money.

 

I also didn’t take this as him maybe trying to dump me. He said he still wanted to be with me, still loved me. Still lead me on. That job lasted all of two weeks before he was back. Said he couldn’t handle all the beeping from the French fry machines. I figured he had gotten employment once he could get it again. I found a rental in Kalispell. A one bedroom house for $150.00 a month, I pay utilities. No more excuses for him of not being able to get rides to Kalispell for employment. After only a week or two, he was going back to Columbia Falls where we had just moved from, staying at his dads or whatever. Still telling me he loved me, still using me for sex.

 

I was done. About two weeks before my eighteenth birthday I gave my self two presents. A tattoo to cover up his name on my right forearm and I finally told him to stay away for good. I felt like such an idiot. Another mutual friend of ours, his name was Tom, told me Rich had cheated on me numerous times. Another had enlightened me to his hiding from me and/or sneaking out the back door when I came over. I felt like such a pathetic idiot. I had wanted a fantasy relationship with a manipulative lying cheat.

 

I still hung out with him and his brother on occasion, with friends. One night a couple girlfriends and I ran into him and his younger brother. They came with us as well drove down to the fishing access to do some drinking. On the way out, we spotted a skunk in the road. Rich started yelling at me to run it over. I refused. He got furious. He was screaming at me to run over this poor little animal who had done absolutely nothing! I got furious. I told him to fuck off. This infuriated him even more. His control over me was no more. He couldn’t stand it.

 

My parents were out of town and had told me to stay at their place. We all went back to their house. We hadn’t had that much alcohol, about two wine coolers apiece. One of the girls, Mona was trying to seduce Rich’s brother. The other girl, my best friend Jessica and I decided we wanted to walk to the store for some gum. Then we detoured to another couple of friends house. Jessica decided she needed to get home, it was 4 am. I wasn’t really worried about Rich and his brother being at the house I figured they would leave once Jessica went to get Mona. Wrong.

 

Jessica and Mona came back to tell me that Rich and Donny had gotten in a fistfight in my parents living room after downing a bottle of whiskey of my Dad’s and stealing a bottle of wine and that Donny had puked on the rug. I came back to my parents house then went to their Dad’s apartment to find them. When I got to the building, Rich was passed out up the first flight of stairs with the stolen bottle of wine on the landing in front of him. I roused him and made him get into the house. His brothers were sleeping on the couches. I was furious and was planning on talking to him later but the dumbass kept trying to follow me out the door. So finally, not wanting to wake his dad or brothers arguing with him there I told him to get into the car and we went back to my parents. I was furious. It’s one thing to treat me like shit but don’t fuck with my folks, even if they can be assholes.

 

We started to argue. I told him how dare he and his brother come into my parents house, trash shit and steal from them. I wouldn’t take any of his guilt bullshit. I refused to take responsibility for his actions anymore and I told him so. It was him, NOT me. He couldn’t handle that and he snapped.

 

The next thing I knew I was flying across the room. I leapt up screaming at him to get out as he swung at my face. I thought about my father’s .357 in the bedroom and a voice that could have only been my guardian angel told me, “If you go for the gun he will kill you with it.”

 

I tried to shove him out the door and he tackled me. He sat up, straddling my stomach and began to strangle me. I couldn’t breathe, my throat locked shut by his hands. I tried to scratch his eyes out but only was able to leave a pathetic shallow gash on his right cheek. I began to panic. I knew he was going to kill me. My vision started to spot and blur.

 

I heard the voice again in my head. “Go for his balls.”

 

I reached down around his hands but was only able to get a little. I twisted, pinched and squeezed for all I was worth. A little goes a long way in a case like this. Rich let go of my throat with his right hand, drew back his fist and punched me as hard as he could. The blow landed just above my left eye. It would take over seven months for that bump to disappear. He jumped up and headed out the door. I was in some out of my head state of mind because I saw him going for my car. I couldn’t even think ’get help’ or ’call police’. I was in some visceral state of freak-the-fuck-out. I thought he was going to steal my car. When I ran up to him he grabbed me and I was air born again, landing on all fours in the gravel of the driveway. He didn’t get in the drivers side, he opened the back door where he had been sitting earlier and got his notebooks out, then stomped off, no sign of drunkenness in his walk.

 

I jumped in my car and drove back down to my friend’s house. I left the front door wide open. My mother later showed up in a panic wanting to know what happened. I told her. We didn’t press charges which was just stupid on my part. I really don’t know where my head was then. I was still angry. He could have killed me but I wanted him to feel bad for what he did.

 

I went over to his Dad’s later, I can’t remember why now. Woke him up. He sat up and looked at me, tried to craft a confused look on his face and asked me, “Dearest, what happened last night?”

 

I could tell by the look on his face he remembered everything. He was all apologies. He was so sorry, called me dearest again. I hated him more then than I ever thought possible.

 

 

Space to Grow

A re-occurring theme through my whole life has been reluctance to a long term relationship. Raised by parents who neither loved nor respected each other gave me a very biased and tainted view of relationships and parenting. I have known this for a long time.

 

Breaking up with Guitar Man didn’t mean we were not going to have contact. We had one child together and I was pregnant with our second, a daughter. No only did we need to get away from each other and the toxic relationship we created, but I felt that getting out and being on his own was what GM needed to help him grow up. His whole life he had lived with one parent or the other until I came in to change everything. That was his safety as well as theirs in that twisted co-dependant way they live. Instead of teaching GM to become an independent self sufficient person, they had their built in babysitter, handyman, sometimes scapegoat and general all around savior merely a shout or phone call away. His sisters used it to their every advantage as well. If anything needed done, they would call GM. GM thought of this as ’helping out’ your family. A familial duty. Even though the help he got in return was usually a pittance compared to what he had to put out. I came into the picture and after we began having kids this messed it up a bit for them as far as having their on-call babysitter. GM now had his own family to take care of. While I wasn’t ever outright rude to his family, and I even, at that time, liked his Mom a lot, I didn’t realize until much later how badly they thought of me.

 

I had loved this man since I was 16. I wanted to see him happy and succeed, but I wanted that for myself as well.

 

I helped him look for a place. He found a small one bedroom house near my mother’s house. For the first time in his life, GM had his own place he paid for himself, his own utilities to be responsible for and had to get it all going for himself. He did awesome, as I knew he could. He liked his job and kept at it. After a few months his father, whose health was getting worse, moved in with him, supposedly to watch his place, but in reality because he wanted someone to take care of him. He had wanted that even in good health and now it was open opportunity for him again. But in true co-dependant fashion he was living there to ’keep an eye on GM’s stuff’ while he worked nights.

 

GM would come watch the kids down at our house on the weekends for me when I worked the closing shifts at the pizza delivery place where I worked my second job. He slept on the couch. I had long since stopped all physical contact. I urged him to get out and date. He refused.

 

I wanted to date but it was awkward for me. I still held feelings for GM even though I pushed them far out of sight. I wanted to move on but I couldn’t, not still being so close to him. We even went over to Oregon for a week for a mutual friend’s wedding. But that aspect of our relationship was over. We slept in the same room. Familiarity allowed us to sleep in the same bed with the baby in the middle. I would not allow anything else and GM never pushed it.

 

After toxic mold was discovered under the Funeral Home apartment, GM let us all stay with him for about two weeks until we got another place. He worked nights and I worked days and the baby slept between us. We had one really nasty fight in that time. Right in front of our son. GM grabbed his 9mm pistol and went to take off in his car. I wouldn’t allow him to leave because I didn’t know if he was going to hurt himself or not. I was angry as well because that was the way it usually went. Explosive argument followed by him getting to leave to cool off while I was stuck, furious, still trying to deal with the kids and my own out of control emotions. I was not afraid for myself because he had never threatened me or the kids. But still, I didn’t know if he might at some point. After I we got our own place again I brought the kids to his house instead of having him come to mine. It just seemed to complicate things more having him there. I really was trying to move on.

 

I dabbled with an online single parent’s group. It was so unreal. Talking to someone through the computer, how the hell do you judge what’s real? GM didn’t like it, he was jealous. He never did let it go. I decided to try dating once. I mostly just wanted friends. Some work friends and I had all gone out drinking and when a guy I thought about dating kissed me all I could think was, this isn’t GM. The guy wanted more and the thought made me want to hurl. I really didn’t want to be with another man. I realized then that there was something I hadn’t dealt with in this relationship. I couldn’t stop loving GM no matter how hard I tried.

 

We were separated almost three years. Neither one of us ever got serious about anyone else. GM didn’t even try. Still, he hung on to the idea of us. At times it annoyed the hell out of me. I felt stalked at times. Like he was always hovering, hanging on. Sometimes he reminded me of a whipped dog and I hated that. Hated thinking of him in that way and hated seeing him act that way. It made me think less of him as a man, having him mooning, like his own father did over his mother after she left. Not a healthy loyalty but almost like and unhealthy obsession. Not that he ever pushed it or even mentioned it. I just knew it was there. I knew his capacity for loyalty. I often felt he was doing himself a grave disservice. I didn’t want to have a toxic relationship with him.

 

About a month after my one miserable attempt at dating I decided to lay it out once and for all that we couldn’t be together ever again. I hated feeling the way I did. I wanted him to be able to move on with his life. I had pretty much decided that single parenting was what I would do until, well, until whenever. I didn’t want to love anyone else. I couldn’t. With four kids I knew my chances of dating were limited to either one night stands or pedophiles. One which held no appeal and the other which held the possibility of me going to jail for homicide.

 

I tried to rely on faith for guidance but where matters of the heart are concerned, I am blinded. Something told me to go back to him and something else told me I would be consigning myself to a lifetime of misery if I did.

 

Outside of my mother’s house I finally confronted him. I was a wreck. In tears. I told him there was just no way we could be together and we both just needed to move on. I suppose I expected anger. Fury. A huge fight. What I got was a man who told me he loved me and only wanted to see me happy. He told me that if that was really what I wanted then, he would go. And he did.

 

I drove home and cried the whole way. I felt like my heart had been cut out. Worse, even. I knew that he would keep his word. I felt like I had made the worst decision in the world. I worried that maybe he could harm himself, but after all of the time and all of the blowups I knew he would not because of the kind of dedicated loving father he was.

 

For the first time, I knew without doubt what it would be like to not have this complicated, kind, loyal, loving and infuriating man in my life. He had always been available for me if I needed him after the breakup. I never tried to abuse that but probably did. The next realization hit home very hard.

 

I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. I could not picture my life without him in it. Not just hovering in the shadows. I loved this man. As twisted, malfunctioning and fucked up as the relationship had been I knew it had changed. We had changed.

 

That same night I called him. I was worried about him. We talked and once again he told me how much he loved me and that if I wanted him there he would be there in ten minutes. I broke. I told him to come.

 

For a year after that, he lived in his house and the kids and I lived in mine. He began staying with us more and more. He was more helpful. We talked things out without screaming constantly. Both of us were sick of renting and after the owner of the property I was renting sold it the new landlords turned out to be complete slumlord assholes. THe had their nephew move into the apartment in the garage so he could ‘keep an eye’ (i.e.; spy) on us, though we had been model renters.

 

That shit got old fast.

 

After a year of being together, our youngest daughter Nunkee being born, GM and I decided to get married. I knew there were still going to be difficulties. I realized finally, that that is what marriages are about, the good AND the bad, the give and the take and it appeared that he knew that as well.

 

I will only tolerate harassment from landlords so much. I knew they wanted us out so we gave our 30 day notice. The month before our wedding. I knew from all these years that GM really wanted to move back out to his Dad’s property. What I think of as the Junk Yard because it is. There are over 50 junk cars, some that are from the 30s, 40s and 50s on the place. It is a form of hording that I really didn’t understand until fairly recently. Five years ago when S moved over here she brought her one time boyfriend F and over 20 unspayed, unneutered dogs plus a variety of geese and rabbits with her. She left them up on that property and went to live in town with N. She would go out every few days, if she felt like it to bring food, water, snuff and dog food out to F who had no vehicle of his own. Everything up there depended on whether or not S felt like going out and bringing the necessities. Over the years in the winter when the roads were impassable, S had had GM take the food and dog food in to F by walking across the train trestle in deep snow the mile up the mountain to do it.

 

Like an idiot I didn’t take into consideration this families habit of leaving all their difficult shit for GM to clean up. All I was focused on was wanting to show my husband to be my willingness to sacrifice (because obviously I have NEVER done THAT before) comfort to live a life both of us wanted. Yes, we both want to live away from town and people. I want to be self sufficient and self sustaining. With a well, solar power and organic sustainable farm. I don’t really know what GM wants, he says one thing then, well, that part of the story will unfold in time.

In the middle of April, when we were in the process of moving, GM’s mother announced that she and GMs sister N, and the three kids were going to be losing the trailer they had been renting. S couldn’t afford to pay rent anymore and GMs sister N hadn’t kept a job in the 6 plus years she and the kids had been there except when the welfare office forced her to go to work for them until they had to lay her off. S had moved in with her and supported her and the kids. N was always taking classes online, and was already in possession of a BA in culinary arts she chose never to use. N was content to allow S to support her and in her twisted way, S seemed to prefer it that way. Even though she also seemed to resent it.

 

I have to admit. I had a selfish hope that GM’s Dad would follow through on his promise to give us the land, perhaps as a wedding gift. Having lived next to N before, and she, her neglect and bullshit being a large art of the reason I left before, well, lets just say that my attitude at the prospect went to shit in a hurry.

 

My wedding was looming. I needed to take my landlords to small claims court to get my deposit back. Neglect was once again coming home to roost. This was the beginning of a whole new can of worms.

 

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.

 

 

Repeat Mistakes

I started going out with my husband in 2000. My eldest son lives primarily with his Dad, and stays with me summers. By 2001 I had purchased a small camp trailer and decided to try living out on the property with Guitar Man and his father, B. My eldest son, eight, being a deeply rooted town kid, hated it. My daughter, a nature lover like her Mom and three at the time loved being there. I wanted to get an idea of what it was like living out there full time. Things were going good between us and I wanted to take it to the next level. He had his trailer, I had mine, but we were right next to each other.

 

Guitar Man didn’t have a job, outside of the odd jobs he would occasionally pick up. At this time he wasn’t even playing music. It was this time that I began to see the bazaar relationship between GM and his father. I have previously mentioned the paranoia and obsessive behaviors of GM’s father, but here I saw the depth at which he had molded his son with them. Guitar Man’s mother, S was living over the mountains with F at this time and had been for years. Guitar Man lived with B to help ‘take care’ of B. he had been doing this for the past ten years, since his Mom, S had sold her property, and to get away from B, moved over to the east side of the mountains.

 

At this time, B had no health problems. He hadn’t had any. Sometimes, if there was Caterpillar work to do, Guitar Man would help his Dad out, and they would earn money this way. There were other odd job things they would occasionally do to earn cash but mostly, they both just lived off B’s social security. B furnished them both with cigarettes and Gm with his every other day twelve pack of Mountain Dew.

 

How did this come to pass? Why would a grown man end up living with his father, after only having held one steady job, years earlier?

 

Roll back the years to the time when Guitar Man was seventeen. After a day of recreational shooting with some friends, Guitar Man and Elmo were getting ready to head home. Big Bubba was up on the hill trying to unload his twenty-two pistol and somehow, in trying to jack a shell out of the chamber the gun discharged. Unfortunately, Big Bubba, not being the brightest of weapons owners had not been paying attention to where the muzzle was pointing. The bullet pierced Guitar Man’s right side, wreaked merry havoc on his intestines, spleen and kidney before lodging itself between two vertebra on his spine.

 

That was discovered in surgery, what happened then was Guitar Man collapsed with a yell and Elmo went running to call an ambulance.

A five or six week stay in the hospital left Guitar Man healed up, but with a constant reminder; the bullet was wedged in such a way between the vertebra that the doctor’s left it in place rather than risk permanent and possibly crippling damage to the spinal cord.

 

Picture then, being raised by a mother whose emotional bonding with her children was sketchy at best, a paranoid delusional father with obsessive and controlling personality traits. Mother is more than willing to push you out to be independent and self caring at as early an age as possible (my husband was responsible for babysitting his two younger sisters, four and one at age eight while his parents worked in the nearby post yard. The whole family sees nothing wrong with this because he could have ‘run out to get Mom’ while dodging large post trucks and heavy equipment if anything went wrong.) while Father tells you constantly that nothing you are doing works, everything you try is wrong, and the whole world is looking down on you. Top it off with the real kicker, “Guitar Man can’t take care of himself.” as the family belief. Then throw in a nearly disabling injury and actual doctors telling you if you fell wrong you could become paralyzed from the waist down for life.

 

The twist however, if a vehicle broke down, the family called Guitar Man. If the sister’s needed a babysitter, they called Guitar Man. If somebody had to travel miles to help one of the immediate family members out of some preventable crises, the called Guitar Man.

 

This is not what Guitar Man has told me, this is what I have observed in his family dynamics. What Guitar Man does has been labeled as ‘helping out’. In reality what happens, is no matter the severity, when shit hits the fan, Guitar Man is the one that is expected to right it for everyone.

 

Through his immediate family’s world views and integral belief system, they turned Guitar Man into the resident caretaker, fix everything guy, rescue everyone guy, meanwhile keeping his self esteem and personal belief system so low, reinforcing the belief that he could not take care of himself, never nurturing ideas such as personal growth, health well-being and soundness of mind, that what they produced was an adult dependant. Co-dependant.

 

I saw a lot of this. I didn’t have the idea of coming in and ‘rescuing’ him from anything, but perhaps somewhere in the back of my mind was the desire to bring positive change, hence my own egotistical and self-serving desires come through.

 

There was one screaming fight I got into with B. While living up on the mountain in the summer, and Guitar Man spent his days getting wood or puttering around doing God knows what, I was working full time, driving 80 miles a day to get there and back. It was during this time I purchased a 1977 Dodge step side pickup for $500 from a friend of mine. The engine needed major work, but I have a passion for step-side pickups and had wanted one for years. It was my own money, I was debt free, I wanted one, I got it.

 

Guitar Man and I were sitting up at B’s cabin(shack) having dinner. B started in on me about buying my truck. Told me I needed to quit buying old junk trucks, otherwise I would be just like him with a bunch of junk cars all over (Ha! NOT!), and what came out of his mouth next, if it hadn’t stunned me so completely, would have landed a punch right in his mouth.

“Besides!” B ranted at me, “You have to save your money so you can take care of Guitar Man!”

My temper snapped. I roared, “GUITAR MAN CAN TAKE CARE OF HIMSELF!!!” to which B yelled vehemently, “No he can’t!”

“YES HE CAN!” I bellowed and left the house.

 

I was furious. Here was B’s belief system, verifying things S had told me. B, when they were married refused to work. S said it was because he was afraid she wouldn’t come home if he went to work. But also, in the area where we live where poverty, domestic violence and joblessness are rampant, there seems to be this character trait of a lot of abusive men to let the women work, then use all their money. This is essentially what B was telling me I was supposed to do. Work my ass off while his son reaped the benefits. Take care of his son, whom he fully believed to be incapable of taking care of himself, and at that time who hadn’t learned how, no thanks to the parenting he received growing up. The weird thing is, B doesn’t really thing he is capable taking care of his own self and he seems to have this desperate desire, some driven by his mental illness, no doubt, that his ex-wife and children need to take care of him.

 

I am not talking about your typical elder care of a sick family member, but something way more co-dependant and unhealthy. B wants his family around so he can ‘watch’ them. even if no words are exchanged. It brings him security and comfort and he cannot be left alone because he will panic and have anxiety attacks. I don’t know how often I have heard the phrase, “Dad gets frantic.” when describing B. So these deep psychological and emotional issues go on, untreated and passed down. I saw this clearly after Guitar Man’s sister, whom I will call Vap moved herself, her abusive husband and their three physically and deeply emotionally abused kids over to live with B and I got to see family neglect up close and personal.

 

Not only was this deeply disturbing to witness first hand, just on basic principle, but I had a major conflict at the time. My job, at this time was as a case manager for a State assisted child care agency. As a government employee, there were certain rules and regulations that I had to follow regarding witnessing abuse and neglect. By law, I was a mandated reporter.