Signs of Healing

Editor’s note:  I have been trying for THREE DAYS to get these pictures on here.  True to my style of organization, they are on here bass-ackwards, so you get to see the pictures ‘after’ and ‘before’ instead of the other way around.  To those of you who actually keep a clean house, it may not seem like the miracle it is.  When you see the ‘before’ pictures, you may have a better understanding.

 

I wanted to see if I could get the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of F’s cabin on here.  I am sort of a techno-idiot for simple things like uploading pictures.  But I feel like it is an important part of the story for people to be able to see what happens when you can stand up for doing the right thing by letting go of anger and animosity and holding peace in your heart.  Even when dealing with someone who is mentally ill.

F is a hoarder.  I really saw the reality of this, not only with the cabin, but when S got his metal filing box out of storage.  He had canceled checks in with his military papers.  Which wouldn’t be odd except the canceled checks were from 1968 on up. Why he felt the need to keep them shall remain a mystery to me.

The ‘cabin’ is a slope roofed one room shack my father-in-law and husband built over fifteen years ago.  It is slowly falling apart and F never tried to keep it up.  S was the one who put new tarpaper on the roof last year to keep it from leaking.

Beds made to military precision, give or take. Floor shoveled clean of the dog shit coated clothes. He threw those down on our burn pile. That’s will smell nice. Guess we won’t be roasting marshmallows this year….

Now, this is what the place looked like the day he left, after we had that two hour palaver the night before. Holy shit, is that floor I see?

Yes, the cans really ARE all gone! Double take! I can’t believe my camera.

Do I detect the tang of Pine-sol in the air? Amazing what a shovel and a little scrubbing can do for that can collection. They hauled them to the dump, too!

This is a view in the front door. You can see my father-in-laws wood cook stove that F used as counter space. There are cans and garbage all in front of it. The floor is coated in dirt, probably dog shit and who knows what else.

The ‘kitchen’ area to the right. Years of food cans and garbage. The linoleum under this all is white, honest.

His heat source and overflowing ash pan for the woodstove. Honestly, I don’t know how he didn’t burn the place down. That’s Cindy Lou sitting in the chair where she had given birth to her pups. S has taken her to live in town now.

Inside to the left. He always made his bed. That’s my dog, Copper, coming in to check out the one that is hiding under the bed. I usually don’t let my dog’s anywhere near this place but he is current on his shots. There is clothes, dirt and most likely dogshit on the floor here too. The bed across has F’s clothes and other crap.

Yet it is real.  I don’t know if you can understand how miraculous this was.  This man, who has never batted and eye at letting not only dogs, but livestock, and I am talking sheep and goats, geese and pigs, in the house to live, eat and shit without ever cleaning it up.  He did this.  He cleaned his house!

This is the same man who would sit in the living room of S’s house over east in a living room that’s rug was soaked so thoroughly with dog urine it squelched with every step, and watch television as the dogs shit on the rug in front of him.

To me, this is evidence that Divinity is at work.  There is a spirit at work here that is stronger than the shit.  This is the miracle that turns shit into black gold.  This is the proof.

S and my father-in-law B seemed a little stunned at F’s  abrupt departure.  I don’t think my mother-in-law quite knew how to deal with the reality. F has been a fixture in her life for over twenty years now.  She never wanted to deal with him, but never made a move to cut him loose either.  This shall forever be a puzzle to me. 

The night GM called to tell her F had gone with his brother, I could hear her voice on the other end of the line.  When she said “Oh.” it sounded higher than her usual speaking voice.  Tremulous.  I wondered.  Did this mean there was a part of her that was actually sorry to see him gone?  Even though this was the man who had told her the mountain wasn’t big enough for the both of them and she should go live with her daughter.  Yet, what was I supposed to do?  I will gladly take on burdens for my family when the cause is just, when the need is real, but I will not  enable someone to use and abuse my family.  I will not allow someone to latch on to us as a drowning victim dragging their savior to the depths.

When I told S he had cleaned to the cabin up,  that he had even used a cleaner (probably even on that one white floor patch!) her mouth actually dropped open.  She was honest to goodness stunned when I told her that.  Said he had never lifted a finger EVER in the twenty-some-odd years they had been together to help her clean.  Not even the animal pens.

I couldn’t explain to her the how or why.  We don’t see things the same way.  I couldn’t explain to her that you can kick someone in the ass and do it with love.  I just don’t think that is the language that they have ever known.  I don’t know if S will ever understand that showing someone you love them doesn’t mean doing everything for them until they are crippled with the inability to do for themselves.  That is not love.  That is something else entirely and it has dark origins, no matter the intent behind it.

After F had left, and in the middle of the night when the large drink of water before bed finally ran its course and woke me, I went outside.  I heard something that I didn’t know I would ever here.  A bull elk bugling.  Our mountain, years and years ago used to have a lot of elk.  GM said he hadn’t seen any for over fifteen years.  I heard it another night, then again last night, just about dusk.  His bugling set the dogs off up at F’s old place where they still stay.  Excited, I went in to tell GM.  He told me he had been watching one of the home movies he recently made with he and our big white dog Fen on it.  He said Fen was howling on the movie.  This annoyed me.  I can tell the difference between and elk bugle and a dog howl for shit’s sake!  I snapped at him a bit.  He got a little mad back and told me angrily that he hadn’t seen elk up here in twenty years.

As we are learning to do now, we went our own ways for a few minutes.  We are trying (slowly) to pick our battles.  When we passed each other again on the trail down to our outhouse I stopped and looked at him.  I knew what I needed to say.

“When you pray for healing to come to a place, when you pray for good things to come back, they do.”

I continued down the path, and he watched me in silence.

The Uphill Climb to Healing

It has been thirteen years now. My lucky thirteen I guess. There is a lot to tell about what has happened in those intervening years, but what is going on in my present life is what takes priority. The past will come as I need it to, but the present cannot be ignored.

 

Suffice it to say thirteen years has taught me a lot. I have been a shitty, sometimes neglectful and sometimes abusive parent. I have learned and am still learning not to be. Some of what I did was done in ignorance. Some was done in inexperience. Some was just plain stubborn selfishness. It has been along road.

 

One of the toughest lessons I have learned is that when and if you pray to the Creator to send you teachers, most likely mystical wise old men and women are not going to come knocking on your door. You will find that your life will end up in circumstances that will test every ounce of character, strength and patience you have. Sometimes it will chew you up and spit you out. This will teach you to get up and dust your ass off. Sometimes you will be down a long time before you get up.

 

When we came out to the mountain last year…when all the conflict began, I once again began to say my prayers. I had been slacking along time. I prayed for healing to come to the mountain. I prayed that the negativity that had found a home there be uprooted and leave. I had no idea at the time that it would be up to me to help it leave. To help it heal. Because, when you pray for Divine help, when you ask for sacred ground to be born anew, you had damned well better make sure you are ready to be the hands, feet, eyes, voice and heart of Divine direction. Most importantly, when you pray for healing, it must come first to your own heart.

 

This summer has been a hard, amazing and eye opening experience for me. I have had to face a lot of fears and learn to put those fears to rest. I have had to learn that I cannot influence other peoples choices, even the choices of those people I love the most, unless I live by example. All I can do is hope I set a positive enough example that they can see they can do it as well. I am a person who has been very quick to anger….that is what I was taught about parenting growing up. My ongoing lesson as a parent with my own children is in learning how to transform snap anger into good parenting. Some days it feels as if it would be easier to gouge my own eyeball out with a spoon. But it isn’t for me that I must do this, it is for the lifelong success of my precious children. Those souls whose charge I keep. This is a very hard lesson to learn and I am far from an expert. I fuck up constantly. Yet people tell me I am a good Mom. This gives me hope because the negative voice in my head does not want to agree. Does not even want to credit me with it.

 

As anyone who has read this blog from beginning to end will gather, I have a drive in me to see fairness and justice done. My husband, in some argument long ago accused me of always turning the critical eye upon his family and never me or mine. Perhaps he is right in part. After all, it is much easier to see the flaws in others than it is to see our own. Ironically however, we are also our own worst critics. There is a crucial balance that must be reached. In order to be able, emotionally, to have that balance, there also must exist in our everyday lives, a balance in our day to day activities. Our external lives must support our internal lives and vise versa. Above all, in my own life anyway, I have learned there are two very important words I need to focus on; Peace and Forgiveness. These words have taught me no only to find forgiveness with myself, in my own heart, and with the negative influences from both past and present, but to find it in my interactions with other people. This can be a very, very hard thing to do, especially with a sometimes foul tempered wench such as myself. Going on the warpath is not the only option. Standing up with peace and love in my heart for what is right is the only option for me.

 

People who have read this blog know of my past conflicts with my mother-in-law, S. They know about the out of control dog situation and S’s ‘boyfriend’ F.

 

To throw some complete confusion into the mix, according to S, she and F haven’t actually been ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’ in over twelve years. Yet still she supported a man who treated her terribly. Se hasn’t lived with him but for maybe a month or two when they first moved over here almost six years ago. Living in that one room shack that was once my father-in-laws cabin, F told S that the mountain wasn’t big enough for the both of them, so she left those years ago to go live with her daughter N and her three grandkids. But still she supported him as his only source of food and he ‘took care of the dogs’. It is one of the most bazaar symbiotic relationships I will never understand.

 

Last winter we ran out of wood. We may have had it last longer if we hadn’t given a few of our loads to F. He would come down, offering to ‘help’ my husband get a load. Of course the payment would be either half or all of the load. My husband wouldn’t have him ‘help’ without giving him some. My husband is not me and also would not tell him to fuck off.

 

I didn’t want to see the crazy old bastard freeze, but I resented the hell out of having to ‘share’ our wood for his ‘help’, which was no real help at all and didn’t include him buying and gas or oil, or sharpening the damned chainsaw either. We never got him enough wood to make it through the winter last winter. So if he ran low he would come steal ours when we weren’t home. Stealing, after all, was easier than scavenging it out in the woods, which could have been done. Last winter as well, he got some sort of croupy chough that wouldn’t go away, which was no surprise. Last winter, with my husband working, we just didn’t HAVE time to go out and get more wood. It was all we could do to get ours. This winter, we will both be going to school.

 

It has floored me time and again that, though S has moved off the mountain, established herself with her ex’s roommate and wanted nothing to do with her dogs that she would continue to support a man who was not nice to her, didn’t seem to want to even be with her and definitely didn’t want to live with her. To me, this just illustrates the horrific situation of a woman who has grown up with the belief that abuse is a way of life, continuing the victim cycle. I will never EVER understand this. I have been through some abusive stuff and NOTHING made me want to stay beyond a certain point. Perhaps, for some, there is a point where the will to fight with flight is crushed down to submission to survive. Yet S would always argue back and tell F off. I just don’t get it. I never will.

 

　

Already this fall, F has started to get a croupy hack. We have had a very wet summer. It was in early August that he got it. The cabin he has lived in is filthy. He hasn’t thrown a food can out since he moved over here. The dogs have had puppies and shit and pissed on the floor. Mice, no doubt, try to dodge the dogs to get to the cans. Yet he always makes his bed. Military training and all.

 

I brought my concerns up time and again to GM and S. S said she may call his brother. His brother that lives in the valley but hasn’t ever come to visit. I let her know if F threatened me or the kids again or even threatened to ‘burn the place down’, I would have the cops out there to haul him off and slap a restraining order on his ass. S told me to ‘do whatever I felt I had to, to be safe’. GM has never learned to stand up for himself or anyone else, especially in the face of his birth family.

 

To me, this seemed to say S was completely content allowing me to handle it. It was becoming a crises, after all.

 

To explain a bit about the relationship I have developed with F, I have to say we have a sort of tentative friendship and mutual grudging respect. I respect his loyalty and sense of duty. There was a lot of that in dealing with his living situation and those dogs. It was complete insanity, but in this mental illness he really was honor bound to protect and care for those dogs as well as his situation and twisted sense would allow. This is why I did not have his ass hauled off first thing when he threatened me. One, I didn’t want to scare that easily, and I don’t think, at this phase of his mental decline that he would actually harm me or my kids. Vietnam pretty much cured him for the desire to actually kill. The unknown part, the part I could NOT risk, was that, if his mental decline became bad enough that he actually might attempt to harm my children. That is a risk I was not wiling to take because if he actually did try to harm my children, as their mother I would protect them, and as their father, so would GM, even if that meant we had to kill another human being. I did not want my children to ever be put in a position to witness that.

 

Oddly enough, a few weeks ago, F started to ‘clean out some stuff’ and move some of his things around. I knew then that my prayers had been answered. I felt he was ready to go.

 

After S said a few times that she would calls F’s brother and nothing came of it, I had enough. I looked up his brother in the phone book and made the call. That was August 28th.

 

I wasn’t sure it was the right man until he answered the phone. It sounded like I was talking to F. I cut to the chase immediately after introducing myself. I told him I was concerned about his brother’s health not only physically, but mentally. I told him I respected his Veteran status and wanted to do this peacefully. I told him his brother needed to leave our mountain. He agreed. Said his brother needed to start taking care of himself. It wasn’t S’s job, he said, to support him.

 

Odd, I thought. You and the rest of the family have had no problem with her supporting him for the last twenty-eight years! I kept my mouth shut of course, seeing as how this was a diplomatic mission and all.

 

I told his brother it wasn’t ours either. I also went over again my concerns for his physical health. F’s brother said he wanted me to call back on Wednesday and he would have to go and see him.

 

I got busy and didn’t call until Thursday. I had to leave a message. I didn’t hear from him and called him again on Friday. He was irate. He had talked to S and she was supposed to either call him back herself or have one of us call him to drive caravan out to our house with him to show him where we lived. He had been waiting all week for a call from either S or us. I was pissed! S had talked to me two days previous and told me she had talked to F’s brother but had never mentioned we were supposed to set up a meeting! When I mentioned it to GM he told me she had told him that and he forgot to tell me.

 

Honestly! The way this family communicates may as well be in a foreign fucking language!

 

We met him the following Monday and GM showed him how to get out there. Tuesday we went up to give him his snuff S bought him. F came out like a nasty tempered cur.

 

“What are you two doing up here, what do you want?”

“Came up here to give you the snoose mom bought!” GM told him.

“Oh yeah? ” He sidestepped to the car and snatched the can. “Thanks for the stab in the back!” he shot at my husband.

 

My husband really does get blamed for a lot of shit he doesn’t do.

 

“I didn’t stab you in the fucking back!” GM yelled.

“Yes you did! YES YOU DID!” F yelled back.

“I DID NOT, GODAMMIT!” GM bellowed in return. Knowing this was going nowhere and not liking my husband getting blamed for shit he didn’t do, I leaned across my husband to lock eyes with F.

“No,” I said, “HE didn’t!” Then I just held his gaze.

F sputtered as if he would keep ranting, shook and angry all encompassing finger at me and my husband and turned away. I think he got my message. GM stomped the accelerator hard enough to throw rocks as we left. I tried to tell him not to let it get to him, but my husband has a paper thin pride and it is easily torn into.

 

We didn’t go up there again. F’s brother told us to just steer clear of him. He bought him a bunch of groceries. Then the weekend came and F’s brother called me to tell me they were going to Great Falls for the weekend and I would need to feed the dogs. F got on the phone. Told me there was half a bag of dog food and they were due to be fed again the next day and I was to feed them the rest of the bag. F only feeds the dogs every other day. I assured him I would, knowing I would go home and feed them that night. He tried to tell me I was a back stabber and I started to laugh at him. I laughed and told him I was not and that he needed to get his shit taken care of and his brother was gonna help him do it. I asked if he had gotten the apartment they were hoping for. He told me to mind my own business and that no, they hadn’t. It may or may not have been the truth. Having been in covert ops in Vietnam he is even now really paranoid about sharing accurate info.

 

That weekend while he was gone, S came out and got a bunch of her stuff. He was supposed to be back on Monday but we didn’t see him. The dogs were acting more their normal paranoid selves so I assumed he was. Thursday, September 4th he came down the hill. I knew he was in a good mood because he asked us if we wanted a watermelon for the kids. I could usually predict his mood. If he wanted something, he was an asshole. Having a conversation with him would lead to threatening, unpredictable verbal assault. I had not spoken to him for months really. When he came down with an offering, it was his white flag. Negotiations could be had and palaver was sought.

He offered eggs as well and I knew he wanted to talk. He was also grungier than usual which is actually saying a lot for a man who may or may not have taken a bath in the pond in the past five years. Said he was cleaning out the place. He was gonna be leaving.

 

My kids were down there, and he tried his ‘backstabber’ crap, telling my kids his parents were backstabbers. I refused to get angry and just rolled my eyes and told my kids to tell F he was full of shit. F started to smile. When he looked at me I looked back and told him,

 

“If I was gonna stab you in the back you wouldn’t have seen me coming. But I am standing here now, telling you it was me. You have health issues and I didn’t want to see you go through another winter not knowing if S would feel like sending food out to you, or you not having enough wood because we didn’t have the time to get it. Your brother’s gonna help you get that stuff.”

 

F then launched into detail about all the paperwork. I walked up the hill to get the watermelon and eggs. I talked to him for two hours. Some of what he told me was probably true, though he lied about the locations of things as was his habit. Not that it mattered. I could tell, he was actually happy. As happy as someone like him, someone carrying his demons, could get. He shared with me that they wanted to test him for PTSD. I told him that after two tours of duty in ‘Nam that he sure as shit probably had it.

 

He said he’d be back in a couple weeks to get more stuff.

 

The next night, I went up as soon as we came home to see if he had gone. The dogs went into baying alarm as I came up and the one dog that is terrified of me took off. The cabin door stood open. I stepped in and was amazed at the difference. (sometime soon I will post the before and after photos.) I could see linoleum through the dirt. All clothes were gone and so were all cans. His remaining belongings were gathered in bins and stacked on the tables. As always, is bed was made. There was the faint tang of Pine-sol in the air.

 

F was gone and he had cleaned out his bunker.

 

He had left in peace.

 

Now, about those remaining dogs……

 

　

A Hard Look Within, Part Nine

I didn’t know what post partum depression was. I had heard of it, but I couldn’t understand it.  I didn’t know I was about to live it.

We celebrated Carter’s four week birthday in Park City, Utah. We had made the eleven hour journey with Cain. I was still in shock about the apprenticeship and could not seem to wrap my mind around the fact that when I went home to Montana I would be going without him and with only our new baby. I kept wanting to think it was all a vacation. I didn’t want to be a single parent before my baby was two months old!

Cain had wanted us to stay in Montana for purely practical purposes. He didn’t want to give up the house, deal with moving and storage. Plus, it hadn’t been like the bastards had given us more than two days to completely change our lives anyway! Two days! I still couldn’t believe they could do that.

The drive home was one of the longest drives in my life. I drove down the road to despair on that car ride home. I couldn’t get used to this little being that was completely dependant upon me for his survival. I could see him, touch him, hear him. I nursed him. I bathed him. Yet there was this level of unreality still attached to the idea of him being mine. I couldn’t seem to make the connection that he was a real living breathing human being with feelings, however new. I couldn’t feel him in my heart.

When I got home, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t feel like myself! I didn’t know who or what I was. I was Carter’s mom. But the title ‘Mom’ linked with my name didn’t make sense. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.

My days began to blur together in a haze. All I wanted to do was sleep. Carter was a good baby, my experience now tells me. I didn’t know enough about healthy breast feeding practices to know not to supplement with formula. I had read somewhere that new mother’s should take advantage of the baby’s naptimes to sleep as well. So I did. Cain sent money home. I stayed in the house and watched cable television. My Mom and, even more rarely, my Dad, would occasionally come to visit, but not often. Mom called everyday to chat about what she was doing. Other than asking in a half hearted sort of way how I was, she didn’t seem to want to hear about any difficulties I was having. So I didn’t talk about it. My Mom had never really wanted children. She felt it was more expected of her. It was what you did after marriage in her day.

I didn’t have my own car at this time. We had used a rental car for Carter and me to get home. Cain’s best friend Leon would come to take me to the grocery store every couple of weeks and check up on us. I never felt that comfortable around Leon and to me the visits seemed awkward. Most weeks would go by with me only going out on the front porch to get the mail, hoping for a letter from Cain.

Cain’s letters were always very eloquently written. Ironically, he could show more emotion toward me in his writing than he ever could in person. I know he was lonely as well and I think it was because of this he found more ways to express the feelings he kept so much to himself ordinarily. We did miss each other.

The letters were a bittersweet blessing. They brought me pieces of Cain but were a tangible reminder of his absence. My heart broke a little every time I got one. I counted the days until we could see one another. I tried to tape letters on my tape recorder, sounds of Carter as he grew bigger. I still have some of the tapes and I sound completely depressed and pathetic. I took pictures by the dozens and always had doubles printed so Cain could see every week how much our son was growing.

I felt like a paper doll playing pretend. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! I didn’t want to try and figure this out all alone! I didn’t know who to talk to about it. I slept. I ate too much. I gained weight. My sleep schedule, always touch and go before parenting, got really fouled up. I never felt like I had a moment to myself, even in this ignorant self imposed isolation. I stayed up late watching movies that meant nothing to me. Soon, I wasn’t wanting to get up when Carter got up. I would change him, make him a bottle and put him back in his crib. If I was tired I would try to go back to sleep. For a long time I slept in the same room with him, but would put in earplugs to muffle his crying. He would cry for an hour or more before falling asleep in exhaustion.

I was so wrapped up in my own miserable self pity that I couldn’t see or understand that I was emotionally neglecting my baby. I would get up with him later and play a bit with him, but I honestly can’t say if I could have brought myself up out of that black pit far enough to give a shit that I was neglecting him. How my heart cries at the thought of it now. How I so wish I could go back and pick him up, the him that was then, and tell him how much I loved and wanted him. Ah, the sting of the bittersweet ‘if only’.

I still have not forgiven myself for this, post partum or not. I look back and think, with the knowledge and hindsight I have now; “Why didn’t you get up off your fat, lazy ass and DO something? ANYTHING? Why?”

But I couldn’t. My whole world was covered in a black caul and I could not tear my way out of it.

My sister, G gave me her old Chevy Nova. I finally had transportation. Still, though it gave me more self sufficiency, I could not find my way out of this inner blackened landscape of depression.

Carter was almost five months old and I had enough money to drive to Salt Lake City where Cain was now working. I needed to get away. I talked to Cain’s step mom and asked her to take Carter for the five days I would be gone. She agreed to. So I left my little son so I could selfishly go spend a week with his father. Cain didn’t seem to mind. I imagine if I had a hard time adjusting to Carter’s reality being with him day after day, he was even more of a figment to Cain.

My breasts became engorged and the manual breast pump only relieved the pressure a little. I didn’t know how to use it well. It was a constant reminder that I had a child at home waiting for me. I tried my selfish damndest to ignore it. I knew he was taken care of and probably didn’t miss me.

My son. My baby. A child that I didn’t even feel bonded to. I knew on some level that this was seriously messed up, but I didn’t know what to do about it. We didn’t have money to spare for anything. I didn’t know who to reach out to. My internal voice told me only weak people or users went to others for help.

I knew something was wrong with me. I cried over it to Cain. He would hold me, but emotionally he was distant. He was usually emotionally unavailable, but strong emotion on my part, especially the tears seemed to push him even further away. I didn’t know what to think, feel or do. He couldn’t help me. The person I needed most to be there for me couldn’t because he couldn’t deal with emotions.

I knew it was messed up that I was feeling so apathetic toward my own baby. My son. I didn’t know what to do. He needed me! He wasn’t even a very demanding baby, but I still felt stifled. I cried a lot on the drive home. I was numb and exhausted. He seemed happy and well cared for when I returned. Not overly excited to see me or anything. I took him home and the same cycle started again.

I had by this time, moved into the other bedroom in the basement. The mother in me now is horrified to think I did this…being on a whole separate floor from my baby! What if a fire had broken out? What if, what if? But the Creator had been looking out for us then, not that I could see it.

It was a highly unlikely way that brought me to bond with my baby. Having nothing else, looking for something, ANYTHING to alleviate or change the frozen landscape of emotions locking me so tightly in this unchanging world of black misery. What brought me to my son would, down the road, have a hand in taking him from me, but at the time and to this day, legal or not, all I can say is it saved my sanity then and taught me how to look at my son as a person. A real live, feeling, growing and miraculous person.

A Hard Look Within, Part Six

I stayed with my folks about three days.  It wasn’t long.  I went home and was greeted by a temporary job offer from my landlord who owned a title company.  Their courier girl was on maternity leave and for three months they needed someone to take her place.  Full time at the then-current minimum wage of $3.75 an hour.

My landlords names were Chuck and Kathleen and they both worked at the title company.  They hated each other and it was apparent.  Kathleen was a bit of a bitch and Chuck was just sort of a crabby weird little guy.  I didn’t feel very comfortable around either of them, but I needed the work and they were cutting me a break.  They could have thrown my ass out.

So began the job of courier.  It was fairly fast paced and easy.  I was out of he office most of the time and that suited me just fine.  I got to avoid the office politics, or so I thought.  One of the office managers took an active dislike to me.  Her name was Joan.  A gray-haired late 50s, early 60s something woman with wide, vapid blue eyes, short curly hair,  stacked like a porn star. This woman hated me.
But, being raised by depression era children, she was my elder and I treated her accordingly. For awhile.

Joan was one of these petty little women who was very good at using her position of power to screw with other people, mainly, me.  She treated me as if she thought I would lie to my own Grandmother and steal out of a church coffer.  This made me extremely angry.  What’s more, she tried to talk down to me and act as if I were stupid.  The fact that I was a smoker at this time of life also gave me a black mark in her book of judgments and she acted as if I were filthy.

Now, it is not in my nature to meekly accept ill treatment at the hands of others for long.  I can’t stand to see other people bullied and, having grown up at the hands of a bully myself it was deeply programmed into me to rebel.  However I took it from her for longer than normal because I was afraid of losing my job. How many people over the years have suffered at the hands of workplace bullies because of this?  How many still do?

I have to give the old hag credit for subtlety.  She knew how to harass with the small stuff.  Nit picking everything.  They got a huge shipment of office supplies and I had to put them away.   She didn’t like how I stacked the toilet paper rolls in the cabinet so she made me re-do all one hundred rolls of them to her specifications, while she stood there watching to ’make sure’ I did it correctly.   She  tried to tell me that same day it was my job to clean the bathroom if we were ‘slow‘.  This struck me as very odd since I was hired to be a courier.  I found out from another office woman that I got along with, Brenda, that they hired a cleaning lady come in to do all the cleaning and the office staff wasn‘t expected to do it.  I could not figure out what this woman’s deal was.  I had done nothing but be respectful to everyone in that office.  She knew I had gotten behind in my rent.  I dressed professionally.  I even wore a black derby hat.  Was it the hat?  Did she hate my hat?  These thoughts kept circling in my head.

When I first was getting to know the ropes of the job, Joan would take time out of her stack of work to sort through my deliveries, putting them in the order she thought they ought to be, then telling me that was how they were to be delivered.  The problem was, after the first week or two, she kept trying to do that.  I found that, by following her method of delivery, I was not only  back tracking all over town, but taking twice as long.  It made me feel like a chicken, running around willy-nilly with my head cut off.

So, true to my own rebellious nature and what I considered a superior sense of efficiency to do my own job, I would sort through the stack on the way out the door, rearranging as I went, plot my driving route by the time I was in the office courier car and be on my way.

Joan must have caught wind of this because soon after that she changed tactics.  Part of my job was to carry a pager in the event they had a rush document or needed me to get hold of them.  It was a voice pager, so it would page their voice in a rather static laden  message.  I couldn’t page them back and they couldn’t hear what I said which was just as well because after Joan started on her new harassment tactics nothing that came out of my mouth at the sound of her voice was even remotely civilized.

I began like this.  I liked the other 99% of the office staff and wanted to do my job to the best of my ability, so I would make a walk-through of the office before going out to see if there was anything else anyone had going out that they may not have had time to get into my courier box.  I could tell that a lot of the folks appreciated this extra effort on my part.  I was starting to be more at ease with the people, even though I was still on the fringes and liked it that way.  After checking with Joan, I would head out the door.

Four blocks down the road, Joan paged me back to the office to pick up a document that needed to be delivered A.S.A.P.  I took it in stride because that happened.  Out the door again I went, to go deliver said document.  Before I arrived at my destination, however, Joan paged me back to the office, again.  Another ‘high priority’ delivery.  Odd, I thought.  What a strange day!

But it didn’t end with a day.  It became a constant thing.  Being rather gullible at times, I even thought that it was just a busier week in the business world and since I had no idea what level of importance these documents really held I had no clue.  That is until one particularly frustrating day when I did have actual rush deliveries other office members needed to get out and Joan had paged me back to the office no less than four times for ‘rush’ deliveries.  One of these ’rush’ deliveries of hers was going to my new friend Floss at the courthouse, and I knew some of those courthouse documents were really important. Upon my arrival at the courthouse, I apologized profusely to Floss, a very nice older lady with a wicked sense of humor, who was the clerk of court.  She laughed and told me it was no big deal.  There was no rush on that document at all.

What?!?

No, it wasn’t a rush.  In fact it was some minor document they just needed to be sure was filed BY THE END OF THE WEEK!

Joan, you dirty bitch.  I was pissed.  I have to say, though, I began to look more closely at the documents I was delivering.  Soon after, I knew what was truly a rush and what wasn’t.  I talked more to the people I delivered to  find out what they may need.  Call it professionalism or ego.  I did NOT want to look bad in the job I was doing!

I was still surprised that Joan was going so out of her way with this crap.  Did this woman have no life and nothing to do at her desk all day?  She was actually MAKING time in her day specifically to fuck with me.  What the hell was up with that?  I didn’t feel like I could go and complain to anyone, because Joan had been with this company a long time.  I was a temp.  My landlords were intimidating to me, Kathleen because of her constant surly nature and Chuck just because he gave me a vibe that made me feel extremely uncomfortable without knowing why.  He had told me once that he viewed me like he would his own daughter, but that didn’t make me feel all warm inside.  It made me feel like I needed a shower and a nightlight.

The other partner in the business, who was higher up on the office food chain than Joan, was a very sweet lady named Connie whom I respected very much.  But I just didn’t know how to stand up for myself in an office setting at that time of life.  I spoke with Connie a few times and sort of clued her in that I thought Joan was perhaps being a bit hard on me.  Connie, bless her heart, told me if I had an problems or questions to just come to her.

Joan began making accusations to me that I was taking too long on deliveries and that the gas gauge was showing that I was using too much gas for the amount of deliveries I completed.  She was in charge of the fuel card for the car of course.  Yet I knew I had cut my delivery time in half by foregoing her delivery methods.  I found out as well, that Chuck and Kathleen would let their son use the company car on occasion.  Still, it bothered me a great deal that I was being accused of something I was not doing.  Joan went  so far even, as to complain to Chuck and Kathleen about it.  I was called into the office at least twice and questioned about my supposed ‘activities’.  I told the truth, gave them an account of where I went, including driving uptown or home for lunch, which I was allowed to do per company policy.  Nothing came of it, but it rankled.  I was done trying to please that woman with my job performance.  I knew that nothing I did would change her opinion of me.  I knew that her harassment wouldn’t stop.  I also learned something else that I could use to my advantage.  No one else seemed to give a shit one way or the other what I was doing as long as the job got done.

This is where the dual side of my nature raised its rebellious head in full.

Before, I had tried to adhere to the no smoking policy Joan wished to have in the company car.  After, I powered down all the windows to let the smell out while driving with the butt hanging out the window between drags.  I learned that one window was more than sufficient while smoking and all windows should follow after smoking the day the cherry red end flew off , out the front window, sailed in the back and burned a dime sized hole in the seat.  I spent my whole lunch hour that day at my house with the gray thread carefully sewing and weaving that hole and another I discovered but was sure wasn’t mine.  I did a great job, too, you couldn’t even tell.

Before, I planned the quickest route through town.  After, I took alternate and scenic routes and always made sure to drive at least five miles under the speed limit.

Before, I would leave for lunch late and get back early.  After, I took random hour and a half lunches.

As before, I would make my office walk-through before heading out.  After, when I came to Joan’s office,  I would look her in the eye and then ask her, speaking very slowly, as you would to a retarded child, if there were aaaannnnnyyyy other IMPORTANT doc-u-ments that needed to go out RIGHT AWAY?  No? Okay.  Then I will be RIGHT BACK, after AALLL the other deliveries were completed!  Okaaaayyyy?

Then I turned on my heel and walked out the door with a touch of evil glinting in my eye.  When my pager went off four blocks later with her prissy, demanding nasal twang, I giggled like a mad bastard and shut that damned pager right the hell off.

I knew I was being childish and I just didn’t care.  My time at the office was winding down and I was fed up.  I had decided to quit smoking.  I had wanted to for a long time and I felt it was time.  I must have chewed a case of Big Red gum and that first week was hell.  But I bragged about it to the ladies of the courthouse and the were very supportive of it and cheered for me the whole time.  I had been on the wagon for a week when Jerry, the regular girl wanted to come back for a day to get a feel for the job again.  When I got in the car the next day, I smelled cigarettes.  I found a half smoked butt in the ashtray.  I left it.

The next day, Joan confronted me and accused me of smoking in the car.  Well, I hadn’t been (not for a whole week!) and was able to tell her that truthfully.  I told her I had smelled cigarettes in the car and saw the butt there as well and suggested she talk to Jerry.  Of course she refused to believe me.  I finally got mad enough I told her to call the courthouse and talk to the ladies there about my quit smoking progress and left the office to do my work.  She may have called them, I don’t know.  My days were fast coming to a close.  The day before my last day, out of sheer spite, I picked up a cute little hitch hiker guy and gave him a ride into Whitefish, seventeen miles away just to kill some time so I didn’t have to be in the office.  My give-a-shitter was broken for good by that point.  It would be more than a year later that Joan would try and get back at me, but for now, we were done.

Life on the outside of work had still been brewing its paths and lessons and the next one was already in place.  His name was Bryan.

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 Four

I knew Rich was sick. Mentally. I had just been too young and naïve to know it. Dealing too with my own issues I couldn’t see it. I didn’t really know how severe his mental health issues were until about a month after I broke up with him.

 

By then I had gone on my own sort of rebellious path of self discovery/destruction. Mostly it involved men and booze. Then one of the boozing men introduced something I had only tried twice with ill results: marijuana.

 

I guess back then what happened was that I had felt so repressed growing up in high school, then in that relationship with Rich that I just took sowing wild oats to a whole new extreme. At least an extreme for a shy, introverted girl raise by Depression Era parents with a religious background. What I did would be nothing for most people, but for me this was extreme, over-the-top behavior.

 

I had been reputed to be a bad ass in school. I didn’t do a lot of the things I wanted to do, like sneak out of my parents house because my Mom for years had told me how much my sisters doing that had hurt her. I didn’t want my parents to be any more ashamed and angry with me than they were. Really, I only wanted them to love me and actually enjoy my presence in their lives. I didn’t want to hurt them. I, save for a handful of times, always went where I said I would be and always came home when I was supposed to. Looking back on it now I really wish I had snuck out more. Perhaps it would have saved me a headache later.

 

After Rich I turned for the first time in my life hardcore to the party life. My friends Jessica and Mona moved in to room with me and we started drinking a lot. I lost my job at the dairy because staying up all night screwing some guy I used to go to school with was more important to me. The truly sad part was that the guy told me not to tell anyone we slept together because he didn’t want to ruin his reputation. That made me laugh because everybody in school thought he was a fucking putz. It also hurt me a lot. I convinced myself that I was using these guys instead. And more guys there were. With no job I didn’t buy food but somehow we always had money for beer and coffee. I lost 40 pounds the first month after I broke up with Rich and for the first time in my life discovered the power of my own sex appeal. Which I used like a common slut, I might add. I found a smorgasbord of men for one night stands. Well, it was a smorgasbord for me anyhow. Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty in a very short period of time.

 

I picked a hitch hiker up that ended up being my boyfriend for three months. He was the one that introduced me to the joys of marijuana. Jessica was my partner in crime. We soon ran Mona off, I think the wild life scared her.

 

We had no phone service. One night my hitch hiker, Terry had stayed over. Early in the morning there was a pounding at the door and Jessica answered. It was Rich. She gave me an odd look when she told me he was there. I hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. I came out to see what the hell he wanted. He walked into the house. I had to either walk backwards or be stepped on. He was talking non-stop the whole time. He wanted to know who was in my bedroom, what I was doing with someone in my bedroom. I told him it was none of his fucking business. He started to babble at me that he had walked the seventeen miles to Kalispell from Columbia Falls and he had counted every one of his steps. I asked him if he was fucking drunk. He then started to tell me all his friends had turned against him and it was all my fault, that I had turned them all against him.

 

I told him I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about and told him to get the fuck out of my house. He shoved past me to the kitchen and I asked him what the fuck he was doing and continued telling him to get out. When Jessica heard me yell, “What the fuck are you doing with that knife?!” she was out the door to try and call the cops from the neighbors house.

 

Rich grabbed one of my kitchen knives and proceeded to try stabbing himself in the chest through his shirt and coat. I freaked out and tried to grab him. Ironically, the only though in my head was, What the hell am I going to tell the cops about a dead body in my house?

 

He and I struggled by the counter, he jerked away from me and I heard a pop noise and felt warmth flood over my hands and legs. I froze in shock and he reeled away from me.

 

For a brief moment I felt myself truly teetering on the thin edge of sanity. My mouth was open, but I couldn’t breathe. I expected him to collapse thinking I was watching a man die. He’s stabbed himself in the heart! I thought. Then I realized he was not only not going down, he was still trying to stab himself. I felt a rush of confusion then dared to look down at my hands. It was then I noticed the paper biggie sized soda cup on the counter laying on it’s side. It had held ice the night before which had melted. Knocking it over in our struggles was what made the sound and it was water dousing me, not his blood.

 

In a snap my paralyzed fear was consumed in towering fury. I was consumed in some unholy rage right then. In two steps I was over to him and yanked the knife out of his hands, by the blade, not even caring at this point. I knew he was over the edge. Somehow we were back across the dining room and he had me shoved up against t he door, pinning me while simultaneously trying to open it. It was then I saw Terry standing casually in the doorway, one arm propped up, looking for all the world like he was watching us play a friendly game of darts.

 

“Terry! HELP ME!” I screamed as Rich began striking at me. Terry sauntered over and made a half assed attempt at putting Rich in a full Nelson. Rich, suddenly realizing there was another person there seemed to revive from his animal state and ran out the front door. Jessica came back, none of the neighbors had been home.

 

I have never been so pumped on adrenaline in my life. I knew we had to make a police report. I stood there in the dining room and we talked about going to the police station, when I rubbed my forehead.

 

“You’re bleeding!” Jessica said, alarmed, pointing at my head. Confused, I reached for my forehead, thinking I was bleeding from there and noticed the blood in my hand. I had forgotten I grabbed that knife by the blade and all for of my fingers were gashed open and oozing blood. I couldn’t even feel it right then. I stared at it for quite awhile, in complete disbelief, waiting for the pain that didn’t come until later, then went in the bathroom to wrap my hand.

 

We went to the police station and Terry took off. There were large, half-dollar sized drops of blood on the walkway in front of my house. The animal had wounded himself after all. We wrote out the police report. I told them how Rich tried to kill himself with the knife, about our ensuing struggle. Before we even left the station the dispatcher informed us the police had him in custody. They had arrested him as he was heading back to my house.

 

For the first time, I was truly scared. He was obviously off his fucking rocker. That he held me personally responsible for his friends turning against him pissed me off and worried me. He had been heading back to my house. Why? Not for anything good, that much I knew. Either the next day or the day after, I called the Violence Free Crisis line at my mother’s suggestion. The advocate suggested I try and find out when he would be released so I could get an order of protection.

 

I called the police station and got the female dispatcher. I asked if he was still incarcerated. The dispatcher asked me if I was a family member.

 

“No. I am his ex-girlfriend. The one in whose house he tried to kill himself.”

 

“We don’t release that information to anyone but family.” the dispatcher informed me.

 

“But he has hurt me before and may try to hurt me or himself again! He tried to stab himself in my house!”

 

What I heard next I still have a hard time believing, but this is what I was told by this dispatcher.

 

“Unless you are family I cannot release that information. Besides, you WERE caught in bed with another man!”

 

“WHAT?!! He’s my EX-boyfriend!” I shouted. I couldn’t believe what that bitch had just said. I hung up the phone in tears. What had that waste of skin told the police? He was my distraught boyfriend come home to find me in bed with another man? Seriously? He hadn’t lived with me in over a MONTH!

 

When I called the crisis line back and relayed the conversation I had with the woman dispatcher my advocate blew a gasket.

 

“SHE SAID WHAT??!!! I’ll take care of this. I’ll call you back.”

 

I don’t’ know what that wonderful woman told that bitch dispatcher but when she returned my call we found out he was going to the state rehab/mental health center in Great Falls for a month for evaluation.

 

I didn’t have a phone but he began calling my parents house. He was so sorry and he was getting help, etc. etc. He had a hang-up about my tattoo, the one I had gotten to cover his name. It is a collage. I told my tattoo artist I wanted a half-Elf woman and a sword or dagger in the collage. I told him to use some artistic license to put something else in it. So what I ended up with is a half-Elf woman’s face, partially obscured by hair. Over the hair on her face is a dagger. To the left of the dagger, coming out of the hair is the head of a snarling demon. The demon was my friends idea, I was 18, what the hell and whatever. Rich called my mother to ask if the demon in the tattoo was supposed to symbolize him.

 

Since the demon was my tattooist’s idea, and this tattooist was the guy that told me about Rich hiding from me at friends houses and he knew it was a freedom gift to myself, it could have been what he had in mind. I don’t know. But I still HAVE that tattoo.

 

Rich talked about getting back together. I made non-committal noises. I still didn’t want to hurt him. I knew he was sick and wanted him to get better. He informed me that before we got back together I had to go get an HIV test and be tested for STDs.

 

I ran into his father in the restaurant. Frank informed me that his son needed healing and I needed to stay away from him since I was the one who had driven him to suicide. Like having parents who raised him telling him he was so smart and could do no wrong or take no responsibility didn’t help get him there. Not to mention the genetic propensity for depression. I couldn’t believe it. Frank was telling me his fucked up son was all my fault too. It was like something Rich himself would have said.

 

Needless to say, I had no interest in getting back together with him. After getting out of Great Falls he came back for awhile and kept a low profile, eventually finding true love and a sugar mama in a cousin of a mutual friend. He and his brother Donny got drunk together, stole their other brother’s car and plowed it into a bunch of trees. Rich had his jaw wired shut. I saw him in the restaurant and to try and prove to him and myself everything was water under the bridge ( I still had nightmares then) I went over to chat with him. Soon his knew girlfriend, Pam, who was about ten years older came in. He began to tell me how wonderful she was. What a miracle what with all her health problems she had. How happy they were together. When I looked at her, it was the strangest thing. She seemed to have this darkness around her. That voice came back again.

“She’ll be dead in three months.”

 

Two and a half months later I ran into her cousin. Pam had died of a sudden heart attack from complications to do with diabetes.

 

I had nightmares about him for about two years. He would be coming to kill me. I knew this was some process of unresolved emotion I needed to work on. At first, in the dreams, I was helpless and at his mercy. As time progressed, I was able to fight him. Then fight him to a draw. Each dream I made more progress. The last dream I ever had of him, The fight ended quickly, and he was naked, cringing. In the dream I told him to leave and never bother me again. I never dreamt of him after that.

 

Sometime after Pam’s death, unable to sponge of someone else, Rich moved to Livingston with his mother. I saw him once years later and it took me a minute to realize who that scruffy, fat guy was. He was bullshitting with some guy he and his mother were having coffee with, trying to tell him his expert opinion on the guys own field of work.

 

I saw him notice me and the look that came across his face was priceless. Like he just took a big bite out of a cat shit sandwich. I suddenly realized that he was way more disturbed by seeing me than I was at seeing him. It occurred to me that the bastard still wanted everything to be my fault! I looked at him, his appearance. The years hadn’t been kind. He was pathetic.

 

He got up at one point to pass by my table. He looked like he had a stick shoved sideways up his ass and the wave he gave me looked more like an epileptic twitch response. I gave him my best condescending smile, vindictive bitch that I am. With the pot-gut, striped shirt and unkempt hair he looked like a fat hair twelve year old.

I went back to reading my book. I never saw him again.

 

Two years ago, his sister-in-law told me they found him dead in the motel room he lived in in Choteau. Heart attack, they say. He was forty-one.

 

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.

 

 

Trust in Families, Broken. Part 2

A few weeks after my mouth had gone off and initiated our own little WWIII, my kid’s had a sleep over with their cousins at Grandma S’s new trailer we finally got towed up the mountain. On the way into town the next day my ten year old daughter Butterfly asked me a weird question.

 

“Mom, what do they call it when a parent makes their kids sick on purpose?”

 

Where’d that come from? I wondered.

 

“It’s called Munchausen by Proxy syndrome sweetie, why?” I asked her.

 

“Well ’cause I couldn’t get to sleep at Grandma S’s last night and F was in her bedroom talking to her. He was asking about Nunkee (my one year old daughter) and wondering why she kept getting sick. Grandma S told F that she thought it was because you were making her sick on purpose to get attention. I couldn’t remember what she called it.”

 

I didn’t think I had heard right.

 

“She said WHAT?” I asked.

 

“That she thought you had that sickness where you like to make your baby sick to get attention. ‘Cause Nunkee keeps getting fevers and stuff.”

 

I was floored. What in the fuck was wrong with this woman? Nunkee had gotten a urinary tract infection! She also had been suffering re-occurring ear infections until my midwife had referred me to the chiropractor that had cured her own daughter’s ear infections. Nunkee’s ear infections seemed to be clearing up. Now S was telling F that I was a Munchausen mom? I began to wonder who else she was saying this shit to. Butterfly said she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want me to get mad. I told her she had done the right thing. That I appreciated her letting me know this was going on.

 

Just that morning GM and I had been having an argument and he had gone off on me again about me ‘causing problems’ and ‘pissing everyone off‘. He went on to say that it was because of my attitude that his Dad didn’t want to sign the land over to him as he had told us for years he would do. GM told me it was because they were afraid I would divorce him and take the land. I thought that odd because B had always seemed more than ready to sign the land off to us. Told us time and again he was going to give it to us. I asked GM who had said I would take the land and he told me it was his mom, S.

 

So, what was going on was S was telling B that I would take the property from the family if B signed it over to GM. GM yelled at me that it was because of ‘all the crap that was going on’, the fight with N. That B was now sure we would throw N off the property if it was in our names. I was finding out more and more the level of manipulations S was capable of. Call me a naïve idiot but every new turn kept surprising me.

 

Now, I consider myself to be someone who will own up to my fuck ups. I am sure there are times I maybe don’t see all my own wrong doings or think I am doing something right when I may be in the wrong. I think that all ties in with that being human thing. I have struggled with my own parenting skills for years. I have been verbally abusive to my children and, I am ashamed to say, have been physically abusive to them in the past as well. I try very hard not to be and to find different approaches at disciplining m kids. I know first hand what it is like to be raised with verbal and physical abuse and I know how damned hard it is to break away from the only parenting style you were ever shown. But it can be done. I yell way to much in frustration at times. There are good days and bad days. Mostly I do ok. I know my own danger areas….lack of sleep for one. I have come a long way in my fifteen and a half years of parenting. I have a long way yet to go. I am far from perfect.

 

However, I try very hard to teach my kids right from wrong. I put up with verbal and mild physical abuse (if it can be classified as such) but I was also raised y Depression Era parents who still held to morals and values that are hard to come by in my own peer group.

 

I try to listen to my children when they want to tell me the thoughts in their heads even if it is the same thought they have told me every car ride for the past eight trips. Sometimes I have to bite my sarcastic tongue because I need to remember how deeply words can wound and how much children just want to be heard and acknowledged. Children want to feel important to their parents. They want us to want to know them. I want my children to know I love them and their little weird quirks and endless prattling that help form who they are. I try to kiss and hug them and tell them I love them each every day. I pray often that I keep my mouth shut and listen.

 

Then there was my husband, screaming at me about how judgmental I was about N and her kids. About ‘his family’. That evening when we were all home I asked Butterfly to tell him what she had overheard S saying to F about me. I wanted him to hear it from her. He didn’t quite get it at first. When I clarified it for him he got mad…at Butterfly for coming to me and telling me what his mom had said!

 

Insert another argument here.

 

I defended her vehemently and said over and again that she had done the right thing and I would have her do it again. That his Mom had no right telling people those kinds of lies about me.

 

GM wanted to go over that night and take me to ‘clear it all up’ with S. He was sure there was some rational explanation. It had to be that Butterfly didn’t hear right. I knew better. I quizzed my daughter thoroughly then and even months later. Her story never changed though her details got fuzzier over time. It was too late and S’s lights were out but the next night after yet another argument we walked down the driveway to her trailer after the kids were in bed.

 

S was in her room on her bed and we came in. She asked what was up as she usually does and GM couldn’t seem to quite get the words out. So I did.

 

“Butterfly overheard you talking to F the other night. Telling him that you thought I was making Nunkee sick on purpose to get attention.” I am not one to beat around the bush. She didn’t even blink as she began fabricating her story.

 

“Oh, she misunderstood me! I was talking to one of The Doctors at work and The Doctor suggested it. It was the first thing The Doctor suggested when I asked why a baby would keep getting fevers for no reason. The Doctor said there are a lot of Mom’s out there that do that to their babies and they see it a lot at the hospital. But it was The Doctor that asked if that was a possibility and Butterfly overheard me telling F about it because The Doctor had suggested that might be something that could be happening. It was the first thing The Doctor had said…”

 

I stood there, taking this all in, listening to her going on about The Doctor, hearing the capital letters as if that would make the lie more credible. She talked for about ten minutes repeating the story over and over again as if trying to make it true in her own mind.

 

This sixty-five year old woman was acting like a kid caught in a lie thinking “If I say it enough that will make it true!” It occurred to me then and there that my husband was taking this all in with a relieved expression on his face, believing her. Of course he would believe her! This had probably been part of the upbringing too. Mommy does something and lies. My husband, even, would do things at times then deny them, even if I had watched him do it. I truly don‘t think he really knows he does it. Like little kids lying.

 

I got sick of listening to the broken record and asked her which doctor she had had this alleged conversation with. She gave the name of a long time local physician I was familiar with. I guess she didn’t realize that due to the privacy laws in place I knew that a physician having a conversation with her, a member of the housekeeping crew, in regards to my daughter was a serious breach of the HIPA law and that no physician realistically would be so stupid as to diagnose Munchausen syndrome on gossip alone for fear of losing their license.

GM and I left. He seemed relieved. There it was, an explanation! Butterfly had just misunderstood like Mommy Dearest had said. Mommy Dearest had explained it all away just like always, now wasn’t everything better?

 

I now understood how N’s kids could be such smooth liars if they got to see crap like that performance on a regular basis.

 

Later on, another argument for another time GM was again going on about how I was so very hypocritical and judgmental about his family when I burst out, “I may not say the nicest things about people, and I know I fuck up plenty but I try to at least to own up to my mistakes, make them right I if I can and at least when I say crap about them I tell the truth and do not make up lies about people like your mom did to me!”

 

“I thought we went and got that all straightened out!” he yelled in disbelief.

 

“Just because she came up with a story to cover the lying doesn’t mean I fucking bought it! No doctor in their right mind would dare diagnose something as serious as Munchausen’s without ever seeing the patient, just to keep something like this from happening! A doctor could lose their license for shit like that and I doubt seriously they would risk it!”

 

GM lapsed into silence. I can’t imagine what it feels like as a grown man to know that your own family will lie to you whenever they need to cover their asses, or who knows, maybe just whenever they find it convenient. I can not imagine the depths of hurt that has brought to my husband’s and his siblings lives. N being so totally fucked in the head. M all but divorcing herself from all contact save for holidays or when she needed S to baby-sit the kids. But GM knows me. He knows I am not a liar by nature. That I would NEVER make up a lie to hurt someone, even if it meant telling the truth would make me look like a complete asshole.

 

The weeks passed. Tensions eased. I even began talking to N more, though some of what she told me only served to confirm how out of touch with her children and the real world she is. I apologized to her for going to Elmo instead of coming to her with the issues of her kids. I didn’t apologize for my opinions or anything I had said. What she had done was wrong. I had been a lily livered chicken shit for not confronting her directly with it, though and said as much. I had been taking full advantage of the way this family dodged responsibility by having someone else do it for me. Copping out.

 

Toward the end of September, Elmo came up and got N and her kids to take them to El Paso. They packed his truck to the tops of the side racks with N’s stuff and pulled a trailer with his motorcycles behind them. N made the kids leave everything they owned and all their toys besides a few small favorites they got to take in their little backpacks.

 

After they finally left I noticed a large black trash bag bulging with something sitting on S’s couch. It was all the clothes N had been going to take for her kids. N had forgotten to take the kids clothes with her when they left. Those kids left Montana with the clothes on their backs and three small daypacks. Their mother’s crap had filled that fucking truck.

 

The single black garbage bag was left behind, sitting on her mother’s couch, abandoned, like everything else.

 

 

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.