From a prompt on the DailyOM.com

I don’t think there was any time in my life when my self-expectations were so high as when I had my first child. Up until that point I had pretty much coasted through my life with little to no expectations except to make enough money to live, literally. I didn’t follow the somewhat standard path of my peers by going to college because that opportunity wasn’t available to me. Nothing was really available to me that compelled me to create any type of expectations; I simply had to go to work and get through each day.

So it wasn’t until I had my first child that I was hit with this myriad of self-doubt. Am I doing this right, should I be do more, less, something different altogether……Even my marriage was easy because my husband and I had a great partnership, complete with a lot of love, trust, respect and like-mindedness, so while there were certainly new expectations in my life once married, they were easy to meet.

Once we had our first child, a girl, born in 1995, I was, as most new parents, completely overwhelmed and absolutely gobsmacked at the flood of feelings of incapability, lack of knowledge, and total confusion at the idea that I didn’t have some semblance of control over my situation on a daily basis. I didn’t really have any role models, and my husband was just as overwhelmed as I was. Of course I read all the how-to books, subscribed to every and all the baby and parent magazines, (I was even published in one of those magazines!), followed my pediatrician’s instructions carefully, but the only thing I had any confidence in during the entire time of raising what would be three children was that I loved them fiercely and unconditionally. That was a true blessing because the expectations I put upon myself beyond that were ridiculous.

I was the PTA mom, the classroom mom, the over-the-top birthday party and Christmas mom, the Sunday school teacher mom, the fundraiser mom, the field trip mom, and on and on. All while working full-time. I was the mom who took her children’s teachers out to lunch at the end of every school year, I went to all (well, most……some, actually) sporting events, I read every book to my kids, I bought them every book they ever wanted once they were able to read on their own, I took them to counseling when they appeared to have anxiety or specific discipline issues that I couldn’t resolve, I took them to church, cultural events, concerts. I traveled with them by train, plane, boat and car, together and separately, on vacations to expose them to cities and states across the U.S. including New York, Chicago, Boston, California, Florida, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Ohio, Seattle, Las Vegas, (when they were older), the Bahamas, and many east coast beaches, They went on church mission trips, special educational summer trips, alone, to college campuses when they were still in elementary school. One rode with Santa in the Christmas parade, one spoke live to the astronauts on the International Space Station, they were all published in the local newspapers for special achievements…..Oh my gosh, it just went on and on.

And I know I’m not special or extraordinary. Most parents do the very best they can for their children. But oh the expectations! They are crushing! Will it ever be enough? We live in a world of FOMO and YOLO, (fear of missing out; you only live once) and time is running out every single day. I have no regrets; I don’t think at this point in my life that I did too much or too little and fortunately for me, my kids have gifted me with a semblance of proof of that. They are all well adjusted, happy, educated and highly functioning adults. And I love them as fiercely and unconditionally as I did the day they were born. And I suspect that could have and would have been enough.

From the prompt in the DailyOM.com

Today’s prompt is to write about the loves of my life. That seems a bit treacly. Doesn’t every writer write about their great loves at some point in their lives? For example, for me, that would be the love I have for my children. It is the most intense, unconditional, and mystifying love I’ve ever known. It’s simply inexplicable, impossible to put into words.
How about if I talk about the lack of loves of my life? The experiences I’ve had in my life that have shaped me due to the lack of love I received? If I’d been loved by my parents like I love my children, my whole entire life would have gone on a radically differently trajectory. I had multiple opportunities to be loved by a number of parental presences, namely my biological parents, which included my mom and dad, then my adopted dad, once my biological dad left the picture, followed by my stepmother, after my mother stepped out of the picture leaving me with my adopted dad and his new and very young and hopelessly unprepared wife. Once that fell apart, as we all knew it would, I was shipped off to my maternal grandmother, who, to be fair, did love me, but very conditionally. So from birth, I think it’s fair to say that I was unloved by my parents.
Alas, they would loudly disagree and that is their right to do so, but I know what it feels like to love and be loved, and I was absolutely unloved and certainly not prioritized by any of these people whose task it was to love me.
Growing up unloved is an extremely lonely existence. I didn’t know any different of course because I never experienced being loved to begin with. I suffered greatly from that lack of love and concern for my wellbeing and it manifested itself in many different ways, both mentally and physically. I had constant anxiety and brain chatter; I had stomach and digestive issues,; I acted out emotionally, especially during adolescence; I attempted to look for love in inappropriate places; eventually I tried to buy their love. But nothing ever really worked. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties, when I began to have children of my own that I came to grasp what I’d missed out on. I’d missed out on a lot of encouragement, a great many hugs, a tremendous amount of validation, recognition of my physical and mental ailments which could have been addressed at a much younger age, saving me years of heartache and pain in my adulthood of trying to heal. And I’ve had to accept that some things never heal. That’s been the toughest part of all.
I’ve been told, in words, that I was loved, but I’ve never seen or felt any proof of it. All I ever saw was reticence, giving up, walking away. I was too much trouble to put in the work. I was damaged goods. And my perception is my reality.
It’s often said that a parent has but one single job: to keep their child safe, I never, ever felt safe, I never knew where I would be living and with whom from one day to the next. I never knew if I would ever see a particular parent figure again once they abandoned me. It is a very sad childhood to live through and it’s not much fun as an adult either, I think all children crave love, attention, validation. I know I did. I know my kids do, and they get it from me every single day, even as they are well into their adult years.
Perhaps one of the saddest parts of this whole situation is that I never was able to cultivate any kind of love for my various parents. I don’t feel the love for them that I know my children feel for me. How I would cherish the feeling of loving someone my whole life who loved me back. That seems the loneliest feeling of all.

A few years back I had all my old VHS tapes converted to digital and placed in a cloud account for which I pay an annual fee to have access to anytime I want. It was a great idea and it was and is money well spent. My third and youngest child, a daughter, was finally able to see herself on video as a baby and child and she screamed with glee, “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!”.

A couple of years ago I did a ridiculously over the top Easter egg hunt for my now adult children and once again, my youngest, with the joy of a five year old (she was 20), ran around in circles apoplectically yelling, “I’ve waited my whole life for this (which I have captured on video, to come full circle). You’d think that the poor third child never had a childhood and didn’t even exist in her mind until these events.

How often do we say, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this?” I find myself, at age 60, saying it almost daily. “I’m living the big life now baby!”. “I’m having the time of my life!”. “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!”.

But it’s actually true. It’s a real thing! It’s an authentic emotion and I’m very present for it. I’m basking in it. Everything up to this point has been geared towards getting to this place.

So where am I? What’s so great about my life now? What was lacking before? What was I waiting for? And what do I have left to look forward to now? Lots of heady questions, I know, but I have all the answers.

I am happy. I am (still) in love with my husband of 29 years. I have three grown children and not a dud among them. I have modest financial security barring the unforeseen. I have good health, physical and mental. I am retired after 45+ years of working to live, in a miserable career, not working for a living. We recently moved to what I call my bucket list dream house which is a darling tiny little house in a charming little town where I can walk everywhere and I am much closer geographically to my kids. We left a big beautiful house that we built, lived in, and raised our children in for 29 years but it was time to move on-be closer to where the kids had moved to, downsize and purge, go from an empty nest to a love nest. We’ve found a perfect church, made new friends, decorated our little nest just so and visit with the kids often. We had the most wonderful first Christmas here a few months ago and there was no sadness or remorse over the “old” days of yore. We are making new memories. We spent the night before Christmas Eve walking down to the local pub and eating fried pub food and taking shots all night. There won’t be an Easter egg hunt for the first time in their lives-we don’t have the space. But that’s ok. We’ve moved on from that. We’ll hopefully convince the kids to come to church then go out to a nice brunch, who knows? If they don’t, that’s ok.

I travel a lot, wherever I want, whenever I want. I see old friends I haven’t seen in years who are also now retired and have grown kids out of the house. It’s so much fun, this life! I read all the time; I write when the mood strikes me; I walk my dog and learn about my new neighborhood. I host charcuterie lunches on my big front porch. My husband and I went out for a fancy Valentine’s Day dinner like when we were just starting to date. I take a nap with my loving dog every single day. We eat whatever we feel like whenever we feel like it. My husband is also retired but like most men, he still works doing contract jobs and couldn’t be more fulfilled. He’s had more fun fixing up his office/man-cave than he ever had mowing the three acres of land we once had.

All three of our children graduated college and have good jobs in their field, and my youngest, who still calls me first thing every single day, is getting ready to start grad school. They all live in close proximity to each other and hang out together and genuinely enjoy each other’s company. They take care of each other and they take care of us. I’m learning how to work within their boundaries a bit slower than they’d like; at least I didn’t move to their city, just close enough to visit for a day. They invite us over and their friends like us. They think we are the fun, cool parents. Because we are. We are having a lot of fun. More than I ever expected. I’ve been waiting for this my whole life. Honestly, I couldn’t be happier. What comes next? More of the same! I plan on living out my remaining days, my many fewer tomorrows than yesterdays, just as I am right now. I see no problem accomplishing that. I pray for continued good health for all of us, and I pray, every single day, for another day just like yesterday.

From the prompt on the DailyOM.com

Adolescence should be outlawed. It has the potential to truly ruin your life and carry trauma with you throughout. And so many parents have no concept of this! Did they not experience adolescence? It’s not something you go through then conveniently forget about, much like the unbelievable pain of childbirth, after which one forgets the pain and chooses to go through it again and again. I don’t know anyone who would choose to relive their adolescence and I really don’t think I know anyone who had many positive experiences with that period in their life.
I remember distinctly, as a parent, when my oldest child, a daughter, was beginning the adolescent stage. We’d gotten into a huge fight, butting heads about something she wanted to do or believed to be so and I was not going along with her train of thought or frame of mind. She was literally screaming at me that I had changed and I had become a different person, with no resemblance to the Mom she once knew and loved. I tried not to get drawn into her dramatic stance and I tried very hard to explain to her that it was she who was changing. I tried, unsuccessfully, to explain the life changes that were happening to her and she insisted that she was exactly the same and I had become this horribly changed person, disallowing her to be who she always was. That was the first of many such arguments and we went through some particularly hard times. In juxtaposition of that, it was I who had gone through a truly terrible adolescence with a life filled with chaos, where my daughter’s life was relatively normal. Her parents were still married; mine were not. In fact I had stepparents by this time. She’d lived in the same home her whole life; I’d moved 10 times by the time I was 10 years old. My parents were terribly mentally ill, suicidal, with addiction issues; my husband and I were relatively healthy although I would later succumb to severe mental illness as a result of the trauma of my own childhood. No, it was simply a matter of normal development that my daughter was going through and I thought I was prepared for it but apparently I failed. My husband was and is a passive observer. He was supportive of the idea of the two of us providing a united front as parents and we did, but he most often was standing in the background just nodding his head, not contributing any words of support or wisdom. This is not a criticism of him, it’s just the way he was. He didn’t have a lot of experience with the female psyche and didn’t know how to navigate this young daughter’s attitude towards his own wife.
Some people, like myself, never fully recover from the trauma of adolescence; others eventually come out the other side relatively unscathed even though the experience itself was horrible. I think my daughter falls somewhere in between, but I don’t really know because while we have a very good adult relationship, she’s not interested in discussing uncomfortable events in her life. She represses it and I worry about her. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, adolescence is the worst, yet most necessary period of life to go through. I wouldn’t wish my own experiences on anyone and I wish I’d done a better job with all three of my children but I do know that I did my best to guide them through this time. My parents would probably argue that they did their best as well, but the circumstances of the time far outweighed any chance of me getting through that period with any sense of contentment or growth. I had a therapist tell me some 30+ years ago that I had the EQ (emotional quotient) of a 13 year old and I can still feel the pain of those years. It takes nothing to bring me to tears when I think about those years and for a long time I believed that time would heal those vicious wounds. I’ve now matured enough to accept that sometimes, time never heals and that has brought a level of acceptance to me that is oddly comforting.
At this juncture I can safely say that all of my children matured beyond an EQ of 13, and are in fact fully functioning and happy adults. I’ve observed that when uncomfortable issues come up for then, they seem to navigate through it with aplomb but I know better than to take any credit for it. After all, as parents we get all the blame and none of the credit. And that’s ok with me as long as my kids are ok. And they are. They are remarkable people and I couldn’t be prouder. So kudos to them for making it through it all. I still think the whole season of adolescence should be outlawed. It’s a grossly unfair process to go through and surely there must be a better way to evolve into adulthood than going through all that angst.

From the Prompt from the DailyOM.com

The worst vacation was the one that never was. One year, in the late 2000’s, I scheduled a dream vacation for my family of five: my husband and three children, who’s ages were probably 14, 12 and 9; I’m just guessing here. I don’t remember those details as much as I remember the tremendous disappointment in excruciating detail. You see, I planned to spend New Year’s Eve in Times Square in New York City. It had always been a dream of mine and this seemed to be the perfect year for it. In doing my research, I discovered that if you wanted hotel reservations you had to make them by April. I definitely insisted that we stay in a hotel for this event because I wanted to have the comfort of my own warm space with a freakin bathroom! Plus, depending on the weather, we could literally watch from the comfort of our room. I didn’t necessarily need to be outside among the tens of thousands of people although that was the main plan. When I go to New York City I always stay at least one night at the Marriott Marquis, right smack in the middle of Times Square. It’s a high end, very fancy huge hotel and needless to say, very expensive, but I was pleasantly surprised at the rate I was offered as I made that early phone call in April. So much so that I decided to get two rooms for our family, adjoining of course. I made the plane reservations and that price was also reasonable for five people. The main caveat was that all of this was non-refundable which I totally understood and was fine with me considering the relatively low cost. I’m going to guess here, but I think the total airfare and rooms was in the range of $7,000 which is of course a lot of money but this was a bucket list dream for me and I wanted to have this experience once in my life, with my family. It would be something we would never forget. I think we planned on staying two nights, maybe three, and we would definitely plan to hook up with our friends Joe and Valerie and their two young daughters. They lived right across the Hudson in Hoboken, NJ and I’d visited with them often, every time I went to New York City. They were wonderful hosts during every visit and we would have been welcome to stay with them for free, but as I said I wanted the comfort of my own room and bathroom right in the middle of the whole thing.

The trip was paid for and anticipated for several months. Somewhere around October, I unceremoniously lost my job and therefore half of our income with no hope in sight for replacing the income I was earning prior to my being let go. I’d become obsolete in my position and it really shouldn’t have been a surprise in hindsight but I was gobsmacked. Truly horrified at this complete 180 of my entire career. I no longer had a career! I was probably somewhere in my late 40’s and could in no way retire so I had to find a job and given that I’d been with the same company for 25 years, and I didn’t have a college education, I knew that I would be starting from scratch at a low paying administrative/bookkeeping job. But that nightmare is a story for another time,

I distinctly remember thinking that there was no way we could take this longed-for vacation. No one but me really cared; Alan never wanted to go in the first place and the kids didn’t know what all the excitement of being in Times Square on New Year’s Eve was all about. We’d do something else for the holiday, something more reasonable. I felt like I had to take responsibility for this debacle and figure out a way to cancel this trip. I was beyond devastated. It went against every fiber of my being not to go, because I live by one of my favorite mantras which is that I only regret the things I don’t do. How could I give up this trip? I knew the opportunity would never come again (and it hasn’t and it won’t at this late stage of the game, some 10-15 years later; we’re definitely too old for this type of debauchery) so I had to try to get my non-refundable money back. I tried, to no avail. Both the hotel and the airline were having none of it, no matter how much I cried and begged. So I took it one step further: I called and wrote to, as I like to call them, Mr. Delta and Mr. Marriott directly, I went straight to the top of each organization and pled my case (knowing full well they could sell those airline tickets and those hotel rooms for quadruple or more than what I paid for them by this point). And I waited for the final answer. Was I going to be awarded the refunds and replenish our rapidly depleting coffers or were we going on this vacation with heavy hearts and a mountain of guilt?

I remember sitting in a Subway sandwich shop when I got the first call. “Yes, Mrs. Clapp, we will refund your money with no fees. We hope you can join us another time”. The second call came subsequently with the same answer. So what did I do? Did I raise my fist in victory? Was I proud of my going the extra mile (excuse the pun) to get my money back? No indeed, I did not and was not. I sat there in that Subway shop and cried. Not tears of relief or happiness. No no no. I cried like a baby because I wanted that vacation more than anything. And I knew now that it was never going to happen. Sure, we’ve taken fun vacations since, but this whole experience was such a shitshow that I never recovered enough to try it again. It is the one and only regret that I have in my life. The one thing I didn’t do. I’ve never gotten over it and I suppose in the big picture it’s not that big of a deal but I’ll never forget the huge ache of disappointment and I regret it to this day, even though it was of course the right thing to do,

Woe is me.

From the Prompt “Acts of Service” in theDailyOM.com

I have found that my generosity towards others doesn’t stem from the need for validation or return on my investment but rather from the need to make someone else’s life better. In my formative years, I never experienced generosity towards me; quite the opposite in fact. I was pushed away, never truly loved and I don’t recall anyone ever doing something for me out of the goodness of their heart. I’m sure there are those who disagree, but my perception is my reality and I truly don’t remember a lot of goodwill coming my way. I feel like if I had, I’d remember it.

As I grew into my adult years, my generous nature was a result of my losses as a child. I tried to buy love by giving, giving, giving, all the time. I gave my money, I gave my time, I gave my love, all freely and filled with hope. Hope that I was making someone happy and hope that I could fill the void of feeling unnecessary. So maybe a part of it was the need for validation but not in the way of “I give to you, you give to me”. I never needed kudos or acknowledgement for the kindness I shared, I just needed to be needed.

Later, I learned the gift of generosity from my friends who gave of themselves like no others I’d ever experienced. I marveled in this gift of receiving and it made me even more generous. It truly gives me no end of pleasure to make someone else happy and I’m so grateful that I’m able to do that with my time, talents and finances.

There is no question that I am an empath. I feel things so deeply and intensely and when I’m feeling happy and upbeat I want the same for the people that I love. If I can do that, it heightens my mood and my purpose.

My first and possibly biggest act of true generosity was when I volunteered to be a Big Sister with the National Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization. I was matched with an 8 year old black orphaned girl named Darlene, who was in the process of being adopted. She was the single most delightful and sweet child in spite of all she’d already suffered: no father, and a mother who died of AIDS. But she attached herself to me right away, and I to her. We became very close despite our 20 year age difference and now, almost 33 years later, we remain as close as ever. I would argue that I benefited more from this relationship than she did, but we disagree on that all the time. I know that I enhanced her life and broadened her horizons but she absolutely did the same for me. I wouldn’t be the Mom I am today to my children if not for the early experiences with her. I love her as much as I do my own children and am as proud of her as I could possibly be. It was never a chore, rather a privilege, to spend time with her when she was young and now that we are adult contemporaries, we are the closest of friends. I consider her my family, and have known her longer than I’ve known my own husband and children.

In further reflecting on this prompt of Generosity, I think my greatest gift is empathy. I’ve been through so much in my own life and there are not many shoes I haven’t walked in. I am able to understand and empathize with so many situations and people, and the irony is that I do not take on their pain, (I have enough of my own, thank you) but rather I learn from these experiences which only serves to further enhance my gift of giving. Maybe I sometimes come across as a know-it-all, and I know that I can be off putting and even unhelpful. But my heart is filled with love to give away, and the more I give, the more I generate, both internally and for others. It is with great sadness that I find myself unable to help someone or improve their situation but that certainly does happen and I’m still learning how to process that feeling of loss when I feel I’ve let someone down. I know, deep down in my heart, that my gifts are directed honestly and with no expectations and I will never stop giving. For me, it is a part of my self-care lifestyle. I hope everyone in my life is aware that I am always available to them. And I look forward to the many new shoes I will walk in throughout the remainder of my life.

An Unconventional Event

From a writing prompt in TheDailyOM.com

In 1976, in Columbus, Ohio, when I was 14 years old, I was not a great teenager. I caused my parents no end of trouble with my mouthiness, my rebellion, my general unhappiness of my home life. In retrospect, I was a normal teenager, wouldn’t you say? But I did a very abnormal, unconventional thing that was unplanned and impulsive. I ran away from home. Far away. For a long time, relatively speaking, that is, two whole weeks.

It all started with one of my best friends, Patty, who was 13 and in the 9th grade and I was in the 10th. I wanted to skip school again, which we did rather frequently (even though I’d always continue to have good grades, lucky me), and Patty said if she got caught skipping again she’d catch hell to pay from her parents so our only choice was to just run away. It was really that remarkably simple. We thought it would be a fun adventure and we set about making our plans.

Patty had what seemed like a huge savings account at the bank for the times and for our age, $700! It was a fortune and it would carry us so far! I contributed my paltry babysitting savings of $30. We walked to the bank and Patty withdrew all of her money, no questions asked. These were different times, the 1970’s.

We packed up a few items, clothing, mementos, things that seemed critically important to take with us, and while Patty had a nifty suitcase, I crammed all my stuff into a paper grocery bag. Patty left a note for her parents; I did no such thing. We then took a city bus to Northland Mall, where there was a Greyhound Bus hub and to fulfill Patty’s wishes, we bought tickets to the first stop in Florida which was a town called Jacksonville Beach. Not to be confused with Jacksonville, FL proper, but Jacksonville Beach which was primarily a navy town, and not considered a safe place to be for young runaways. But we didn’t know and we didn’t care. Again, no questions asked at the ticket counter of two teenaged girls buying bus tickets bound for Florida in the middle of a school day.

Oh, it was so exciting, so novel, when we boarded that bus! The whole process had been so simple and we were giddy! This was so freaking cool, no? Definitely yes, indeed, it was.

We were on that bus for 24 very long hours my friends. I’d been to Florida before, but I’d never taken a Greyhound bus anywhere. We just sort of winged it as far as eating at the various stops, being very careful with our financial windfall stash, and no one bothered us, made us feel uncomfortable or really engaged with us. We were just doing our thing.

We arrived in sunny hot Jacksonville Beach and debarked from the bus for the final time of the long trip. We went into the ladies room to freshen up and I remember there was a man in the ladies room, looking for trouble. That was our first sign that maybe Jacksonville Beach wasn’t the best Florida town to come to but again, we didn’t care. This was way too exciting! We were here and Patty’s lifelong dream had come true. Florida was somewhere she’d always wanted to go. By this time in my life, I’d lived many places, Missouri, New York (twice), Florida and several homes in Columbus, Ohio so I considered myself seasoned.

Of course our main goal before any other was to see the beach. I don’t remember how we found ourself there but we did get to the beach before doing anything else. Then we decided we needed a place to live. At this point, in our minds, this was a permanent situation and we needed to make well thought out, good choices.

We rented a studio apartment (once again, no questions asked) that had roaches and no air conditioning but as with everything else, we didn’t care. We were moving forward with our plans and making accomplishments. We were still so giddy and proud of ourselves, but not in a gloating way, rather a more of a validation way, where we were proving that this was all a great idea and everything was going so well.

The next day, we met some of our neighbors, all navy men and their wives or girlfriends and we fell right in with them. They were in their late teens and early twenties and we all formed a quick and warm friendship, Patty’s and my ages notwithstanding-we didn’t hide it. I met an 18 year old guy named Chuck and immediately developed a crush on him-these were my boy-crazy years after all.

The naval guys had a band that played covers from the popular group called Bad Company and they took us down to the local USO to see them play. Nary a thought to us about getting into a car with these relative strangers. They were, and continued to be, very kind people. I still have a photograph of the band playing that night; Chuck must have given it to me at some point.

Within a couple of days, Patty was starting to feel homesick for her boyfriend, Corky, a ne’er-do-well from our friend group-we were all basically anti-establishment and did everything our parents disallowed or disagreed with. We were, after all, I must point out again, teenagers. And most of us were from dysfunctional homes; I know I was. We decided to write letters to all our friends and let them know what we were up to, just newsy letters like you would write to a friend or relative who lived out of town, assuming that our running away was a big deal to them because they weren’t with us and we wanted them to know we missed them but were doing great! We even put our return address on the letters! Never occurred to us that might not be a great idea. We were already gone for good in our minds and nothing could stop us now. This was our life now. And our friends wrote us back.

On the way to looking for a job, I remember Patty buying a record player because music was our thing, like any teenager, and we’d brought our favorite 45’s with us as essentials. So the record player was not considered an extravagance, but rather a necessity. We applied for jobs at McDonald’s and were hired on the spot pending a work permit proving we were 16 years old. This would prove to be a problem since we had no way to get such a permit but we knew we’d figure it out somehow.

So we had our apartment, our record player, our jobs and our friends, all within a few days. I never experienced a moment of homesickness and this life was definitely my new normal. Patty, on the other hand, wasn’t faring so well. Mainly, she just really missed her boyfriend and the novelty was wearing off for her, I could tell. We continued to hang out with our friends, go to the beach, go to the USO, listen to records and ponder the whole work permit issue, but we had plenty of money. I was having a blast. This was heaven for me considering what I’d left behind. I saw my whole future here, especially with Chuck; as by this time we were definitely an item.

One day, two weeks into our adventure, two police officers came to our humble door and that, of course, was the beginning of the end. I was devastated! Who would rat us out? Surely, none of our likeminded friends at home? Our new friends in the apartment complex? To this day, I’ve never known.

We were unceremoniously escorted to the police department, paltry belongings in hand, and immediately separated. I wouldn’t see Patty again until we reunited in school back in Columbus. We never saw our local friends to say goodbye. It was just over. I particularly remember the policeman remarking that I was lucky to be alive considering how long we’d lasted in this dangerous situation and unsafe environment. Who knew? I just cried and cried. This was my first and fortunately only time spending the night in a group home associated with social services. I just remember being so incredibly sad, disappointed and scared to death to go back to my unhappy home in Columbus. I knew I’d be in a world of trouble.

I was flown home the next day and my parents immediately took me to a therapist which was of no use at all because I was so embittered and wasn’t having any of it. Within a week, a violent fight broke out between my dad and me and I was sent to Patty’s to stay until I could procure yet another person to take me in. My mother refused, as she had done several times previously when I requested her to take me back in, my dad and his wife wouldn’t allow me to come back so the plan was to send me to a juvenile detention center. Yes, this was the plan. No one in my family was willing to take care of me. In retrospect, this was extremely traumatic and has affected me my entire life-this life of constant abandonment and giving up on me. I was a relatively normal, smart, friendly, outgoing teenager with atypical problems at home through no real fault of my own. My actions were a result of the constantly dysfunctional circumstances I was exposed to going back to when my biological father left me at 18 months old and subsequently signed adoption papers when my mother remarried. Then she divorced, and made me go live with my adopted father and his 19 year old wife when I was 11. My mom kept my three siblings and I never lived with them again and that was truly traumatizing. So by this time, there had indeed been a lot of disruption in my life and clearly I was acting out as anyone my age would. But I was a good person and it took me years to finally realize that it wasn’t my fault.

Meanwhile, in a Hail Mary attempt to find someone to take me in, I called my maternal grandmother who had recently moved from Ohio to North Carolina with her youngest child, my 18 year old uncle. She agreed to take me! It was bittersweet because I was once again saying goodbye to all my friends, going to a strange place into a strange situation. I remember crying on the plane the entire way down to NC to my seatmate and I wonder today what that poor woman must have thought.

My grandmother saved my life; I have no doubt of that. It was with pure love that she allowed me to come and live with her. We shared a room in a two bedroom apartment until my uncle moved out on his own. We had a lot of fun together, I must say, and I felt safe and loved by at least one person on this earth. She saw to it that I paid Patty back every penny that we’d used to run away and she taught me so many things about unconditional love which I’d never experienced. I also stayed in touch with Chuck and he even came to visit me in NC which was very cool. Sadly, I dumped him for a loser boyfriend and I regretted how I handled it for the rest of my life. I was actually able to track him down fairly recently and I apologized and he was fine, no regrets, no worries, so that was satisfying,

I lived with my grandmother for over a year, until I finished high school. I got a full time job at age 15 working in a diner, and mainly couch-surfed for awhile with my co-workers. I stayed in touch with my Columbus friends, and actually saw Patty many years later when I was visiting Columbus with my future husband. Patty has since died, of an alcoholic overdose. Her life never really recovered after our adventure. I, however, look back on this time with joy and astonishment as I know now that it was a truly unconventional, ballsy and dangerous thing to do, but I will always remember it as a grand adventure.

 

Charles Marvin Clapp.

Born, lived and died on Clapp Farms Rd.

Eighty-eight years old.

Lived an exemplary life as a successful farmer.

Married to the love of his life, Sylvia Fryar, for nigh on 40 years

Until her untimely death 20 years ago.

Raised two very fine sons, Alan and Andy, both of whom were close to him especially in these later years as they spent more time together.

 

Marvin never remarried, although all the widow ladies of the church were lined up and down the road bearing casseroles and maybe an offer he couldn’t refuse.

But refuse he did and he spent those remaining 20 years working the farm with his brother, nephew, son and grandsons.

 

Marvin lived to see all five of his grandchildren through college and they were his pride and joy. He adored each of them equally, including the girls even though they couldn’t farm.

 

In addition to his family, Marvin loved his Ford trucks, his John Deere equipment, Old Timer pocket knives and chewing tobacco. His favorite sports teams were any team that his children and grandchildren participated in and of course, the Atlanta Braves.

 

He loved cats and dogs equally; but he was particularly partial to his last dog, Trixie.

 

Marvin was an incredibly smart but very uncomplicated man. He was a man of very few words but when he did speak, it was always profound.

Words such as “Hey”.

Or “Thank You”.

Or “Fine, you?”

Or “Bring me a Pepsi and a pack of Nabs.”

And my personal favorite, “I love you too.”

 

After Sylvia’s passing, no one was sure how Marvin would eat. Once the casseroles dried up, he was fortunate enough to get a home-cooked meal for dinner every night from daughter-in-law Lisa, and a yummy breakfast every morning of pineapple coconut cake, lovingly made weekly by daughter-in-law Amy. And if he was running low, he would absolutely let Amy know.

 

Marvin was fair and generous to all his loved ones and he suffered a number of losses in his later years including his wife, two sisters, a brother-in-law, several cousins and a host of longtime true friends.

 

It’s very difficult to think of Clapp Farms Rd. without Marvin residing and working there. This is a tremendous loss to the family but all are grateful that his aching body has been renewed and that he is reunited with his beloved Sylvia.

 

We all come into this world in the same way, and clutching a round trip ticket. We don’t get to know when God will see fit to redeem that ticket but Marvin loved his God, our Father, and he was ready to go. That does bring some degree of comfort to the family and we are eternally  grateful for having known and loved him.

 

I awaken, finding myself splayed out

In the bottom of a small, rickety dinghy.

Unmoored, untethered, without anchor.

I am in the middle of the ocean

In the middle of nowhere.

I see nothing but swells

All around me

Rocking me to and fro.

I feel the pain; it’s palpable,

But intangible.

No broken bones, no bleeding cuts.

Just the very essence of my broken heart

Oozing its way throughout my body.

Palpable yet intangible.

Words not yet invented to describe the pain.

I sit up, take inventory of my predicament.

Doesn’t matter how I got here.

Does it?

I can’t think about that; it’s more than I can comprehend.

Why must I feel so intensely?

Why does heartache feel so unmanageable?

Why can’t I be dense, unthinking, unfeeling?

Why can’t this pain roll off of me like the very ocean of water I find myself in?

No, my body absorbs the pain.

It takes unexplainable, circuitous routes

Throughout my being, inside and out

Like a pinball game.

Bouncing around all my organs

Including my skin

With nowhere to go

So it hits nerves, everywhere

And I shudder with the pain, not knowing where it’s going to hit next.

 

I awaken again, this time in a fetal position,

Ocean waves still all around me

A bit more aggressive this time

Should I be worried?

I can’t decide whether I care.

I’m pretty sure I don’t.

I just want the pain to stop.

 

I lean over the side of the dinghy

In order to let my tears fall into the ocean

So as not to flood my little boat.

It would have surely sunk by now.

 

As I look up, I see something

Something far away but moving closer.

It’s a ship!

And ever closer, I see people lined up on the deck

People I know

People I love

People who love me.

There seem to be so many!

And they are calling out to me,

Begging me to grab the float they’ve tossed.

Asking me to come back

To myself

And them.

They can save me.

But can they?

 

I look again

And see nothing.

It was all a mirage.

There’s no one who loves me

There’s no one I love.

There’s no life saving float.

 

I remain unmoored, untethered.

Then I completely come undone.

This is the saddest story that I will ever have to write.

I first met my friend Mark, in Ohio, where we were both from, when we were teenagers. We were each other’s first young love. We only parted because my family moved several states away. However, we stayed in touch sporadically, some 47 years now, and he went on to live a successful life as a husband and father of four children and a career as a minister of the Free Will Baptist Church. I moved to the south and I married and had three children of my own and worked in a career in accounting.

We saw each other at a 20^th high school class reunion and it was very emotional for both of us. We knew that we still had a connection between us but we of course could not voice it or act upon it. About 20 years later, in 2019, I found out through the grapevine that Mark had developed late in life bipolar disorder and it was pretty severe. His family could not and would not understand or help him. He lost his marriage and his kids and this disease sent him into a spiral of despair. Sadly, he ended up in prison for three years for stalking and violating a restraining order from his ex-wife.  Several months of that prison time was spent in the mental ward where he was finally regulated properly with his medications so he finished his prison term in fairly good shape, all things considered.

Upon his release from prison, he had to start over completely. He had no wife, no children, no career. He had nothing, but he was taking his medication. And he was healthy, if not a bit over medicated. He was determined to starting his new life on solid mental ground. I was very proud of him, as I too, suffer from mental illness, in my case, major depressive disorder, and I understand all too well how important it is to stay on your medication and stay vigilant.

He’d suffered terrible losses. But he never lost his faith in God and he lived a life that he was proud of. He continued to progress forward in his new life and became involved in his church and got an apartment and was doing well. I reached out to him in late 2019 and he was just kind of living his life as a loner, spending most of his time in worship and service to God, having put his past successes and failures behind him.

We were in regular touch for about two years. We visited each other and we supported each other through our lives, and our trials. It was a good and very comforting friendship that I cherished.

Unfortunately, Mark was arrested for violating parole because he contacted his ex-wife in order to obtain permission to see his children on Father’s Day in 2021. This resulted in a six month prison sentence for parole violation which began in June of 2021. As I write this, Mark will be released in seven days, on Monday, November 29. And up until last week, I was scheduled to go pick him up from prison and take him back home and stay up there for several days to help him get back on his feet. He has absolutely no family support whatsoever. It’s quite sad and speaks to the ongoing stigma of mental illness. But I am his champion and advocate by choice and have been grateful for the opportunity to be the one person he can count on. We’ve stayed in touch daily during his prison sentence, and I have been devoted and diligent in writing him letters, talking to him by phone, scheduling video chats and just being available. I have covered his costs of commissary, telephone, etc. Since his own family has given up on him, he would agree that I was all that he had in this world besides God and his church.

Unfortunately, upon his arrest in late May, he was denied medication and had to go off his medications cold turkey which was extremely dangerous as anyone who suffers from mental illness knows. He, however, was not disappointed because he was feeling so much better being off the medication. Apparently, it was obvious that he was very over medicated during the past two years as he was often depressed and slept 16 plus hours a day and had trouble making decisions. He was looking forward to seeing his doctor to regulate his medications as he knew that his quality of life could be better but then the arrest happened and all of the medications ended. I was really impressed and proud of how he was handling his time in prison. I really expected him to freefall into mania or depression and I was quite concerned. But he was socializing, making friends, spreading the Word of God, from whom his faith has never wavered, and he was feeling very positive about his future.

He saw the prison mental health professionals a couple of times during his incarceration and he told them that he was fine and that he was cured from this disease. However, this was absolutely not the case. I didn’t really begin to recognize the effects of the lack of medication until about September. He was only sleeping three to four hours during a 24 hour period, if even that much. When we would talk on the phone, he would talk quite rapidly and just tell me every bit of detailed minutiae of what he’d been doing, what music he was listening to, what movies he was watching, et cetera. It became so overwhelming that I just couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He was just frankly talking gibberish and the letters that he sent me were unreadable. They were just pages and pages of drawings and numbers and calculations and meaningless paragraphs that made no sense.

Around the beginning of October I called him out on this. I said I really think he needed to get back on some proper medication and he vehemently said absolutely not. He felt like a million bucks! And he had grand plans for when he was released. He was in the arrogant, grandiose phase of his mania. Meanwhile, at least six bunkmates he’d shared a cell with over the time he’d been in prison requested that he be moved because he never slept, talked all the time and generally drove them crazy. And he just was driving everyone crazy, including prison authorities. In the six months that he spent in prison to this day, he has been sent to solitary confinement seven times for minor infractions.

As I’ve observed this massive and unchecked deterioration, my heart has been breaking because I knew him to be a humble, kind, loving, faithful, compassionate person and that person has completely disappeared, absorbed by this monster disease. He’s been transformed into this manic, grandiose, angry, obnoxious, crazy talking, non-sleeping person that I’ve never known and certainly do not recognize. At this point I don’t even see a flicker of the Mark I knew and loved. But he doesn’t in any way accept that anything is wrong with him, that anything had changed. He is convinced that he’s been cured by the Grace of God of his mental illness.

A few days ago, which would have been two weeks before his release, I once again called him out on his behavior, saying that he had to own his part in what he’s been doing and that he can’t blame everyone else for all of his problems. And he completely lost control and cussed at me and berated me and was horribly hateful and belligerent. I simply couldn’t have a rational conversation with him. It was impossible. I had to hang up on him. He called back the next day because he had been sent to solitary again, presumably after throwing a fit following our phone call. He told me that prisoners were trying to kill him. He’d become delusional. By this point, I was so angry and so disappointed and so frustrated that I told him that he was on his own. I told him that I canceled him. And I did cancel him. I canceled my trip. I canceled everything that I had done for him. I canceled my financial support. I told him to never speak to me again unless and/or until he saw a doctor and got back on medication. And he went on to cuss me out again, and tell me how horrible I was. He called me names such as baby killer because I am pro-choice. He was spouting homophobic and racist tirades. He was just delusional and completely off the wall with his anger towards me, something I’ve never ever heard from this formerly peaceful God loving and forgiving soul that I knew.

It’s now seven days until his release and my understanding is that he will take a Greyhound bus from the prison back to his hometown and he has no one to pick him up and get him settled. But he is not worried about it. He has got it all under control. He is going to go out and preach The Word of God to the world as he has been personally instructed by God to do, so he believes. He insists that I will see him on TV someday soon. I can’t even imagine what additional utter nonsense he would say to me at this point.

I’m absolutely devastated by this. I feel like I have watched a man that I have loved my whole life spiral into someone completely unrecognizable, whom I do not know, and I watched it happen day by day, hour by hour in real time. It has been one of the most brutal experiences that I have ever had. I genuinely fear for his life. I fear for the damage that he will do to himself and to others especially once he is released from prison. I suspect that he will be back in prison fairly soon. And it is heartbreaking to me because we were so close and I was such a great supporter of him while he was incarcerated. And now I feel that I have failed him. even though I know intellectually that is not true. I don’t know who to blame. Although I do think he needs to take ownership of what has happened to him. And he is in no way going to do that. As far as he’s concerned, he’s fine, and everyone else is doing him wrong. This is indeed the saddest story that I have ever written. And my heart is broken, irrevocably.

I Missed Out…..

I missed out on so much.

I missed out on a loving father-daughter relationship.

I missed out on a loving mother-daughter relationship.

I missed out on healthy sibling relationships.

I missed out on seeing my first love relationship to its fruition.

I missed out on going to college.

I missed out on celebrating a number of birthdays and holidays.

I missed out on being able to maintain lifelong friendships.

I missed out on a life not filled with anxiety and depression.

I missed out on healthy relationships with boyfriends.

I missed out on understanding and appreciating intimacy.

I missed out on acceptance.

I missed out on joy and celebrations.

I missed out on healthy working relationships with colleagues and bosses.

I missed out on being needed.

I missed out on being wanted.

I missed out on being respected.

I missed out on being appreciated.

And I missed out on being missed.

 

No, I was not an orphan.

I had a mother and a few stepmothers.

I had a father and an adopted father and a stepfather.

I had four siblings, none of whom I grew up with.

I had a life of being removed and replaced.

A life of being dismissed and disrespected.

A life of pain and loneliness.

A life without boundaries.

A life of confusion.

A life of misunderstanding.

A life of being misunderstood.

A life of conditional love.

A life of unhealthy relationships.

 

I missed out on so much.

And I don’t have a lot of life left to live; 

I have many more yesterdays than tomorrows.  

I learned too late to remove myself from the toxicity of the past.

 

But my life isn’t over yet.

I now have a life filled with unconditional love.

A life filled with unconditional love that I feel for others.

A life of being self taught through books and research and experience.

A life of experiencing current, healthy and ongoing relationships.

And I’m learning how to set boundaries.

I’m still learning how to appreciate all that I have now.

I’m still learning how to appreciate being me.

I’m still learning how to love being me.

I’m still learning…….

This daughter of mine

She was a gift from the heavens

Almost twenty-one years ago

I wasn’t aware she was coming

As she was number three of my fold

And honestly, I thought at the time

That I was too tired, too old.

She melded herself into us

Once a family of four, now five

And made herself known

With her serene beauty and vibe

She was no trouble at all

And if she was

I wouldn’t have known

As the seeds of my family

Were swiftly being sown

And soon, too soon, two of them were grown

But still this daughter of mine

Who was not yet fully bloomed

I had her all to myself now

And she had me, happily, I assumed

We grew together over three more years

Until she too, was grown and gone.

But gone she never was in truth

Because she’d captured my essence

Captured my soul

Became what we playfully called

Amy 2.0

She is the best, most amazing version of me

Through all my life existed I didn’t know

As my own troubled childhood

of abandonment and neglect

Caused my synapses to disconnect

But this daughter of mine

Sewed me back together

Taught me how to grow

And I wouldn’t change any part of my past

Now that I know

That this daughter of mine

Forever resides at the end of my rainbow.

 

“Alan, come zip my dress, please!” I holler to my husband from our first-floor bedroom. The room is spotless, just like the rest of the house, for the party later.

“And see if you can find my phone! I’ve got to call Rosa to confirm her being here to meet the caterers.” I am talking too fast and too loud. I am panicking.

“Heath? Gwyneth? Are you ready to go?” I have not seen my kids yet, as they were upstairs in their rooms presumably getting ready to go to the ceremony. I want to make sure they are dressed appropriately, so I am a bit worried.

“I want to get a decent parking space so I don’t have to walk for miles in these shoes. Alan, are you sure you want to wear that plaid shirt? It’s kind of boring. C’mon guys, this is important to me.”

I know I am nagging, but I can’t help it. 

“God Almighty this is gonna be a clusterfuck”, I whine.

 

I am in full panic mode, but in a mostly good way, if that makes sense. My oldest daughter, Alana, is graduating high school this evening, June 14, 2014. After the ceremony at the large coliseum, which I’m dreading because of the chaos, we’re all coming back to my house for a graduation party. And that will be the potentially awkward and uncomfortable part of the evening’s events. Among the guests there will be eight people—all of the parents and stepparents I’ve had in my life—who are all going to be in the same room together for the first time, and there is a distinct possibility that the whole night might go straight to hell. 

 

“Is everyone ready to go?” I said. 

“Alana, did you give all the grandparents their tickets or are we supposed to find them? Do we have a meeting place? Alana? Hello?” I said, panic continuing to rise in my voice by the moment.

 

“Alana has already gone ahead honey”,  Alan said. “Don’t you remember she had to be there early? Just try to relax, it’s all going to be fine. Everyone will find the meeting place and they all have their tickets. I know you’re stressed but it’s all going to be okay.”

 

Once we are all downstairs ready to go, I examine my family. They are dressed relatively appropriately. Heath, aged 16, his six foot tall frame, dark hair recently trimmed appropriately for the occasion, including his emerging mustache and beard (of which he was most proud), in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, Gwyneth, aged 13, her 5’4” stature, in her standard “I hate dressing up so I’m wearing the only dress I own” which is drab and frankly, unflattering. Sad, too, because she is stunningly beautiful with long blonde hair, beautiful eyes and plump lips. Her curvy figure is just starting to take shape and she is gorgeous. Alan, who is 6’3”, with a full head of black hair, just barely graying at the temples, is also in his standard fare of khaki slacks and an okay-ish plaid button down shirt, no tie. He, too, is extremely handsome and cleans up well. We are rather an odd looking family, with Gwyneth and myself both short and blonde, and Alana, also blonde and beautiful, and Heath, are both very tall and thin. I wear a lovely floral dress with high heels and I feel very attractive this evening. I am 52 years old and still feel pretty good about my looks.

 

“Oh hell and damn it all then. Let’s just go and get this over with” I concede.

 

The four of us pile into our blue Honda Pilot SUV and head down our long gravel driveway to the road that we live on, Clapp Farms Road, named after Alan’s extended family. It is a two mile stretch of farms and dotted with about twenty dwellings, from a few very nice houses, to a number of ranch-style homes to the ever attractive mobile homes. Also included is the migrant farm workers temporary housing. Alan’s dad and brother own one of the farms and other forks of the family tree owns the additional farms. Alan does not farm; he is a soil scientist for the Orange County, NC Health Department and I work part time from home as an accounting paraprofessional. Our house, a two-story brick house, looks lovely on our 3 acres of land, set about 300 feet back from the road with several trees, a long winding gravel driveway and a forest of trees on each side. You cannot see the house from the road so it’s a nice private place. It is considered to be the 3rd nicest house on our road.

 

We head towards Interstate 40W/85S which is just a few turns from our house and we merge into the traffic which is pretty heavy as everyone seems to be driving to the godforsaken Greensboro Coliseum Complex where the graduation is being held. Traffic on this stretch of highway between Greensboro and Burlington is always bad but it is certainly worse due to the comings and goings of all the graduation traffic. 

 

I dial Rosa’s cell phone, “Rosa, we’ve just left the house. Are you all set to meet the caterers at 7:00? And then if you would,  please set up everything buffet style in the kitchen like we planned and if you have time before anybody arrives do a final sweeping of the downstairs where the party is going to be.”

 

“Jes, I be there with everyting ready,” she said in her broken English.

”I set everyting up and I sweep floors.”

 

Rosa, a sweet 42 year old Hispanic woman who was all of 5’ tall, if even, and shaped like a beach ball, is my closest friend who also cleans and manages my house every week. I know she has everything under control. Of course she does! When has she not?

 

“If any of our guests arrive early could you please let them in and offer them a drink? It’s possible that Alan’s aunt Lib and uncle Eddie will be there as well as Andy and Lisa,  Alan’s brother and sister in law, and a few other friends that we’ve invited to the party that are not coming to the graduation. I’ve told them to arrive around 8 o’clock so that should be plenty of time for us to get back from the graduation ceremony.” I replied.

 

“Jes, I have everyting ready and will let people in,” she confirmed. 

 

I thank her profusely as I always do and we end the call. I am still a ball of nervous energy, trying to think of anything I might have forgotten to do or ask Rosa to do. Following the graduation ceremony, we are having a party at our house. We are expecting about 25 people total, including some other friends, three of my four siblings, Alan’s aunt, uncle, brother and sister-in-law and of course my dear Rosa, and her son, Edgar, who grew up with Heath. We are serving a taco bar, catered by Moe’s, wine, beer, soft drinks, and a graduation cake specially made for Alana. The decorations are done: We have the requisite CONGRATULATIONS banner, streamers, and lovely flowers on the table. My final decorative touch was taking every 8×10 school picture of Alana throughout her life, including a few baby pictures, and taping them to the kitchen cabinets in our U-shaped kitchen in age order, except for the picture of her graduation from preschool in which they dressed them in cap and gowns; this one I hung above her current graduation cap and gown picture. It is a fun idea and I think it will go over well.

 

It took us about 20 minutes to drive to the venue and upon arrival we could see that the parking situation was dire and I was not happy because I knew that I would be walking a long way in my heels. There are traffic police directing us where to park and we disembark from our car and start our  trek towards the entrance to the Coliseum. Alan is holding my hand both for moral support and so I won’t fall right off my high heels.

 

The Greensboro Coliseum Complex is its own special nightmare with its multiple venues for different sized events, no decent signage or directions on where to go and of all things, a long uphill ramp to navigate. Every year, there are 26 high schools in Guilford County, NC, graduating back to back over a period of three days, all at this monolithic Coliseum. We finally make it up the ramp and walk towards the entrance where I see that the previous graduation ceremony is just letting out and they are all taking pictures in a sea of red and white caps and gowns along with hundreds of attendees dressed up, dressed down, and some just dressed downright inappropriately. 

 

Meanwhile we push through the crowd of the previous graduates and their families and we make our way to the place we had agreed to meet our family members, the grandparents. This was near the ticket booth at the entrance. I could see from afar that all eight of them are there including my mother, my father, my biological father, and my ex-stepmother, and their respective spouses, my current stepparents. That’s right, four sets of maternal grandparents. This whole time I’m thinking to myself that I’m excited about the novelty of it all and I’m proud to show off my beautiful graduate and my two other children, but I’m also nervous and ambivalent. I feel like I’m a teenager again, trying to impress these various parental figures, hoping they’ll be proud of me, presenting them with all this perfection I’m trying to create. Maybe they’ll accept me finally; maybe they’ll see that I’m not so awful after all, considering they all abandoned and neglected me at some point in my youth. Basically, I’m a nervous wreck over the whole thing. Still, the novelty is the highlight: my Mom, Rima, and her third husband Bill, my adopted Dad, Gary (Mom’s second husband) and his third wife Sandy, my biological Father, Bill, who left my Mom when I was six months old (and who was also pregnant with my brother when he walked out on her), and his fourth wife Nancy, who is just nine years my senior, and finally, my ex-stepmother, Debbie, eight years my senior, formerly married to my adopted Dad, Gary, and currently married to her second husband, Dennis. All eight of these adults claim grandparent status with my kids, even though they all relinquished me to an ever circling cycle of parental units from the age of six months until age 15, when I was sent packing for the final time from Columbus, Ohio to Chapel Hill, NC, to live with my maternal grandmother, now deceased. Clusterfuck indeed. Each of these individuals represented 19 marriages, albeit some to each other, but 19 separate marriage ceremonies, (four of which I attended), among the eight people. Fucking ridiculous. I was most nervous about my Dad, Gary, and my ex-stepmother, Debbie, seeing each other as they’d had an ugly and contentious divorce in 1990 after 15 years of marriage. 

 

As we approach them we all say our hellos and commence with the proper hugging and greeting. My mom just generally annoys me, with her narcissistic all-about-her attitude, my adopted dad is stoic and proper but I recognize underneath that demeanor that he can snap in a second into meanness as he has in the past. My birth father is ever cheerful and feeling festive, and my ex-stepmother seems a bit trepidatious at being in my adopted dad’s company. This meet and greet seems to go on forever and I am overwhelmed inside my head upon seeing them all, given our sad history, but outwardly, I am quite upbeat and cheerful. I, ever in full hostess mode, make sure that our eight guests all knew and/or remembered each other from previous events that they have attended. Having them all together, however, is really intense. I wonder how they felt?

 

Even though this is my first child graduating, I’ve attended other high school graduations, and it’s a nightmare of pomp and circumstance with all the yelling parents, whooping students, picture taking, no one following directions…… I am already hating every minute of it. The crowd is getting larger as the previous graduates are still milling about and the family and friends of the next graduates are arriving.

 

Meanwhile, we’d gotten 12 tickets, the maximum allowed,  which were to be doled out as follows: Alan, Heath, Gwyneth, myself, and then the ridiculous array of four sets of grandparents, this merry set of misfits.

 

Tickets in hands, we snake our way through the crowd and head towards the main area where we are to be seated in bleachers. The graduates themselves will be seated on the main floor. We walk in and try to find a row of bleachers where we could all sit together which ends up being close to the very top of the bleacher section. I lead our group up the rickety, metal bleachers. The uneven steps are difficult to traverse in our dress clothes and shoes. Once again, thank God for Alan guiding me all the way up lest I tumble, which I am lately wont to do more often than usual. I can see that my days of wearing high heels are numbered.

 

Once we are all seated I lean over to Alan and whisper, “Alan, look at this!” I exclaimed.

“Can you believe that all these people are here together in one place? It’s all so weird. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all, I have to be honest. I’m trying to be festive on what should be all about Alana’s day, but my thoughts are racing with all of them here and bringing forward painful memories that I don’t want to deal with”.

I look at each of them all sitting together in our aisle: All of them highly educated with college degrees, some had master’s degrees, one, a law degree, and three ordained ministers. All very smart people intellectually but pretty much not a clue as to how to raise their collective nine children.

 

Mom, who is a short, plump, dark-haired woman, to whom I resemble not at all, her current husband Bill C., an average looking guy, bearded and dressed straight out of the 1970’s; Bill W., my biological father whom I didn’t meet until I was 16 years old, a tall balding grayish-blonde man who is professional and dapper and the parent I look most like, and his wife Nancy, a young tiny spirited gal with short red cropped hair, dressed in her flowy Chico’s style that she always seems to favor; my adopted Dad, Gary, hair completely gray now, which is in stark contrast to his formerly black hair back in the day, is of average height and struggles with his weight and a few medical issues, his wife Sandy, who is difficult to describe because she is quiet as a mouse, but is very smart and completely devoted to Dad; and finally Debbie, a short woman, with short blonde hair, proportionately plump and dressed very nicely, along with her husband, the always smiling, good natured and good looking Dennis. It is such an aberration, seeing all these couples now comfortably settled into their presumably final marriages, and I couldn’t help comparing their current spouses to the ones they were previously married to, and all with whom I lived with at one point in my childhood. Essentially, prior to moving in with my grandmother, I’d lived among four different family units in my youth, one of which I had no biological relationship to. 

 

“Honey, just try not to think about the past right now; think about the fact that they all wanted to be here and celebrate our Alana,” Alan replied.

 

“But I’m struggling with the idea of ‘how dare they think they can swoop in and claim grandparent status’ after each and every one of them abandoned and neglected me from the age of six months. I still have complicated relationships with each of them and it’s exhausting for me to make nice and share pleasantries with all of them and their current spouses, most of with whom I barely have any investment in, at the same time when I can barely tolerate any of them in just the smallest of doses” I said. 

 

“Honey, let’s just see how it goes, okay? I will be with you the whole time and I promise you nothing bad is going to happen. It’s Alana’s day and that’s why we’re all here,” Alan said, always the voice of positivity and reason.

 

That helps a little but the night is still young and the variety of combustive personalities, my own included, has the potential makings of plenty of drama. Having suffered from clinical depression my whole life, although not officially diagnosed and properly medicated until age 28, I am really feeling out of sorts and experiencing a great deal of anxiety.

 

The graduation ceremony itself is predictably tedious with all the introductions of school board members, special guests, and then the boring speeches, followed by over 200 graduates called up by name in alphabetical order to cross the stage and receive their diplomas. As mind numbing as it is, I must admit that it was thrilling to watch the graduates file in to their seats with the traditional pomp and circumstance music, and then to hear Alana Clapp’s name and watch her glide across that stage like the statuesque model she is meant to be. This is the biggest day in her young life so far and she is walking on air. I scramble down the bleachers, surprisingly without falling, and take a couple of good, close up pictures of her as she descends the stage. It really is exhilarating. Interestingly, I never experienced my own graduation ceremony as I was able to graduate early due to my excellent academics and the different requirements from Ohio to NC, so there had been no fanfare for me. I suspect there wouldn’t have been regardless, as by that time, at age 16, I was estranged from most of my family and was working full time, couch surfing, until I slunk away and moved to another town, virtually unnoticed as soon as I turned 17 in July of 1979.

 

Once the ceremony is over, the graduates are dismissed and then the friends and family are instructed to leave. This is the final graduation of the day, so the crowd isn’t too bad, and we are able to spot Alana fairly quickly. 

 

I grab her and hug her tall frame tightly. “Honey, I’m so proud of you! You look stunning and full of joy! I can’t believe my baby has graduated from high school. This is wonderful!” I said.

 

“Thanks Mom. This is all so crazy isn’t it?” she replied.

 

“Yes, sweetie, it is. So have you seen all the grandparents yet?” I ask.

 

“Yes, they’re all over there waiting to take pictures,” she pointed.

 

We all gather together to take pictures and it is chaos on steroids.  I am  ready to go home and get this strangely bizarre party started. I attempt to speed things up, promising plenty of picture opportunities at the party. Alana needs extra time to take pictures with her friends so the 12 of us left to head back to the house.

 

The drive home seems quicker and I am getting excited, yet still flustered and nervous. So far, so good, but the night is young. Anything could happen. When we arrive home, I see a couple of cars parked in the grassy area next to the driveway so I knew that some guests had arrived. Of course Rosa has everything done up beautifully and she is acting as hostess as well. God Bless that woman.

 

Once the festivities begin in our home, the crowd of 25 or so is mainly hanging out in the kitchen getting food and drinks. The buffet includes Mexican fare of chicken, beef, lettuce, salsa, sour cream, guacamole and soft taco shells. We also serve Mexican rice and black beans, and for beverages I have a big copper bin filled with ice, soft drinks, beer and wine. The caterers provided all the paper products so we were in business and ready to start eating and drinking. Everyone is looking and marveling at the pictures I’d hung on the cabinet doors in the kitchen as they move through the buffet line and then one by one begin slowly moving into the living room, sunroom and parlor, all on the first floor of our house, to visit, commiserate and take pictures. Alana arrived not long after we did, as did the remainder of invited guests. I am feeling much more relaxed by this time. Things seem to be going smoothly and everyone is civilized, festive and on their best behavior. There is the inevitable awkwardness of introducing all these grandparents to the other party guests, especially those from Alan’s family, because how do I explain that this or that couple got married, got divorced, remarried this person and that one is my biological father whom I call by his given name, Bill, while this one is my adopted father whom I call Dad, and this one is the ex-stepmother, etc. and here’s how I’m related to them, and oh, by the way, I lived with all of them at one point in my life, but was ultimately invited to move on to the next family unit in fairly short order. 

 

“Mom? Can you and Bill take a picture with me?” I ask. “I’d like to have one with just the three of us since we’ve never had an opportunity to do that.”

 

“Yes, of course,” they both replied, seeming somewhat distracted by this interruption.

 

I rush around trying to find someone to take this epic snapshot that I could never have imagined would exist. I feel very childlike in my excitement of having this particular photo captured. Maybe this photograph will give me some validation. Each of my biological parents had abandoned me in my childhood, but are now here willing to be photographed with me. It sounds rather pathetic and I guess it really is. Of all the novelty that this graduation party brings, it is so important to me to have my picture taken with my biological parents-just the three of us. Only one such photograph exists and it was taken in 1962 shortly after my birth. Many people are lucky enough to take such a thing for granted, but there were periods in my childhood when I lived with no blood relative, and for some reason, having this picture taken is profoundly important to me.

 

I stand  between my biological parents with our arms around each other and it is surreal. After the photo is taken, I feel a rush of emotion about it, but at the same time, I wasn’t surprised when Mom and Bill seemed very nonchalant, like it was no big deal. They move along back into the crowd, and it made me feel like it meant nothing to them.

 

The party itself was a grand success, lasting a couple of hours, and I feel success as a welcoming hostess. I am grateful there is no drama except what I am feeling internally. Despite my internal struggles, I manage. Alana is, of course, the center of attention and Alan and I are so proud of her. She leaves towards the end of the party to visit her house bound grandfather, Alan’s dad, and then she is taking off for the beach with her crew of best friends for a post graduation celebration. I am so happy for her and extremely proud.

 

Once my parents and their spouses depart, I felt a sense of relief but also a sad sense of disappointment. These people hurt me; they abandoned me, they neglected me. I desperately wanted to feel better about my lingering childhood pain but it stays with me, this childhood trauma. Whatever expectations I had for any validation or penance (not that this was the time or place for it), were dashed and frankly I was just glad it was over. I have so many feelings right now: relief, exhaustion, sadness, curiosity, heartache……I’d once thought that time would heal, but I feel now for the first time that it may never happen. I will forever seek acceptance, love, validation, even as I know that no matter what I’m told, I’ll never really believe anything different than how I lived my entire childhood and young adult years—neglected, abandoned, ignored, cast aside. I’ve never known any different, but I broke that vicious cycle with Alan and my children, and I am ever grateful for that.

 

 

 

 

 

In anticipation of writing my upcoming memoir (working title: “Show My Ugly”) I decided that I needed to read my old teenaged diaries which I kept from age 12 to 17, and included 7^th through 12^th grade. I’ve written two pieces of poetry about the torture of this endeavor, (See “The Diaries” and “The Diaries-Part Deux”, previously published) and, full disclosure, I have not yet finished this most unsettling project but I am going to – I must pace myself, honestly; it’s that awful. I’m doing this because I need the context of people and timing, and most of all I need the proof of my memoir title, “Show My Ugly”. When writing a memoir, one must be reminded that although they are the hero of their own story, one must also be brutally honest and own up to one’s part in the misery of it all. I’m sure not everyone has torturous childhoods recorded in diaries; some have written about lovely childhoods, but who wants to read about that? The bottom line is, when you wait forty-plus years to read them, they are at the very least cringe worthy and at the most, will spiral you into a never ending PTSD episode. Mine was definitely on the latter end of the scale, thus the reading breaks I’ve had to take, and reading in very small doses. I have 26 volumes and as of this writing I am only on volume 12 at the age of 14.

Even in that seemingly short amount of time (ages 12-14, seventh through ninth grade) I must share my most constant thought throughout this reading and that is, Adolescence Should Be Outlawed. I mean c’mon, let’s face it: there are absolutely no redeeming qualities to living through something like that – not for the adolescent OR for their long-suffering parents.

I knew that I had a tumultuous childhood with more than a few sprinkles of true trauma thrown in, and living through it again has been very painful, if I’m being honest. There isn’t much that I’ve forgotten, but reliving it through my own adolescent eyes has brought some necessary clarity to what I remember, and more importantly, why these things happened. There was definitely some questionable parenting going on, but I now know that they were just people with their own problems saddled with a posse of unruly kids. That doesn’t alleviate the trauma by any means, because let’s face it, they were the parents and we really were just kids. I have an ongoing reflection in my head that I just can’t shake, and as a parent myself, really don’t want to. This mantra is, “As a parent, you have one job: to keep your children safe. One job”.

That wasn’t the childhood that I lived. There was a lot of ugly going on back then and while I recognize my part in it, I need to stop carrying the entire weight of it on my own shoulders. I was just a kid. I needed taken care of. I needed boundaries. I needed stability. I needed my siblings. I needed to be heard. I needed to hear that I was loved, (and not, “I love you, but I don’t like you at all”). Sure, I was fed and clothed, but there was so much more that I needed. Childhood trauma can be defined in a number of ways, from basic neglect to overt physical, mental or sexual abuse. I fell somewhere in the middle of that, but my adult emotional needs are greater than most, and I frankly resent it. I resent that I live in fear of rejection, that I’m so intense that some people just can’t cope with me. (They are uncoping, my new favorite, personally coined word, which really should be in the dictionary, which it is not). I’m sad that my own children have had to see and experience the negative affects of what I’ve been through. My own husband had a self-described idyllic childhood, and he lovingly aches for me because sometimes he just doesn’t understand me and I can’t blame him. Thank God for him because our children are well past their way of coping rather than uncoping with that horrific time of adolescence. They seem to have made it through relatively unscathed. I hope.

Meanwhile, I remain tormented on many levels due to the circumstances of my adolescence. It was a horrific period in my life and if I were forced to come up with one single good outcome from it, it is that I am very independent and self-sufficient. Shit gets done, because who else is going to do it, right? But I have suffered immensely, which some of you many have already inferred from many of my previous essays and poetry. My best writing comes from my pain, and I am in a hell of a lot of pain. It’s definitely the rule, not the exception.

You may wonder why I’m tasking myself with writing a memoir and I can honestly tell you that I need to get this flotsam and detritus out of my brain and onto paper because I’m running out of  space in my brain for happy thoughts. I’ve simply got to try and heal myself since my attempts at hiring professionals (25 years of talk therapy – I’m so sick of myself!), taking medication for the depression, anxiety and PTSD that I continue to suffer from, haven’t seemed to reveal any permanent healing, only temporary bandaids.

As I have been reading these tomes of torment, I have a few other observations: life is full of missed opportunities, some good, some bad. I’ve always relied on my own personal belief that I only regret the things I don’t do, but I’ve now realized that very often I wasn’t given a choice. I wasn’t given a voice. I feel a lot of sadness in what could have been had different choices been made for me, or if I hadn’t been afraid to speak up for myself, and I think the saddest thing of all is realizing that I never knew any different. See, that’s one of the fatal flaws of childhood versus maturity into adulthood: as a child, everything you learn you inherently know to be true. You trust the adults in your life because it’s all you know. It isn’t until much later that you can look back and say, “Oh, hell no! That ain’t right!”. And generally, by the time you reach that realization, it’s likely too late and you’ve suffered the consequences on a long term, macro scale. This is how I would define myself at this point. Fortunately for me, I was able to make some good choices in picking my spouse and parenting my children (though one never knows for sure, does one?), but I live with a great deal of anguish which is clearly hindering my success at the goal of acceptance and happiness, and for that I do remain resentful and even unforgiving, which I happen to know intellectually, is just self-torment.

I stand by my earlier statement: Adolescence Should Be Outlawed. It was the worst of times and the worst of times for me. I’m not yet convinced that I will ever get over it. But I’m trying, I’m doing the best I can with the very few tools I was given along the way. In that regard, my parents failed me. They did not keep me safe and I am paying the price. Nobody wins, and that’s probably the saddest denouement of all.

Why do they call it heartbreak?

It’s really a whole body break, isn’t it?

When you’re rejected, your whole body reacts.

And just like any trauma to your body

Sometimes you have to learn to walk again.

You take it step by step by step.

And when your heart is broken,

You take it breath by breath by breath.

***

And you wonder all the time

What did I do?

And you ask,

Please, please come back to me

Or, please, can I come back?

Because I’m broken, can’t you see?

***

A child in her crib feels her whole body break when her father leaves her.

An eleven year old girl feels her whole body break when her mother rejects her.

And she has to learn how to breathe again.

Breath by breath by breath.

***

Every time she experiences traumatic rejection,

It is not just a matter of mending a broken heart.

Her whole body is broken.

And she takes one step, one breath at a time

Hoping the next one comes.

And each time

She valiantly tells herself

That when that final breath comes

She hopes she’s going to heaven

Seeing as she’s already been to hell.

It must be where she came from in the beginning

Because it’s the only explanation, isn’t it?

***

Why does she suffer so much rejection?

No one wants her

Because she’s hell to live with.

 

I’ve had the unfortunate experience of having to attend three funerals in the last week and a half. While none of them were unexpected, it’s always sad for the grieving families. But in an odd juxtaposition, I can’t help but think about how to grieve for the living, the Ghosts.

I’ve suffered many losses. Not by death, but by abandonment, also sometimes known as Ghosting in today’s vernacular. I feel like I’ve spent my entire life grieving on some level. It began with my biological father, who left when I was six months old, followed by my mother, who abandoned me when I was 11 years old, and then my adoptive father, who abandoned me when I was 15 years old. So even though those people are still living, I’ve had to grieve for those losses. At this juncture, they’ve come back into my life, somewhat hovering around as if they don’t quite know what to do with me, given the actions of their pasts. I know that I can say, on some level, I never got over those losses. And I certainly didn’t have the tools to properly grieve for them, then or now.

Meanwhile, due to so many upheavals during my past, I’ve lost many friends. And that has been the most difficult of all in my grieving process. I missed out on long term friendships because I was always moving away. In seventh grade, twice in eighth grade, and again in 10th grade. Anyone who’s ever been a teenager, especially between the ages of 11 to 15, can appreciate how painful it must be to say goodbye forever to your closest friends, your allies, your first loves, your lifelines.

As an adult, I have suffered additional losses by those I call the living ghosts. Those who have decided to leave me and not let me know why. And while I suspect I know what their reasons are, and feel I have no choice but to respect them, I just feel tremendous grief and loss, all the time.

As I reflect on these funerals that I’ve attended recently, I observed that the survivors are understood and nurtured in their grief. While painful for them, it is a finality of sorts which usually allows them to begin the process of learning to live without their loved one for the rest of their lives. However, when dealing with abandonment and ghosting, I am not afforded the same comfort. The person lives on, sometimes in my midst, and I am left wondering what could have been. I will always wonder what could have been done differently or what I could have done differently to avoid the pain of so much loss. It is simply a variant, unvalidated form of grieving that never seems to abate or heal. I can’t help but wonder how I’ll feel when the loss is final, once they’ve reached the end of their lives. Will I then finally be able to grieve and accept the loss and heal?

The last thing you said to me

Before we were forced to part

Was, “I will wait for you”.

I entrusted you

With my deepest feelings

To hold close to your heart

Until we could meet again.

 

You were the keeper of my feelings

You said you would wait for me.

 

You did neither.

I  was abandoned

And I am bereft of feelings

 

And I am empty and alone.

“Wanna go out with me?” “Ewww….”

Oh, who should I like today?

Who is gonna like me today?

Meet me behind the bleachers ok?

I’m grounded for like, forever, man.

My parents are so fucking stupid.

Why doesn’t anyone ever understand me?

You are my best friend today.

He only sent twenty texts today.

He likes her. I hate her.

Dear Diary, my life is shit.

OMG he did NOT say that!

School sucks. Can’t wait to graduate.

Real life is gonna be easy.

What in the actual fuck, bruh?

Did you seriously just say that?

Teachers have no clue about anything.

I’m getting my driver’s license today!

I failed my driver’s test. Fuck!

I have to get a job?

Do I have to go to college?

He’s suck a dick. Love him!

I stand at the abyss.

I don’t know how I got here.

But I look down and I see the gates.

The floodgates.

And I don’t want them to open.

I don’t want the floodgates open,

Because I don’t want to fall into the abyss.

It’s too hard to climb out of it.

But I do

Every time

And I walk away,

Wipe the tears.

And I go on.

But I’m always back.

Back at the abyss.

The floodgates are always there.

And I fight and I fight and I fight.

Hoping they won’t open.

But they do, always do.

Back into the abyss I go

One day, I will stop fighting

I’ll just stay in the abyss

Because why not?

Aren’t most teenaged angst diaries supposed to be filled with lovelorn, treacly drivel?

Constant jealousy amongst friends, puppy love?

Dramatic makeups and breakups from one day to the next?

Aren’t these diaries supposed to be cringe-worthy musings from she who didn’t yet know true heartache?

Shouldn’t they be about boring school stuff? Boring parents? Feeling totally misunderstood?

Then we read the diaries a half century later and we chuckle at our naïveté? Laughing at our ridiculous drama of what was, at the time, just puberty and hormones?

Shouldn’t reading them now be fun and funny? Hilarious even, in our immature notion that we were so sophisticated? That our parents were the hopeless naiveté’s?

Shouldn’t it be just a gas to reach back in time and find our long-promised-best-friends-for-life and giggle hysterically just like we did then?

Then why, oh why, am I transported back into so much pain? Why am I putting myself through this? Do I really think it will help to heal me as I continue to spiral into despair? Am I that desperate?

Some came out unscathed; others either died young or wish they had. Like me.

We were a MESS back then and things didn’t improve for many of us.

Those of us who survived, some did okay, I suppose. Others, like myself, suffer to this day.

These diaries…….

Why can I only read a few month’s worth at a time?

Afterwards, I come out of a fugue state of abject depression and just want to throw myself off a cliff.

After several days of recovery, I dive back in. Because I must.

If I’d known now what I knew then, there would be no now. And God help me, there’s more to come.

Stay tuned……

An Unconventional Thank You Note To My Children

November 5, 1995. The day my first child was born. August 16, 2019. The day my youngest child left for college. 8,686 days; 1,240 weeks, 6 days; 285 months, 12 days; 23 years, 9 months, 12 days…… you get the picture.

My three charges, of whom I am no longer in charge. Now young adults, living too far away, but exactly where they are meant to be.

From the day they were born, it was my job to kick them out. To prepare them to leave. To teach them how to live without me. I taught them how to walk, how to talk, how to eat, how to dress, when to sleep. I taught them to ask for what they need (if you don’t ask, the answer’s always no); I taught them not how to think, but how to think for themselves. I taught them how to learn, how to listen, how to feel compassion, how to love. I taught not how to see, but what to look for. Every single day, I taught them how to leave. And leave they did.

So here I am. All this time I’ve been teaching, guiding, leading. And I’m tired. I’m resting now. I’m reflecting. I’m wandering. I’m wondering. How did I do it? How did I do? I can check off a few boxes: they all graduated high school; they all went to college; they are all healthy; they are all safe; they are all loved. So I suppose I did fairly well.

I want to say a few more things to my kids though. I wasn’t quite finished when they left. I have a bit more to share with them. Give me a few more moments, won’t you? Here’s what I want to say. In case you didn’t know this yet.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming into my life. Thank you for giving me a family. This has been the hardest job I will ever have. Every single minute (12,507,840 minutes), has been a challenge. I learned so much more than I taught. I learned that my life as I knew it before you would never be the same. I learned that each of you was born with a unique personality and that I had to get to know you individually. I learned to understand that there is no template for parenting.

I learned the deeper, truest meaning of words like joy; love; sorrow; happiness; fear; laughter; trust; excitement; kindness; hurt; loss; honesty; betrayal; exhaustion; thrilled; proud; glee; partnership; heartache; perception; reality; time.

Time. That which we cannot control. No pause, no rewind, no fast-forward, no stopping. So here we are, all this time gone by. But I have my memories. And you have yours. I wonder: are our collective memories somewhat parallel? Or do they diverge wildly?

I remember the moment that each of you became known to me. One of you took several months. One of you had two misfires before you finally took. And one of you came as a pleasantly quick addition.

I remember the moment each of you emerged and separated from my womb. Moments full of drama, joy, tears, awe.

And I remember the moment each of you walked out the door, to begin the independent life I so carefully prepared you for. The heartache of saying goodbye was more painful than the physical pain of giving birth, but I’m managing.

You were sent to me with a message: Becoming a Mom brings joy and heartache, great memories and memory loss, patience and always hurrying, teaching and learning, knowing and not wanting to know, gales of laughter and oceans of tears, and most of all, the truest form of giving and receiving unconditional love.

Someone once told me that my children aren’t perfect because nobody’s perfect, right? I, however, know perfection when I see it. And I see it every single day in all of you. Thank you Alana, Heath & Gwyneth, for defining perfection for me.

I opened my eyes very slowly, carefully. I was extremely groggy and confused. And I looked at the end of my bed, and Darlene was there, my beloved Darlene.

“Darlene, is that really you, or are you an angel? Am I really awake or am I dreaming?”

“No, Sweetie,” she said. “It’s really me, I’m really here. It’s really me. You’re not dreaming.”

Looking around, I realized that I was in a hospital room. I was hooked up to IV’s and dressed in a hospital gown. I saw that I was in a hospital bed. There was a whiteboard on the wall with my name, and date of admittance. My attending doctors and nurses were listed as well.I also observed a stranger, a woman who was not dressed in hospital garb, sitting in the corner of my room. And I was needing to be convinced that I wasn’t still hallucinating. Gradually I slowly began remembering what I’d done. I’d taken an overdose of pills. I’d tried to kill myself. And apparently, I’d failed.

***

The previous Friday was March 7, 2014. Greensboro, NC, was smacked with a terrible ice storm. Everyone knows that if you live in North Carolina, any thought of even a single snowflake falling from the heavens is cause for widespread panic and a run to the grocery store to buy out all the bread and milk. A three-loaf alert, it’s often called. And an impending ice storm is the worst case scenario, because it is sure to knock out electrical power across the region. We in NC are simply not prepared for this. And when we lose power out where we live, in the country, we lose water as well because we have an electric well pump

When the ice storm hit, we lost power on that Friday, March 7. We found the last available hotel room in Greensboro at a 5-star hotel, paying $400 a night.

The five of us, Alan, my husband, our oldest daughter, Alana, 18 years old, our son Heath, age 16, our youngest daughter, Gwyneth, age 12, and myself, all stayed in one room together. Saturday morning, we checked out of the hotel to go home, hoping that the power would be back on. When we got home, the power was indeed on, but the heat was not working. So it was freezing cold inside our house. I was just losing my shit, minute by minute because I hate living out in the country; it’s not my thing but it’s what I signed up for when I married Alan in 1994. I absolutely hate it when the power goes out, I hate living without water; it’s simply barbaric. I was just hating everything.

“This is such bullshit!” I said. “I hate living out here with no electricity or water anytime the power goes out. I’m so sick of having to deal with this every single time. And now, it’s freezing because we have no goddamn heat! This is ridiculous and I hate it here!

“I’m going to Alamance Crossing with Sarah and Caroline,” Alana announced. Alamance Crossing was a shopping center about 15 miles away.

“No, you’re not.” I said. “There’s no way I’m going to let you drive in this ice.” I looked to Alan for support.

He shrugged. Alan was noncommittal. He knew that he was in a no-win situation and he avoids confrontation at all costs, especially when it comes to Alana’s and my disagreements. His passive non-involvement was typical because he didn’t want to side with either one of us. She and I are both so strong-willed and when an argument breaks out between us, Alan generally walks away. In reality, I suspect he didn’t really think it was that big of a deal for Alana to go with her friends because we’d just driven home from the hotel so he knew what the conditions were, but he could see my dismay and didn’t want to break ranks.

So she and I got into a huge fight over her rights as an adult at 18 years old, (even though she was still in high school and living under our care.) We escalated into a screaming match that included her yelling from her room upstairs.

I hate you!” she hollered. “YouI never let me do anything! This house is so boring being stuck here with you!” she screamed. “All my friends have so many more privileges!”

I yelled from the bottom of the steps in return, “ Alana, you’re exaggerating and you know it! We give you plenty of privileges and independence but we are still in charge as long as you are living here and my answer is NO!”

She demanded, “Why? Why can’t I go? Just tell me why?”

Still yelling upstairs to her, I said, “I am not comfortable with you driving in the melting ice given your inexperience with these conditions. I don’t think it’s safe.”

“The roads are fine!” she continued. “All my friends are allowed to go,” she repeated.

“You’re not allowed to go!,” I yelled back to her. “Just stop asking me. The answer is no!”

I was increasingly frustrated because everything I said was met with a comeback, mostly just Alana saying Why, why why, and repeating how much she hates me and can’t wait to leave for college in the fall. This went on and on and I was not handling the situation well because I was angry that she was disobeying me. I was also hurt by her words of hatred towards me and her life in general while living under our roof. I was devolving towards an ugly breaking point; I could feel myself losing my patience and control and becoming angrier and her and also angry with Alan for not stepping in to support me. Eventually she just insisted that she was going to go, whether I said she could or not. And that was not the norm in our household.

Alan’s and my parenting rules are that whatever we say goes. That being said, we’re very flexible, we allow our kids a tremendous amount of independence, and we rarely came across a situation like this where one of our children was being completely, blatantly, disobedient. I just was taken aback. I was losing my cool and losing my temper as we were hurling these fighting words at each other. And finally I just snapped. I said,”Well just go then! Just go down and live with with your damn Aunt Lisa and Uncle Andy! Just fucking go, since your life is so awful here!”

She said, “Okay I will!” This caused me to lose my shit altogether and then I screamed at her, “Oh no, you won’t,”

She screamed back at me, “I’m going!”

I said, “If you go down to their house, then you’re dead to me!” And I stomped off.

I was immediately horrified that I’d said those words. I’d never said those words. I’ve never thought those words about my children and I was just completely out of control.

But sure enough, she left.

By this time it was Saturday afternoon. I just slammed the door to my bedroom and locked it, and just ugly-cried and remained unreasonable, unapproachable and unavailable for the remainder of the day and night.

I was furious with Alan, because he let her go. Not that he would physically stop her. But, I just was losing control. When I get this way, I get in an ugly rage, and I get into a despairing mood, and I can’t cope. I can’t cope at all. I feel like I spent my whole childhood having no power, no control, and my mental illness was rearing its ugly head. I couldn’t figure out how to properly handle situations like this because I’d had no role-modeling or experience of my own. Even though I’d spent years in therapy, and some of that included family therapy with Alan and the kids, I just hadn’t reached that healthy space that I intellectually knew I should be in.

So, Saturday night, she didn’t come home at all because she was going to stay with Lisa and Andy. I don’t know if she went driving to the shopping center or not, but it was confirmed by Alan that she was safe and going to stay with them that night.

I was still in full-on despair on Sunday morning when I woke up. I was still in the foulest of moods, unreasonable, and completely hateful to everyone. I wanted Alana to come home and work with me to do whatever we could to resolve this situation, especially by my apologizing for my awful words I spoke to her regarding her being dead to me.

I called Lisa and I screamed at her to send my daughter home, and she was just a total nasty bitch like she always is. She and I have never seen eye to eye and I consider her a spoiled, ignorant, closed-minded brat. She’s eight years my junior, had lived in this area all her life and she lorded around like the fucking Queen of all things. We had nothing in common from day one of my marriage, and even though we’d made somewhat of an effort to get along in the earlier years, we’d both finally conceded that we were never going to be friends. This happened years earlier, when our mother-in-law died, and we knew we no longer had to operate under any pretense that we were a close family. Alan had never been close to his brother, Andy, who was four years younger than Alan. We lived totally different lifestyles and though they were always civil to one another, they were never friends. Once again I demanded that Alan go down there and get her, get my daughter and bring her home.

I was just absolutely out of my mind with the thought that she was staying with Andy and Lisa. Possibly permanently. The two people that I loathe the most out here in this godforsaken redneck place that we live. I had no power. I had no power.

And I felt like I felt when I was a kid. When I was just abandoned. I felt like Alana was abandoning me, she was leaving me, another person was excising me from their life. I grew up being left, abandoned, kicked out. I grew up being schlepped from parent to parent to grandparent to potentially foster care, one after another. And I just couldn’t bear it.

Lisa wouldn’t send her home; of course she wouldn’t. I was a crazy person and her niece was better off with her. Alana wouldn’t take my calls at all. I called Andy, Lisa’s husband, (Alan’s brother), and he just railed me, calling me every name in the book from psycho, to the fact that I belonged in the loony bin, to I don’t know what the hell is going on with you. “You’re crazy,” he said. “And we’re not sending her back to you. She doesn’t want to live with you.”

The situation had deteriorated exponentially and I was just absolutely out of my mind with grief. This went on all day Sunday. Not a word from Alana. Alan went down there again to bring her home and came back without her.

And I just screamed at him, “What the hell? Bring her home! She is our daughter and this is where she belongs!”

He said, “You told her to leave, Amy, you told her to leave.”

And he couldn’t reason with me, I was completely unreasonable. There was no reasoning. So, it just devolved into a big clusterfuck of a mess.

Eventually, I went back into my room, shut and locked the door and told Alan, “You go sleep upstairs with Heath. Just don’t come near me. Don’t come near me until you bring me my daughter. Bring me my daughter. Bring me my daughter!”

***

Some hours later, in the dark and loneliness of night, when I realized that she wasn’t coming home for the second night, I was just not coping at all. I just couldn’t get my head around the idea that she may stay away for good. I wasn’t thinking straight and I was overwhelmed. It was late, and I was alone and I was awake.

And so I just decided, I can’t do this. I can’t live, I can’t live without her. I cannot live without my daughter. I cannot, I cannot go through this, I cannot go through this abandonment. This loss, this grief. I cannot deal with this, and I was just not of any kind of sound mind at all. It had just escalated, completely out of control. And it was all on me, and poor Alan, there was nothing he could do to appease me or appease Alana and convince her to come home. There was no dealing with Andy and Lisa. It was just a nightmare, so I just impulsively swallowed as many pills as I could find. I had antidepressants and anti anxiety medications to treat my mental illness, and Alan had some Tramadol from a hip replacement surgery he’d had.

I just put every pill I could find in my mouth, I didn’t even think about Alan, I didn’t think about Heath and Gwyneth. I just knew that I didn’t want to live for one more second if Alana wasn’t coming home. So I went to bed, ready to die. I felt dead already. I felt I’d lost everything.

***

I woke up around 4am Monday morning. And I realized that I wasn’t dead, and I was pissed. And I was sick. Very sick. So I called Heath on his cell phone upstairs and told him to tell Daddy to come downstairs and Alan came down, and I was really, really sick and really, really out of it and I told him what I had done and he called 911, right away.

***

I was very sick. I was in the cardiac unit at the hospital, because I was having heart problems. And I remember hallucinating. And if you’ve never hallucinated, if you’ve ever wondered if you’re hallucinating, then you’re not, because if you are, you know it. I had so many hallucinogenic experiences during these two days or three days that I was hospitalized. I guess I woke up Wednesday. And when I woke up there was the Angel. Darlene. This angel, my angel. Darlene was my little sister from Big Brothers Big Sisters, and we’ve been together for 20 plus years. She was somewhat like my very first child in a way. There she was, and no one except family was even allowed in the room but somehow she just pushed her way in and came and sat there until I woke up. Meanwhile, Alan was visiting every day, but was essentially home taking care of the kids. Alana apparently came back home on Monday, after school.

While I was in the hospital, I had to have a babysitter in my room because I was on suicide watch. In the cardiac unit. And so along with the nurses, doctors, CNA’s, there was a sitter, literally called a Sitter, who was in there with me 24/7. Once I regained consciousness I was just in complete and total despair over what I had done, and what Alana’s status was. I asked Alan, “Did you tell the kids what I did?”

He replied, “Well, Heath and Gwyneth knew because they were there when the ambulance came and I went to the hospital with you so Heath had to stay home alone with Gwyneth. And, you know, he didn’t know whether you were alive or dead until I called and told him. And so he was scared and confused. He didn’t go to school Monday morning and the whole thing was just so horrific and terrifying for the kids.”

I asked him about Alana, “Did you tell her?”

“Yes, I did,” he replied. “And she was shocked. She was shocked that you had done that. And I explained to her that it was nobody’s fault. That Mom is sick. Mom has mental illness. We all know that. And she just went over the edge, and it was not her fault.”

I don’t think I’ll ever know if she accepted that. I suspect not.

It was my fault, but Alan didn’t blame me. It just happened. It’s a picture of what mental illness can do.

Once I was discharged from the main hospital, I was mandated to go to a psychiatric hospital which I tried to refuse but apparently the law said I had to go. In other words, according to the laws in my state, “If someone else has decided that you need to be in the hospital, these are the steps that must be followed:

An affidavit must be filed with the Clerk of Superior Court or Magistrate of District Court. The Clerk or Magistrate may issue an order to a law enforcement officer to take you into custody for examination by a qualified professional. If the qualified professional finds that you are mentally ill and dangerous to yourself or others, you will be taken to the psychiatric hospital.”

I was literally driven in a paddy wagon to Winston Salem, because Greensboro had no beds available. Straight to the loony bin, just as Andy said I should. I stayed there, probably three to four days of which 72 hours is the standard for an involuntary commitment; we don’t have any long term in-patient facilities in our area, only short term. Alan came every day.

I asked him if Alana would come. He said he would ask her.

Alan said to Alana, “Mom really wants you to come to see her at the psychiatric hospital.” His perception of her reaction was that she was quiet, humbled.

He went on reassuredly, “Mom is going to be okay,” and, “We feel like the reason that you should to come is to see that for yourself. Mom and I don’t blame you for what happened at all, and she really is going to be alright.” She agreed to come without any comment,

I remember that when Alan brought Alana to the psychiatric hospital, Heath was at baseball practice and could not stay home with Gwyneth, so Alan had to bring Gwyneth with him, but she was too young to come back into the hospital so she had to wait in the lobby area of the hospital all alone. At 12 years old. I felt absolutely awful and extremely guilty for what I’d put my family through.

Once they arrived, Alana was allowed to come back to see me. Alan had warned her about all the security measures and that they would need to search her and she couldn’t bring her phone or any other gadgets or potentially dangerous items with her. She came back alone and I was very upbeat, very happy to see her, and the only reference I made to what had happened was that I was very glad to see her and I appreciated that she agreed to come. She shrugged, noncommittally, not sure what to say. It was uncomfortable for her. I didn’t know if she harbored any hurt feelings of me having almost abandoning her by trying to kill myself, or if she felt any feelings of guilt that I felt like she was abandoning me by leaving.

My experience at the hospital was very, very good. I’d had previous experiences at the hospital in Greensboro, under voluntary admittance, that were not good, and that’s why I refused to go, but this particular hospital was very good. And I learned for the first time in my life that everyone has a story. Everyone, from the doctor’s wife, to the drug guy on the street, and everyone in between, has a story. We all have a story. And I thought about it and I thought, “Well you know, Alan, my husband, he doesn’t really have a story. He had a self-professed idyllic childhood and he is a happily married man with three great kids. And then I realized that I was his story. I am his story.”

Note: This is a chapter from my upcoming memoir, “Show My Ugly”. Thanks for reading. Stay tuned.

The Diaries

They are all that’s left

From a scattered, shattered childhood

Proof

In twenty-six tortuous volumes

In living color

Of what happened to me

 

***

 

The Diaries

From age twelve to seventeen

Are there any more tumultuous years in a child’s life?

The brutal ignorance

Of the ugliest of truths

It was all I knew

 

***

 

The Diaries

 

Reading them now

Forty-five years later

Determined to get through them

After several attempts in the past

This is my past

And I must do this

To heal?

Must I?

 

***

 

The Diaries

 

Day to day

Hour by hour

Of minutiae

Full of angst

Even some joy

But mostly pain

Was it really that awful?

Yes, indefensibly, it was.

 

***

 

The Diaries

 

A living, breathing record

Of the truth

I can only do small snippets

Then I must take a break

To recover

Before I move on to the next pages

Of what in the actual the fuck?

This is how it all went down?

 

***

 

The Diaries

 

They follow me

They haunt me

They hurt me

They are me

 

***

 

The Diaries

 

Don’t you dare try to change the narrative

It’s all there

They define me

Ugliness, pain, and truth

 

***

 

The Diaries

Bury them with me when I die.

Why can’t I …….

Stop feeling lonely

Stop being who everyone else wants me to be

Be my authentic self

Why can’t I…..

Cry when I need to

Stop feeling obligated to making others happy

Feel unconditionally loved

Why can’t I…..

Say what I’m really thinking

Feel what I’m really feeling

Trust my instincts

Why can’t I…..

Stop feeling like I owe everyone

Feel like I’ve paid my dues

Feel like I’ve got nothing left to prove

Why can’t I…..

Rest on my laurels

Enjoy my legacy

Stop pretending everything is fine

Why can’t I…..

Figure out what to do

Figure out who I am

Find my bliss

Why can’t I…..

Stop hurting

Stop trying so hard

Stop feeling exhausted

Why can’t I…..

Just….

Be……

Just take the high road, they say

Be the better person, they say

Rise to the occasion, they say

Don’t stoop to their level, they say

You’ll feel better, they say

The high road

Is lonely

Depressing

The few people there

Are unhappy

Unsmiling

Grim

Pissed

Withdrawn

Irritated

And jealous

As they glance down

At the low road

Where the crowds are gathered

Merrily commiserating

Gleeful in their honesty

Confident in their candor

Sincere in their authenticity

Just having a hell of lot more fun.

You miss me, don’t you?

You miss seeing me, don’t you?

You miss talking to me, don’t you?

You miss hearing my voice, don’t you?

You miss seeing my face every day, don’t you?

You miss laughing with me, don’t you?

You miss telling me about your day, don’t you?

You miss kissing me good night, don’t you?

You miss me comforting you, don’t you?

You miss me wiping away your tears, don’t you?

You miss me telling you that you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, don’t you?

You miss me telling you how much I love you, don’t you?

You miss hearing me tell you that I’ve loved you your whole life, don’t you?

You miss me telling you how perfect you are, don’t you?

You miss me right now, don’t you?

You miss me, don’t you?

Then come back, won’t you?

Come home, won’t you?

Please? Won’t you?

In my own journey with crippling depression, I have taken umbrage with that rather pithy expression, “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem “. I’ve been personally subjected to these ill-perceived words of wisdom on more than one occasion, and adding to that narrative vein, another unhelpful expression, “Suicide is the coward’s way out”, has also been tossed in my direction at the precisely inopportune time.

I only recently have come to what, for me, is the simple and obvious and frankly, quite rational counter response, which is this: when one’s body, one’s person, sustains an injury or endures a pain of some sort, isn’t it the natural reflex, the very human nature ingrained among us, to find and execute the quickest and easiest remedy to that pain? If we cut ourselves, do we not apply a bandage? If we have a headache, do we not take a pain reliever? If we sprain an ankle or strain a muscle, do we not use a hot or cold compress and/or apply a wrap to stabilize the affected area? If we break a leg or an arm, do we not have the bone reset and get a cast?

All relatively permanent solutions to temporary problems, no? All the quickest, easiest (cowardly?) way to address the pain, no? So as with the very real emotional and even physical pain of depression, why wouldn’t we afford ourselves the same avenue of relief? When did the desire to ease the pain as quickly and efficiently as possible become “the permanent solution to a temporary problem”, and “the coward’s way out”? Who decided that masochism is the first and foremost appropriate reaction to pain like this?

Such is the ongoing stigma of mental illness. We’re making progress but we still have a long way to go. I would submit to anyone that managing to continue to live my life every single day is the bravest thing I’ve done so far.