The D Word

At first I was going to leave a comment on Laurie's blog on Wednesday but then I realized that it would be a really long one. That's when I decided that perhaps once more Laurie had inspired me with a post topic. (Thank you, Laurie, because otherwise I would have written something really bitchy instead.) I realized that since I was leaving bits and pieces of this all over the internet that I may as well just write it all out at once. Yep, it's going to be another one of those serious posts -- and long. If you don't want something serious, then go check this out.

I know I have mentioned my parents' divorce many times before. If you are new here, they divorced when I was eight. My parents were not alone in the divorce; we all went through it. The two years prior to that were not some of the happiest. In fact I have very few memories of home during that time period but I have plenty of non-home memories. (Oh, and my memory starts at about age two and a half.) I do remember being seven and making plans to run away from home. At the time it seemed odd. As an adult, I understand why I probably wanted to get out of there. My parents had some really good fights. When my mom told my dad that she wanted a divorce, he told her that she would never survive without him. She mentioned that to me once more when she bought a house in Mexico a few months ago. If retiring at 51 and ending up owning two homes is not making it, then sign me up.

I wasn't going to tell this one but what the heck. In July of 1974 my dad showed up at the house to pick up furniture. He was not happy about having to move out. He was even less happy when he discovered that we had no birthday gifts for him. Yes, he moved out on his birthday. Apparently I had been sick all that week so my mother had not had the chance to take me shopping for a gift. Bottom line was that at this point he was pissed off. There are still marks in the hallway where my father purposefully ran furniture into the walls. The front door still had the dent in it from the piece of furniture that went flying down the stairs when my mother finally had the door changed last summer. Over 20 years of looking at that dent. Once the furniture started flying, my mother sent me to my room to play -- and to be safe. Apparently it culminated with my dad pinning my mom to the floor in what was their bedroom and trying to strangle her. My "real dad" pulled him off of her. (It seems that I got to witness all of this as well since I was playing in the doorway of my bedroom which is a straight shot down the hall to the other doorway. I still have no memory of this part of the day. I figure it's for the best. I discussed my anger at my mother for sharing this detail with me in therapy ad nauseum. And eventually I got over my feeling of guilt. My mother's point in telling me this was that I didn't try to help her. Who cares that I was eight at the time. Remind me to tell y'all about my mother's twisted childhood sometime.) My mom then went to the kitchen to get a knife. My "real dad" disarmed her. My mom's next idea was to call the police. My dad pulled the phone out of the wall. (This was in the days when your phone was hardwired to the wall. My mom made up some lie to explain to the repairman how it happened but I'm sure he didn't believe her.) The next thing in my memory after being sent to my room was when my mother was changing the locks later and the police showed up to take the report. My mother turned to me and said, "I'm not having your father arrested but someone needs to see the damage that was done. Just in case." You've gotta love life in the 'burbs.

My "real parents" and my father's mom were highly supportive of me during this time period. I don't know if I would have made it through without them. They always provided me with a safe place to talk about what I was feeling. Whenever I tried to talk to my mother, she got defensive so I just stopped talking to her about the important things. Well, it was that and the fact that she felt this need to fix everything. To this day, I still tell her that sometimes I just want to vent and that I'm not looking for a solution because a lot of times after venting, I can find the solution on my own. My other outlet back then was in writing -- either in my journal or through autobiographical fiction. I didn't realize the last one until I was in eighth grade. I ended up in a creative writing class that year. Sure we read novels and all but the majority of the class was spent writing and getting feedback. For open house the teacher put out a number of the stories that he thought were good. This included one of mine which was about two sisters whose parents were going through a divorce. My mother read the story for the first time that night and turned to me and said that the two girls in the story put together were me. Up until this point, I had thought that the stories just came to me magically. I had never thought that they were a way of dealing with what I was feeling.

I spent the summer when I was 12 with one of my dad's brothers and his wife. My aunt was finishing up her doctorate in psychology at that time. (She's now a school psychologist.) At the end of the summer, my aunt suggested that we go for a drive. Just the two of us. During the drive she shared with me that she thought that I was depressed and that she was concerned. Because of this conversation, I told my mother, upon returning home, that I wanted to see a therapist. I spent the next school year in therapy. It helped but I don't think I really got through everything back then. I still didn't really know how to trust people completely. Heck. I still don't.

I don't stay in relationships for too long. The older I get, the sooner that point comes when I think I'm drowning or that I'm starting to disappear. One day I will learn how to choose guys who are not so much like my dad in personality -- guys who want to believe that I am someone who I really am not. Even if they realize that I am not that person, they seem intent on making me into that person. That's what it all comes back to. My dad has always had a picture in his mind of who I should be. Being such a daddy's girl, I wanted to make him happy. (Now I suddenly realize why I spent all that time in therapy. My father was drunk and wallowing in self-pity but all I wanted his acceptance.) This is what I got from my parents' divorce. The need to make everyone around me happy. It turned me into a chameleon. I could have been an actress if only I wasn't so shy. I also got an inability to trust others and sometimes even an inability to trust myself. It was around this time that I announced to my parents that I was never going to get married. I was never going to have children. My mother didn't want to believe the words because I was the girl who believed in fairy tales.

At least the last therapist I ended up with realized that I have huge abandonment issues which have led to my lack of trust. (My dad left. OK. My mother threw him out but he chose to be emotionally unavailable after that. Less than a month after my dad moved out, my grandfather died. In college, my grandmother had the first of a series of strokes and stopped being the person upon whom I had relied for so many years. A few of my peers also had either died or had attempted suicide in this time period. I just came to expect that people would leave.) The first couple of relationships I went through after this realization were really hard on me when they ended -- even though I was the one who ended them. ("Leave them before they have the chance to leave you.") I dated this one guy for eight months which might not sound like much to you but was a record for me. The depression I felt when I stopped dating him was overwhelming at times. It took me at least three years to come out of it completely. At first I didn't go out. Then when I did, I was wild and out of control. I felt like I was dying at times. Probably because I was slowly killing myself off. Not so much the body although the partying probably did its toll on the body. All I can say is thank goodness I had sense enough to say no whenever someone offered me cocaine or ecstasy. If I had ever accepted any of those offers, I probably wouldn't be here today. Instead I figured it was just as good to kill off the inner person. I would say to myself, "If someone says 'this' to you and you don't feel anything, then you're just one step closer." All I wanted to do was to stop feeling. I did this for three years and was pretty successful in becoming emotionally numb. During this time period, my personal theme song was either this or this. Then one night I pulled into the garage after a night out and sat in my car and cried for at least a half hour. No, it wasn't really crying; it was gut wrenching sobs. When I got out of the car, I knew that things had to change.

I stopped going out for the most part for about two years after that. At this point I realized that the person whom I trusted the least was me. I was making a lot of stupid choices. The partying and dating ban also coincided with my decision to go back to school to get my teaching credential. I remember showing up for the orientation for the program and noticing that the guy sitting next to me was kind of hot. But I wasn't supposed to be dating. A few months into the program, we were at a barbeque at a fellow student's home. He asked me why I wasn't dating. I told him that I had realized that I had a pattern of making some really bad choices. Even if the guys were jerks, the bottom line was that I kept choosing these jerks. I told him that I decided that I just needed to step back and to try to figure out why I made these kind of choices. I know. Stupid me. I probably could have had a date with the kind of hot guy. Then again, he was fresh from a divorce and I wasn't ready to be transition woman. I've done that before. Oh, but I went into that situation knowing exactly who I was. It's just that at that time in my life, it worked. What I finally realized during this period of my life was that I could not make other people happy (Even more importantly, I was not responsible for their happiness.) and that I should not rely on other people to make me happy. Happiness is something that should come from within. (Sorry if I sound like some self-help book but it's true.) I finally learned how to be comfortable with being me. The biggest challenge was trying to figure out who that person was in the first place. After so many years of being a chameleon, I thought that I wouldn't be able to find that person again. One of the happiest points in my life to date was when I realized that person wasn't dead and gone; she had just been in hiding, waiting until it was safe to come back out.

I also recently realized that I have not given up on making connections with other people. What I used to look for from men, I now get from my students. Don't worry. I am not about to become one of those women about whom you read in the news. It's just that in teaching I suddenly get to spend my days with people who constantly tell me how wonderful they think I am. Those of you who are still in the corporate world know how few and far between those days can be there. When I went to the promotion ceremony for my first group of sixth graders, I was greeted by hugs and later emails. The thing about kids is that they usually do not have another agenda so their compliments are completely honest. They are easy to trust. After awhile I started to think, "Well, if these kids think I'm so great, then maybe I really am." And it wasn't just the kids. Their parents said the same things. I had finally found a job that inspired me, the night owl, to get out of bed each morning. They filled me with confidence and hope when I thought that I had none left. When I am having a bad day, I pull out the stuff that my students wrote during that first year so that I can feel the hope again. My second year teaching, a student asked me why I had decided to go into teaching. I told him, "Because you're not jaded. I see all of you and believe that everything is possible once more." I then had to explain what jaded means.

So about a year and a half ago, I decided to start getting back out there. It was kind of tricky because in becoming comfortable in who I am, I also have gotten very comfortable with doing things on my own. Years ago when I wasn't so together, I told a friend that another person in your life should be a compliment and not a complement. It's like that story I told about the poundcake. The cake is complete on its own and the glaze just adds a little something extra. Sometimes I hear my stepmother telling me that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince. Sometimes I hear my mother telling me that maybe she made a mistake in making me so independent. The one thing that I have definitely learned though is how to look like I have everything together even when I feel like I am falling apart inside. Fortunately these days I don't have the inner feeling that often so it's not so much an act as it used to be.

And how do I get through each day? My mother's wisdom. She is the eternal optimist and believes that there is some good in everything. So I have learned to not plan so much and kind of go with the flow. For some of you it may sound easy but because of all of the chaos in my earlier life, I ended up a control freak. For example, salsa dancing? Hard for me. I can do the steps but I also have to trust that guy. Easier said than done. But in the meantime, I am trying my best to let life happen, to a certain extent, and to enjoy every moment of it. Even if what life brings me is not what I expected.

Oh, and I hate to appear weak in front of other people so please excuse me while I go off to a quiet corner to wipe the tears from my eyes. Yes, I frequently get misty. I just don't like to admit it.