I realized when I went back and read last weeks diary that I had not really said all I wanted to say about my mother. So this week I will try to fix that. Because last week I wrote in part of my family mythology.
In my family, and maybe in yours, there was a kind of family mythology. My father was the devil, I think even he agreed with that one most of the time. My oldest brother was the responsible one. My older sister the good girl. My other brother was the troubled one. I was the baby. My mother was a saint.
That was how I always felt in growing up. That was how we all talked about each other to each other. But my mother was not a saint. Saint's don't have claws. My mother had claws. They weren't the really long over-painted kind that some ladies wear nowadays, but they dug into the flesh of your upper arm real good when she wanted your attention though.
The reality is that my mother participated in some of the abuse. Not the sexual abuse. She whipped us with belts, shoes, hot wheel tracks, switches, brushes, wooden spoons, etc. She also did what I called in my teen years "the flying mom slap". That is when you aren't expecting it and get a good slap in the face. She also participated in the emotional abuse. She used to say things like: "We love you all equally! We never wanted any of you." She participated in the neglect as well. She was there when I fell out of a tree and lost consciousness. It was her prescription painkillers that they gave me instead of taking me to the hospital. She sent us to school without lunch or money to buy it. She was the one who finally took me to the eye doctor after the school threatened to turn them in to the state if they didn't. I was thirteen and was already legally blind without corrective lenses by then.
If she knew about the sexual abuse, she never let on. When I was a little girl we moved around a lot. the thing is my father always found a house with a 'jack and jill bathroom'. The bedroom that my sister and I shared was always connected to my parents room by a bathroom. This made it convenient for my father as he could presumably just tell my mother he was in the bathroom when he was molesting one of us. I think she knew. I remember crying so hard and begging her to take me with her whenever she left me alone with him. She couldn't protect herself from him, how could she have protected me. But at the same time I am still angry that she did not at least try. I managed to protect my child. That makes me wonder why she couldn't do the same.
My mother suffered worse abuse than I did. I was not raped by my father or his friends. I was not raped until I was 11 years old and then they weren't family members. So I can say with honesty she had it worse. I was able to eventually get out of abusive relationships. She stayed in what I consider the worst relationship ever until she managed to drink herself to death. I do not know why we are so different.
Once when I was a teenager and we were arguing(probably about her racism) and she said to me, "I am going to give you the mothers curse. I hope that someday you have a child just like you!" I very quickly retorted that if I did I hoped to be a better mother than her. I could see that I had really hurt her, and at the time I still considered her a saint so I felt really bad. She looked really sad and just said, "me too". We can break the hearts of people we really care about just that easily. Later she came back to me and said, "You know, I tried to give you kids a better childhood than I had. If you give your kids a better childhood and they give their kids a better childhood, then maybe things will turn out okay one day."
My mother managed to finally drink herself to death in June of 1988. I was six months pregnant with my older daughter. I understand what her problems were and where they came form. I still wish she could have protected us and recognize that as a failure on her part. Mostly I just miss her and wish I could tell her this. I had a better childhood than you did Mom. My daughter had a better childhood than I did. Her children, I believe, will have it even better. And it is not a curse when I wish for my daughter to have a child just like she was.
This is actually the first time I have cried while writing a diary.
This week: I may have mentioned this in a previous diary. Nearly every person I know who is on disability for mental health reasons was abused as a child. The only ones I am not sure about are the people who will not speak about their childhood at all.
This week a very close friend of mine told me for the first time. I will call her Sandy. Sandy never said "this is why I am disabled", but...
We were talking about sex and she said she was thirteen when she first did it. The way she described it was like a child. "I didn't know what he was doing! It hurt so bad I told him 'I'm telling'" Sandy was raped at the age of thirteen while on a date and all these years later she does not describe it as rape. Sandy really had not been taught anything about sex and when she told her mother what happened her mother laughed at her! She told me this in front of several other people and said it as if it were a joke. The look in her eyes told me otherwise. Even for people who find it impossible to talk about their experiences, there is the need to tell. there is the need to express it. there is a need for understanding. Sandy told me the only way she could and I hoe she knows that I completely understood.