Before I go any further with my story, I should probably tell you what the main point of me even writing my story is.
My Mother was mentally ill, she had some sort of personality disorder. My brother was also very sick, he was many, many years later diagnosed with Schizophrenia. I'm not sure Mom was ever diagnosed with anything other than she had a Dr. who prescribed her "Nerve pills". She had other pills too, but mostly to help her deal with the "nervous condition" she supposedly had. I know she took some very strong stuff at times, like Quayludes <sp> and librium, stuff like that. I know the quayludes as I tried them, she gave me one and I found I loved the feeling they gave me. I helped myself to them for a while, but when I took so many that I don't even remember what happened at school that day, and only vaguely remember getting home, I realized that wasn't something I wanted to feel ever again. They were laying all over the house, and I figured if she gave them to me, it couldn't be bad. Live and learn.
The reason for this blog is to show the effect mental illness has on the children living with it, what it can do to your life and how it can totally destroy a persons ability to function in a healthy world. I don't know how it is in the mental health field now, but back then I think they must not have known much about it. And for sure there was no rules or structures in place to protect the innocent ones living with it. If so, I certainly never benefited from it.
By writing my story, I hope to show my children that when I left them, it was from a place of total love and not what they grew up believing. I was protecting them the only way I knew how. I married their father when I was fifteen years old, I was already pregnant, and wasn't even old enough to drive a car. When I got my first driver license my husband had to sign his permission for me to get it. He had become my legal guardian, isn't that a hoot? Then after the first son was born, not even two years later I found out I was pregnant again. This time I was seventeen and still not even old enough to make my own decisions about my body. I wanted to have my tubes tied, I knew at that point, two babies were enough. My husband even had to sign his permission for me to do that. He was 7 years older than me, I suppose they thought he was smarter, more mature? I don't know. Why they would even allow a seventeen year old girl to have her tubes tied, is totally beyond me now. I regretted that decision many times afterwards, but it was only one more regret in a long list.
After our second son was born, I went into a depression so bad, I could hardly function. I wasn't able to give my sons even the simplest things, I felt so inadequate. I wanted to just stay in bed and not have to think about anything. Sleep was my only peace. My husband at the time was very jealous and insecure, even to the point of accusing me of having affairs behind the grocery store with the bag boys. I didn't know how to live with it. He didn't even like it if I asked him to watch the kids so I could get out of the house and go for a walk. He was just sure I was meeting someone behind his back. I had only moved location and traded one dominant sick personality for another. I am sure if they knew anything back then, I would have been diagnosed with post par-tum depression, I fit all the symptoms at the time. Of course, I don't even think they knew what that was back then.
Then one day I had gotten supper all ready and waiting for when the husband came home, but he came in drunk after drinking some wine with his buddies or something. He was late and I was very angry by then. And seeing him so drunk and so ugly, I knew I had had it with him. I threw the food in the trash, and the fight was on. I realize it was time I got out of there, but he wouldn't let me go, first he pushed me into a wall, while I was holding the baby. I'm not saying he was ever violent, I don't think he meant to do it, but he did. I was doing my best to get my stuff together and both babies ready to go. He went into the kitchen and came out with a small kitchen knife, not even a sharp one, threatening to kill himself with it. He even went so far as to act like he was stabbing himself in the chest with it. It was a butter knife for crying out loud, but I didn't know for sure at that point. I was screaming by then, the kids were crying, and our neighbors called the police. I made it to the car and before I could get it started he was at me again, through the window, yelling and screaming and acting such a fool, somehow I ended up not leaving at that moment, I think it was to avoid running him over as he was hanging through the window.
I got out of the car and went back inside, and the next thing I know he has his gun in hand, he is threatening to shoot himself or me telling me if I leave it will be over his dead body or mine. I just reached out and grabbed it out of his hands telling him to stay away from me, and ran back outside. He came at me again and I threw the gun down as hard as I could on the concrete sidewalk. It broke right at the handle, the barrel was completely broken off. It was about this time we both heard the sirens and knew it was for us. He picked up the part of the gun that held the bullets and ran inside. The police came around the house shortly after this asking me what was going on and where he was. I told them about the gun and what had happened and told them he wasn't dangerous, the gun was broken and showed them what was left on the ground. The first cop unhooked his gun and said he was going in and that the part of the gun the husband had was the business end and it was still very dangerous.
The next think I knew they were bringing him out of the house in handcuffs. They told me at that point that if I wanted him to be arrested I would have to sign a paper pressing charges against him. I signed it, I sure as hell didn't know how to deal with him, the wine had turned him into a maniac as far as I was concerned and I had, had enough of him to last a lifetime by that point.
I don't remember much detail of what happened after that, I do know that he was released the next day. His family were all very angry at me asking me why I didn't call them instead of having him arrested. I couldn't get through to any of them that I wasn't even given an opportunity to do that, even if I would have had the presence of mind to do it. I did what I had to do, and I was the one that was punished, they all just hated me for doing that, and his sister was my role model at that time, I thought she was the only one in that family that even cared about me at all. She was angry too, I was pretty much lost after that.
The husband had a lifelong dream back then to join the FBI, he wanted it more than anything. Of course with him having a record now, that was off the table. And who else could be to blame but me for signing the arrest thing. It was all on me, my fault, I ruined his life. No one could even see that it was him that brought it on, not me. I even felt for a long time that it was my fault. I was programmed by a long life of blame, that anything that went wrong was my fault somehow, it was part of my dependency on crazy people that brought it on I suppose.
It wasn't too long after that that I finally lost it completely, I had a total breakdown and had to get away from him, I really felt I had no other choices at all. It was either that or I would lose any sanity I had left. When I told him I had to go, the first of many attempts, he told me that I could take the kids, but it would be over my dead body. He had said that many times, and I believed him. I had seen how he was when he had a gun, I even saw him shoot at a deer one time and I think it was wounded, but he never tried to find it. It wasn't hunting season and he didn't even have a hunting rifle, it was a 22 bott line special, with a longer barren than most pistols. I'm not sure why that sticks in my mind, guns are not something I know much about at all, especially back then. I remember screaming at that deer telling her to run! Get out of here! But she just stood there with those big eyes looking at us.
So, when I left, I left with nothing, I ran and ran and ran. I left the kids with him, not only because I feared his threats, but because I had no way of raising them, and I knew it. I was barely eighteen years old, I had dropped out of school, I knew that I couldn't take them to my Mother's house, she wasn't someone that I would want to be around them for long amounts of time. I had nowhere to go with them, I had nowhere to go with myself either. All I could do was remember how bad it was for my brother growing up without a father. We didn't know what was wrong with him, no one knew, but in my mind it was because he didn't have a father, he had no man in his life to teach him what it was to be a boy. Even now a hundred years later, I believe that he if would have had a man around things might have turned out different. Even knowing now how sick he was, I believe that. I knew that if I took my sons with me, there would be no father to teach them, and I could not face them growing up to be anything like my brother.
I take full responsibility for leaving them, it was my fault I made that choice. I made the decision and I will live with it for the rest of my life. I am only just the last year or so realizing that I did the only thing I knew how to do to save them. They say we all have choices in this life, but looking back, I really didn't see any other choice I could make. The odds were all against us, I didn't know what else to do. And honestly, even now, knowing what I do, I can only see that I did the best thing I knew how to do at that time.
The one thing that was always steady in my mind, was that I love them both with all my heart. And I always will. I can't even really ask them for forgiveness, how can I ask them to do something that I can't do? There will always be in my heart the feeling of anger I have that I did what I did. I can't forgive that even to myself. How can I ask them for that? And someday when they may be able to do just that, it will make me happy only that they are able to get past all this pain, the hurt, the confusion and the wondering why?
We have a relationship now, of sorts, but I will never feel that I even have a right to give them advice or demand what most Mothers take for granted. The youngest one can't even call me Mom anymore. I will never feel that I deserve what love they care to share with me. I will always have my regrets and my pain, it may get easier with time to live with, but it will never be what I call normal.
So this story is for them, for them to heal and if it touches someone else's heart or helps someone else going through the same things, it is worth all of it. I am going to try to be totally honest with my story as best as I can remember, the bad as well as the good. I know it is the only way to make anyone understand, honestly and truly, who I am and what shaped me.
And with the help of my creator, I will now try to face what I never could before.
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