About that can of worms
So I have three questions:
- How did I survive that house?
- What has that past cost me…healthwise, lifewise, financially?
- And last – What in God’s name happened in our home that such abuse could take place?
For the remainder of this Albedo section, I will deal with those first two questions.
On that last one, I can see other people out there – including, and especially other women – shaking their heads at women like my mother, or like me, who endured that abuse. I can hear them defiantly pronounce: “THAT would never happen to me. I would have never stayed.”
I have a response for them:
“Yes. Yes, it could happen to you. More than you think….And yes, given the right circumstances, you, too, would have stayed.”
When people are so sure of how they would act in a hypothetical situation, especially a bad one, I think they are often just trying to separate themselves from that reality so they can feel better…or safer:
“Finding something wrong with battered women makes it possible for the rest of us to distance ourselves from them: ‘If I am different from battered women, I will not be battered. If she is different from other women, I do not have to do anything to help her.’”
From Alyce D. LaViolette’s and Ola W. Barnett’s book: It Could Happen to Anyone – Why Battered Women Stay.
That third question – WHY could it happen to anyone? – is a particular can of worms that I will deal with in the next book section – Citrinitas. That “yellow stage of greater insights” is the next stage in healing. It is the “returning.” The learning. The finally coming to see it for what it truly was, and understand it all.
For now, let me wrap up Albedo.
How DID I survive?
I spoke earlier of various testing tools that researchers use to measure the effects of trauma –
- How many bad things happen in the home – Adverse Childhood Experiences score (ACE)
- What positive influences exist within the home (PCEs)
- Are there beneficial influences, especially outside the home, to offer support (BCEs)
And for myself, I had a high ACE score – an indicator of poor future outcomes – as well as a low PCE score – again, a predictor of poor future outcomes.
Both of those combined set me up for a bleak future and possible re-victimization throughout my life, not to mention a host of physical and mental illnesses.
But there was one thing I had going for me – the BCE score. The beneficial things that happened outside my house. There, in that outer world my father tried to make us all fear and avoid, was my salvation, even as I didn’t realize it then.
BCE. Never have three letters wielded so much power to save a life. And I will share those below.
But first, there were a couple of positives that took place in my house that might have helped.
POSITIVE INSIDE INFLUENCES
Dad
As strange as it sounds, the very person who did the most damage also gave me the very tools I needed to fight back. There were actually some positive things he did, whether intentionally or not, that saved me.
I have often wrestled with the questions: Did he have any good in him? WHY did he do some things that were actually good or beneficial? WHAT were his motives? I have some thoughts – nuanced ideas that I will share on this later.
For right now, in total fairness, suffice it to say he gave some things that turned out to be helpful:
- He taught us to be tough. To defy the odds, whether out of ego or survival.
- He demanded we do well in school and grow up to do something.
- He took us places on vacation and wanted us to learn about the world
- He gave us extra lessons – art classes, dance classes
- He drilled it in – You WILL go to college
- He instilled in me a love of science, learning, books, and provided learning toys and kits for that
- He had an attitude that rules were for others. And if he had a goal, he didn’t let anyone else’s rules stop him.
- He showed interest and caring at times, whatever his motives.
Mom
She was always there. In the mornings. After school. When we were sick, she was there. Or if we were afraid at night.
She made clothes for us. For that matter, she made clothes for our Barbie and Ken dolls. She taught us how to make camping tents for our dolls out of paper bags, and our own version of “Barbie’s Dream House” out of cardboard boxes.
I loved walking downtown with her in the summers to go shopping and have lunch. And on those weeks when Dad was working the night shift, she would let us all relax and eat Swanson TV dinners for supper in front of the TV. She was always baking cookies, making pierogies, and had us help. I even liked helping her carry food upstairs to our grandparents’ apartment when she defrosted our freezer.
I was most proud of her for that time she spent a year working with one of the nuns to set up a library at our school. I loved to stop in that room at lunchtime to see her and say “Hi!”
In the later years of her marriage, she was so much more battered and bitter. And she was not always emotionally available. But at the end of the day, we were never alone either, and she always made sure we had food and clothes.
That part of “ME” that survived and stayed
The other part within that house that was positive was within me. Despite that he tried to break me right from day one, there was SOMETHING in me that stayed…that refused to be broken.
It showed up when I stood up to any of the neighborhood boys and never let them intimidate me. If they could do something, I could do it just as well…or better. So there was a feisty streak. And certainly, my father would have encouraged that because it would have matched his own ethic of not letting anyone tell you what you could or couldn’t do. HE might dominate us…but by God, he wouldn’t have put up with us folding in the face of anyone outside the family. We were his property and, as such, were expected to make him look good by being tough to anyone who challenged us… except him.
I was also starved for affection and approval. And doing well in school got praise from him. Again, maybe it was his ego that drove that – if we did well in school, he looked good.
But there was another part. I LOVED school. My own nature was that I loved learning. Loved books, microscopes, dissecting specimens, creating art… so many things fascinated me, just for my own enjoyment. And I also had dreams of being a scientist or teacher or “something,” and I knew that school was my ticket to those dreams… and claiming my own life…someday.
I was a dreamer, and could “escape” into my “Moments of Respite.” It was more likely a dissociation effort, but when things were at their worst, I could escape into my own mind. Imaginary places. Or into books, or nature, or any small thing around me. I had the ability to shut him out and “microfocus” into ANYTHING around me to help me sustain his onslaughts.
The other quality…?ability…I had was to take in succor from wherever I found it. And I’ll talk about that below.
There were countless spiritual books and philosophies….
And then there was God. Which I categorize as both “inside” AND outside the house. But then, why not? The nuns taught that God was everywhere. But within that house, I could pray. I believed God was with me. Would help me. And that power got reinforced outside the house as well.
POSITIVE OUTSIDE INFLUENCES
God…Catholicism…Mother Mary
As I said, there was always God. But not just as an inside force. There were those peaceful daily Masses before school. The gospel stories that the nuns and priests told and retold that fed my soul and gave me hope. And I believed all of it, and in God.
There was school itself. Not all of the nuns were the best, and their punishments could be mean. But they also created this place that was safe from outsiders. A place that had order to it… and rules you knew clearly and could understand. And they cared that you learned. They really did.
Then, there were the rituals – rosaries, processions with the kids in school to celebrate Lent, or Mary’s month of May. And there was Mother Mary herself.
She was that statue in church of her holding her crucified son. The POWER of those eyes in their maternal agony at losing her son. That a mother, ANY mother, could care about a child THAT much. I always felt like she was there to help me.
And then, most of all, there was God Himself…and HIS RULES. The rules about SIN. Because no matter how powerful Dad was….GOD’S POWER TRUMPED DAD’S. If there was ONE thing that drove me to stand up to Dad again and again and again, all through childhood, and drove me even more so as a young adult, it was the sense that WE WERE BREAKING GOD’S RULES. I simply could NOT abide that. No matter what Dad did to me. I was just convinced I needed to find the right way to get Dad to stop.
No matter how many times Dad said what we were doing was love, was good for the family, for him, for me, on and on and on, despite his decades of trying to brainwash and gaslight me… the things I learned from the nuns and the Church about sin, about impure deeds, about going to Hell…about HURTING God, outweighed anything Dad said.
If there was any force at all that sustained me with the “HOPE” that SOMEDAY it would be better, and that I wasn’t totally alone in my misery, it was the force of my belief that God wanted me to keep trying to do better, to hang in there, and to find a way to STOP THIS SINNING.
While I can look back now and see the many ways that Catholicism eventually would not work for me, I also know that it was the one force that drove me to NEVER STOP TRYING TO STOP DAD. And THAT would eventually get me out of that house.
So for that, I will always be grateful.
Resilience – taking succor wherever you can find it
Actor Jane Fonda, in a Fresh Air interview, spoke of her life, her own sorrows at losing her mother to suicide at a young age. Of her wound of growing up without that love. And of the deep sorrow of learning years later that her mother’s suicide was rooted in being sexually abused and raised in an abusive household.
When asked why she kept striving in life despite her personal pain, Fonda talked about resilience, which to me incorporates the attitudes of hope and tenacity:
“Resilience is such an interesting thing…I think people are born with it…resilience is when a young child who is not getting love at home, kind of — there’s a radar that’s scanning the horizon. If there’s a warm body that maybe could love her or teach her something, you go there. You find love where you can. You find support where you can. That’s a resilient child. That was me.”
And that was me. I never gave up on trying to find love instead of refusing it. I never gave up hoping – at least until my late 20s – that it would finally get better.
Whether it was a friendly nun, my grandparents, the old Slovak ladies at church who always said they were “Str-r-r-o-n-g like Bulls,” the mom of one of my school friends, or my art teacher…there were people who showed kindness, caring, and empathy. And that Slovak culture had a grounding and sense of belonging to it that fed my soul even from a distance.
So, for those moments, I reveled in the love and soaked up as much as I could get. It was like I was a starving person who occasionally found a stash of food, so I would gather up all I could and stockpile it against the times when there would be none…or violence.
And t least while I was young, I had friends – the neighborhood kids who all went to the same Catholic school I did. So for that time in my younger years, I would revel in any mom’s attention.
It would be later, in high school and on, that I would be more alone, more the outcast, and the chances to soak up caring were more sparse. Yet even there, I found a way.
High School
“Quod Facis Bene Fac – What You Do, Do Well.”
This was emblazoned on the front of the small manual I was given before starting my freshman year in high school. I LOVED that manual. That summer I CONSUMED IT, several times. I read every single description of every single class that was offered.
Earth Science, English Literature, Poetry, Seminars in World Affairs, World Civilization, German….Oh my God, a veritable FEAST of learning opportunities. I wanted to take ALL of them. Learn EVERYTHING. My heart reveled in the possibilities.
I then read the names of every single teacher…their degrees…where they went to school…what subjects they taught. I analyzed all the different courses of study: Business, College Preparation, Mechanical Arts. And the different levels – A Level, B Level, Honors. And CLUBS! Imagine being able to learn to debate, play chess, or be part of ANYTHING after school.
That book showed me that this school was my ticket to my future. And I cherished every word about it.
Maybe the most wonderful thing was that for the first time in my life… this book offered me the power of CHOICE…I had choices for what to study.
And on that first day of school, I was given a computer printout that listed my classes, the levels I was assigned to, the rooms the classes were in — I was in awe that I could move to different rooms for every class.
But most of all on that card was the column of the utmost power – the one with the two-letter initials for a teacher in each class. And for English I – A, I studied the two letters – TD. NEVER have two letters meant so much to a person’s life….
TD
To this day, “TD” and I are still friends. And all I can say is, thank God for TD.
This person, this AMAZING, passionate, caring teacher, was the major turning point of my young life. If ever there was the power of one person to alter my life’s trajectory in a GOOD way, that totally countered what my father had done to ROB my life, it was her.
TD, Theresa Doyle. English teacher extraordinaire. I thank God for her and the power of example and caring she gave me.
There is too much to say in this piece about her…about WHY teachers save lives and should be paid huge sums of money for what they do.
But here are two links to the post I wrote honoring her, and what she gave me at a most critical moment in my life. One is my Substack blog, the other is my WordPress blog. Same entry, different blog. But the love for her is the same.
College/Hospital
The years beyond high school I have written about in the first half of this book, in the Old Country section. Suffice it to say it was rough. Lonely. A time of utter despair and near suicide. But in between those moments, there were still the occasional teacher, co-worker, friend, job opportunity, and college class that kept me going. Until finally a nun at a retreat center who lit the final match to my breaking out of that house.
From then on, it was the blessing of several very caring, compassionate, skilled therapists who would help me find my way through desperation, rebuilding, to thriving. The many friends. Buddhism. Judaism. Teachers, monks, rabbis….
Most of all, they helped me be ready for and stay married to the man who would change my life – my husband. His enduring love, even through our hardest struggles, his willingness to challenge me to grow, and then to challenge himself to grow, has been the ultimate gift. It helped us survive as a couple, continue to heal, and to bring into the world our biggest gift, our son.
Up next
What did all of this cost me….
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
Soul Mosaic 
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