Soul Mosaic

No clear path

Recovered from my surgery, I was back into the grind of work and home. The temporary reprieve had given me time to look at my life as a whole. There were so many conflicting emotions, but no answers. Life was a mixed bag of struggles interspersed with searches for new ways to find peace. So often, it just seemed like a long, bleak road through a swamp, with no indication that there was ever an end to it, though every once in a while, the sun would shine through.

As to solutions, most of my thoughts about how to fix things were so “outer-focused.” I was looking for someone to rescue me – a boyfriend. God. Anybody. Those would alternate with times of hope where I would try new things, find simple joys in the moment, and learn more about who I was and what I wanted. Then I would dissolve into despair again.

And then, there’s work

If there was one clear thing in all of this, it was that most of the time, I just flat-out hated work. But even there, that would alternate with moments of tolerance, and sometimes even liking it. At the very least, I liked the people and the environment. Just not my boss. I liked her as a person, but not as a boss. She had her own issues that manifested in trying to find fault all the time. However, I think my own filter of just wanting to be left alone colored that assessment. And it was also clear I felt little confidence yet in my ability to do my job, and so overall, I just wanted a way to escape everything.

2/2/79

“Lately, I seem to be so filled with aggression. A great deal of it comes from work…the job itself is tension-producing – there’s so much work, and we are understaffed. Mistakes can’t be made because it could be dangerous for the patient…so my nerves are always on edge…and I resent having to take courses related to my job…I used to look forward to years of working, not wanting to be married right away, never having kids because I’d have to quit working. But now I would be very content to get married and have kids. I want to be a writer. The other day at coffee, I just sat there looking out the window, trying to make sense of my depression…I am just not cut out for the medical field….*

If I were independently wealthy, I would love to raise chickens, rabbits, maybe a cow, kids, and write…I think the solitary life…is more my line…I enjoy being home and doing things there….it seems I’ve lost my desire to fight and I just want to be free of such hassles…

I would appreciate having a meaningful relationship, maybe eventually marriage. And a few kids wouldn’t bother me. But it just doesn’t ever seem to work out.”

I am working at a job that, while I like it, I don’t love it. My heart lies in the area of writing…but my job is a practical matter. It gives me the money I need to live and do what I want.”

Reading this, I am grateful I didn’t have the chance to marry or have any kids at that point in my life. I would have made a terrible wife and parent. I wasn’t really wanting those things, just desperate for a way out. And at that time, it seemed like the only choice was finding someone to marry and following the path everyone else did, which meant kids.

But anyone who says having a few kids “wouldn’t bother them” or lists having kids AFTER wanting chickens, rabbits, and a cow, is definitely NOT ready for parenthood. And I find it interesting that I didn’t even mention a spouse there. Speaks volumes about what I was really looking for, which was peace, quiet, and to be left alone.

Dating?

Yet my journal at this time was still filled with entries about who I could date. Who might be a worthwhile candidate for a spouse? But it was such a confusing set of emotions. There would be entries about not wanting to marry just “anyone,” and about the fact that one shouldn’t feel like they “have to date” someone just to be like everyone else. Those would be followed by lists of the different men I met or dated on-and-off at the time. And of course, mixed into my own mess of thoughts in this were my father’s encouragements to “not rush into anything because I had so much going for me.”

The one young man I liked best of all was in the Navy. We had been on and off. I would reach out, we’d date, then I’d back off and go silent. It didn’t help that he wanted the Navy as a career. I didn’t want that life. But still, my interest in him was the most serious, and I was always using him as the yardstick to measure any new date against. My journals questioned, “Is this love?” But looking back, I now know that if you are also at times forcing yourself to be with someone, that isn’t love. More like a desperate hope for an escape.

As to work, despite my depression about it, I kept hoping that by some miracle, everything would eventually just fall into place and get better. But most days, I simply hated it.

Trying to build a life

The one positive about my job was that my work schedule had a routine to it — weekday day shifts, every third weekend with days off during the week, and the occasional dreaded 11 p.m. – 7 a.m. shift. This routine was a blessing because it gave me a chance to explore other areas of life and expand my interests. I was trying desperately to build a whole life for myself, like the people I worked with. They weren’t always thrilled about their jobs either, but jobs were a necessary evil that allowed you to enjoy the other things in life. So I started searching for things that I loved to do and gave balance to work.

I started by taking every opportunity I could that winter to go skiing. We lived 15 minutes from the Mohawk Mountain ski area. And with lower weekday prices, especially on “Ladies’ Day,” I was able to get in a lot of time on the slopes. Not only did I become a pretty good skier, but the peace and solitude of it all were a salve for my soul.

If anything described my “outside-of-work” life at that time, it was “immersed in home activities.” Whether it was the family garden or chores around the yard, I was learning all kinds of life skills.

Simple things like running the tractor to cut the lawn, replacing the shear pins on the snowblower when a rock jammed its blade, changing the oil in my car, or helping my father tap trees and make maple syrup. It was a time of new experiences that I mostly enjoyed.

I say “mostly” because the garden, which could at times be a soothing ritual, was at other times an unfair taskmaster. Or rather, my father was. If he decided on a given night to pick bushels of vegetables, he expected you to drop everything and help get them into the freezer. It didn’t matter if you had planned something else. He considered this a family function because it was about “feeding the family.”

Family and heritage

There were some family moments that I loved, though. My grandmother, who had tried to commit suicide when I was in high school, was living in a nearby convalescent home. She seemed to be at peace there, and we would bring her to our house every Sunday. So I spent time helping care for her — a way to give back for all the years she gave us love. I would also visit my great aunt, who still lived at our old house in town. I would bring her the Sunday newspaper and chat about her life over breakfast, or I would take her shopping. While it was all family-oriented, still, these moments fed my soul.

I also began to explore my own Slovak heritage more by learning to make some of the family favorites. There were “pirohy,” which were the Slovak version of ravioli, stuffed with potatoes and sharp cheddar cheese. But my absolute favorite was learning to make the best kolach I could. Kolach was a bread loaf made from a sweet, raised dough and stuffed with ground walnuts. I LOVED making them, and spent hours with my great aunt “defining” a family recipe. She had always just taken “some of this” and a “little of that.” So I took her “handful of whatever” and measured it into some amount I could put in a recipe. I would then spend the next 25 or so years, making it every year for weddings or holidays as gifts. And over that time, I adapted her recipe into one that exceeded my hopes!

My own creation

While my father was absorbed with his large-scale vegetable gardening and harvesting, I decided to pursue my own project. I was fascinated by herbs, plants that were just “different,” partly wild, maybe even “weeds,” but useful in the kitchen or as fragrances.

So I took a spot of dirt near the vegetable garden, carved out my own space, bought every bag of herb seeds I could find, and planted them all. With one exception, they all did well. Dill was the one herb I loved that eluded my efforts to grow it. But still, this effort was totally mine – my personal interest, initiative, efforts, and success. I was so pleased.

Diving into the arts

The other things I indulged myself in were classes that spoke to my love of the arts. I went to the local community college and took a music appreciation class. I’d always loved chamber music and classical pieces, and this broadened my awareness of both composers and the special sounds of each instrument. To this day, I just LOVE clarinet and oboe pieces best of all.

I was also introduced to a genre I never knew of — Gregorian Chants. Their simple meditative melodies and Latin words soothed my soul, just the litanies from church when I was a child. We even took a trip to a place I’d been unaware of: The Abbey of Regina Laudis in nearby Bethlehem, CT. It was the home for an order of cloistered nuns who focused on this music as well as manual labor on their farm. Once a year, they would have a festival to sell their herbs and especially their homemade cheeses, which were, no pun intended, divine.

Add to this, I also continued with my writing correspondence course. And I discovered a local artist who gave lessons in her home to adults once a week in the evenings. That became a refuge and a regular outlet for my creativity. It was also an opportunity to try and bond with my mother. My father had created a rift between us over the years. By having my mother come along, it was a small way of trying to connect with her in spite of him.

Trying to connect with Mom

The other thing I did to further that bond was to take day trips or share errand days with Mom. Some days it was just to go out for breakfast and run errands in town. Other days, we would head to Hartford, or sometimes the Abbey, just to visit their chapel. And yet other days we’d head up the peaceful Route 7 into southern Massachusetts and visit shops in all the small towns along the way. Those were moments that had mixed results. It was shared time. There was love. It was a break for both of us from him. But there was always a wall of sorts between us that neither of us dared approach.

The social scene

At work, friendships began to take hold. I joined the bowling league and got to meet people from all over the hospital. And the people in the lab were always celebrating something, throwing wedding or baby showers, or hosting craft or baking events. Or sometimes just parties for no reason.

That was fun too, because for one of those parties, which usually involved a bit too much alcohol, one of my work friends invited me to stay over at her new home that she and her husband had just bought. It was convenient because the party was far from where I lived, and she was close by. Of course, as always, my father made a comment about why I was staying over at a married friend’s home. Again, I just tuned him out. I wasn’t going to have him sully everything with his mind.

Still, there were times that I was the odd man out at some of these things, especially if the event involved “couples”:

“There’s a Christmas bowling banquet coming up. I really don’t want to go. I have to come by myself, have no one to dance with, and I’m tired of sitting there and looking happy or the other way, while others fool around and have intimate conversations. I can’t talk about the things I enjoy because they aren’t interested. And when they make comments like “We can’t talk about ‘those things’ in front of you because you’re not supposed to know about those things”… it hurt at their insensitivity.”

The surprise at Corning, NY

The fall of this year brought a couple of vacation trips. First, we brought one of my siblings out to her college in Michigan. That was a long, grueling drive, and on the way back, my parents and I stopped for the night in Syracuse. The next morning, my father, being his usual miserable self and wanting to hurry up and get home, kept yelling at me to get going or do this or that while I was driving. \

I suddenly flashed on that episode from childhood where he had lost his license and was harping at my mother as she drove us to an amusement park. That was the moment she floored the car, whipped it into a ditch, and told him to shut up because he lost his license and she didn’t want to hear it.

So as I drove through rush hour traffic that morning in Syracuse with him nagging at me constantly, I remembered that moment and channeled my mother from back then. I floored the gas pedal in traffic, then slammed on the brakes and yelled at him, “This is MY car, and I’m driving. So shut up!” It was a rare moment of my standing up for myself, and an even rarer moment of his backing off.

The other trip, though, had a different kind of surprise. An almost eerie predictor of things to come.

We took a weekend trip to Corning, New York, partly to visit the Finger Lakes winery region, and also to tour the Corning Glass Factory. While the wineries were fun, it was the glass factory, or maybe more, the factory outlet there, that held the surprise.

Wandering through the aisles of casserole bowls and baking dishes, I stopped in front of a large box. It was a complete dish set in the pattern called Spring Blossom Green. Those dishes just CALLED to me. Here I was, living at home, with no plans or hopes at that moment of having my own place. But something in that moment just told me to buy them. That I HAD to have that set. That SOMEDAY I WOULD be on my own. So, start by buying a simple dish set. My mother encouraged me. My father didn’t notice.

I still have those dishes. And love them. They were the first call I’d ever heard to an independent life. My first step toward freedom.

The wild emotional ride

The remainder of that year, though, was wildly up and down, emotion-wise:

9/25/79

“Well, in a never-ending cycle of things get bad, get better, get bad, get better, right now it’s a down cycle. I’m dissatisfied with my job. My job has my nerves down to a frazzle. Even now, I’m scared to death to go in tomorrow. I have no faith in my work — even if I make no mistakes, I live in fear that I’m going to make one…I’m hyper and nervous the whole time I’m there. I’m not interested in my work. I don’t know if I’m not interested because I’m nervous, or I’m nervous because I’m not interested.”

I was totally in the wrong direction for a career. Maybe given the job market then, I had no choice, but it was obvious where my heart was:

9/30/79

“Today is such peace. I’ve spent the whole afternoon working on my writing course assignment, writing and rewriting until it’s just right…Does wonders for the spirit. I don’t want to go to work tomorrow…I’m nervous, paranoid, and lack confidence.”

But in many ways, the soul disturbance ran much deeper than my immediate job:

11/16/79

“More often than not, my frustration is because I don’t feel I’m getting in life what I want out of it, and I don’t mean financially or career success. I want very much to feel as if I’m doing some good for someone on earth. There’s so much I’d like to give. Giving money is fine {Save the Children}, but it isn’t satisfying. Giving of myself, IS. Helping someone even in small ways. I know I make my parents happy, and am helping them to readjust to a new stage of life with grown-up kids who aren’t always around…my being there helps them get through it…I know I make my grandmother and great aunt happy. I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad….God has His reasons, I guess. It’s just that I’m impatient to have a life, a husband, a family of my own…I try to hang in there, but some days I could really scream.”

The frustration alternated constantly with such a crushing depression that some days it was all I could do to get out of bed:

11/23/79

“My eventual dream is to write. But it requires a great deal of initiative and self-drive, which must come from within…a cultivation of the proper attitude and self-discipline to do it even when I don’t feel like it. Take now, for instance. I just want to crawl into bed and forget this – forget everything – I’m too depressed to FEEL like writing – I’d just as soon close my eyes and escape into unconscious oblivion – my dream life, ie, much more interesting than my real life…I don’t feel like doing anything, and that depresses me because I know I’m wasting time and talent…to be squandering it away, it’s life that will never be regained, time that will never be gotten back. It’s so necessary to use every minute, to be grateful for it – even the dark, depressing times you must try to grit your teeth and apply yourself even when you just want to tell everyone to fuck off, even yourself.”

11/2979

“This morning I just couldn’t seem to get out of bed. It was almost noon before I got up. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I just couldn’t get motivated.”

World events

And these entries were mixed in with ones about the very scary developments in the world:

11/21/79

“Iran is not any better today – in fact, worse.”

It was the time of the Iran hostage crisis, nuclear bombs, Love Canal pollution, train derailments, and gas costs through the roof because of the Oil Embargo. And inflation was very high.

The most unnerving thing

It was the next entry, though, that outranked all others for emotional distress that year:

12/4/79

“My period is overdue almost a month…I don’t know why it’s so late… and it makes me nervous….”

On March 18, 2024, The Atlantic magazine had an article whose headline read:

“DNA TESTS ARE UNCOVERING THE TRUE PREVALENCE OF INCEST:

People are discovering the truth about their biological parents with DNA–and learning that incest is far more common than many think.”

During these years back at home, I managed to avoid Dad as much as I could – being busy with activities, working weekends, and sometimes just incurring his wrath because I pushed back on his advances.

But still, he was pressuring me more and more when I was around, and his wrath was even worse. And he would take his opportunities to grope, probe me after a date, or try to “get near the entrance” orally or otherwise. And I was supposed to be happy about it, required to let him know he “succeeded” in doing a great job.

On one occasion, even as he was not “in,” he was close and almost started to climax. He pulled back because I think the only thing he feared was getting me pregnant. And for sure, that December, he was scared when I mentioned being late.

I didn’t even want to contemplate what it would have been like if I were pregnant. Fortunately for me, my menstrual cycle was often irregular, even if not generally this late. And my period did finally show up. I assume all of that irregularity was due to the amount of stress I was under. But this incident did seem to have the one effect of him never again getting that risky.

Is this love?

Perhaps that was even the reason that when my boyfriend was home on leave over the holidays, he encouraged me to go out with him. I myself was torn about it because my boyfriend had been late in contacting me, forgot to touch base, and generally seemed to be pulling away.

I felt that if he couldn’t even give me the courtesy of a timely phone call for a date, I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for him. So I made a point of going out with someone else and generally avoiding returning my boyfriend’s calls.

Eventually, Dad came upstairs and quietly suggested that I should not run from facing the situation. I was surprised. But I also knew that this boyfriend was the only one my father liked. Long story short, I did end up going out and having a good time. Which was all the more difficult because I knew he was heading back to his base soon. We would have a generally good time together. I was attracted to him. But I had serious reservations that this could work. And even as we enjoyed each other, a deep conversation was hard to get. All I knew was that I was drawn to him and put off by things at the same time. Was this supposed to be love? I had doubts.

What next?

And as for Dad, while he stopped being that risky, and had even encouraged me to go out on that date, he still made sure to grope me when I came home….Some things change. Some stay the same.

Would next year change anything? After all, I had a dish set now….

Who Was I?

The spring of 1978 saw a shift for me. Having left the job at the UCONN Health Center for the one in Torrington, I had, if not decreased my stress, at least “changed it.”

I was free of commuting with my father. That in itself was a relief. And the environment at the community hospital was much different from the high-paced research environment at UCONN. Even though I worked in the microbiology department at the hospital lab, I had much more contact with staff from all the different lab sections — hematology, chemistry, blood bank, etc. It was like one large unified section – the lab – versus individual isolated “kingdoms.” And the staff interactions were more collaborative and friendly. So there were those improvements.

But there is an old saying – “No matter where you go, there you are.” And the question was – who did I bring with me into that lab? Where had life left me after the last several years of intense driving toward my degree?

Only criticisms and questions

Looking back through journal entries, I noticed some trends.

9/23/76 – The start of my last year of college at the hospital:

“I want to remember when I’m older, how I feel now…I will write down a number of topics that serve as my major problems and about which I have the fewest answers:

• My inability to make decisions, especially if it involves going against someone’s will or requires a large amount of independence.*
• My overwhelming need to please people (especially those close to me) even if it means sacrificing my own desires*
• The fact that everything is “relative.” There is no right or wrong per se, no clear, cut-and-dry answers…This is tied up with my need to please everyone & my inability to make decisions. I can no longer decide for myself what **I** feel is right or wrong.*
• When am I too selfish, and when do I give in when I shouldn’t?*
• Where do I go from college…Can I cope with higher responsibility?*
• What do I want out of a man?
• *This might all sound like I am crazy – maybe I am. I prefer to prevent going crazy. Instead of ignoring my problems, I prefer to face them…”

I am struck by three things here: 1) I wrote of myself in such critical terms – seeing myself only as a list of problems. I didn’t list one positive quality. 2) On some level, I was already aware that I wasn’t “taking the reins” of my life. 3) Despite that, I knew I wanted to take action. I just had no idea what. So I just ‘existed.’”

Great insights, totally wrong conclusions

4/28/77 – While in the hospital program in Bridgeport:

“By psychological attacks, he elicits the desired reaction and programs the person’s responses to give him the desired effect, affection, whatever. Creating feelings of guilt, or of some sort of debt owed that should be repaid, he slowly grasps control of that person until they are no longer an entity of their own but rather an extension of him. They cannot function without him….but the person has nothing to be guilty about, and the right to maintain one’s own entity….It is precisely this last item that must be conveyed to the parent…one must demand one’s rights…”

As an aside, I will note that being away in Bridgeport gave me enough distance to start to grasp some healthy truths about my father and how he operated. There was hope and the spark of independence forming in what I wrote above. I am actually surprised at the clarity I had in that moment to see the way he was manipulating me. At the same time I note how “ambiguously worded” my entries were. I wrote in a detached “third-person observer” style, careful never to mention that I was speaking of my father when I said “he,” or of myself when I spoke of “that person” or “one.” I was always afraid Dad might find my journals and read them. If my own body and orifices weren’t my own to control, why would I expect my journal privacy would be respected?

But whatever correct insights I started out with, given my brainwashing, I then drew the absolutely wrong and unhealthy conclusions, shades of that person who never wanted to upset another. And as always, I spoke in vague coded terms of “they” and “anyone”:

“They say one must get these rights regardless of what they must do to free themselves — They are WRONG….A parent, husband, friend who puts such demands on another will not be helped by cold rejection — anyone who can heartlessly walk up to someone and inform her or her to leave them alone deserves to be smothered by another. After all, it might be an attachment born out of deep love, respect, and a sort of plea for help…. All our lives, our parents are throwing out the life line to us….then all of the sudden comes the realization that this function they perform is no longer needed — this is as it should be for the child, now an adult must be able to function independently…But it leaves the parent hanging to threads of what once was…what the parent forgets is that their function is only one piece of their whole person, and there is still more to life.

It is for this reason that the heartless severing of familial ties just because one “comes of age” …is the wrong approach to true freedom…True understanding of what the parent is going through is essential. PATIENCE, even when resentment is overflowing…and above all, showing LOVE…to reassure the parents they are not useless. Instead, expose them to new things. Much patience, love, honesty, effort, and communication are required like never before…it is easier to run away, but more satisfying to succeed.”

There are so many things wrong with these two paragraphs. First, NO ONE deserves to be smothered by another for any reason. But I apparently thought it was my job to put my parents’ emotional needs ahead of mine, and my job to “rescue them” and help them navigate their “mid-life empty nest” issues.

Also, the conclusion that their attachment to me might be deep love and respect was totally wrong. Deep love and respect are shown by honoring the individuality of a person and setting them free. So while I had moments of total clarity as to what was operating, I had such a sense that it was my job to sacrifice myself for their sakes…as if that was true, healthy love.

The wrong path

9/28/77 – A year later, near the end of that hospital internship, right before I moved back home:

“I would like:

• To get in my car…leave this house {grandparents in Bridgeport}
• Move to New York or Boston or somewhere away from here, home, and that job in Farmington
• Be a writer or teacher
• QUIT Medical Technology right now

I feel so trapped….I am not happy here in Bridgeport…in the Med Tech field…and I can go home, but I feel trapped there….

I feel like exploding…like I am hanging in limbo…I could go back to school for something else, but not just yet, as I have to finish this first. And I want a new relationship, but not just yet because I am still waiting to hear from him {current boyfriend}…”

2/27/78 – While still at the UCONN research lab:

“In a previous entry, where I made mention of dealing with parents and loved ones – a labor of love yet one not without its frustrations…frustrations from life at Bridgeport, my parents, school….and my conclusion: The worst was yet to come…, the pain is somewhat eased…Though it looked bleak…one survives, and things can get better.”

So this is the state of my thinking as I entered the new job. None of these entries gives a glowing assessment of my life then. I was “surviving and waiting.”

I hated my career choice – not a setup for professional success. Frankly, Medical Technology was not my passion. It was a means to an end — getting an income. The burning question in my mind always was — I want to be a writer or teacher, so how do I get there?

And I was waiting for some boyfriend to free me from my home. That was what everyone did back then — either date someone, get married and move out, or live at home with your parents.

One bit of initiative I demonstrated though, was to take a writing correspondence course through the Newspaper Institute of America. It was geared toward teaching you journalistic skills and writing for publication. Everything from the basics of grammar to to how to structure a feature article and spice it with fiction techniques.

It was perfect because I was afraid of failing at my dream of being a writer. This was a slow-, and self-paced approach I could do at home — a low-risk, “putting a toe in the water” attempt. And while I didn’t complete the entire course, I did manage to complete the first half. The instructor provided a a lot of quality feedback and positive encouragement. Someone actually thought I could write for publication. For a second attempt at taking a writing class, this was the success I was capable of at that moment.

As to home, I vacillated between thinking it was the best, or getting in my car, driving off, never to return. I just wanted to run away…from all of it. Not exactly a way to start a life. I needed a break from the last several years of pushing and pushing toward a goal I didn’t want.

A moment of respite to think

The fall brought me that. I had been having a lot of abdominal pain — something not unusual when sexual abuse is present. But no one knew that then. I had consulted a doctor who concluded it was my gallbladder and so scheduled me for surgery.

These days, before that happens, medical professionals check to see if the patient has been abused. Back then, no one questioned anything. The x-ray of my abdomen seemed to show a shadow around the gallbladder. Combined with my symptoms, full abdominal surgery was the next step — there was no such thing as the less invasive endoscopic surgery back then. They just opened my abdomen, removed my gallbladder and the appendix since they were “in the neighborhood,” and then closed me up.

About that gallbladder shadow? There was nothing there. It was perfectly fine. That pain was diagnosed years later as Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Again, very common in people who have been sexually abused. But at that point, I didn’t care.

Frankly, despite the pain, I didn’t mind. The surgery required an 8-week recuperation at home. I got to stay home from work with sick-time pay. And Dad had to leave me alone. It was just what I needed.

For whatever reason, I pulled out my oil paints, which I’d abandoned since college. And I spent the next 8 weeks painting. Painting and thinking. A lot of thinking…

Seeds of answers

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”

Brene Brown

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

I have spent the last several days deeply reading my journals from those early years. So many revelations, as well as seeds of answers. So, I will share some journal quotes to show a bit of who I was in my 20s, and then add some insights I gleaned.

What you never see

One of the reasons I never looked back before was the high level of shame I felt at still living in that abusive home until 28, AND thinking it was a generally loving, if imperfect home.

But when you don’t even realize it’s wrong, you don’t know you have to fight back. And the reality was, my home world wasn’t just “imperfect,” it was REALLY wrong. But at that point, I was totally unaware of the truth. Why? What was missing that I could not see the obvious?

(more…)

The Yo-Yo

When we were kids, everyone had a Yo-Yo. For sure, we dreamed of making our toy do all the tricks they showed on TV, though most of us failed.

Yet we were happy just to keep that disc going up and down as long as possible. You could feel the initial energy in the string as you whipped the wooden disc downward, then felt that disc shoot right back up.

But eventually, the “energy” stored in the string would start to wane. The disc would drop down, but only return halfway, then a quarter, until finally, it just stopped and dangled there, inert at the end of its string.

Then you would either take the disc, rewind the string around it, and start over, or give up and put the toy away.

That was a good description of my life.

Cycles

“Surviving under such conditions puts a constant, draining demand on both body and mind. Each day stretches the limits of your endurance, siphoning your energy as if simply making it through is a battle you fight over and over again. The weight of this exhaustion is invisible, but it’s there…a cycle that leaves no room for rest or reflection…the brain, molded by the forces of environment and experience, turns its focus inward. The aperture narrows to the present moment, obscuring potential dreams and possibilities….blur any vision of the future, making it difficult to see beyond the pressing needs of now.”

Daria Burke, pg 72, Of My Own Making

My life was like a Yo-Yo. I’d push forward for a while, then just run out of steam and dangle helplessly. It was the cycle of being pushed to my limits and beyond, then collapsing. Each time, I thought it was the last and my life was over.

Yet, after a period of dormant despair, I’d feel the tug of a tiny spark deep within. I don’t know why it was there, but it was. Just a tiny ember of hope waiting to be fed kindling, then small sticks, until it was nursed into a real fire.

So, after a long period of giving up, just as in the past…and as would be in my future, I would regroup, pull me back together, and try again for a way to make things better.

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The painting: Entry Forbidden

By my mid-20s, I watched everyone around me move on into their adult life, relationships, and marriages. They moved in a world that I was denied entry to. I was an outsider who had nothing, no one, no hope of anything. I felt like a freak and an aberration of nature. Hiding my secret part of life left me feeling so dirty and shameful. I was just at my wits’ end.

And he was always leering at me, and after me. Even if I tried to reach for someone in my life, I just felt like no one could or would love me if they knew what I had to do to survive. So I gave up. I avoided him as much as I could until his rage was unbearable, then just let him have his way. I was the walking dead…

Facing “the failures”

Even though, as I do this and find it is necessary and worth it, there’s nothing like writing about the “failure periods” of your life to flood you with shame. The more you dig to heal, the more of those times that come up. Their sting still throbs, and maybe more intensely now, because revisiting them feels like you are freshly slicing open scarred-over wounds. They stand there before you in all their stark reality, with no way to sugar-coat what they were or escape what you felt. The only choice is to run but then never heal, or to face them fully head-on and just hurt as you look closer for what really happened, and wait for the understanding and acceptance that will transform them.

Now the truth is, I was doing the best I could at any point; it’s just that it wasn’t enough to measure up to what life demands of an adult. And maybe “failure period” was an unfair judgment rendered by my critical self. Maybe it wasn’t so much “failure” as the obvious outcome because of what he’d taken from me all those years. But either way, the reality is that I had a golden opportunity with the job at the UCONN Health Center lab, a chance to build a solid career path, and I blew it. There’s no other way to say it – I wasn’t measuring up…I couldn’t…

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The questions that shamed me for so long

I was talking with a friend one day who knew of my background, so I felt safe. But her question froze me, then filled me with shame.

“Did you move back home after college?”

She meant nothing by it, just an informational question more than anything. But for me, I hated the answer, and myself for it. I couldn’t even look at her.

Before I get into what happened next in my life, there is the obvious…and to me, for so many years, the embarrassing question to address: Why, if I was being abused, did I go back home after graduation?

In one way, anyone could understand initially coming home, if only to regroup and figure out where to go next, now that college was done. But why did I STAY? That is the part I found so hard to accept without shame, for most of my life.

Not a “whole person”

But the truth is, I couldn’t do anything else. I wasn’t ready. And I was doing the absolute best I could at each moment in time. It’s just the way it was.

First, despite my age, I was not an adult. I was not even a “whole person.” He had seen to that. He brainwashed me from the beginning to be compliant and to be what he needed and expected. I had been denied the right to develop into a fully functioning, independent adult. I was always focused on “not hurting the family or him.”

So much I didn’t know

So, I learned how to sustain from one day to the next, versus how to live a life. How to survive one “Dad outburst” to the next. And the reality is that when you’ve grown up in that mindset, you don’t even know there is another way. So, while I knew how to focus on the goal right in front of me — getting through college, obtaining school and car loans, finding a job — I had no idea how to navigate life. And society further interfered because, for financial things like loans, I needed him to be a co-signer. So to be an “adult?” I had no clue what that even meant.

And as to the sexual abuse, frankly, I still didn’t even understand that this was “abuse.” I had no idea I wasn’t alone in this happening to me, or that it had a name — incest. I just considered it all a shameful mess that I wanted to leave in the past, and so I hoped that with college done, he would stop.

My thinking was that, after all, how long could he expect to continue this? I was an adult…at least in age. Certainly, he had to see that. What I didn’t understand then was that I was his addiction, and why would a man with all the power give up his addiction?

Dreams vs financial reality

Instead, I expected that I would move on into greater and greater independence like my peers. Dating. Travel. Maybe marriage and kids sometime down the road. I had gone to school. I followed his command not to grow up to be a stupid woman. I followed my own mantra – don’t grow up to be my mother. I had a profession, a job, a car, and dreams. But my dreams were about to hit a hard reality.

First, there was the reality of my paycheck in 1977. I was going to make $8500 a year. While I thought that was a fortune after being a poor student, the truth is that even for that time period, it was a pitiful sum. After income tax, Social Security, the car loan, taxes, gas, and insurance, student loans, and a hundred other small bites that I had no idea were coming, and some money to my parents for living at home, I was about broke. If I could barely give my parents a small amount of “board money,” how could I afford rent?

Where would I go?

Then, even if I could afford it, where would I go? My hometown was a small community, and apartment complexes were rare. I think there was one in my town at that time — except for something in a 3-family house, which was way more than I needed or could afford.

Also, at that point, most women lived at home until they got married. That was just the norm, between society, the immigrant culture, and the church. About the only exception was if you lived out of town, a rarity, and maybe had roommates. But I had no friends at that point or idea of how to find a roommate…or even the awareness that I COULD do that. I was raised to follow the social norms. And, the truth is, I was emotionally unprepared to move away permanently and start my own life. I might have been an adult if judged by age, but emotionally?

The “pre-adolescent”

As to “maturity,” I was a mixed bag. Certainly, for some things, I was a responsible adult. But in so many ways, I was “pre-adolescent,” to use the description of a counselor years later. I was an emotional child, operating in a grown-up body and world, with limited awareness of how to do “life.” My whole existence up to that point was – survive Dad, get through school, get a job, and the rest would “just happen.”

So, for many reasons, I had to return home…and at least for some time to come, I would remain there. While it was crushing to see my financial reality, it was nowhere near as crushing as the rest of reality that would come crashing in almost immediately…

Today’s Last Gift Quote:

If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.

Zig Ziglar

Happy Thanksgiving and a return!

Just a heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving to all reading this! I wish each person a peaceful day and much love.

After a lovely 70th birthday celebration and visit with my immediate family, I will resume my writing journey. There will be one last “gift post” tomorrow (Friday) along with a new memoir post.

Thank you for your patience, and again, Happy Thanksgiving!

Today’s Gift Quote:

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

Attributed to C.S. Lewis

The explanation for this, from the previous posting:

A celebration of life in the present

I have been sharing many deep and painful things. And it is helpful for me to speak openly and feel “worthy.” But I also do this process while staying grounded in the present and celebrating life’s current gifts.

A current gift is that this month is my 70th birthday. I will be taking the coming week off to share time with my family and savor the joys of each other’s company. AND celebrate that I have my wonderful family.

As important as this writing process is, it needs to be paced well for my health, and it needs to be connected to the joy of my present life, filled with love.

My “gift posts”

While I am away from my desk, I will leave “daily gift posts” for all.

The gift post will include this post’s text (for context to anyone new). But at the top of each new day’s post will also be a quote — one of the many I keep handy to feed my soul as I write. That will be my gift to all while I am celebrating.

The painting is also part of the gift posts. While I worked at the museum, there was a small puffer fish in one of the aquariums. When I needed a moment’s break from things, I would stand by the tank. The puffer fish would always come right up to the window and hover there. I don’t know what it was thinking, but I hope it was happy. He seemed to linger longest whenever there was a group of happy children waving at him. So one day I took his picture and painted him. So, as part of this gift, I leave you with the puffer fish.

When I return, I will resume my memoir posts.

In the meantime, a reminder of the purpose of this blog:

This blog is my way of honoring what I lived through and had to do to reach “today” in as healthy a way as possible.

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