Soul Mosaic

About the only thing I can say for 1981 was that, with few exceptions, it was “dormant.”

I gardened. And continued to wrestle with where and how to live.

I survived home.

I went to work. Did my job. And seemed to grow more confident in my skills.

The exceptions

The dog died.

And on this count, it shows how totally out of touch all of us were, emotionally, because the entire night before we had to put the dog down — she was dying of cancer — we hid downstairs in the basement playing a game, rather than sitting with the dog. The only one with the courage and emotional awareness to sit with and comfort the dog was our cat. That speaks volumes.

Maybe the most interesting and unexpected thing came in December, when one of my co-workers, who was very skilled in astrology, read my palm. I did it mostly as a lark, more a fun moment on a quiet afternoon. I’d never done that before, or since. I did it more as a curiosity for what he might say.

I will also note that, while he was a co-worker, I didn’t work that closely with him, and he knew little of my actual life outside of the lab. Yet, the reason I have kept his comments all these years is that he got so much right. Even the few other things that were a bit off were still darn “close.”

Whether he was psychic or just saw a lot in the amount of time he did interact with me, I can’t say. But at the time, I tucked away his comments in my journal, and only re-read them now, as I wrote this. Pretty darn close….

The palm reading

“Square hands…that shows I have stability; I am dependable. Yet while I show some caution, in other areas I show recklessness, willingness to take a gamble or a chance.

Life line: long, firm, strong. Interference with many small lines in the top half shows frequent conflicts in my early years with people, continuing into my late 20s, but closer to 30, I will come into my own. People’s opinions, attitudes won’t matter much; conflicts disappear, become peaceful, calm, and happy.

Hands show many traits that seem to contradict, which causes much turmoil – but this actually makes for a good balance; it leads to soul searching, personal growth.

Very imaginative, creative, Strong mind. Open mind. Much pride in work.

I like to collect things, all sorts. Somewhat psychic in dreams – things that may not seem to make sense.

Very strong willpower and sense of values; many times I want to give up, chuck it all, let loose and go wild, but won’t because I know I wouldn’t think much of myself if I did. Stubborn. Tenacious. Can and will endure a lot, quietly, won’t give up. Stick with my instincts and values – Things right now look bleak, but it will pay off. I’m on the right track, so hold out for what I want.

There’s been much conflict internally since my teen years…about who I am. I’m practical and have a good understanding of how things really are, but also very idealistic….I have a dream about how things should be and try to make it that way, and I get frustrated when I can’t do it. I can see beyond the small picture, ie, see the world in a larger light and realize what’s really important.

The internal conflicts will soon come to an end – right now, I still don’t feel like my own person, still struggling, but within 1-3 years, this will be resolved. Things will suddenly start to fall into place. Will really blossom in my 30s-40s – these will be very good years….The second quarter to third of my life – much peace and happiness.

I am very ambitious and will be successful. My present experiences with leadership are difficult, but I will learn much. I will eventually be in a position of leadership, but I will be totally comfortable in this position. I will probably stay in this field (or something very similar) for another 5-12 years, then something else, maybe not totally different, will become more important, and I will work in that and be successful. Probably change jobs about 5 years at each job.

However, a career is not a very big thing in my life — I will find that having a home, family is most important.

At the moment, though it seems like there is no one on the horizon, there are two strong relationships in my life with at least one showing children. Relationship very soon – suddenly – out of nowhere, maybe a new person, or a renewal of an old one, only on a totally new level, within the next 1-2 years; may have some struggles two years from now, but after that, peace. The man will have to be from a similar background and interests. Has to be a man secure in his own right and who is willing to give me a lot of rope. Any man who tries to own me or dominate me won’t last.

Very independent, couldn’t survive living in a city; I need a country environment, homesteading, like animals, want them around.

Communication problems – tendency to keep it all in, but here, a contradiction too: torn between not saying anything and a strong desire to let it out and tell someone.

Health problems: upper and lower GI, maybe gyn, lots of headaches. Upper back – Be careful of heavy lifting.

Family relationships are good, however….there is…some conflict with someone……there are differences…..

His reaction at this point was almost shock…it was strong, and he stopped suddenly, as if he knew or saw something he didn’t expect and didn’t want to say. To this day, I have always wondered what he saw or thought.”

But it was his last comment that really hit home in reading it now:

“I mostly don’t realize how good a future I have coming up.”

And he was right. It was going to be a battle to get there, a long one for sure.

But in the end…he would be right about that.

The lifelong scar

“Why won’t you fight?!!!!!”

He leaned his face right into mine, and I could feel the heat of his breath. His eyes were molten blue-green fury, and I struggled to swallow as his fist, shoved up in my throat, twisted the neck of my shirt tighter. It was that years-long familiar choking move that I was never sure he was totally in control of. Through gritted teeth, he kept goading me to react, taunting me because I wouldn’t fight him.

But I had already assessed that flushed face and those hateful eyes, and knew that the stupidest thing I could do was shove him or hit back. I was scared and angry, but no idiot. While I hated the sense of being at his mercy, of feeling like I was a coward, I knew the only REAL way to fight him was to choose NOT to react. That absolutely enraged him.

Finally, disgusted, he shoved me back and stormed out of my room.

Since that day, I have ALWAYS hated being in situations where I couldn’t fight back and had to refrain from engaging in “battle.” I have NEVER again wanted to feel helpless like that.

But the truth was, I hadn’t been helpless. I had actually made my own choice — to respond from my heart, NOT REACT from rage. I was still that kid on the playground who didn’t want to hit the bully. So I made my choice, and I had exercised tremendous strength and courage to execute it…to defy him in the best way I could.

The other thing that I wonder about now is who that rage was really directed at. My feeling is that his rage was self-directed. All the years he was abused by his mother, he must have felt impotent to defy her. And perhaps hated himself for it. Seeing my lack of willingness to scream back at him maybe triggered a weakness he felt long ago? I can’t be sure of any of this. I can only speak to a gut sense that very little of that rage was about my behavior in that moment.

Whatever was operating, he did leave me with a scar that I still struggle with. He handed me his wound, and I’ve had to wrestle with it my whole life. I will speak of that more later on.

God or suicide?

As to the rest of life, the overall trend for me that year ranged from seeking to do God’s will to help others or build a new writing career path, to overdoing the drinking at parties or driving too fast, hoping I’d plow into a tree or off the road and end it all.

For a lot of good reasons, I was depressed. And it didn’t help that, through those years, I was attending more and more weddings of friends and relatives and watching them all start a life I had no hope for. The pain only intensified as now they were all getting pregnant.

Consumed with despair, I questioned the meaning of life, in general, and my own in particular. Suicide began to seem reasonable, which scared me into considering visiting a psychiatrist. But in my family, that was seen as being only for those people who were too weak to bull through whatever. If you had to “see a therapist,” you were a failure. Surely I could pull it together and get on with things, right? Our house was not always happy, but it wasn’t THAT bad, right?

But my depression was so bad that at one point, even my father consoled me. He told me how much joy I gave to him and my mother and that my life had worth. But I found that to be little comfort given how he was treating my mother. If I ever got married, and that was starting to look less likely, no man would ever treat me like that. I was damned if I was going to be my mother.

Those Saturday fights

As to their interactions, the general level of physical violence in our house seemed to be increasing. Those weekend fights between my parents, which had been going on since my childhood, were getting worse. Instead of one violent round in the morning followed by Dad’s contrite behavior the rest of the day, there were now multiple rounds of violent arguments that lasted all day, and no apologies.

So at that moment, life was like trying to paddle upstream in the face of raging rapids — yet again, seemingly hopeless.

God speaks

But then, I came across this book: Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning.

Thank God.

In the first half of the book, Frankl wrote of his experiences surviving in the concentration camps of World War II. The second half was about the particular approach to psychology he developed to heal people, influenced by those experiences. I hungrily read and absorbed every word, and most especially, two lines on page 104 of that book:

“Man CAN preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

The way forward?

Here was the piece of wisdom from the Universe that I needed at that very moment — that every last possession and piece of dignity can be taken away, but you can still choose to keep one last part of yourself safe, locked away deep within — your own thoughts and responses.

In that moment, I felt my world shift. Here was the affirmation that I WASN’T weak or a victim. Just because I didn’t hit him or fight back didn’t make me a failure. I was actually demonstrating total strength in recognizing that fighting in that moment would only escalate the violence, and it was not the time or the place. I wasn’t sure yet what would be the right way or time. But I knew that MY POWER was in maintaining me, holding onto my private thoughts, and choosing what to do and when. And that even if all other choices were taken from me, I still had the choice to withhold the most important and last part of me from him — who I was at my core. If I could keep that, I still had a chance…and worth.

Seeking the wisdom within

After that, I began to read voraciously. Philosophy. Biographies. I read about Robert F. Kennedy’s search for meaning in the Greek tragedies after his brother’s assassination and before his own.

I had also been reading the scary doomsday books about stock market crashes, nuclear holocaust, and global extinctions:

8/9/80

“I’ve always wanted to be already dead when the end of the world came….to live out my life completely and then die quietly and face a solitary judgment rather than some horrendous universal calamity and chaos with bombs, volcanoes, earthquakes, storms, and lightening, climaxed by the Lord riding in on thunderous majesty with legions of angels blowing trumpets heralding His arrival and in general lending to the overall hysteria….”

Yes, that part was a bit dramatic, but given the nuclear fears of the time, the house I lived in, and my own anxiety, I guess it was my own version of The Book of Revelations.

Anyway, given all that, it’s no wonder that when there was pressure at work to go back for a graduate degree in microbiology and move up in my career, I was not interested. While I had considered going back for a Master’s in Business Administration, and was even accepted into a program, deep inside my gut screamed, “WRONG!” So I backed out.

Instead, I focused on what possible ways I could forge my own path forward. I got into a lot of books about survivalist thinking. More than ever, I wanted to just find a job that let me live a quiet existence somewhere where I could focus on simple, sustainable, peaceful living.

The hermit

I dug out my own small-scale garden and learned how to do intensive food growing in small spaces. I bought a food dryer to preserve what I grew, as well as stores of freeze-dried food supplies, a grain mill, and books about surviving any kind of disaster. And I started looking at buying property in New Hampshire or Vermont.

One of the things I liked about New Hampshire was that the land then was still fairly cheap, even as some of it wasn’t that far from the Boston area of Massachusetts. I might have wanted to live like a hermit on a mountain in New Hampshire. But now and then, I still wanted to be able to visit fine restaurants and civilization in the big city…if it hadn’t been blown up by then.

The retreat

As to dating, friends would match me up with, “Here, let me introduce you to my mom’s friend’s brother’s son’s nephew who’s still living at home with his mom.” My experience was that most of the time, there was a reason he was still home with Mom, and she could keep him. There were always bars in town, but that was often men with a white ring of skin where their removed wedding bands usually sat.

Vacations were limited this year, aside from a couple of ski trips and short things with my parents. But then I had a chance to visit a local retreat center and do a silent retreat.

A silent retreat intrigued me. For that matter, any kind of retreat did. It was something that had been percolating in the back of my mind for some time. A weekend away. A weekend to just stop, be still, and see if God spoke.

10/17/80

“I am afraid to say yes – afraid to let go and let God take over. I want His help – but I fight Him at every turn.”

In that respect, God wasn’t faring any better than any of the men I dated. I didn’t want to yield any of myself to anyone else’s power. It was too scary.

“I keep having panicky thoughts, like ‘Why am I here?’ Shouldn’t I be home watching Love Boat on TV or something?”

While I was expecting this retreat to involve a lot of reading, heavy discussions with my spiritual director aimed at identifying my problems and reaching solutions, instead, I was to be silent, reflect, and not read any of the books I’d brought along with me. Instead, Sister gave me three things to focus my thoughts on:

1. What does God want from me, NOT vice versa?
2. What had my relationship with God been?
3. What is His relationship with me?

While I was supposed to think about these, I was mostly supposed to just LISTEN.

The terror of being alone with God

My room was separate from other groups that were there that weekend for their retreats, and I found it a bit unnerving to be so alone with God. I actually felt “cloistered” in my wing of the building, cut off from everyone else. It took a lot of my willpower not to just pack up, get in my car, and leave.

“It’s lonely…it’s scary, just me and God….I’m afraid of what He wants…of what He’ll ask of me…of what I might have to give up to do His will…I’m afraid of signing an ‘unread contract’ with Him.”

The idea of “surrendering” to some unknown spiritual power…especially one depicted as “male,” as “Father,” totally set me off.

“Why should I be afraid? He loves me…I think. God is a good Father and wouldn’t ask of me something that is wrong. And I’m the one who sought this out because I needed to find out once and for all WHAT is it He’s been trying to tell me. WHAT? I’ve been climbing the walls — agitated, angry, hostile, looking for fights. Even when Sister brought me up to this room and told me how we’re handling this weekend, I felt resentment at being told what to do. There it was, my first reaction – rebellion. Why?”

The one relief that helped was that apparently they did have some of the other women at the other end of the hall, so I wasn’t totally alone. The first thing that came to me, following the relief of hearing other voices, even as I was to keep to myself, was:

“I feel better about one thing…there are people in this wing with me. I am NOT alone. That has already taught me one thing about me…While I like time to be off with my thoughts, I don’t like to be alone, separated from others for any length of time. As much as I talk about running off and being a hermit, could I really live without other people? {Maybe that New Hampshire mountain top might not be my answer?} Well, maybe I could be a nun ….join a cloistered order? Like the Abbey of Regina Laudis?”

Don’t MAKE me do anything!

But there was still the terror that God was going to make me do something I didn’t want to do:

“I guess I am afraid God will make me move somewhere far away, be a nun, give up any chance for a husband, children, a home close to my family, and those are all things that are so important to me…but when I’m home I feel I should be far away, experiencing new things, doing something for mankind. But when I am far away, I’m not happy. I want to be back with family and familiar surroundings.”

The amount of back-and-forth really strikes me now. After hearing my therapist’s explanation of my being an adult, with a core child piece that needed healing, I see it in the above. I wanted an adult life, independence, but I was afraid of leaving my family. And there was no recognition of how abusive that family situation was. But still, the very fact that I showed up for the retreat willing to leave me open to an answer from God, even one I did not feel prepared for, showed a tremendous amount of courage on my part, and willingness to seek answers.

More entries from that weekend reflect both my fears, again, of God asking me to do something I didn’t want to, and my sense of rebellion against that. I felt like a victim fighting back against a captor. In fact, by the end of the weekend, my notes were written in SCREAMING CAPITALS WITH EXCLAMATION POINTS ACROSS THE PAGE!!!!!

The victim and the captor

A victim against a captor. I realize now that if that didn’t sum up where I was in life, nothing did. And maybe the term “projection” applies here? Maybe I was projecting my father onto God, as well as my sense of helplessness and being forced to do things I hated?

Maybe the most interesting thing of all is that after that screaming entry from 10/19/80, I didn’t write another word in my journal until July of 1982…

Maybe it was my herb garden experience, but I somehow sensed I needed to broaden my life…scatter more seeds. Maybe with the more new endeavors I tried, and the more seeds of hope I planted, the right path would come clear to me yet.

3/1/80

“I desperately need a new direction..a new purpose in my life. Nothing will be right until I find an inner peace – that’s the key. I’ve been looking for happiness in things and people and jobs, not from within…I MUST get a grip on my life.”

4/22/80

“What is it God wants from me? I’ve been endowed with talents, but as yet I haven’t found why I have them, how to best use them, and what it is God wants me to do…I’m so mixed up…I experience depression, lethargy, apathy, procrastination, frustration, disgust, and contempt for myself when I am like this. I feel paralyzed to do or think anything clearly that will lead me out of this mess.”

The snowball

While this may sound like more of the same, and throughout this year there would still be a fair bit of despair, yet there is one key piece above that was a change from the past – the recognition that my peace must come from WITHIN, not from others or work. That small shift would eventually snowball into a powerful avalanche, even as it would still take more time.

In fact, where work and career were concerned, this year I started to consider looking beyond the lab. I was continuing to pursue writing classes. In February, I took an 8-week night class at Post College in writing for publication. Even as I had my arm in a sling from a broken elbow incurred in a fall and had to have my father drive me there, I passionately attended those classes. The instructor was a freelance writer, business instructor, and editor who was making her total living from her writing pursuits. I was excited. If she could do this, certainly there had to be a way for me to use writing in my career.

Sending out hope

I started looking beyond the hospital environment to corporate positions. With a medical background and more writing classes on my resume, I wondered if I might secure a public relations position. There were several medical and pharmaceutical firms in Connecticut, not to mention the aerospace industry. I didn’t care what the field was. I only knew that if I could leverage any skills I had acquired, maybe I could still use my writing professionally.

In that same vein, I also started sending out articles to magazines. I started with what I knew. I had an herb garden and had learned a number of things about both growing and using them, both in the kitchen and as landscaping. And I started tapping some of my other interests for material to write general interest articles.

I submitted to everything from in-flight magazines to the National Enquirer. I wasn’t having any success in selling any writing…yet. But I figured if I kept up my efforts, sooner or later I might. And any “clip” from a published article might secure me more credibility as a writer. That might get me out of the lab and into a new career path. So I kept trying.

In service to others

The other possibilities I started considering had more to do with serving others. I visited a school in Norfolk that cared for patients with mental disabilities, and I investigated things like the military, Vista, and the Peace Corps. While I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to do any of those, I still kept looking around for some job that might allow me to use my caring and compassionate side in service to another.

While all this was going on, I was starting to pay a bit more attention to me. I got rid of the sports car and bought a Honda hatchback that was great on gas. That left me more money for things like clothes and books. I even took a couple of skiing trips with family, to northern Massachusetts and to Maine. And I continued to try to build a connection with my mother.

Reaching for Mom

On that point, a few of my work friends were planning to take a cake decorating class at the local YMCA and invited me to join them. Even as domestic skills were not my forte – I hated sewing, any kind of needlework, and was not big on cooking, still, this was a chance to build friendships. And it was my chance for a foray into the world of the “feminine,” something I’d never valued.

Knowing my mother was a master baker from all her years of making desserts from scratch, I asked my mother to join me. I thought this was something we could do together. And where in the art class that we took together, the attention was often on my painting versus her sketching, here I felt she would outshine everybody.

“Painting” on cakes

It was pretty good in the beginning. We learned how to make large cakes, all kinds of frostings, and how to wield pastry bags for flowers, piping, and decorative writing. We made a trip to a baking supply store in Waterbury to get specialty supplies…it was almost like painting, except on cakes.

The final day of the class was to be a party. Each of us had to bake and decorate our own cake and bring it in to share with everyone. I was off that day, so I set about baking a two-layer cake and decorating it with some corded edging and flowers. It wasn’t fancy, but it was good enough.

I noticed, though, that my mother hadn’t made her cake yet. I kept asking her, and she kept saying “later.” By supper time, it was obvious she wasn’t making her cake, and we had to be there for 6:30 p.m. I asked why she hadn’t made anything, and she said she wasn’t going. She didn’t feel like it.

That damned garden

Disappointed, I went upstairs to get ready. As I was about to walk out the door with my cake, she said she had chest pains. She didn’t seem particularly upset about them, but I went outside to tell my father what was going on.

He immediately got mad at me and accused me of not caring about her. He told me he had to work in the garden, and I should be the one to take her to the ER.

I was crushed. For starters, I didn’t think she was in any crisis. But still, with chest pains, who could be sure? Yet, here was my father, more worried about his damned garden than his wife. Why wasn’t he worried enough to join me at the hospital?

Needless to say, I did not go to my last cake class. My sense of duty won out. If something had happened to my mother and I’d not taken her to the ER, I would have never forgiven myself. So I took her.

There was nothing wrong. They said maybe it was anxiety. But she was okay.

The “right” thing

Of course, I was praised by both her and my father for doing “the right thing” and putting family first. She never did answer me as to why she wouldn’t make a cake for class. Did she feel inadequate? Had my father mocked her? Whatever it was, I didn’t try to include Mom in any new classes. And as for any worth in that world of the feminine in my life, I wrote it off.

The next day, we took a picture of my cake and ate it at home. And that was the end of that.

But it was not the end of the pressure ramping up in the house….

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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