Category: Unwanted Children

Posted in Depression, Emotions, Memories, PTSD, Unwanted Children

Depressed

Posted on by debthumanblog

That’s how I feel and it’s getting worse by the minute. I have two bad days a year: April 1 and June 24. April 1 was my youngest sister’s birthday. June 24 was the anniversary of her death. Melanoma killed her. She was 35.

I’ve been plagued by memories – none of them happy. My mother went into labor on a Sunday morning. When we got home from church, The Drunk told us we had a sister. My brother, a few months shy of 5, burst into tears. “You promised me a brother!” Way to go Drunk!

When I was 11 and Tina, my youngest sister, was 13 months old, she played with oven cleaner. My mother watcher her do it. After cleaning my sister off, she put the oven cleaner soaked sneakers back on my sister. My sister spent the next four hours crying. My mother spent the next four hours yelling, literally, at my sister telling her to stop crying. Eventually, Tina’s diaper needed changing. That’s when my mother noticed Tina had second and third degree chemical burns from the waist down. Off they went to the emergency room. Because they were Caucasian and had enough income to afford health insurance, no one at the hospital bothered to call child protective services.

Many years ago, the Olympic event featuring skiers doing tricks and turns was called hot dogging. Tina and her friends went skiing. It was a miserable day with freezing rain. Tina said the weather was so bad she did the last run with her eyes closed. When she got to the bottom of the hill, her friends asked her where she learned to do all that hot dogging. Tina responded that she didn’t know how to ski. That may sound like resilience, but it wasn’t. It was the legacy of child abuse. You didn’t ask for help in my house. You figured out how to do it yourself or face the wrath of two drunks.

When my sister had her first period. She didn’t tell anyone. She knew there was always an assortment of feminine hygiene products under the bathroom sink, so she grabbed a pad, pinned it in her pants, and went to school. That wasn’t resilience either. When I had my first period, I didn’t want to say anything to my mother because I was sure she would bitch at me. The next morning, there was more blood in my panties and I was stuck telling my mother. To my shock, she didn’t bitch at me.

The last week, I’ve had a cascade of miserable memories. Tina died in 1997. A friend saw the death notice and called to ask how I was. That’s when my friend discovered I had no idea my sister died. I didn’t even know she was ill. After I hung up the phone, I heard keening for the first time. It’s the most blood curdling sound you can imagine, and it came out of me.

My mother had decreed I wasn’t to know Tina was sick or that she had died. To tell me meant getting cut out of the will. My surviving sister, hereinafter The Fruitcake, told me the reason no one told me Tina was sick was because I’m a horrible person. I never asked my mother and The Drunk for money, I put myself through college, I put myself through law school, I’ve only been married once, and I’ve never had an abortion. Clearly I’m every mother’s worst nightmare.

The universe gave me revenge. My mother spent the last years of her life in a nursing home and there was nothing left for my greedy siblings to inherit. Even so, they refused to tell me our mother had died. I only knew because I got a notice from Legacy.com. I had to crash the funeral. My remaining siblings were shocked to see me.

All these years later, I still can’t get past April 1 without major depression. I’ll do something special for me tomorrow. I might take Brady and go on an adventure. I’m considering going to Mesilla (where Billy The Kid hung out) and doing some photography. I’d like to have lunch someplace, but I’m not sure where I want to go. I’d suggest going to Albuquerque, but there’s nothing much I want to do there and the Albuquerque Fiber Arts Fiesta is in two weeks. I don’t feel like making two major trips that close together.

Listening to Roger Daltry sing Behind Blue Eyes isn’t helping although it does explain how I feel. Sort of.

I hate my mother. I don’t apologize for that. She was a violent, drunken narcissist who had four kids she didn’t want and made very sure we knew she never wanted us.

Please make it stop hurting.

No one can make it stop hurting.

This is how it felt from my fourth birthday in 1956 until the day I got married in 1972. It never stopped hurting. It was never happy.

Posted in Child abuse, Depression, Emotions, Memories, PTSD, Unwanted Children

This Weekend Will Again Be Painful

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’ll be staying home on Sunday. I detest mother’s day. My mother was a violent, drunken narcissist and it would be bordering on impossible to find a time she when was nice to me. I vividly remember when acne started for me. Not because of worrying about dates or classmates. I didn’t have dates because I was what she called her “built in babysitter.” I had to watch her kids while she went out and got drunk. After getting dressed one school day morning, I walked into the kitchen, and my mother gleefully announced, “Debby has a pimple on her nose. She looks just like a witch.”

Nothing I did was right. Nothing I did made her proud. Although I wasn’t allowed to take math and science courses in high school, I put myself through college starting at age 25. I wasn’t allowed to go to college after high school although I badly wanted a college education. I earned two degrees. One in journalism and the other in biology. It was not easy to take science courses having never had any science classes in high school. I did it anyway. My mother refused to come to my graduation because she had to “open up the cottage.” My mother and her husband, hereinafter The Drunk, owned a cottage at a lake in the Southern Tier of New York. My siblings, their friends, and the hired help could spend weekends at the cottage. I wasn’t allowed to go there. One year, The Drunk told Jim to fix the dock at the cottage so there would be a nice place for them to play. Jim declined.

One summer, my mother and siblings went to the cottage during the week, and I had to stay home and babysit The Drunk. I’d spend the day going through cookbooks looking for interesting recipes to make for dinner. The Drunk would always come home late, tell me he had already eaten, and stagger up the stairs to go to bed. I asked to go with my mother and siblings, and she told me I couldn’t.

When I would spend the night at a friend’s house, my mother would tell me after I got home, “It was so peaceful while you were gone.”

Imagine a hurt so deep that even 51 years later I can vividly remember what she said to me.

One year, I got her an especially appropriate mother’s day gift: a Venus flytrap. She let it die. Another year, I drove to her house to give her a mother’s day gift – can’t remember what it was – and sat in her driveway crying. That’s how much I didn’t want to see her. I forced myself to get out of the car, walk up to the front door and ring the doorbell.  It never occurred to me to just walk in. It wasn’t my house.

At my maternal grandmother’s funeral, she bragged to the extended family about drinking so much she puked. She then proceeded to talk about her kids growing up. I remained silent simultaneously wishing she said anything about me and dreading her saying anything about me because I knew whatever she said would be hurtful. My sister-in-law said a friend had made a casserole for the family. I silently wondered if it would be okay for me to stay and eat some of the casserole. I wasn’t part of the family. No one threw me out, so I stayed and ate.

One day, my sister-in-law was at my mother’s house. She gave my SIL wine. She didn’t offer me even lukewarm water in a cracked cup. When I mentioned that to her, she made it my fault that I had nothing to drink. After all, she insisted, it was my house. It was never my house.

While I was working between high school and marriage, I asked – I knew better than to just take – to have an egg so I could have an egg salad sandwich for lunch the next day. She refused to let me have an egg.

I don’t have children  – a decision I’ve never regretted – because I could never do to another person what was done to me and I knew no other way. One therapy session I asked my psychologist why anyone would want to have children. He thought I was making a joke. I still can’t imagine why anyone would want children.  It isn’t easy not to have children. I got pressured by both friends and family who, for some reason, thought biology was destiny. Turning 40 was a relief. People stopped pressuring me because, science notwithstanding, people think pregnancy after age 40 is too dangerous. What an incredible relief to be allowed to be myself.

At age 66, I discovered being without children was one of the healthiest things I’ve done. A biopsy revealed I have a septate uterus. If I had managed to get pregnant, I would have had a 90% chance of a miscarriage. Deciding not to have children didn’t just save my sanity; it may well have saved my life.  

Time, and a whole lot of therapy, removed from me a longing to have a mother. I still hate mother’s day.

Posted in Unwanted Children

I Refuse To Be Silent

Posted on by debthumanblog

No one bothers to ask unwanted children about abortion.

My mother wasn’t married when she had me. That was a big deal in 1952, especially in the rural area we lived. I was never around kids until I went to kindergarten so I had no idea I was supposed to have a father. Out of the urge to avoid the embarrassment of sending me to kindergarten without a father, she and her husband married a month before my 4th birthday. I remember my grandmother taking me by the plum tree and saying: Your mother and father are getting married today. 

What followed was violent hell until I got married. My mother was a violent, drunken narcissist. Her husband was a violent drunk. I was hit, pulled around by my hair, beaten with a belt, yanked off a chair by my mother’s husband when he grabbed my hair, screamed at and told I was worthless. I knew full well that my mother and her husband hated me. I’d come home from a sleep over at a friend’s house and my mother would tell me, “It was so peaceful while you were gone.”

My mother and her husband had a cottage at Rushford Lake. My mother would take my siblings to the lake during the week. When I asked to go to the lake with them, my mother refused to take me. I had to stay home and babysit her husband. I’d spend most of the day going through cookbooks to find a recipe for dinner. Then, when the dinner was ready, I’d wait for my mother’s husband to come home. He’d tell me he had already eaten and then go to bed. I was stuck with the dinner I had made.

I heard my mother’s husband tell my brother not to be like me because one like that in the family is enough. Once, he was arguing with my mother and told her, “Now I know why Debby is the way she is.” 

When I got married, the complex PTSD – although the diagnosis didn’t exist at that time – was so bad I couldn’t think about growing up without crying. 50 years later, I still have flashbacks. They aren’t debilitating, but recently for the first time I had an emotional reaction to a flashback. I saw the horror of what I went through. 

I put myself through college and earned two degrees, biology and journalism. I put myself through law school. I ran my own solo law practice. I moved 2000 miles across the country by myself. I’m the only one of the four kids who never had an abortion or got divorced. Obviously, I’m every mother’s worst nightmare. 

My father, who I never met until I was 35, is a drunken selfish jerk. I was 34 when I went to get a copy of my birth certificate and was told by a clerk in the vital statistics office that I was adopted. I felt as if someone slammed me against a brick wall. I remember thinking that even my feet hurt. I walked two blocks to the library and went through a couple rolls of microfilm to find a birth announcement and discovered my father was Don Harmon. I spent the rest of the day thinking I was handling the news well. I woke up the next morning and the shock hit me. This is real, and it’s not going to go away.  It took 5 months and a lot of determination, but I found Don. It took a year and a half for him to decide I was too much reality for him and he shoved me out of his life. I’ve no idea if he’s still living although I’ve never been able to find a death notice for him. 

My grandmother was horrified that I knew I was adopted and who my father was. She blamed the clerk at vital statistics for telling me I was adopted. Once my mother knew that I knew I was adopted, I was shoved out of the family. I was never told that my youngest sister was sick or that she had died.. I only knew my mother died because I subscribe to Legacy.com. I had to crash her funeral. 

When I talked to my mother about being adopted, I asked her why she didn’t have an abortion. She was quiet and wouldn’t look at me. I asked her if she tried to have an abortion. She said it was illegal. Later, when my sisters were young adults, my diehard Catholic mother told them that if they get pregnant before they get married they should have an abortion. 

A couple years ago, I discovered I have a brother I didn’t know about. He’s 6 months older than me. Our father walked out on him, too. His life while he was growing up was equally as horrible as mine. 

I’m glad I’m alive, but being aborted is 1000 times better than the hell I went through. 

Every one of those right-to-life lunatics should be forced to raise all the unwanted children they just created.