Protecting My Soft Gooey Center

I've never been a good daughter.

I've never been a good daughter-in-law.

I've never been a good sister.

I've been been a good sister-in-law.

I've also never been a good dancer but that's a story for another day.

I'm one of those people that totally lack the warm, fuzzy cute as a kitten gene. I think I learned at a very young age that I am the only one that I can depend upon. Not getting too comfortable on the psychiatrists couch or anything, but from birth to last December, I have learned one thing very well. People fuck you over seven ways to Sunday and if you don't let them into your soft gooey center, they won't hurt you.

I think that is why I value my friends so much. I would go to the ends of the earth for my friends and as the last few months have shown, my friends feel the same way about me.

When it comes to family, I've been hurt enough. Throwing my hands up in the air and walking away is a defense mechanism that I've employed over the years to mixed success. I always thought I was refusing to allow people to use me. I thought I was refusing people the opportunity to hurt me. I'm not going to lend someone money when all they want is another drink or a hit. I'm also not going to stand around and wait to be asked a second time.

Likewise, I'm not going to stand around and put up with being treated like shit. (This statement, after 17 years of being treated like shit actually makes me laugh at my own 'full-of-shitedness').

All this leads to a phone call that I made on the day of the omnibus hearing. I've actually gotten back in touch with one of my brothers who lives in Michigan after falling out of touch with him for quite some time. (My fault. Refer to the third statement at the beginning of the post.) This is the brother that I've always been proud to call my "big brother". I've always felt a special kinship to him.

From him, I got my biological mother's telephone number.

Yeah, I'm sure you can see where this is going.

I haven't talked to her in years. The kids haven't been back to Michigan for about twelve years and as I talked to them about who we should see and where we should go, my daughter mentioned seeing her grandmother. "She's my last grandma alive.I want to try to see her."

I stopped trying to communicate with her years ago. She would email me and I would reply and then there would be silence. Then another unrelated email a few months later from her that I would reply to, complete with questions and an expectation of a reply and then there would be silence again. Any emails that I would initiate would go unanswered. I think I may have left a phone message, I can't recall.

But it was obviously a completely one sided conversation so I gave up.

I warned my daughter that it might not be a good idea but I would try. As brave as she has been through all of this, I couldn't NOT try.

But really, should I have tried to call on the Friday of the omnibus? Now that was just dumb.

Thankfully, I was alone at the time. When she answered the phone and I said "Hi mom", she demanded to know who I was in a very techy voice. I told her it was her daughter and she said that she didn't have a daughter by that name and hung up.

Well, it looks like having warm cookies and milk at grandma's is off the itinerary.

The thing that is so hard to get through to people that haven't been through a similar experience is that I feel no positive emotions toward my own biological mother. I have no feelings of love or care or protectiveness going either way. It's as if I tried to throw my arms around the door to door magazine sales woman from last week and tricked myself into feeling something.

I think my major malfunction comes from the fact that I see using the forced structure of a family as a "support' as flawed. Life is so incredibly short and telling myself that I'm supposed to make an effort to surround myself with people that will only try to hurt me and use me and expect me to help them continue on their self destructive ways MAKES ME FUCKING CRANKY.

This philosophy also spilled over into STBX's family. He would talk about being treated like shit but then he would go back for more because "they're my family".

Well, we can all see how well they raised you and how well you turned out so I guess that just proves how wrong I am.

Advice For Mother's Who Are Living In The Eye Of A Storm

Everyone else who stops by here that has never been through familial trauma, you can just go on to your next task for the day, nothing to read here.

OK, now that they're gone, it's just you and me. You've been there, I know. You've been left standing in the middle of a huge painful mess with no recourse that feels appropriate.

You want permission to fall apart but when you turn around to get that permission, you realize how horribly alone you really are.

You look at your kids and your heart breaks because this was never in your game plan. You were never going to be one of "those" families. One of "those" families that have their worlds fall apart and end up at the grocery store, juggling coupons, doing math in your head, looking at the balance in the checking account, and taking that second gallon of milk out of the cart. You were never going to be the mom that looked at her kids and wished she could afford a birthday present. Or a trip to the dentist.

You were going to be in charge of your life and you read all the parenting books and took your kids to all the playgroups and make macaroni art and hung it on the fridge. You told your kids how much you loved them and that you would always protect them and to never talk to strangers.

Now, when you look in the mirror, you wonder what happened. You search your eyes for a clue to the moment when it all went horribly wrong. Words echo through your head, words from his side of the family. Words that say "At least he didn't do this or that..." Words that assuaged their grief and told you that your children were merely bait, not worthy to have a father that didn't hurt them.

You're so tired. You're so hurt. You're so alone.

You need to take a few minutes, find a safe place, and fall apart.

Then, perhaps you can come back to your kids. Maybe play this lullaby for your whole little family.

And try to convince yourself that you did the best that you could.

Mommie Dearest

It's always interesting to pop the top off your head and take a look at what makes you tick.

I remember a long time ago when my kids were toddlers, I went to a workshop on parenting and the presenter said that, when your kids are misbehaving and you are at your wits end, it sometimes helps to pretend that they are someone else's kids. You are less likely to throttle someone else's kids. You are more likely to step back from the situation and act responsibly.

I've found that advice to be very beneficial over the years when examining my own self. Having had the cheese slip off my crackers as a college student, I really don't want to go there again. Having had less than stellar therapy in the past, I'm less than trusting when it comes to laying all the power at someone else's feet.

Thus, I tinker.

During the years of my marriage, I would stand in the kitchen, stare out of the kitchen window, and psychoanalyze why I was so angry. I would delve into the reasons for my sadness. I would take comfort in the fact that I had reasons to feel the way I was feeling.

And then I wouldn't do a damn thing about it.

It's sort of like being the most enlightened person on a deserted island. In the long run, it doesn't really matter much.

Something I've been examining lately is motherhood.

So much of what is going on revolves around motherhood.

Mother-guilt for not knowing what was going on (yes, I know it's ridiculous to beat myself up for ignorance but SAYING it and FEELING it are two entirely different things.)

Abysmal choices by mothers-STBX's manhole choosing to carry on a relationship with a known pedophile when she has a young daughter. (Do you think he fantasizes about her daughter when they're having sex?).

Maternal abandonment issues-something that I've been working on in regards to myself and my first few months of life.

STBX's mother issues-He never moved past the psychological development of a ten year old and always acted like I was supposed to be his mother rather than his wife. I know a lot of women feel this way about their husbands but his is a deep seated psychological issue rather than an annoying immaturity.

There's also the culture of judgment of mother's, mine being right up there at the top. Mothers are judged far more than fathers. One side of the coin is that we're all trying to do the best we can with what we have. The other side of the coin is the reality that we often act out of selfish desires for our own safety, our own security, and our own desires.

See, prying the top off your head can get ugly.

You have to be willing to own what you have done. To admit that there were times when you should have made better choices and that there were times when you were just hanging on by a thread.

To realize that the decisions you make as a mother are made in somewhat of an echo chamber, they might seem transitory at the time but when you string them together, they make a conversation, the foundation of a life for your children.

That is the ultimate challenge and the heartbreaking joy of being a mother.

And Now The Award For Mother Of The Year

Finding out yesterday that my husband has now hooked up with his level seven healer in the flesh leaves me with mixed feelings. I know this woman is so screwed up that I should feel sorry for her. I know this woman is totally falling for his martyr schtick. I know this woman thinks he is the bees knees and wants to "save him". (Wow! a WILLING SAVIOR! Isn't he a LUCKY BOY???)

But this sticky wicket is the fact that she KNOWS he is a pedophile. He confessed to her because he wanted to "start over fresh" with her. Notice he didn't confess to the actual person that could help his daughter, he confessed to the person that would be pulled into his little martyr fantasy. "Oh the world has done me wrong and anything that I have done in response to it is THE WORLD'S FAULT. This has been his life's philosophy for as long as we have been married.

And drumroll please....

She has a six year old daughter.

TAA DAA!!!!!!

Here we go with another sad story of a fucked up woman that thinks she can save a man and is willing to put her child up as jail bait to do it.

The saddest part of this tale is that the child's father can't do a damn thing about getting custody from his wife because my soon-to-be-ex -husband hasn't been charged with anything yet.

Remember what I said about this whole thing taking months and months to resolve? Yeah, time is not on that child's side.

Hungry Ghosts

As I've stated before, this entire incident is like an onion. Peel back one layer and you find an equally stinky layer beneath.

I've been here before.

I was sexually molested by my mom's boyfriend when I was a pre-teen. When I was 19 and struggling with not slitting my wrists, taking a bottle of pills, or driving my car into a concrete abutment (all before noon every day), I told my mother what had happened. Her boyfriend had died years before and was no longer an issue.

My mother looked at me and said "Well, you always were a slut."

The funniest thing about this situation was that I wasn't. Aside from the fact that a mother would accuse her eleven year old daughter of seducing a senior citizen, I was a hopeless, well behaved kid. She had known all along that something wasn't right. She had her suspicions. And when her suspicions were confirmed, she sided with a dead man.

Now, twenty one years later I look in the mirror every morning. Not only as the girl that was thrown away by her mother but now, as the mother that was clueless. The mother that was unable to protect her own child even when it was ingrained in every cell in her body. I was the one that ranted in front of the television when a story about a pedophile came on. I was the one that suggested they should all be publically castrated. I was the one that would feel such anger and nausea at the thought that anyone could hurt a child. And my own child was being hurt.

I'm fighting ghosts this morning. Ghosts of my perpetrator. Ghosts of my mother. Ghosts of the happy, normal childhood that I wanted to give my children. Ghosts of who I thought I was married to. Ghosts of every night of my childhood, laying in the dark, not able to sleep, not able to breathe.

Ghosts.