I always think of Curtis Martin on August 16 each year.
Here is a pic, with Curtis in the chair, and me on the right in red pants. On the far right are the handlebars of the bike I was sitting on during our first kiss. Here is the story I wrote about it: Moses
Somebody asked me if I love my second grandchild as much as I love my first grandchild. They couldn't figure out why I have not written about him the way I blogged here about my "Little Dude" in the first years of my blog. And suddenly I was filled with horror, because my second grandchild may one day believe I did not care as much for him as I do for his big brother, because I have not blogged about him.
When I was twelve, living in a trailer park in Utah, I was friends with a girl named Cindi Salzetti. She had all these great magazines and records, and we would read and listen to them when I was allowed to visit her up the road. She had a small tv in her room, and I watched Andy Gibb sing Shadow Dancing on some television show. I heard a song called "I'm Yours" by Prince. I took home some of the pull-out posters Cindi let me have from Tiger Beat magazines. I found other ways to get posters, and slowly started taping them to my bedroom wall. I knew these things were "of the devil," but I did not want to end up in heaven with my father anyway, so I did not care. I enjoyed my small collection of posters. I even got ahold of some Bee Gees and Andy Gibb cassettes and had Debby Boone's cassette. (I had a bit of a crush on Debby Boone, the first signs of my personal experience of human sexuality, something I did not understand at all then.) A month or so passed, and my father had said nothing about my posters.
One day he stormed into my room and started tearing down posters and throwing them into a trash can. He grabbed my tapes, and I did something I had never done before. I asked him why he could have Linda Ronstadt and Crystal Gayle tapes but I couldn't have my own cassettes. He stormed to his room and came back to my room, tearing the thin glistening black tape out of a Ronstadt cassette while he screamed, and then proceeding to rip the voices on shimmering ribbon out of my cassettes. I shut up and shut down, trying not to feel anything. I stood there, mute, stupid. Then he grabbed Ratty, the stuffed animal my paternal Grandparents bought for me with greenstamps when I turned one. Ratty went with me to hospitals. He was my silent, constant friend. I loved him with all of my heart. And in that instant, I realized what was required. I turned toward my father, put all the disdain I could muster into my voice, and said, "Go ahead, throw it away. It was YOUR parents who gave him to me anyway!" I turned away. My father stomped out with the trash can. I slowly turned toward my bed. Ratty was still there.
I knew, if I loved or cared about anything or anyone, my father would hurt me with it/them, because he knew that specifically would hurt me to my core. Thus began my coming teenage years of being too tough to ever outwardly show love of anything or anyone. It was the only way to protect myself from having my father hurt me with them.
I finally allowed myself to express my love for other humans when I had children. When myspace came into existence, and we got a computer from my sister in 2001, I started letting my love express itself on social media. It felt nice to be free to express the love I felt. By the time my first grandchild was born, it was so nice to freely express my love for him. And then I paid the price. I had forgotten the lesson I learned in that tiny bedroom back in Utah. I had to realize my father is not an aberration.
I met my second grandchild when he was 5 months old. Every week or so I get to skype with my oldest grandchild, and I get to enjoy his little brother, who is two now, during those skypes.
In the off chance anyone ever questions my love for my second grandchild, or my estranged child, I am right now stating this unequivocally: I love my 3 children and my grandchildren with all of my heart. I denied my love of Ratty once, and it saved him. But he could take it. I could say those words to my father, and it would not harm Ratty.
I love my kids and grandkids, with an unconditional and deep love I will never feel for anyone else. Always.
I did not ever plan on blogging again at the end of 2019. I spent the last 2 years and 3 months in a fog of sadness. I am still wandering in that fog. But I cannot remove myself from all this, because of the damage that would create in the lives of my children and grandchildren. Frustratingly, the pain is too much to silently carry. I have nowhere else to place it. So I find myself back here, doing what has been my only real relief throughout my life. I am writing.
Over the past year, I had to find out what it is that some of my paternal family have said about my childhood experiences. Once again, I thought some healing was finally being gifted to me, when once again I reconnected with family members I had not seen in years. The experience brought brief feelings of acceptance and validation. One would think I would know better by now. One would definitely think I would never fall for such hopes ever again. I realize now I will most likely always be susceptible to these kinds of hopes. As I child, I wanted so much to be able to speak the truth. I wanted to be seen as I was, not as others defined me. I guess these needs are so deeply embedded, I will never be able to shake them. I am not cynical or tough enough to shut myself down when these opportunities arise with paternal family members. No matter how tough or invulnerable I try to make myself, I cannot be that tough.
Whenever others choose to mis-define me, there are a couple of things that seem to happen. These mis-definers must know, consciously or unconsciously, that what they are defining is not really true, because they never come to me with their definitions, to confirm or debunk them. These definitions are almost always based on things I have never said or done. Communicating with me openly could probably clear things up. But no one comes to me about these definitions, which makes me feel that they know what they are saying is not reality, and they do not want to have to see, or admit, the truth. Talking to me might shed light on their mis-definitions, so they have to avoid telling me what they are saying. In the case of small-town gossipy definitions, I think a lot of people just like to hear outrageous things about people who are not a part of the good-old-boy system, are not a real part of the community, so no one bothers to go straight to the person and find out the truth. When it comes to family members, I feel like it is simply a need to escape the pain of accepting the truth. I am guessing it is easier to think of me as delusional, than to see the truth.
I was finally told what a number of my paternal family members think about my childhood. At first I was told it was too bad I had been so mistreated by psychiatrists. I was shocked to hear a paternal family member say this. There had been family knowledge about my experience with the Adventist principal, but none of them ever said to me that what he did was wrong. I had sort of accepted that they, like many in my church, saw his abuse of me as my fault. No one but my father ever said as much, it was just something I internalized. I thought it was nice to finally hear from family that I had experienced some mistreatment by those in the mental health field. But I was told no, it was something else. There is a belief in my family that mental health workers have planted false memories in my head.
I do not at all know what has ever happened in my experiences with the mental health field that would give anyone such an idea. Mental health workers tended to land in two camps for me. Most wouldn't believe my mom was a nurse and my father was an engineer. These are some of the first answers required from clients seeking help. "What do your parents do for a living?" My answers were easily provable, but I was simply disbelieved from the get go, so I'd give up right away with that camp. The other camp would listen, so I would maybe open up a very little bit about my past. Almost without exception, this camp realized I am a messed up human that no one believes, so they know they can con and misuse me, and they will get away with it. They misuse me. These have been my experiences.
Nowhere in any of these mental healthcare interactions did anyone ever tell me that anything must have happened to me. They did make me feel like I was supposed to tell them a false narrative about what my parents did for a living. And that was a reaction by them that was guaranteed to shut me down. I know what my parents did for a living. No one can make me falsify the truth. The mental health field has failed in helping me, but not once by planting false memories. I have no idea where anything I have ever said, or written, or experienced, could be twisted into such an idea. I am still somewhat in a state of shock that this is the way I am being defined by some family members. I know what happened with my father and Pam. No one can make me falsify the truth. Not even a lifelong desire to belong will ever make me betray the child I once was by denying the truth.
The interactions between countries, the political discourse within this country, the atrocities that are daily happening, all confirm for me that my own family experiences are simply a small example of regular human behavior on a global scale. Nothing should shock me. Children are bombed. Children are daily misused. This is the truth. Why do these things happen? Because they can.
I have no idea if I will blog again.
I have discovered some music that gives me comfort, in the midst of everything. It expresses the pain I feel. This song is probably the song I love more than any other song I have ever heard in my life:
Last year, as I dealt once again with the frustration I experience at not being believed or listened to, a mental health worker I spoke with a handful of times in 2021 said something that bothered me at first. After thinking on his words, and adding it up with my own ways of remembering events in my life, it dawns on me that he could have been on to something. He said I am probably on the spectrum.
I am currently reading a book called "Divergent Mind," by Jenara Neremberg. My constant feelings of not being "normal" or human, the way I desperately long for total honesty, my instant inner turmoil when I realize someone is trying to change the truth about my behavior or motivations or history without looking at my daily life and my recollections of things that do not change over time, my inability to read others properly, my total failure at ever figuring out the "game" of life, all of it fits into this idea of me perhaps being on the spectrum. I don't know. And for me it is irrelevant. I have been othered and excluded by the very people I trusted most to never do that to me. I am not seen as enough of a human to ever expect real inclusion in family. I accept this. I know my truth. This blog, my memories, have always been what they are, and until my brain stops working or death takes me, my memories will always be what they are. My "perspective" does not change over time, when it comes to what happened in my childhood. No mental health person implanted false memories. No mental health person ever even believed me when I said what my parents did for a living. I grew up knowing what had happened to me, and nobody will make me change what I know is true. Two plus two is four. This very paragraph, and my blog, and my whole life, do seem to make it very possible that I am not neurotypical.
