Memoir of a mom

Scissors

I know that every single person remembers the moment when they walked away from any type of abuse.

If you have been blessed with a healthy positive upbringing- all you need to know is that it is this odd experience of contradiction, of fear and bravery.

If you cut the strings what will happen?

When they can’t control you, how will they hurt you?

I personally have had the sick pleasure of doing it twice in my life time.

The first time I am not ready to discuss.

The second time is the mere sustenance for my adult being.

After the last time I vowed to never ever allow any negativity or manipulation into my life where it could drain and impose on my children, my spouse, and myself.

I’ll jokingly call it a superpower because I constantly find myself scanning every aspect of my life searching deep for any sign of exploitation or corruption.

Simply, I do not want my children subjected to the same confusion I was forced into as a child, teenager, and adult.

It is a struggle. I am free from first hand control, but not free from third party manipulation, harassment, defamation, and stalking.

Am I then really free from control?

I would not had truly worked through the cycle if I could not admit that I have asked myself multiple times, is not being tied to the puppet master worth all of the evil that has managed to come with it.

Life is not like a lifetime movie.

Although my strings have been cut, they will not diminish. They have only fallen systematically; and as they lay on the ground like a trail leading back to the source, they remind me that I can never truly be free…… because the evil helped create me.

How could I be made from that?

Eyes Wide Open

Isn’t it funny how you never really know someone until you fully know that it’s too late?

Odd phrasing. I know.

For example, I didn’t know the puppet master was a truly evil vindictive person until I cut the strings, literally.

The things a person closest to you should never even think of doing, he did. I know it’s a result of his mental instability and addictive tendencies however, you really see the truth in someone when they are losing power you didn’t even know they had…..

Funny?

With abuse and manipulation it’s critical to keep the victim blinded. I think at times keeping them blinded is the number one goal to have had. For once they even get a peep through the crack of corruption, they begin their journey to freedom.

Or so they think.

Do you remember walking away?

Not MY “Mini Me”

I am days, hopefully still weeks away from giving birth to a little girl.

It has been an awfully odd journey for me, one I have taken incredibly serious. I cannot seem to get comfortable with the idea that I-ME-Jessica, am having a daughter.

Every mother that has a daughter promotes the same vision. The matching clothes, the matching shoes, the matching hairstyles and bows… the “this is my mini me” mentality.

I do not want that.

For me, it is a whole sense of distrust within that mindset… How can you rave over having a tiny little you, when you are not content with being you?

I could not imagine having a replica of me. In fact, I want the complete opposite of that, I want her to be everything I am not, everything I never was, and everything I never got to be.

I am constantly working on who I am as an individual, mother, sister, daughter, wife, and woman. I am never good enough, right enough, proper enough, I am nothing that I would want my own daughter to be.

Do not get me wrong, I am far from this melancholy, depressed, desolate sounding individual you may currently be picturing in your mind.

Truly, without doubt I am ecstatically happy within my life.

I. Am. Blessed.

However, striving to always be what I consider my personal level of perfect is ingrained in my psyche. Although I am bittersweetly content with that situation within myself (possibly more comfortable than anything else), I also would never wish that on my daughter.

I have continually fought with myself and the image that I would fight to portray as my identity to eventually connecting the dots to my own upbringing.

In as little words as possible (because discussion was never tolerated when coming from anyone other than the puppet master), it would best be described as: ‘always painting the outside to be perfect to the outside world while never really EVER acknowledging, reflecting, or working on what is on the inside- for that is, and always will be a sign of weakness’.

Now…… how could a daughter raised in a corrupted mind frame that could not only fabricate, but fathom that idea as a reality ever raise a daughter of her own?

I am not finished with myself yet. I am not done working out all of the neglect and abuse that was poured into the very foundation of me.. I do not yet know how to be a mother to a daughter. I do not yet know how to raise a daughter in this world simply because I do not yet know how to be a woman in it.

One thing is absolutely certain- I know who I do not want her to be.

Is that enough?

Writers writing

If you have been a writer for any time at all, in any type of way, you have suffered from a painful experience.

I have always been a writer. I just didn’t write. I wrote for the first time in years last year when I experienced a very painful loss, and by doing so, it reminded me of what my true outlet really is.

Unfortunately, I am the type of person that requires an outlet. If I do not have one then I do not digest everything properly. I hold onto it, dwell, and then explode. It is beyond unhealthy. I blame the narcissistic upbringing I was exposed to as a young child. Since coming to terms with that years ago I make sure I always have some type of creative new hobby to allow me to process.

I recently decided to start writing again.

I always felt like I had a story to tell.

It is not the one I am telling today or the one I told yesterday- but it is a story worth telling and if it does not find satisfaction within someone else, at least I was set free from it.

Two of everything

My youngest son literally has two of everything. It’s cathartic. Let me explain.

I had a unique upbringing. I, too, had everything. I was spoiled beyond belief with tangible materialistic items. It was… excessive.

Naturally everyone singles me out due to my overbearing childhood experiences. They too assume I do the same for my children because it is what I am use to. It is not. Let me explain.

My Memory: You are ten years old standing outside of your house in the front yard playing catch with your brand new softball gear. Out of no where multiple black SUV’s appear like a whirlwind surrounding your home. Confused. Scared. You are rushed into the house and locked into your bedroom. Peering under the crack of your door you see what seems like one hundred pairs of shoes running throughout your entire house. The noises were chaos, fear, and shame. You gather the courage and open to crack your door and you see men going through dresser drawers throwing the clothes out as they go. You shut the door. You then, are escorted to the kitchen as the people devour your own space. You watch them one by one hand off all of your belongings which included your brand new Christmas presents and take them with them in their big black SUVs. You are then ordered to go into your room and clean up the enormous mess that was not made by you.

Looking back at that tumultuous situation that was left in shambles I am infused with the contentment of never allowing things to be taken from my children. I over buy so they never have to go without and so they always have options. If something gets lost, stolen, or broken, they have another to not have to ever miss.

As an adult, as a parent, the tangible materialistic items were obviously absolutely nothing in the bigger picture of things. However as a child, my space was invaded, my belongings were stolen, and in turn it had turned me into an individual who constantly regurgitated anxiety due to the paranoia and the fear of the unknown.

Honesty and stability — has been the mission statement, so to speak, of my entire life.

Down the rabbit hole

Have you ever had one single clear memory stir up a massive amount of memories, but they are all tangled up together in one big cloudy BLUR!?

I have been spending the last year and half decoding my own brain and understanding why it is I do the things I do as an adult. Specifically as a parent. Obviously the two go hand in hand. I have to make it out of the big cloudy blur in order to have a proper comprehension of my own behaviors.

Like for example, I distinctly remember having to practice my spelling words as a child. When I go to do the same with my own children I turn it into this ginormous glamorous event full of excitement. After doing so for the past couple of years my super intelligent middle son (admittedly exhausted by my exuberance) asked me why I always insist on making a big deal out of just silly old spelling words, and just like it would in a movie, I had a flashback yesterday as to why I do so.

I was not beaten black and blue as a child, but I did get remotes repeatedly chunked at my face in a fit of rage because I did not spell the word chocolate right when I was nine years old.

Now, whenever I go to spell the word chocolate I say “Cho-Co-Late” in my head and know without a shred of doubt that word is spelt correctly. I also get this weird quiver shiver up the side of my face as well, but at least I will never spell my favorite ice cream flavor wrong.

I will always throw spelling word parties, and bask in the fact my children will not have that same satisfaction. In fact they all read on levels way beyond their own grade levels and I pride myself on the patience I have acquired unintentionally due to the lack of patience that was shown to me for just being a little child.

The maid’s tales

I don’t harp on my children to clean. I don’t scream or fuss or fight over the wrappers or spilt messes. I just do it. I frustratedly and confusingly convince myself that it’s because I love them and also it’s because this is my job. However when I feel overrun or taken advantage of I have a burst of “you all need to learn to clean up after yourself” and then the classically adorable mom guilt to follow.

When I was a child I was tricked, bought, and bribed to clean. I had to maintain the entire household in some way, shape, or fashion. When “company” would come over it was a nightmare for me. If I did not do it, it did NOT get done and that simply was NOT an option.

My memory: I was woken up early as a small child to a half suppressed snicker and the puppet master standing big overtop of me. He smiled at me like the Cheshire Cat and whispered, “if you get up and promise to clean the house really well I will let you stay home from school ALL day”. I got up and began to do my duties.. I spent the day scrubbing the ungodly amount of filth off of the disgusting floors on my hands and knees with a toothbrush….

Then.. As I lay in the floor scrubbing I distinctly remember the noise of the doorbell and my friend asking if I could come out and play since we did NOT have school that day and the puppet master laughed and said no that I was doing chores..

You see, this vivid memory that stains my brain is the story I now tell to anyone close to me to describe and sum up my childhood. It wasn’t until recently that I remembered the story and it dawned on me heavily that it was manipulation, and that manipulating story turned into a string of memories being pulled deep out of my hippocampus.

THIS memory is WHY I have been unintentionally and subconsciously allowing my children to not learn the basic every day childhood lesson, “clean up after yourself”. I have selfishly self sabotaged my own children because I grew up in an mentally abusive home.

WHAT a terrible realization….

WHAT a way to LEARN and HEAL.

Just WOW!

How does your childhood influence your parenting mechanics?

I am forever haunted by that question with every move I make.

Nameless

This emotion doesn’t have a name.

It doesn’t have a name because naming it would take away from it.

It’s confusing. Raw. Real. Deep. dark.

It’s abusing.

It doesn’t have a name because naming it would allow you the ability to not truly- feel it.

It’s like loneliness on a summer day.

I want to explain it, but I just won’t ever find the words to say…

it doesn’t have a name because naming it means you have to talk about it.

It’s uninvited and curiosity mixed deep together in a train wreck “can’t help but to watch it” type of way.

This emotion doesn’t have a name.

For if it did, I wouldn’t ever have to say I packed my feelings. And then hid.

Foreign Emotion

The feeling of not sleeping is comforting.

It tempts, to attempt to, drown out the unknown foreign emotion.

I want to not feel, but that’s not an option.

Which leaves me playing Russian roulette with my conscience.

Sleeping means peace comfort and acceptance. For all of those things I have built a resistance.

I will never ever ever be close to the same. I got way too lost in that comfortable drain.

I can slowly start to feel my body shutting down, it’s one of those torturous unsettling sounds.

If I go to sleep. What will I see?. And when I wake? What new version of me will I unintentionally set free?