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My father was a violent alcoholic. His target was Mom. Always accused her of cheating (don't know if that was true). They married after only one or two dates (Mom worked in his office). They had my two older sisters within the first couple of years. First sister was born with cerebral palsy. Before I was born, they put my sisters in an orphanage (picture mid 1930s orphanages) because they were splitting and neither wanted the girls. Then they got back together, got the girls out of orphanage and decided to have me. I was supposed to be the "glue" that kept them together. Dad never went after any of us girls but when he came home drunk he would attack Mom and try to kill her. And we girls were expected to save Mom. We had many times of walking the streets till he fell asleep. Or having to call the police. Etc. It was embarrassing. We were told to never talk about it to our friends, but pretty hard to keep a secret when it was so loud and police were at house. Also being chased out of house. As my sisters and I grew up we started to resent Mom for keeping us in that violent situation. Why didn't she leave him? Well, back in those days there was no Vera House or other places for Mom to go to. But Mom had the attitude that we were to take care of her.
On the day my first child was born, Dad went after her again more aggressively, my oldest sister smacked him on the head with a cast iron fry pan, which stopped the attack. He of course needed stitches and then he was taken to a prison locally. His family (they all immigrated from England and all but us lived in Buffalo area), pleaded with Mom to not let him go to a "worse" prison, they wanted him to go with them. After a year, he caused too much trouble there so they shipped him to California where another black sheep family member lived. He was probably 60 when that happened. Eight years later he was hit and killed by a drunk driver who left the scene of the accident (too drunk to know she hit anyone).
Mom was very miserable and love was very conditional. If we made her happy things were good.
Eventually I started thinking about all we had lived through and why was it like that. I came to realize my father's childhood was a living hell. My mother's was not much better. In other words, they gave us their "best" and what more could we ask for? They did not know how to do better. Understanding that took so much of the sting out of our crummy childhood.
I think as parents we all think we will do a "better job" than our parents did. My daughter told me she would be a better mother than me, which hurt like heck. In the middle of getting my divorce she revealed that her father had molested her. I believed her when she told me, felt guilty as heck that I did not realize this. She became quite promiscuous, got STD, and became sterile. She was (still is?) very resentful that she could have no babies of her own. And when one of her friends became pregnant, my daughter was very mean to them. Unbelievable. And the topper??? She forgives her father but apparently hates me.
I think, for me anyway, living alone is my best bet. I've had enough heartache and fear for my lifetime.
WOW!.....Just......WOW! I've got my problems, but you have lived a life.....WOW! All I can say is therapy, lots and lots of therapy. I really hope you can leave the darkness of your past and the damage it caused you and your family. No matter what has happened, there is always hope in what the future can bring, if not for your kids and you, at least find your own peace.
WOW!.....Just......WOW! I've got my problems, but you have lived a life.....WOW! All I can say is therapy, lots and lots of therapy. I really hope you can leave the darkness of your past and the damage it caused you and your family. No matter what has happened, there is always hope in what the future can bring, if not for your kids and you, at least find your own peace.
Thank you for your feedback. I have done therapy for almost 40 years. Not consistently, but fairly regularly. Some were excellent; some were terrible.
I am looking to do just what you said...... finding my own peace. I need to get away from here where there is a memory just about everywhere. Need to see new, pretty, peaceful. I imagine some people would think that everything is behind me, but some things in life stay with you forever, they just never go away. My middle sister died of lung cancer 1999 and my oldest sister is dying from lung cancer. I heard today she is not doing well. I still plan my trip for May 9. Sister has a daughter who is a whole different story. But I left her with the instructions she would need if sister died while I am away. (Daughter is 47 and has very very little to do with her mother).
Thank you snowtired14. It was nice to hear from you.
They are called scars, wounds of the past. But they mean you have survived regardless.
Yes, that is exactly what they are..... scars.
My regret is my two sisters...... wish Mary Ann was alive and wish Adrienne was well and whole. They are the ones who really suffered.
You are a great support and because you seem to "get it" pretty well, you must have your own story. I'd be interested to read it when you are ready to write it.
The most beautiful love I've experienced from another person came from my maternal grandmother. When I became a teenager, I can't rightly recall how I learned but I learned that my grandfather, her husband, had been unfaithful. So I simply asked her about it. She acknowledged that that was true, and it was very obvious that decades later the pain she felt was still very real and deep. So I asked my grandfather if it was true, and he too acknowledged it and tried brushing it away. I insisted that he had to apologize to my grandmother. It took years before he finally did. Now, an important point. My grandparents always ALWAYS A.L.W.A.Y.S. for as long as I knew them, they bickered and quarreled. In time I came to understand and believe that it was due to my grandmother's pain for her husband's unfaithfulness.
The years passed, my grandfather continued to drag his feet about apologizing to my grandmother for his sexual infidelity, and I continued to pester him. The time came when my grandmother had a stroke, was left paralyzed on either her left or her right side, I don't rightly recall, and during those first few days afterward while being treated in the hospital, the doctors informed our family that my grandmother would require a feeding tube or she would starve to death, but they couldn't put one in without permission from "the family." The family decided to leave the decision to my grandmother, she chose not to have it because she preferred to die with dignity, and we all agreed to support her. At the last moment, my grandfather unbeknownst to anyone authorized a feeding tube.
And so my grandmother lived for a number of years after being half paralyzed, and all the difficulties and indignities that caused. And after many years, my continual pestering of my grandfather to apologize to my beautiful grandmother for his unfaithfulness paid off, and he did so. I was there, I witnessed it. And my beautiful grandmother died shortly thereafter. My grandfather lived a number of years beyond her death, and he would have moments of spontaneously bursting out into tears and carrying on about what a wonderful life they had had together. And it was all a fraud, because all I had ever seen them do was quarrel.
The point being that memory can be damn selective. And what one insists is so may or may not actually be so.
LOVING THEM UNCONDITIONALLY FOR A LIFETIME is hard for me to believe as the source of estrangement. But that's just me.
I've shared what was on my heart and my own experience(s). As has been said above, good luck.
As I read your post, I found myself feeling angry. Why in the world would you push for that apology? Was it really for your grandmother or was it for you to experience a sense if power? I'm sorry, but reading that did not come off as purely wanting to fix something so grandmother would feel better.
There is a saying about letting sleeping dogs lie. Have you heard of it? Your grandfather did a terrible, hurtful thing. But what you did kept that pain going.
A thought popped in my head as I was reading these posts.
Expectations. Those will kill you. I think after we birth our babies, bring them up as best we know how, see them grow up and leave. And that empty nest settles in and we are reminded how quiet the house is. So we "expect" our kids to keep our lives going with visits, phone calls, proclamations of their love for us.
I learned a lot about expectations in my many years of therapy; also the al-anon, open AA, etc. meetings I attended faithfully for many years. As long as we expect something from our kids we are setting ourselves up.
Maybe it is because we have lost touch with who we are besides someone's Mom or Dad. Now we are stuck with "us" and we don't have a clue. Maybe we should spend more time with us and quit worrying what the kids are doing.
A thought popped in my head as I was reading these posts.
Expectations. Those will kill you. I think after we birth our babies, bring them up as best we know how, see them grow up and leave. And that empty nest settles in and we are reminded how quiet the house is. So we "expect" our kids to keep our lives going with visits, phone calls, proclamations of their love for us.
I learned a lot about expectations in my many years of therapy; also the al-anon, open AA, etc. meetings I attended faithfully for many years. As long as we expect something from our kids we are setting ourselves up.
Maybe it is because we have lost touch with who we are besides someone's Mom or Dad. Now we are stuck with "us" and we don't have a clue. Maybe we should spend more time with us and quit worrying what the kids are doing.
Just a thought.
For me, I just missed my kids. They went off to college, and then found work elsewhere. I didn't miss them at first, and they came home for holidays. But as they became invested in their lives, finding mates and making careers, they stopped coming home. And after a few years I realized how much I missed them. I missed their presence in my home. I missed talking to them.
I do not feel I had lost touch with myself at all. I simply missed the people I loved the most in the world. But I have learned that you can't reel the kids back in. They have their lives, just as I had my life after I married and had a family. The wheel turns. It is counterproductive to try to hold them close. If the kids love us, they will find the right amount of independence without abandoning us. But the more we try to reel them in, the more they will resent us, and pull away.
As I read your post, I found myself feeling angry. Why in the world would you push for that apology? Was it really for your grandmother or was it for you to experience a sense if power? I'm sorry, but reading that did not come off as purely wanting to fix something so grandmother would feel better.
There is a saying about letting sleeping dogs lie. Have you heard of it? Your grandfather did a terrible, hurtful thing. But what you did kept that pain going.
I totally understand why she wanted to persuade him to apologize. Without that apology, the pain just lingers and it appears that they just don't understand the pain they caused and/or don't really care. A sincere apology can do wonders.
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