Jumble

My mind is jumble. I have so many things floating around. It is hard for me to think or focus on one thing at a time. I just want to cry. I just want to rage. I just want to sleep. I just want to laugh. I just want to be.

Every day I have sat down and tried to write something, but the words always get stuck. Sometimes I have to close my eyes and let my fingers dance over the keyboard as the memories come, and I tried even that. When I went to proof read it was like I was reading someone else's life. I feel so disconnected from it, yet it is very much in the front of my mind.

Music has always been something that is very important to me. I don't play an instrument anymore, haven't for a long time. I sing, but it's the sort of singing you do when no one is around to hear you, in the shower, in the car, or sometimes with my kids as we are goofing around.

There are certain songs that trigger specific events in my mind. "Round Here" was the song that was playing when my youngest child was born. Every time that I hear it my mind drifts there and I am filled with a peaceful feeling.

Anger and Pain

I am angry. I am in pain. Physical pain and emotional pain. I want to cry and cry until I am all cried out.

I am tired of hearing people around me talk. I want them to shut up. All they ever do is argue with me anyway. Even my husband felt the need to attack me today.

Why? Because I complain too much. I asked him to help me with the boy since he has this new program he wants me to do with him. I know he doesn't feel well but neither do I and really I needed his support. He sent the boy to bed and then yelled at me about how I need to stop engaging him all the time. I do this because I need someone to listen to me, not to fix it. Now I feel more alone then ever. I will keep my complaints to myself. I will be the person who does it all. I will be as perfect as I can be. Sadly, I know I will fail.

I have failed at being a wife. I have failed about being a mother and grandmother and daughter and sister and every other role I've played in my life. I am an epic failure.

I have dark ugly thoughts about hurting myself. Yes I am in counseling and yes I have told my counselor. I am just too tired to even put more of my thoughts down but I'm guessing that without being able to share with my husband I will be coming here a lot more.

Healing

I am home from the hospital, surgery was a success and now I have to pass the fragments of the kidney stone here at home. I am tired and groggy from the pain medication so I am sorry but it will be a few more days before I am back to blogging full time. Thank you to all of you who sent up prayers and positive thoughts. I carried them with me when it was time and even the doctor said I was unusually relaxed at facing the procedure. I told him it was because I had so much love in my corner.

Surgery

The pain was getting worse, started around 7pm on Friday night. I took some Tylenol for it. I took some more Tylenol. Got home from work around 1030pm. I took some pain killers I had been prescribed for something else. Took some more about 2am. By 6am I thought I was going to die. I woke up the husband and called my mom and she came to take me to the hospital becausehe wouldratherspend time with Def than accompanyhis wife to the er.

Five shots of morphine later, a host of other stuff that I can't spell, and a big fat hospital bill later, they told me what I already knew. I have kidney stones, again, and in both sides.

Tomorrow is Monday and I have to be at the doctor's office by 730 so that they can do outpatient surgery and remove them. I don't know how long it will be before I get back to post a real post, but I will post an update so everyone knows how I'm doing.

I am very afraid, I just keeping telling myself that I'll be fine. I sure hope it's true.

What I Deserved

I had a conversation tonight that really brought back some memories for me. I am going to share some of them here in the next few days.

For those who have followed my journey I apologize for the repeat of information, but I have to give it again in order for new readers to understand.

I spent eight years under the care of the Department of Human Services. The first two in foster care and after thirty days in a psychiatric hospital I was shipped to a Residential Child Care Facility. I was, and to this day still am, the youngest “resident” that they ever had. I also spent more time in that facility then any other child before or after me and it has been over twenty years since I first went there.

Just a few weeks before I was sent to the psychiatric hospital I was in a halfway house, a place of transition, and while there, a sixteen year old boy tried to rape me. I never told anyone, I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I was a bad girl and bad girls are not to be believed. When I arrived at Western Academy, much to my horror, he was there as well.

I think that his guilt, and his fear of me telling someone what he did to me, really led to the circumstances of the first few years I spent there. In order to destroy my credibility, should I choose to tell someone, he had to paint me to be a horrible person. He told them that I was a slut, a whore, a liar and an instigator. I never stood a chance.

Kendra was the first roommate that I ever had. She was not mean to me per say, but she delighted in scaring me to death. I was terrified to sleep most of the nights. Before long I was moved into another room with another girl who frankly, I can’t recall her name, a lot of the names are lost to me now as time separates me from the memories. It is much easier to recall incidents.

I woke up cold and tired one early morning and after shuffling over to my locker and dragging out the first change of clothes I came to, I stumbled into the bathroom for a shower. Now, this was not just a simple bathroom, there was four showers (complete with a tiny cloth curtain to cover us) and four bathroom stalls all along one wall opposite of the door, and next to the door was a counter with four sinks and a mirror that ran the length above them (many hours were spent sitting on those counters shaving our legs in later years). Showers were required before we could go down to breakfast and we had to be down by eight in the morning. So I force myself under the water and leaned against the wall with my eyes closed.

I was thinking of my mother, wondering how I came to be in such a place. I felt the hot sting of tears as I wondered why she didn’t love me, why she didn’t want to be my mother anymore and why she didn’t want a daughter like me. I asked myself (as I have many times over the years) what I could have possibly done to make her turn her back on me.

I felt the cool breeze and the cloth curtain sucked in towards me and I pushed it away, it never registered in my mind that the room had grown unnaturally silent, nor did it register that as I pushed the curtain away from me that my hand had connected to something solid.

Before another thought entered my mind I found myself without water. I tried to work it out in my mind how this had happened and once more I felt the icy touch of air lick my wet skin before I felt the first blow connect. It came in hard and fast and my head slammed back against the wall and bounced back. I reached out to brace myself and found myself with my arms pinned to my side and darkness descended on me and I suddenly found I couldn’t couldn't breathe. I was dragged out by more hands then I could count, not that counting them was on my mind as blow after blow rained down on me. I tried to cry out but found myself paralyzed with fear and dizzying pain, reacting with a need for survival as I tried best I could to curl up and cover my face. It didn’t really help. When they finally walked away just as silently as the had come, I continued to lay there and it was probably an hour later when it was time for breakfast and I didn’t show up that someone came to look for me, that I was found and the pillowcase was removed from my face.

I cringed as hands reached for me and some sort of pathetic whimper escaped me as I tried to pull away. Quiet and soothing words came at me but it doesn’t really matter, I don’t want them to touch me. I deserved it, I am a bad girl. I deserve pain, I deserve to hurt, I deserve the darkness, I deserve to loose any and all good things in my life.

Bush Adminstration.

Tonight as I made my evening rounds of blog reading, I found myself encountering the same theme over and over again and I felt it important to weigh in on the topic myself.

The war in Iraq has taken a terrible toll on the American people and Bush continues to press forward and state that this has been for the best. I truly do not understand how he can continue to claim this unless he is simply delusional. Not only has it cost lives of American Soldiers (I won't even go into the cost of innocent Iraq citizens at the moment) but it has impacted our economy, our families at home, our standing within the world.

I had a young couple that came to work for me. The young man was barely twenty-one and his girlfriend was about nineteen. They had met just before he went to Iraq to serve for the Army. I had many conversations with them during the time they worked for me, as I like to get to know people on a personal level.

He told me that he had joined the military because he felt it was his duty to his country. I agreed that everyone has a duty to their country, even if they do not do this by serving in the military. He spoke to me of some of the things that he had been through, some of the things he had seen. Perhaps soon I will go into those, but during this time he was happy to be home and looked forward to building a life with his girlfriend. Within weeks he had saved enough money to buy her a ring and he proposed and they intended to get married within a few months.

Then came 9/11. The anniversary of the beginning of what would lead to a war built on lies. The anniversary of a day that changed millions of lives.

That day he came to work as usual, was a little quieter then normal. There were people around him discussing the date, the significance of it to them and he suddenly stood up and threw his headset down and walked away, all the way outside. Both his girlfriend and I followed him out to find him sitting on the curb. He was shaking and holding his head and as she reaches for his shoulder I put my hand out to stop her, I had seen that look before and I knew that she would be in danger even as I knew he would never want to hurt her.

She called his name three times before he managed to pull his head up to look at her fully. It was like he didn't really see her though and he stood quickly and backed up. Hurt and confusion flickered over her face and I placed a hand on her arm in hopes of keeping her from advancing on him.

He turned and walked away. He did not return to work for me, but she did. We spoke about his struggles and her difficulty in dealing with it, she begged him to get help through the VA hospital. To add to her despair, she found out that she was expecting his child and she couldn't share it with him because she was afraid he would not be able to handle the additional pressure of impending father hood.

Roughly two weeks later, I called to check on her because she didn't come to work. As soon as she heard my voice she broke down and through her sobs recounted a story that was so disturbing to me that I actually went to our Human Resource department and asked to speak to someone.

They had moved in with his mother, so that while she was at work he would have someone to watch over him constantly. He seemed to be losing touch with reality with every passing moment and she was terrified to leave him alone. He had gone to bed early the night before and after spending some time discussing with his mother a way to get him some help, she went up and climbed into bed with him.

She awoke a few hours later and found herself alone so she began to search the house for him. She found his mother huddled in the bathroom sobbing. He had gotten up in the middle of the night and found his way into her bedroom.

Through her sobs she told me every detail of what took place and I shook at the atrocity of it. My stomach turned several times and I felt that I would throw up. I can't even begin to detail the story here, but I can tell you that being over there, being a part of a war where every man, woman, and child was the enemy, destroyed a part of this young man. It desensitized him to the morals that we cling to with every fiber of our being.

Through my blog I have corresponded with several young men and women who have either served, or are currently serving in Iraq and every story seems the same to me. They are being broken down, their self worth is in shambles as they fight for their very survival against people who do not want them there, all because of a pack of lies. The news is full of incidents involving ex-soldiers who have come back suffering not only physically but psychologically as well as Bush calls the war "romantic".

I find there to be nothing romantic about pain and suffering, despair and black holes. If he thinks it is so romantic, perhaps he should re-enlist and serve on the front lines.

There has been so much stupidity in the name of Bush that I can not even begin to cover it all in one post, it would probably take me weeks, but I felt that I had to get this particular thing off of my chest so that I could sleep tonight. I will leave you with a slightly happier note.

I ran into this young couple several weeks back, they have a beautiful baby girl and went through with their plans to be married. He is currently in therapy as well as taking medication for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and she has joined a local support group for spouses of men or women who have gone through this. They seem to be willing to do the work it is going to take to make their individual and joint lives a success.

Tired

I am tired and worn out. It has been difficult trying to juggle everything in my life and I'm starting to feel the burnout of it. Before I can really explain it, I suppose I should start with the major changes that have taken place in my life since I lost blogged.

My father-in-law died.
We now own a house.
My parents have moved across the country and now live half a block away.
Grandmother-in-law lives next door to parents.
Daughter has started high school.
Oldest son started junior high.
Youngest son has been diagnosed with ADHD.
I have gone back to school.

Otherwise life is about the same. The problem is that trying to juggle all of these things, while getting my kids tot heir activities, and trying to find time to help update and edit Chris' website (which I love to do, don't get me wrong) leaves me feeling as if I have very little time for myself. So much so, that I want to simply weep most nights.

My children are the biggest issue right now. I understand that kids are going to go through a teenage "angst" period, but it seems that they are out of control.

My daughter is openly defiant, she will not bring home her homework, she does not do her chores, she is mouthy towards both Chris and I and she screams nearly constantly at her brothers.

My oldest son is a bit better, but he is often argumentative with me or his father, he hits his brother and never stops trying to goad the other kids into a fight. I have never seen such bickering between children in my entire life.

The youngest son doesn't listen, he is physically aggressive with the other kids, he is too aggressive with the animals. He uses language that is way inappropriate.

I am falling apart at the seams over my kids. I don't know how to make them listen. I don't know how to impress on them the importance of getting their chores and homework done. I just don't know. I am tired of it and something has to give.