I watched 60 Minutes, last night. Oprah did a piece on the Alabama Lynching Memorial. Yay. The truth. All those horrible white faces smiling over the death of one black man or woman. Cowards and creeps all. Those were the faces of my family. Smirking monsters--who went to church, no doubt, and felt superior and justified and special in God's eyes, while they tortured and killed a lone black person, to frighten and terrorize all those who knew him and to maintain their power.
I know those faces. I saw them every day when I woke up and every night when I went to sleep: smirking monsters who found pleasure in hurting me and seeing my pain. My own family.
60 Minutes reminded me that there is no reconciliation without truth, which is why, I think I need to write this. I haven't been able to put it behind me. I've tried to move on but it dogs me and trips me up at every turn. The anger and hurt are part of me and I need to speak about it because i can't forget it. I've tried.
* * *
I'm 66 years old. I have been sober for over 30 years, with some Nyquil a couple of times at night when I confronted my mother about Russel, 15 years ago, but that's something for another time. 30 years without drinking and doing drugs. 30 years of working the program to the best of my ability and learning about recovery and adult child stuff, etc. Of realizing I couldn't move on with my life unless i forgave my mother and father and sister. And I came to some sort of reconciliation, 12 years ago. I did. Overcome by grief and anger and shame, I realized I couldn't ask anyone else to forgive me my shortcomings and ignorance if i couldn't forgive my mother's.
People always said, she did the best she could, but I couldn't accept that because she enjoyed hurting me so much. Because, well, because it was, the sadism, that was what I knew about her. But I had this realization: that for whatever reason, that was who she was. It wasn't personal! Even all the insults and beatings, they weren't personal. And i felt deep empathy for her. And for myself, a troubled person who probably looked crazy and did stupid things myself. How could I ask anyone else to understand and have compassion for me because I was doing the best I could, that if I made mistakes, it was because I didn't know any better. Couldn't they understand that? That even when I wanted to do better, I didn't know how. That i did things out of habit and ignorance and fear and hope and desire and ambition and pleasure and ... who knows. It all was either reaction or bad ideas. But I didn't want to be stupid. I did't want to be ignorant or crass or selfish or unproductive or a hermit! I wanted to be happy and friendly and creative and have lots of friends and a purpose. I just didn't know how. And every time I tried, I seemed to fail.
So after years and years of sobriety, 18, I guess, there i was, one more time paralyzed with shame and mortification. One more time I was housebound for months, having nightmares and waking up filled with rage and pain at my mother and family. And I had been 5 or 6 years since seeing her, at all.
But I did speak to her on the phone. I did ask her about Russel, why she chose him over me. She said, he said you seduced him. Mom! I said, I was 21. He was 20 years older than me! He kept coming over at night and you believe him? Well, you are an alcoholic, she said.
My blood ran cold. Suddenly, every cell in my body felt foreign and monstrous. I wanted it all out of me. I felt that every vein and artery were of her genes, were poison and they were in me -- and I couldn't get away from this thing that had born me. She was in me. I was doomed.
For months, which seemed like years, I don't know, I wrestled with the horror that she was in me. In my thoughts, but also in my body. For months, I guess it was, or another year, the horror came every night. therapy didn't make it go away, AA didn't make it go away, Al-anon didn't make it go away, either. I couldn't talk to anyone about it without dissolving into buckets of tears and gulping of air. Most people have never been beaten like I was. Most people had never been humiliated and laughed at like I was. Most people hadn't been turned out like I was. How could I bring my pain to someone in a meeting? My pain was too great, it scared them. they would say things like, you are doing this to yourself. You have to stop thinking about this. She did the best she could. Look you have such straight teeth. She couldn't have been all bad. Move on already."
So I stopped going to meetings, which made me feel worse than if I didn't go. I didn't know how to protect myself. I didn't know who to talk to. My therapist thought I should go on medication, which felt like a failure after so many years in AA. But after months of mental torment and not being able to sleep, I went to a psychiatrist. I needed blood tests to make sure there wasn't something physical going on. I was fine, great, even, so he put me on meds. They didn't help and I didn't want them. I felt like a failure because I had needed meds, which meant I was sicker than a regular alcoholic and I was a failure because I couldn't get on with my life and was now afraid to go to sleep for fear of nightmares, and sick because my mother and sister so blithely threw me the bus. I was defective, just like they said.
for months it went on like this. That's when I took some NyQuil to go to sleep a few times. People in AA said I drank. OK. So i didn't go back to AA. I didn't want to grovel about how I failed and whatever since I'd already been told by so many people to just get over what happened when I was a kid. I couldn't tell that story anymore. Not in three minute increments, not to people who had never been beaten, or to people who couldn't admit their own issues. Months and months and months.
Finally, one night, I awoke from a nightmare, from fear and the feeling that I should die. I kept trying to run from whatever was after me, shame, fear, rejection. Finally, I just said, ok, God, throw everything you have at me. If I am to die, than so be it. I can't take it anymore. I can't run, anymore.
I fell asleep. And the next day i vowed not to run. Just to be.
* * *
I started going back to Al-anon, since I didn't want to deal with the NyQuil thing in AA. And I saw people I hadn't seen in a while. I mentioned that it was great that after all this time we were still around. And this woman said, well, I didn't want to know you, because you were so sick. Ow. Um, that's kind of the definition for being here. And, while I thought the same about her, I didn't say so. But I took it in, like I always did. Never having a good come back for that kind of thing. But it was duly noted. My lack of pushback was duly noted by her, as well, which meant that this relationship continued until it didn't. One time we went to lunch. Yes I was foolish enough to go to lunch with her, and I drove up in a car the same make and year as her own. She said, wow, I thought you would be in a run-down jalopy. People always think I look like I drive a BMW. We both had Toyota Matrixes, at the time. Mine was white and pristine. I didn't have a come back. But the next time, as we walked into a meeting, she started to complain to me about her husband for the hundredth time, and I simply said, you know, Shelly, it's you. It's you. Someone needs to tell you. People won't say anything here, but it's you. You always complain, but it's you." She was so angry, she was speechless for a moment. I walked into the meeting, and she shared about it without naming names, that someone was so rude to her. She could hardly get the words out. I've never been talked to at a meeting like that that, she said. Yes, I thought, finally, they were rude back. when it was my time to speak, I share about how al-anon's go to meetings for years and talk about the alcoholic who can't stay sober, or whose behavior doesn't change, all the while, they slip continuously--and get away with it since there is no drink to count or people to tell them that they keep repeating the same behavior over and over again, themselves. In Al-anon, they don't call out the slips.
* * *
She didn't kill me. She clothed and fed me, reluctantly and resentfully, even spitefully, but she did so. she didn't kill me. She tortured me and laughed, but she didn't kill me. These are thoughts i needed to think to find the forgiveness for her. You see, I have had five abortions, from three different men. 2 one-night stands and 3 with the love of my life.
* * *
I walked out my front door and looked at the world outside.
Blue sky and green glossy leaves on a nsb shrub
A tree in full leaf
Camilias, Avocado and succulents
Aimes Aire lounges and table on my patio
A fat Buddha waving our troubles away
I have a cat named Canyon
she lives with me in a canyon
in California
Joni Mitchell songs
and a husband of 30 years
who would have thought
