December's Illusion

I suppose this being the last night of 2003, waxing philosophical is to be expected, and by rights, an entry to top of the year would be wonderful.

Unfortunately I don’t have the time nor the patience or the energy even to sit here tonight and wax on about the events that transpired throughout the year, things that should have happened, but just didn’t come to pass, or the things that did happen and was especially inspiring to me.

But I did want to jump on for just a bit and wish each and every one of you the most joyous of New Years. It is my wish that you are able to bring in the New Year surrounded by those you love and cherish, and for those that are far away – may they forever stay close in your hearts.

I raise my cup of kindness to you all…

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I was going to write about a small victory that I felt today, but then I realized that the victory would be made less victorious if I wrote about it and have it cause more pain and anguish for the person who made the victory happen. It’s a rather long story and sometimes the less said about an emotion and/or victory of this sort is probably better.

I have always been the type of person who takes another persons feelings into consideration over my own; this has been something I have always felt to be the right thing to do. I think that this became even more reinforced within as a woman who raised two girls alone. Many times I gave up things I needed because they needed or wanted something, and this seemed completely natural to me. I am sure most mothers feel the same. On an after thought; it would be fair to add that I know of some women who are just the opposite and think only of themselves and I know of some Fathers who feel the same way I do, but I am looking at this from my point of view – my perspective so I will continue on in this fashion.

With the journey of Understanding who I am, I have come to realize that it shouldn’t have been as hard as I thought that it would be, and sometimes in the not so distant past and the distant past when I have been depressed and wondered who or what I am, I think that on retrospect I was looking too deep for the answer to this question. I only needed to look just under the surface to find that I am not the bad person I have been at times portrayed to be. True I have made my mistakes, but most of us who can admit to being human have made their share of mistakes, but this doesn’t make me a bad person.

Growing up in a small community and living most of my life in that same small town had only helped to highlight the mistakes I made and as some people have nothing better to do than talk about and revel in the misfortunes of another, my mistakes were sometimes glorified because of these people. Along the road to get to where I am has been littered with individuals who wanted nothing more in life than to break my will, to ruin my self esteem and to make me feel worthless. I have said it before, I will probably say it many times over…small towns breed small minds. I used to have this saying when I was told that someone was talking about me in a negative fashion, that it was okay, because it was giving some other misfortunate soul a break from their caustic words. That was how I looked at life.

While I sometimes miss the closeness of a small town, while I sometimes miss the one or two true friends that I thought that I had, I find myself much removed from all the harshness of that environment and I am now free to be whom and what I was meant to be. I can have my dreams and feel free to make them goals in my life. I am free to live life as I see it, and living in a large city also accommodates more for diversity, something that you will never find in a small community, anyone that had the audacity to be different from the norm was most generally driven out or their life was made so difficult they would never find happiness or acceptance and I find that truly sad.

So, while I know that my life is far from the journey’s end, the journey inward has been long, hard and sometimes very trying, yet so far very fulfilling and I cannot wait to continue on with it. Regardless of whether those people who thought that I would make nothing of my life still believe in their simplistic attitudes, I know, and the ones who truly know and love me know better, and that is a victory in itself.

When I think about this world in relation to the miles that separates me from my family and friends, the immense vastness of it is incredulous. The time that it takes me to travel from point A to point B is a whole day from my life.

News on the other hand, travels much faster – like the speed of light. Ultimately nanoseconds.

D#3 called me at work today with a bit of news that really rocked my world and turned it upside down. The gist of this conversation didn’t completely sink in until much later when I took a break and went outside for a bit.

Back home I used to work at a plant that manufactured medical supplies. While I would like to say that the job sucked, I couldn’t and be totally honest. The job provided me many benefits, and some of those benefits were not those that are naturally associated with employment. Not only did it pay well, for a small town it was and still is the only thing going, and it enabled me to provide my girls with decent health care and a little less than modest living.

But on a grander scale – after being with said company for 10 years, quite naturally a few friendships were made, and some quite naturally lost. But the friends that I kept have been and will always be dear to my heart, even if we don’t keep in touch like we should. Life happens like that.

There was a small group of us who always managed to take our lunch breaks at the same time and sat with each other before work, at lunch and this also carried on over into our personal lives and we would go out on rare occasions to party together. We watched as each others kids grew up, if we lived in the same town our kids may have played together or went to school together. We stood by each other as we fell in love, married, had more kids, went through broken relationships, retired or simply moved away.

Today D#3 called me with the news that one of those friends had to bury her first-born son today. He was only 28. It was the day after Christmas, he took out his new gun that he had just got to show his wife and not knowing the gun was loaded – it fired and killed him.

My friend received the news at 3:00 am, on the morning of the 27th. I can imagine her shivering at the door as the local sheriffs knocked on her door to deliver the news that had traveled the distance from one end of the country to the other, I can only imagine what she must have felt at that moment – and then I can’t imagine anymore, because in truth I don’t want to know, and I wish that she didn’t have to know, I wish that she didn’t have to hear those words, those awful words that your child is dead.

I can only imagine the days, weeks, months and years that are ahead of her. I can only imagine how her heart must be breaking, and I can only wish that I could be with her to comfort her, give her my strength, my love and my support, because that is all I have to offer. My words fail me; I cannot begin to know what to say to her, I can imagine she knows how I feel, yet somehow sorry just isn’t enough, not when a mother has had every mother’s worst nightmare come true.

With the Christmas holiday over, it is only natural I suppose to start thinking about the upcoming year and try to set some realistic goals for myself.

You notice I said, “try” and “goals” instead of blatantly claiming I’m going to make some resolutions. I gave up on the resolutions. Most of the time that word makes me cringe because it feels like I’m setting myself up for failure, and that’s not a good thing.

So, I’m kinder to myself now – something I learned to do the older I get.

Maybe I should make a goal to sit down throughout the year and write goals that I can easily accomplish next year. It would be a goal that I am sure that I could eventually accomplish, because when I sit here now and try to come up with something, anything, I draw a complete blank and the ones I do think of seem so trivial in comparison to the goals one ideally sets for themselves on these occasions.

I was moaning to T about how trivial my life has become, and he asked what I wanted to accomplish in the next year, and I started rattling off these “mom” type projects that I want to complete and moaned “See how small and inconsequential I have become?” and he say’s in his ever so stern voice: “Susan, that is a life – that’s your life and there is nothing wrong with those goals. It may not be what someone else wants, but it is your life.”

So okay, it’s my life. How come I feel like I am sitting on the sidelines most of the time instead of out there living it? That’s my fault, I know.

I guess I could make that a goal – to get out there and live life more. That would actually be a great one for me, the social butterfly I’m not. But perhaps its time this butterfly spread her wings a bit.

Now what? How does one prepare to become more sociable when they have been a recluse most of their life? Is there a book to read that will help this turtle come out of her shell? Are there classes one can attend that will help this hermit find a newer and prettier home, seriously, because I have no idea how to go about it.

People think that I am stuck up, or that I am a bitch because I often keep to myself and I have very few friends because I don’t know how to make them. Even growing up I didn’t have very many friends because after being burnt a few times, it tends to make one not want to reach out, we all know how horrible kids can be, and the terrible thing is that where I come from they learn it from their parents. I didn’t teach my kids that lesson.

This will be something that I will have to give a bit more thought. There is the saying that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks…but I wonder. It IS my life.

This morning came early, in a rush with a frenzy of getting out the door and to the airport so that D#3 could make her flight on time.

Had we have known that the flight was going to be delayed for almost an hour we could have taken our time with our goodbyes and I wouldn’t have felt so awful at being rushed. I hate letting go.

I hate goodbyes, and those at the airport are even worse, especially now that you can no longer sit with them at their gate. I felt like I was leading my baby lamb to slaughter as we scurried through the baggage check-in and then hurried her to her checkpoint. The last thing I saw of her was a faint smile on a tear stained face and then watching as she turned down the concourse, the bobbing of her hair that she hurriedly scrunched up in a ponytail this morning bouncing and my only thought and emotion was that she looked so little walking away by herself. She may be an adult now in the eyes of the law – but she’ll always be my baby to me.

The “Family” portion of Focused on Life has now been updated with the few pictures that I was able to capture for proof in the days, weeks and months to come that she really was here. But I think it is those special little moments captured in my mind that will always stay close in my heart.

While here, D#3 never ceased to amaze me with her intelligence and had shown me repeatedly how she has grown up in so many ways. Her philosophy on many different issues that we spoke of in some of our more private moments together had me staring in awe of the wisdom that came out of this woman/child’s mouth.

I was constantly struck with the thought; when did she get so smart?

When did she grow up? Yesterday she was my little baby and today she is a young woman. How does that happen so fast? While she was here we went mind tripping through a picture box that I have been creating for the girls to someday place in special albums for each of them, and it was so hard to believe that those pictures taken of a precious baby was the young woman sitting beside me then.

I wonder if my Mom felt like this…the realization that your child has grown, and nothing will ever be the way it used to be. Did it strike her as odd how all that is left of those years of caring, struggling, questioning your decisions, praying you do the right thing, and all the while constantly loving your child is the product of those efforts shaped into the individual you see before you. I wonder if she was struck by the same earth shattering realization that her children had grown up and all that is left of those babies are the memories depicted like footprints left in her mind.

Disappointments are not immune during the holiday season; lots of people experience them all the time. Perhaps a family member can’t make it home for Christmas, or you can’t go home for Christmas, or maybe you just didn’t get what you wanted from that special someone.

I wish this disappointment that I am feeling were from the holidays because I could perhaps get over it easier. Unfortunately it isn’t, and there is nothing that I can do that will ease the bad taste it has left in my mouth.

Recall a post I had written about my boss leaving. Yesterday I had 3 meetings all total with the President and the HR VP, then with the leadership team and all staff at the office and finally with the HR VP again. These meetings left me feeling completely insulted, and like I am being punished for my position.

The gist of the first meeting was to discuss what was expected of me during the interim of finding a replacement for the position left open from by boss leaving. I was informed of what tasks were given to whom (most of which I already knew), and what would be expected of me. I was also informed that my salary would be compensated for the extra workload that I took on my shoulders in addition to the jobs I already perform for this period that I perform the extra work. Then I guess they reduce my salary back to what it was.

I must say that I wasn’t expecting much, but I wasn’t expecting this.

The second meeting informed everyone else basically what they had told me at the first meeting. Plus they also decided that the phones were an issue, or rather, a distraction for me to complete all the necessary jobs that I will have to do. It was decided that all were to change their voice mail to accommodate this by removing the part of the message that tells people to dial 0 for assistance, and it seems I am to let all the calls that zero out to go into my voice mail and check and respond to them at various times throughout the day. This is stated to take effect January 1 and stay in place for the next 3 months.

The third meeting was to inform me of what the expectations were for me to achieve these goals that have now been thrust upon me, and that I was expected to get these jobs done during the 40 hours I already work, with no chance of overtime, no coming in on weekends and no taking work home. Then I was informed of my pay increase. All I could do was sit there with my mouth open, or… maybe it was closed I can’t really tell you because I was so shocked, I felt like I had been insulted and then slapped in the face.

I even got a nice little written letter this morning thanking me for agreeing to taking on these extra duties during this time and informing me in writing the gift they seem to think that they bestowed upon my pay.

Basically, it is barely even a cost of living raise. It amounts to .34 cents an hour. Which is $2.72 a day, $13.60 a week, and $707.20 a year.

I suppose I should be thankful, right?

I cannot get the work done that I am supposed to do now and now I have added responsibilities that I have to place first on my list of priorities. Lets also look at the fact that for these .34 cents an hour I get to help organize and do all the clerical work as well as all the billing for 3 fundraising benefits that are approaching. On top of this, I will need to perform other clerical duties as requested by the CEO/President and other team leaders. I get to completely manage the website now, track and take care of all the clerical support requests, basic assistant office management and try to squeeze in all my other duties as well.

Lets not mention the extra time that I am now going to have to spend listening to all these voice mails that will come in from disgruntled people because they were not allowed to speak to a real person. Then I will either need to respond to the voice mails, call them back, or forward them on to the appropriate individual. This will take more of my time then answering the original phone call and directing it to the appropriate individual originally would.

I’m not even going to go into the part that should be obvious, like – how much my boss was making, in comparison to how much I am making for doing part of her job. I think that it is not only an insult to me; but what does it say of the person who previously held the position.

I would not perhaps be half as disappointed and insulted if they had suggested no pay raise at all, and maybe that doesn’t make sense, but I feel like it is in relation to what my time is worth and it is the constant factor that we are struggling as it is. They refuse to hire additional support to get me off the front desk and have a receptionist only position, they refuse to see that the administration department is overworked, and they obviously do not care one way or another if one comes or goes.

I think the part that made me scoff the most in the letter I received this morning was where I was thanked for agreeing to take on these additional duties. If I would have said no, would I still have a job…you mean I actually had a choice?

I know one thing is sure…they will get their .34 cents worth, and nothing more. I am not going to stress myself out over this, I am not going to work and worry myself into the ground. They have proved that my experience, talents and work ethics mean nothing to them and that they are not appreciated in the least bit.

Needless to say my resume has been updated on Monster.Com, and it has been emailed to several acquaintances that heard about this and requested that I send them a copy.

You can call it what you want, but I call it an insult.

What would this world be like if you and I shared the same opinions, the same ideals, and the same beliefs? What would life be like if we all thought the same on every level, and if we were all one nationality, if we were all one color, one religion, or all one sex?

Can you imagine what life would become? Gone would be the debate classes that you took in high school, because there’d be nothing left to debate, not if we were all the same.

For that matter – we wouldn’t have political voting anymore either with differences in the political parties because we’d all have the same view and who would we vote for? We’d all think the same, so instead of Presidential elections, Gubernatorial elections, Senatorial elections…we’d all have the same thing to offer so we’d just know who the next term would go to.

That might not be such a bad thing… right?

Well, wouldn’t it?

We’d have no wars…no fights between religious sects, no street gangs, no countries, because there would be no diversity, no originality, and no individuality. We’d all be one nation, no longer would there be England, Paris, France or the United States that you always wished you could visit, because we’d all be the same nation. That’s a thought.

We’d never have an original idea because someone else thought of it at the exact same time you did, and if we all agreed on everything, there wouldn’t be much point to life.

We wouldn’t have any need for more than one denomination for a religion because we’d all pray the same, to the same deity, that “being” would be one and the same.

Oh, and remember how you went to a party and the person you absolutely could not stand had the same outfit on that you did? Well, forget about it! For starters you’d love that person and of course they would dress the same as you because they think the same as you, or you think the same as they…I’ve confused myself there. But what they hay, its all the same – there is no diversity.

Your homes would all look the same, because hell, we all like the same things. There would be street after street of houses that looked exactly the same. Everywhere you went all stores would be the same store – there’d be no Marshall Fields, no JC. Penny’s, no Sears, no Wal-Mart’s, no Cub Foods or Safeway’s, no Walgreen’s because we’d only go to one brand of store, there would be many of the same brand to allow for the population, but it’d all be the same. That might be a good thing, right? Hey, at least you know you couldn’t have bought it cheaper somewhere else because…yes?

Let me hear you say it:
“Because…it’s all the SAME.”

Oh, and you know that cute dog we have? It’s the same as your neighbors, and your neighbor’s neighbor and so on and so forth.

Look on the bright side people…you can rule out that nasty little habit of keeping up with the Jones’s or the Smith’s because we’d all have the same. Why wouldn’t we? We think the same, we act the same, we do the same thing at the same time…oh – I just had a thought…we’d have to build up those sewer drains…the thought runs along the lines of us all flushing at the same time…I won’t expatiate on that one any further, you get the idea.

Wouldn’t that be so cool?

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I need to share a story with you, one about a woman who up until now I have only given you a tiny glimpse of. That woman is my Mother.

Some of you may have perceived from my entries that the woman who was my mother may not have been very close to me because of the abuse that I experienced through the mate she lived with for that period in our lives…but your perceptions would have been incorrect and if I in any way mislead you to believe that, I apologize.

While growing up was hard in the life I was dealt to live, behind those troubled times was the quiet strength of my mother. We grew up poor, low income, with hand-me-down clothes, but the one factor, the one thing we were completely wealthy of was the knowledge that we always had the love of our mother standing firmly rooted in our lives.

My mother and I were not always close. For many years I felt that she loved my younger brother and my older brother more than she did me. I was of course wrong. My older brother got attention because he was always in trouble with the law; my younger brother got attention because he was the baby. It’s just that misconception that we middle children get the shit end of the stick.

Little did I know that my mother would have adored a close and loving relationship with her daughter, just as I wanted one with my Mother but she was blinded with the needs of my brothers and I was blinded by the hatred I often felt with her, but mainly with myself.

My father and I wrote often to each other and became close through long distance mail. My oldest brother refused to contact him because of his pride – and yes, pride does always go before the fall. I made 4 visits to my Father’s state from 1972 up until 1996. The first time was in the summer of 1977 and I went to spend a month with him and his new wife. The second time was in 1994 when a gf from work flew out with me to visit him for a week. The third time was in 1996 with my Mother and my oldest brother to visit him as he lay in ICU struggling to regain consciousness after a surgery to repair an aortic aneurism became complicated by his emphysema. The fourth time was also in 1996 and I was alone, I went back home to bury him.

After my father’s death, little by little my mother and I began a beautiful relationship and we shared 6 wonderful, memory packed short years together before she too passed away.

In those six years I learned the depth of her love, the beauty of her strength and her incredible wisdom, all of which is deeply embedded in me.

In 1997 she watched with unspeakable joy as one of her dreams came to fruition. She was reunited with her first-born grandchild. The daughter I had lost custody of at the age of 16. Two times in 1998 she witnessed two more of her dreams come to life before her eyes – both my older brother and my younger brother met and married the true loves of their lives. And finally, in 1999, she was blessed yet again as I found the other half of my soul and married the only love I will ever have for all time.

In 2001 after spending 18 months of my first time ever in college she also witnessed my dream come true, which in turn made it her dream as well as she with tear filled eyes watched her daughter walk down that stadium, walk up to the podium and receive her college diploma.

Also in 2001 she gave her only daughter the courage and the approval she was seeking to find the strength to move 900 miles from home to another life…a new life, a new beginning in another world away.

*Always wanting my mother’s approval, needing to think I was making her proud. It’s amazing to me even now when I realize how much our parents hold a remarkable power over their children. It didn’t matter how old those children grew, or how distant in their everyday lives. We’ve received messages from our parents from the moment of birth; those messages are as deeply etched on the psyche as hair, eyes, and height in the genes. Those messages are clear, if we only open our hearts to listen and they are as clear when they depart from us, as they were when they were here.

In January of 2002 I made the 3rd trip back to my home state in one months time to say goodbye to the woman who was not only my mother, but the woman who ultimately became my best friend.

Her death was complicated by her years of suffering from emphysema and with a twist of fate she waited for my permission, my approval to finally leave her frail body behind.

I missed that call. Cell phone towers not being what they could be in that part of the state, I didn’t get the message until 20 minutes after she passed that she had wanted to speak to me. Her strength to hold on, to wait for me failed her and I wasn’t with her when she passed. To this day this has haunted me. An ever pressing need to know what it was she wanted to tell me with her last dying breath, and an even heavier burden to bare – guilt because I wasn’t there.

Tonight as I lay trying to make my weary body find peace in sleep, I for the millionth time mull this over and over again in my mind and the weight, the anguish, the pain from the guilt of it all seems almost to heavy to carry as I cry for the hundredth time; “But I wasn’t there with you at the end”.

A voice as soft and sweet as a whisper lovingly caressed my ear, and that voice only spoke the words: “Ahh, but you were my dear, you were.”

*parts of this paragraph are rephrased in my own language from a book by Barbara Delinsky titled “Flirting with Pete”. This book touched my soul like no other has and has brought with it some relief to the anguish I have felt in the past 23 months since my mother passed away. That relief came with her gentle whisper allowing me to let go.

I couldn’t get to sleep last night. The floodgates in my brain were open and working overtime and for the life of me I could not get my head to shut up. I think it finally did around 2:00 this morning…that is the last time I recall looking at those damn red digital numbers on my clock. I finally tossed a Kleenex over the clock so I would’nt sit there thinking to myself:

Okay its 12:00 now; if I get to sleep now, I’ll have 7 hours of sleep if I sleep in till 7:00. Okay its 1:00 now; if I get to sleep now, I’ll have 6 hours of sleep if I sleep in till 7:00. Okay its 1:30 now; if I get to sleep now, I’ll have 5.5 hours of sleep if I sleep in till 7:00. Okay its 2:00 now; if I get to sleep now, I’ll have 5 hours of sleep if I sleep in till 7:00.

I did get up just a bit before 7:00. I had no real reason to get up so early, but I find it doesn’t toss me off my schedule if I try to stay close to the same routine on the weekends as I do during the week when the alarm goes off at 5:20 in the morning.

I have managed to actually get some things done so far today. Laundry for one; this seems to have become something of a heavy-duty chore for me. I look at those mountains sitting on the laundry room floor and want to kick out at them and ask to no one in particular as to why they can’t clean themselves?

It also turned out it was green thumb day and I, two plants at a time brought all the plants to the kitchen sink and cut off all the dead and dying foliage, and watered them profusely and left them there to drain. I used to do that every two weeks. Ha! Thinking about it now, the only time they get that is in the summer when they are outside on the deck and they are fortunate enough to get rained on. They really need to have me do this at least monthly for them to stay healthy, especially as dry as it is. We have the humidifier running full force because of my allergies and sinuses, but still it is dry.

I want to try to get at a bit more cleaning today because I know tomorrow I won’t have time to do it. D#2 will be arriving by noon and I HAVE to be up, showered and dressed and at the airport by 11:30 at the latest. That will give me 45 minutes to wait, but I would feel safer knowing that I am there before she gets in so I can find a spot up front of the baggage claim area to watch for her.

She has never flown before and she is so psyched about flying for the first time. This is one of her Christmas presents from us. I just wish we could still meet them at their gates again. What predicament 9/11 put us in on that one, Damn those terrorists anyway.

Then I have to return to the airport at 9:30 the same night to pick up S#1. Lord I hope someone brings him to me…I worry about a 9-year-old flying by himself, at that time of night. I worry about an 18 year old enough as it is flying by herself for the first time, but a 9 year old scares me silly. I am hoping that T won’t have to work and he can go with me.

And as this really wasn’t what I had intended to write about I think I’ll just stop this boring blabbering and go finish the laundry instead!

I have had a lot of time today to reflect on some of the emotions I have been feeling, as well as ruminate a bit on some of the issues I have been reading the past week on self help sites and through other victims journals and I find it has brought on a few revelations about myself.

This is always a good thing, because I feel it is a step in the right direction towards inner healing. Any little accomplishment that I make in that direction is in my opinion a great thing.

So it was while reading over at A Little Unwell that the topic of Chris’s post made me stop and look within a bit further on a similar issue with me, only my experience took me a totally different direction.

I find with victims we are similar in many facets of what the abuse has done to us, but yet at the same time we are typically unique in our own ways as well. She is talking about how the consequences of the abuse changed her perception on sex and she states “For me, it poses a bit of a dilemma more often than I like to admit. For me, sex has been more than just an expression of love; it IS love in my warped little mind.”

This was also true for me as well, but yet different in the way I see it. I tend to see sex as being dirty. For my teen-age years it had always been that if a guy had sex with me, that was his show of love and affection for me, and this became the way I learned to show affection for them as well. This lasted for most of my teenage years, until I learned that most young guys used that to their advantage and that was all I was good for… Then I turned sour on it and began to see it as dirty.

This feeling was compounded by the fact that I got married to a very domineering young man when I was only 16 and eventually I became the mother to our 3 daughters. This relationship turned physically, mentally and emotionally abusing and sex played a large part in it and I became so mentally crippled that to this day I have a very hard time discussing sex, and I do not even relate to the love making that my current husband and I do as sex, in my mind we never have sex, we make love, it is the only way I can conceive of it.

Some short years ago when I went to college, one of my final grades in the Business Administration aspect of my degree, I had to write a 10-page report. It could be on anything I wanted it to be…I just had to interview people, research all the information and report on it. I chose Child Abuse and Domestic Violence as my subject. I jumped in with both feet.

It wasn’t until I met my current husband that I realized how special I really am. I may not have ever blamed myself for the child abuse that I went through, but I definitely thought that the abuse at the hands of my ex-husband was partially my fault because I allowed it to go on for so many years, and both situations of the abuse that I experienced made me feel disgust towards myself – self loathing. It wasn’t until my current husband entered the picture that some of that low-self esteem started to crumble away and I began to delve deeper into the abuse that I experienced from both of my abusers and the deep impact it has made on my life.

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