Everyone has a first memory. Mine is ugly. I was a baby, not more than a toddler I suspect, and I was sitting in a large white room, empty but for a tv set on cinder blocks (?) and I was eating something. Suddenly, out of a room nearby burst my father and mother screaming at each other. My father left and my mother returned to a room with a mattress on the floor and was sitting on it crying. I toddled in after her to offer my baby comfort and because I was scared. She screamed at me, "Get away from me! Get out now!"
Years passed. I lived with my grandparents for awhile (dads). I was shuffled off to Ohio once to live on a farm with a great aunt and the story has it that my mother had disappeared while my father was in Vietnam and my "paternal" grandmother had a thyroid issue that put her in the hospital and made her exhausted. The lore is that my mothers mother protected her location until her own father gave it away. My father had to get emergency leave to come back and find her to establish legitimate custody.
After he found her in California with a man she ran away with that may be my biological father, they returned to Virginia and he returned to the war. She didn't stay long before disappearing again.
I remained with grandma for a few more years before I moved in with my young father and his new wife to begin the rest of my childhood raised by him.
I had some visits with her over the years, on weekends and such. Mostly pleasant enough, but sporadic.
I'm not sure what started it, but perhaps it was something to do with marrying a new guy, but a new custody battle ensued. It got so ugly, that the state of Virginia allowed an unprecedented legal event in that I was invited to testify on my own behalf over who I wanted to live with. I had spent the summer with mom, and she spoiled me a little with the mother's love I so craved. She bought me a bike and taught me to ride it. We went to the pool a lot.
The day arrived for me to talk to the judge. My father drove me to court and in the parking lot he broke down. Still in the car, he confessed "I love you, and you should choose who you want to, but I will be very sad if you don't live with me anymore." as tears streamed down his face. I'd never seen my father cry before and it completely rocked me. I had been all set to try it out with mom, because the past summer had fulfilled many childhood fantasies of maternal love. I'd been led to believe it might work out and I could still see my father whenever I wanted.
But after my father's breakdown, I was sent confused and saddened and as I sat in the nice judges chambers and sipped a hot chocolate, I answered the judge, "I like it the way things are, I want to stay with Daddy."
The judge returned to the courtroom, and I sat and waited for my parents. The first to meet me was mom.
"So who did you choose?" she asked.
"I'm sorry mommy, I told him I wanted things to stay as they are."
"You little bitch!" "How could you?" After all I've done for you?!" "Get away from me!" and she huffed off to not be seen or heard from again for years.
I don't know how we came back together again, but I was much older now; closing in on my teens. I started going to her house again, and spending weekends.
My mothers house was always warm. She crafted. She made me meals. My father never quite developed an appropriate sense of how much care I needed and I had been left home alone, the classic latch key kid since I was in the 3rd grade. I ate mostly canned soup and cereal, but there was this one year where it was McDonalds or nothing. It's not that he couldn't afford it, he just didn't know any better.
My mother, on the other hand cut up my carrot sticks like my grandmother did. She sliced apples for me. If I ever got sick when I was at her house, it was heaven. She would set me up in the spare bedroom with a dozen pillows, a tv and bring me a meal on a tray that fit on the bed. Those are my fondest memories. Someone cared I was sick.
She was somewhat stable then, on her third husband who was a delight. I loved him and he loved me. I toyed with the idea of moving in with her again. There were meals. There were people around.
At one point she said she'd buy me a pony. I took it seriously, and went so far as to look up ponies in the paper, find a place to board it and even calculated the over all costs to make it happen.
Very proud of myself for being so thorough, imagining she couldn't say no to such a bargain, I approached her with my plan.
"Are you kidding me?" she blurted. I'm not going to buy you any pony. You're crazy.
"oh."
The next false bribe was a car.
"I'll give you my car when you learn how to drive." she said.
Her husband spent some time teaching me to drive the old brown Plymouth Duster and I was getting pretty good when I asked her to take me to get my learners permit. I think she did (I don't remember), but then when I got it and was almost old enough to get my real license, I asked her when I could take the car.
"I never said that." "You're crazy."
Fast forward to my 18th year. I was living in Baltimore at the time, and mom called and invited me to the beach with her and my baby brother. My aunt advised me not to go, but I ignored her looking forward to time with the baby.
We took a side trip to another beach about 10 miles away from the house to visit a board walk. While we were there, we stopped in to an old time photo booth. She pointed at the wall of photos selecting a group photo of people dressed up in old west brothel garb, and said, "Why don't you get your picture taken like that?"
I happily agreed thinking it would be fun, but immediately she changed moods and said, "Oh, I was just kidding. Your father would kill me if I let you get your pic taken looking like that.
"What?" "Why?" I asked confused.
She changed gears and said, "I mean my father would kill me."
Now I was really confused because 1. I was an adult at the time. 2. She hadn't spoken with her own father in years.
Then it dawned on me. We were acting out for the guy behind the counter.
I spurted out something about the two reasons and her face went crimson. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of the booth and began screaming at me.
"How dare you speak to me like that in front of a stranger!" "You nasty little whore." " Get away from me!" she shouted on the board walk in front of confused strangers and my horrified 3 year old brother.
With that, she stormed down the boardwalk and away from me, taking any money and my ride with her.
I hitch hiked back to the beach house, found $80 in her room, took $40 of it and hitch hiked to the bus station and went back to Baltimore.
And on and on and on it went like that until I was grown and had started a family of my own.
I lived in California at the time, and she came to visit me 2 days after my second child was born. It soon became obvious that she was using the birth of my child to have a vacation in so. CA. and she dragged me to Disneyland on the third day of my daughter's life. She offered to go by herself, but it was the first full day of her visit, and she'd never visited me before, so I bucked up and went. We rode roller coasters all day, handing off the baby while I started to bleed like crazy from all the effort.
More dragging around to see the sights and finally her visit ended. Before she left, we watched the birth tape and she howled with laughter as she watched my pain unfold on the tape. It seemed to be the funniest thing she'd ever seen in her life!
More years passed, and my unhappy, abusive marriage came to an end abruptly. I called her and asked her for help. Totally out of character, she offered me some frequent flyer tickets she'd had saved up and I scheduled myself and my two babies in diapers to leave for Virginia after giving away almost everything we owned, as my husband sat in jail for beating me up.
I arrived at the airport, met by her husband and we drove to her house. I was exhausted not only from the flight, but from the whole ordeal.
As soon as we arrived, after greeting me and showing us our room, she said, "So, where are you planning to stay?"
"Um....here?" I whispered.
"Oh no." "You can't stay here more than one night. I have company arriving tomorrow."
I called a friend and got a ride to Virginia. I "surprised" my father and he wasn't too happy to see me as he was on his way in less than a month to do a contract job in Europe for months."
I told him about what happened and asked if I could stay at his place - a four bedroom condo townhouse - the house I grew up in.
He turned me down, saying that he'd already hired a dog sitter and that I'd be a burden to the dog sitter and that wasn't fair. We fought. I left to stay with friends for a few days while I tried to figure out what to do.
Thankfully, my father's brother's wife intervened. She was a social worker. She set me up within the system and helped me find an apartment. My father conceded to pay the first months rent and deposit. He gave me some old furniture and a tv - refusing to let me have the bedroom set his g'friend had given me years before and that was stored at his cabin being used by his tenants.
Mom pitched in some old towels, a bed frame, some pots and pans and a stereo, as well as some old prints in frames she no longer wanted and said she was saving for a yard sale.
A few months passed. Very difficult months with two babies in diapers, a minimum wage job, and an apartment full of cockroaches. My first child had severe hyperactivity problems and I was frequently called at work by the baby sitter to come home because he was beating up the other children.
With no family to help further, no time, no energy, no sleep and the overwhelming proof that I was on my own entirely I had a nervous breakdown. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't deal with any of it. The babies needed so much. My littlest one never slept more than 3 hours in a row and she would wake up screaming for me to nurse her endlessly every night for months. After a few months, I made the painful decision to send my first child back to his father.
His father was wretched to me, but I'd never seen him be anything but loving to my son. He wanted him. He offered no money or support at all, and I would have had to cross state sue him for it, and after the custody battle saga of my own childhood, I couldn't put myself or my kids through that. So I did what I had to do. We split the kids.
My mother heard I was going to do this, and she phoned one night.
"I've heard you're sending your little one back to CA." "You know, you'll never see him again (she was right).
"You know..." she said "I have some friends who have been trying to adopt." "They'll give you $10,000 and take both the kids off your hands." "Keeping them is stupid...you're not capable. You're not going to make it."
"I can't do that!" I shouted. "I'm sending my child back to his biological father who loves him." "I will see him again!" (I thought).
"You're so selfish." she spewed. "You know this doesn't surprise me one bit. It's no wonder you don't love your own children because nobody EVER loved YOU!"
I screamed, "You bitch!" and hung up on her.
I cried and cried and a few weeks later on my birthday, my friend from California arrived to take my son back to his father. On the day before he left, he was beating up my daughter (he was just a toddler but she was a baby)..and rather than hurt him trying to restrain him, I locked me and my daughter in my bedroom while my little boy pulled a chair into the kitchen and started smashing dishes on the floor in a rage.
Off he went. Sadly. Something in me died that day. I just couldn't deal with it, but I had my daughter and we spent then next few months seriously struggling to eat and pay the bills. I ate a lot of beans and she still nursed.
A few weeks after my son left, she phoned again.
"Kimmy, I want my stuff back." Her stuff was my bed and towels and pots and pans, that I could not afford to replace. My father was in Europe, and I hadn't heard from him in months.
I screamed into the phone, "Screw you lady! I'd rather throw it in the dumpster than give it back to you." "You're heartless!"
That was the last time I spoke with her for over ten more years. I heard she told the family that I had driven down to her house with a friend and broken in while she was out of town and stolen the bed and other belongings. I just laughed.
I later married, and started another family. I had two more children, desperately trying to create the family I never had, for me and my remaining child.
It lasted almost nine years, until he had a mid-life crisis (as did I somewhat) and he dissolved our relationship ready to wage warfare over the custody. It was sheer torture, the last thing I ever wanted to happen to me again. After a brief battle, and a terrible year living on $125 dollars in addition to my rent to feed all four of us, and after losing 25 pounds, I gave up when my landlord decided not to renew my lease - not because I hadn't paid, but because he wanted to sell.
I appealed to my family to help me get another apartment (I had no money for deposits and the rents had escalated tremendoulsly as it was the middle of the DC/NoVa dot com crisis) and nobody would step up.
Once again, I gave away 2/3s of my belongings and sent the children including my first daughter who had been raised by my second husband, back to my ex to live in the house the latter two children were born in.
I couch surfed for a bit, tried to find a job (to no avail) and finally decided impulsively to run off to Europe with a bf I'd met in the interim.
I was there for three years, but the relationship was another disaster (I chose a pathological liar, can you go figure?) and my ex was pressuring me to take my daughter back.
So I left Europe, moved to Vermont finished raising my eldest daughter and we've been here ever since. I have recently started a dialog with my first son. I have a decent relationship with the two youngers who love me deeply and forgive me everything. My eldest daughter lives here in Burlington, not with me, but near by and we see each other every day for the most part. We have a GREAT relatiionship and are good friends as well as mother and daughter, somewhat notorious for being the dynamic mother daughter artistic duo.
Life is good now. I have great friends, have recently gotten past another destructive relationship and my art and work life are going swimmingly. I'm happy. I really am. Truly content, with my low impact life working my community gardens, taking photographs, volunteering and making art and sculptures, even winning a major sculpture competition this summer with my first effort.
The vitriol that follows in the previous post, all began because despite my contentment, I had some set backs after my little brother passed away 21 months ago.
Mom didn't come to the funeral, but she did call everyone in the family (except me) to blame them for his death which was due to the complications of epilepsy. She wouldn't allow us to have any of his ashes at his service, insisting "every goddamn shred of them better be there or so help me, I'll come to Virginia and kill every single one of you people." My aunt and I bought mace just in case.
We sent her the ashes, and she's been safe in Florida ever since, until...
A few months ago, I was sent a letter she wrote about me and my brother to her sister Kim. Kim said it was the nicest letter she'd ever received from Patty and for some reason she thought I'd like to see it.
Here it is copied and pasted:
Hating you is killing me, or so says my
doctor. So I am going to have say this.
It doesn't matter what has
happened. I know what you did. I know what Chi did. I know
much more than you think. But all of it doesn't matter. He's
dead. I'm alive. And so are you. Every day of my life since
his death I have awakened, just like that song, overcome with dread. I
feel it coming as I awaken. I know something is wrong, then it gets
stronger as I get more awake, and then it hits me square in the face.
Dudley's dead. Say what you want about me; think what you want Kim, but I
put my heart and soul into raising that child. Whether I want to admit it
or not, there was something wrong with Dudley. Like his dad, he couldn't
hold a job. I've been told, had Dudley lived, he may have had
schizophrenia, like his aunt, or severe depression, like his father, or had been
bi-polar, like his other aunt. That was a family full of disease. We
are a family full of addictions. That was not a good gene pool for
Dudley. I know you don't know this, but during a marriage counseling
session, right after Dudley was born, I found out his father had tried to commit
suicide, and that at the time of conception, he was on psychotropic meds for
depression.
So, basically, Dudley didn't stand a
chance. We gave him everything, thinking that would avert what we knew was
coming. We sent him to camp for 5 years, for a month each summer. I
wrote him every day and have all those hundreds of letters to prove it. We
gave him cars, college, lots of love and told him daily how special and good and
beautiful he was. The more we gave, the meaner he got. The year or
so before he died he came for his last Christmas and was so mean and nasty Dick
was sure he was on drugs. We had to send him home. He couldn't bear
to be with me, and he let me know this. My last picture of us together was
on the day before he went home, Christmas day. I tried to make peace with
him, even giving him that car, but he never gave me love back. I swear to
you that since Dudley was 18, I've been telling Dick, making Dick promise me,
time and time again, "Don't let me see him dead." What kind of remark is
that to make about your child? That's crazy, but I knew he wouldn't make
it. I just knew it. Not from the epilepsy, but Dick and I thought he
would be killed by someone he'd pissed off, or shot by being in the wrong place,
or an overdose.
He stole a television set when he was 10,
from a store, and got caught. His dad fixed that. He stole from
someone's house and got caught when he was 20, and spent a week in jail.
That cost us a fortune in legal fees, or he may have gone to jail for a year.
His dad wouldn't do it. He stole and hawked my jewelry. I was
always missing things. DVD cases without DVD's, CD cases without
CD's. I would sneak into his room before he left and pull out what I
could from his duffle bag before he left for school. There was always
something in there he stole from us. I ignored this.
Not that I didn't have Dudley in
counseling. He went in H.S. That cost a fortune. I was so
involved in his schooling, trying desperately to get him on the right track,
that I became close friends with his H. S. counselor, who I still talk to every
month or so. She's devastated that Dudley didn't make it.
Many people have epilepsy. A
supreme court judge has it. Famous artists. Actors. Dudley
didn't die of epilepsy. He died of arrogance brought about by a mental
illness. Which one of those he had, I don't know. But whatever it
was, it was laced with an unhealthy dose of meanness. He could love, but
not fully. He took advantage of everyone, and it caught up with
him.
I do believe I'll see him again
Kim. Whether I'll apologize to him for the genes or he'll apologize to me
for not trying his best, only time will tell. I honestly do think he's
apologizing now. He couldn't just show up, as he would know I would be
seeing a psychiatrist for having delusions. But he comes to me through the
earth. We live in an unbelievably beautiful place. Clean air.
13 miles to the ocean and 8 miles to a huge river on the other side. The
breeze is always making the palms sway. The night sky has the milky way
for us to ponder. The view from our home is unbelievable; from golf course
to lake to woods. It's flat here so the sky is huge. Dudley's in the
sky. He's in the sunrises and sunsets, and like the rainbow we saw on the
way home from his funeral on the beach, he's in those that we have so
often. I can never catch it in the pictures, but our sprinker system on
the course goes 30 feet high, and it causes rainbows everywhere, just for my
visual enjoyment. Dudley loved it here. He thought we lived in
paradise. Now maybe he's in paradise, and visiting us by bringing all
those rainbows.
It's over Kim. I need to feel
better, and apparently I can't by being filled with so much hate. I never
knew what hate was until Dudley died. I could have killed all of
you. Literally. But it's subsiding, and the only way I'll ever get
over this is to forgive. But I can't have contact with you. I can't
be reminded of any of this. That's why I don't want his things. Sell
what you want, or keep it. It's yours. I don't want any of it.
I have what I feel is the amount of his ashes that would be his heart.
They are in a small biscuit jar with a ring from H.S., his dog tags, some small
gifts he gave me, and a few other things. I could hold it all in my one
hand. Dick is going to mix my ashes with Dudley's and put me in the same
place on the beach when I die. But it doesn't matter. I'll find
Dudley wherever he is. Hopefully he'll want to see me. I think he
will. I think that's where the sunset came from.
I'm begging you not to return this
message. You're blocked and will go to spam, and now I empty it without
looking. So it's futile. I'm not going to live very long Kim.
I don't have anything really wrong with me except I've lost my zest for life and
most of my will to live. I'm getting on a plane tomorrow and have no
jitters because I could care less if the plane crashes. I'm
ready.
Dick will not call or write to you any of
you if anything ever happens to me. He's made that promise, so I guess you
can consider me gone now. I don't want to know what happens to
anyone.
If little Kim ever needs someone, I hope
Brandy will be there for her. I stopped loving Kim when she was
very young. I had to. The pain would have destroyed my
life....was destroying my life. She had a child, and when I went to see
her after her second child she started blaming me for her miserable
life. I brought her here for a visit and she sent her first born back to
California on the return ticket, blaming me because I was a bad mother to her,
she couldn't be a good mother. At that moment in time, in the car on the
way to mom's, as she was having a fit about her and me and what I didn't do for
her, I wrote her off. I instantaneously stopped loving her, and that was
that. I don't even know how it happened, but I knew she would ruin any
happiness that would come my way. I was not going to let that
happen.
Dick is the kindest person in the world
and he's going to care for me forever. We have lots of travel in our
future and I will not be reopening my business, though I'll do transactions from
home. I still have my broker's license AND my nursing license and I keep
the continuing education credits updated so I won't lose either. So I'll
always have money and/or a job. But Dick is number four in the country in
his company and we're doing just fine. I really don't have to
work.
I have several friends who are like
family to me. I've known them maybe not longer (40 years for some), but
certainly better and deeper than I've known anyone in my family.
You have to remember that I left at 16 and was never allowed back.
And the years before Dad died, about 6, I wasn't allowed to return, and when I
did, it was nothing but drunken fights. I made Dad a promise, and
I kept it. He was already dead Kim, no matter what you think.
He knew I would be sure that he didn't suffer, but pulling the plug wasn't
necessary. I saw the CT and I can read them. He was brain
dead. Plain and simple. All I did was save mom some time and
money. And Dad knew I could do this. He made me promise to do what I
did about 8 months before he died. He knew he didn't have long, and
he didn't want to suffer. He, too, died in his sleep, in his
bed, and they only resuscitated his brain stem. Nothing
more. ...so I have family with me. Not blood, but just as close
and just as dear. I'll never be alone.
That's it Kim. Forgiveness.
That's all I have to offer. And I'm asking for your forgiveness for every
horrible thing I've ever done or said to you. You can laugh, and say you
don't need my forgiveness, but I'm giving it to you any way. And I am
going to assume that you have given me your forgiveness as well. Take care
of mom and please respect my wishes. You won't be able to get through to
me, so it won't matter.
I'll see you on the other side.
Patsy
I can't even read it. It rocked me to my core. How could she say those things about him after he died? She's so twisted - she scares me but not because I'm afraid of her physically, but because I'm terrified that some of her evil twisted genes are infecting me.
I reacted. I wrote to her at her business and took a pot shot at her about my father not being my father. I won't go into huge details about why I believe this to be true other than to offer that the man who raised me has blue eyes, she has blue eyes and I have brown. It made for a humiliating moment in 10th grade biology class.
After that, I blogged a short blurb about it. View it here:
link.Months passed and here were are in our current state of disarray. Someone recently alerted her to it, and the rest of the story is in the previous post My Mother = Sociopath.
So there you have it. In summary. You decide who's crazy and who's the victim. She's terrified I'm going to destroy her business, but if she'd asked me nicely to remove her business name like her husband did (sort of) I would have. Instead she decided to let me have it full guns, revealing to the world how hateful and mean she is. Are these the words of a sane person? That's for the world to decide.
XXKHT
"Trying to take something off of the internet, is like trying to take pee out of a pool." ~Joe Rogan (character on News Radio)
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