The Closing Chapter con’t…pt 3.

It was July 2004 when we got married in Ohio. Our daughter was 4 years old. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. I was doing this huge thing for all the wrong reasons. I was keeping up some sort of promise I made because of this code I held deep inside of me that was tied to my religious upbringing, I went through with it because the bills were paid for all the wedding items, the dress was bought and paid for, the invitations were sent, the cake was made and paid for, my family was all set for the day, I was sick and needed insurance, and I thought it was the best thing for my daughter. It ended up being a long abusive marriage that should not have taken place.

Early 2005 my leg and back problem had progressed to the point where I couldn’t walk anymore. I got out of bed one morning and couldn’t walk. I went into the clinic immediately. It was at that time when I found out that there was a tumor that had been growing on a nerve next to my spine, and a tarlov cyst also growing next to that tumor that would require surgery. In September 2005 I went in for surgery with the belief that the tumor would be removed, and my problem would be fixed, and life would return to normal.

Nothing ever goes as planned, especially in my life! The tumor was not surgically removable; in fact, the surgeon did something he wasn’t supposed to do, and he left me with permanent nerve damage in my right leg. He also drained the tarlov cyst and wasn’t supposed to do that, so it grew back larger. I was permanently disabled, and when he came into my room to inform me of the news after surgery I thought for sure I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I was devastated. The next few years I tried to adjust to this new lifestyle.

He was out drinking A LOT. I was alone taking care of my daughter. He pushed the few friends I had away. I became a babysitter while he went and partied, a maid for him, a cook, and I had no life outside my home or my daughter. When physical therapy finally helped me to walk and drive some he became possessive, jealous, and made me feel guilty, or bad for wanting to join him in his life, or for wanting to start having my own life outside the house. I had decided to join politics. I was passionate about that, so I dived right in. I joined a chat room to help me have some sort of social life. He made that dirty. He accused me of chatting with men and made me feel bad for having that too. I eventually gave that up too. Year by year I allowed him to isolate me a little more.

2007 came and I ended up pregnant with our second daughter. We bought our first home. I worried this was a huge mistake too. I knew deep in my gut that we were doomed. I had been thinking about leaving him for years and contemplating how to formulate a plan on leaving him. I went and got my GED because I knew whatever I was going to do, if I was going to do it, I knew I would need that GED. When would be a good time? How would I financially be able to do it? I calculated numbers all the time. I could never see the way out. The only family I had was a brother. Two years turned into four. Four years turned into five.

2012 I had finally hit rock bottom. I was abusing opiates for years. I was contemplating suicide. I knew I was wasting potential and I knew that there was more to my life than sitting at home raising kids. Over the years I had gave up painting, drawing, writing, music, dance, and the goals I had for myself were kept on a shelf, so I could please him. I wanted something more, so I shared what I was feeling and thinking with him. He was in the basement, he called it the “man cave,” and I went down to him and said, “We need to talk.” I was crying in my fluffy pink housecoat. My hair was long then and it hung down over my face. It soaked up some of my tears as I sat looking at him in the corner at the computer desk. “I’m depressed. I’m contemplating driving my car into the local Caribou. There has to be something more to life than what I’m doing. There has to be something I can do. There are people who have no arms, no legs, and they do spectacular things with their lives…I think I want to go back to work or school. I was a great student…” he cut me off and his reply to me was, “You can’t even clean my house the way I like. What makes you think you can go back to school?” Those words still cut into me like a razor blade down the side of my throat.

A week later I had a job driving school bus. I set a goal that if I could drive bus and physically be capable of doing that for two years I would apply to the local community college. Over those passing years the verbal abuse and mind-fuck I lived with was constant. He continued to stay out drinking often. I had to tolerate his drunk friends being at my house and his best friend disrespected me often when he was over drunk, and sometimes he would try to advance on me. My life was turmoil. I was working the bus driving job, I was basically taking care of my kids on my own, doing the house stuff on my own, I did the remodeling needed in the house, I repaired the car when it needed it. I really began to think why did I need a man? He only showed me affection when he wanted laid, and our relationship felt more like a roommate type set up. When you’re not getting affection you’re not going to want to have sex with your man. He often accused me of cheating, or chatting online with men, and this led me to wonder what he was doing while he was out. As I started to wonder about what he was doing, and his past bullshit of coming home with another woman’s jeans on, I began asking him the same questions. The entire fucking relationship was fucking chaotic bullshit now that I reflect back. There wasn’t anything healthy about it at all.

Two years and a summer passed, and I met my goal. I applied to the local community college and I was accepted. He wasn’t supportive. He claims today he was, but that is a complete fucking joke. He likes to rewrite history and make shit up about the way things have been. That is the way it is when your dealing with a narcissistic abuser though. My kids are old enough now that they have been able to notice and see the way he is, so he can try to say whatever the fuck he wants. His friends can think whatever the fuck they want. I know the facts. My kids know the facts.

Fast forward to November 2017. I filed for divorce. Things were bad. He was throwing things at me. He was verbally abusing my kids more often. He came home raging around the house every single day. I never knew what was going to set him off. He was more volatile. I knew the next step was physical violence. He had been gas-lighting me for over a decade, invalidating my feelings, projecting on me, and he made me want to kill myself. Unfortunately, my fear about my youngest daughter and his manipulation talked me out of divorce at this time. He made me promises about going to therapy and that he would really work on his issues of control etc. It would be another five months before I would finally file the divorce fee and start the process of getting out of this nightmare. It took a push from someone special to help me do this too. That someone special had to tell me to take a leap of faith and just do it that things would be OK.

The best thing I’ve done was to leave his ass. I’m still working on my main goal, and I will achieve that goal. He might have done some temporary damage, but he didn’t break me. He may have done some minor, temporary damage to my children, but he didn’t break them. We are moving on. We are going to be OK. This chapter is closing and a new one is opening. It feels good not being verbally abused every day, and it feels good not being gas-lighted, emotionally manipulated, controlled, and it feels good that my girls are not being verbally abused every day, and they aren’t being gas-lighted every day, and they are not being emotionally manipulated every day. This new chapter is going to be spectacular.

The Closing Chapter con’t…(2)

The pregnancy did not start out great. I was almost certain that I wasn’t going to carry it to term due to complications I was having from the very beginning, so I was not going to get my hopes up this time. I was also having troubles walking, standing, and I was having major pain down my right leg that had been progressively getting worse over the previous two years that doctors were just medicating. They opted to medicate me instead of doing an MRI because I didn’t have insurance to pay for a scan. His mum actually made me an appointment with a place that specialized in abortions and I went to the appointment under the impression that it was a regular OB/GYN, so you can imagine how that made me feel. I thought she was doing something nice since I wasn’t familiar with Wisconsin doctors.

I worked a crap job during my pregnancy and he went to college for business part time while he worked a crap job. We lived in a crap apartment in a nice college town. I decided to put my goals of going back to school on delay, so he could finish school, and when he went into what he wanted to do for a career then I could focus on my goal. He drank a lot during the pregnancy, and he only went to a couple of the appointments with me over the entire pregnancy. New Year’s came, and he decided to leave me home alone while he loaded up into a car with a bunch of girls he worked with. He thought it was OK to go out and drink with them while I was stuck home alone pregnant. These types of things happened over and over again. We started to argue more and more because I stood up for myself. He would get jealous and upset if I spoke to the guys I worked with. He would get upset if I went back home to visit my family. He became more controlling over time and as I reflect back I see it clearly but, in the moments, back then I didn’t realize that slowly I quit sticking up for myself, and I just started bending to his will because I was exhausted.

Fast forward two years…

My daughter was two years old, and I still had my goals put on hold. I was even more exhausted, and my health issue was still not getting resolved; in fact, it was still progressing. I was buckling at the knees at times walking. It was becoming more difficult to drive. Doctors still refusing to believe me that something terrible was wrong, or they were refusing to do an MRI to find the cause of what was going on. I was at my breaking point in the relationship, so I packed my shit, my daughters’ shit, and I left him. I went back home to Ohio. I moved in with my mom because that was the only place I had to go. I got a crap job right away because that was all I could get since I never went back to get my GED. I put all that on hold to take care of my daughter when she was born, and to support him in his endeavors. Months passed, and he dropped out of college, so he could move from Wisconsin to Chicago. He started driving over to visit our daughter on the weekend and hanging out when he got word that I was starting to move on. He made promises to me, and he asked me to come back to him. He told me he wanted to marry me and that he wanted to take care of me. My initial response was, “No, you can’t even be my friend, so what makes you think that you can be my husband?” He said, “OK, I will prove to you I can be your friend.” I didn’t have high hopes for him to be honest. Six months passed, and he continued to drive back and forth from Chicago, and he convinced me that maybe things would be different. I knew it would be better for our daughter if we were together than if we were apart, so I decided to move to Chicago with him. Hindsight is always 20/20.

We lived in Chicago for six months before the business he worked with went out of business and we were forced to move back to Wisconsin. Moving close to my family was never an option or even a conversation. Reflecting on those years now there is so much clarity but back then I did what suited him. It all revolved around him and his family. Not that moving to Ohio would have been this great financial break thru, but it sure would have been nice to have mattered enough that my connection to my roots would have at least been discussed in a partnership. It wasn’t a partnership though you see…it was never a partnership.

We stayed with his parents in Wisconsin for a few months and my brother who had lived in Minnesota had offered him an opportunity to enter the casino industry. I still had not been able to do anything towards my goals and I was getting older, and I was getting sicker by the year. We moved to Minnesota and stayed with my brother for 3 months. I got a job right away, and he started training for the casino job and started work there. I was barely getting to work and I was barely able to drive. The back pain and leg pain was out of hand. I started self-medicating to just make it through the days. He was staying out drinking. I was pretty much raising my daughter by myself doing the school stuff on my own. Nothing had changed from our earlier Wisconsin days except time had passed, I was older, sicker, our daughter was older now, and I was planning a wedding I knew I shouldn’t had been planning. About a month before the wedding he actually stayed out all night drinking and ended up coming home with another woman’s jeans on. I had already sent out the invitations, everything was paid for, and things were set up in Ohio for the big day! I still married him like a fucking idiot…that was 2004….

(more to come…)

The Closing Chapter

Most of my readers know I have not had an easy life. Some of you may not. I’ve been molested, sexually assaulted, raped, beaten, and I just recently left a verbally/emotionally abusive marriage of 19 years. (together 19, married for 15). I’m not here intending to complain about the life I’ve lived. I believe that everything that happens to us, happens to us for a reason. The trauma I’ve lived through has helped shaped me. The scars I bare on my heart has made me the open minded, loving, understanding and strong woman that I’ve grown into. I’m still growing. What I intend to do tonight is reflect the last 19 years.

I guess I should start at the beginning…sit back…this might take a while…

I had left my home state that year to live with my older brother. I left my home state to clean my life up from some previous trauma and to get off drugs. While living with my brother I met him. We met online, American Online to be exact. We chatted for about a year and we got to know each other. We had decided to meet outside of chat. He was a military guy. He was kind of shy. He had a sense of humor and we both loved music. Things at my brothers’ place was becoming chaotic. Things were strained in his marriage and I needed to go. He moved me back to my home state, Ohio. He was from Wisconsin. He knew my hometown wasn’t a great place for me and my past drug use, so he offered to move to Wisconsin. We decided to move in together. Off to Wisconsin I went.

What could go wrong? He knew me!  I loved him. Wasn’t it love? I knew what love was! I adored him. I was his best friend. He knew almost every secret I had. We laughed, I loved, we argued, I made up, there was sex, promises, I trusted, and things were great! I spent MY time TOGETHER! My world revolved around him. Nothing could tear us apart! The first two years flew by! The only problem that approached during these two years was I was slowly becoming sick as a tumor grew slowly in my back along with a tarlov cyst.

I can’t be pregnant! There is no way! Doctors told me I couldn’t conceive. He didn’t want to tell his parents. I called back home to tell my mom and she asked if I was happy about it. I told her I was scared and shocked, but I was happy. My family knew about the pregnancy a week before he finally got courage up to tell his parents about it. We finally told his parents…they tried to push us to get married. I refused for several reasons. The first was I had not divorced from the first marriage I fled from (they didn’t know I was married at this point yet), and the second was I didn’t want to marry him just because I was pregnant. I felt like his parents was pushing the idea that we should be married simply because we were having a kid and not because we were in love. When I reached 12 weeks I miscarried that pregnancy. I was pretty upset because I had accepted that I wasn’t going to ever have children, and then I conceived a child and built my hopes up about motherhood then it was ripped from me. His dad bought me flowers and a card. His brothers said sorry about the loss.

Some time passed. I can’t be sure how long. We had one night of not using protection. I ended up pregnant again. This was the beginning of the end…

(more to come…tomorrow)

I have serious trust issues!

 

Some days I get this overwhelming feeling that I will not survive the day I am faced with. The feeling comes from struggling everyday with chronic illness, pain, loss, and insecurity in me.

Everyone around me, including my husband and children, never really get the internal person I am. The people that surround me see this strong, happy, enduring woman who lets her ambition drive her in everything she decides to take on. In reality though, there is this other woman who lives deep inside that rarely gets seen. This woman who lives deep inside is a scary one. I do not let her out very often for fear it will be used against me. Perhaps this is because my entire life things have been used as weapons against me. I have serious trust issues!

In all honesty I feel alone most days. It isn’t an alone that is repaired by having people around me either. It is hard to explain the loneliness I feel on a daily basis. To have success in conquering it I need to understand it and I do not. I find myself ignoring it most days by keeping busy. It is a temporary fix to a serious long term problem. Eventually I get to a point I can no longer ignore it and keep busy. It becomes so prevalent that is distracts me in many ways and it exhausts me. I eventually write as some way to alleviate it. Again I use a temporary fix to a long term problem. I know it is long term because I have dealt with this loneliness since I was a little girl. I have been a sick person my entire life and I believe this is where it originates. It escalated after I lost my dad at age eighteen. Every loss after that little by little it got bigger, and now with the loss of my lifelong friend, Andrew, it seems even larger than ever and makes me wonder what happens when it becomes so big I can no longer carry it around. It is a frightening to me because most of my life I have struggled with suicidal thoughts.

I have thought a lot about suicide lately. I haven’t thought about it as in I’m contemplating my final exit, but thinking about all those I have lost to suicide over the years. I also have been thinking on Robin Williams taking his life. I wonder if they felt the same way I feel with loneliness and eventually just decided to not fight anymore. What made them finally give up? Did they feel something else that I do not feel? Will I just end up like them one day? Will I be successful in this fight and be able to cope? When I think about Robin Williams, one of the most successful actors known, taking his life, I worry that if a man of that stature cannot handle things, what makes me think I will be any better. I am not financial set up like he was. I do not have a stage of the magnitude he had access too, to help him alleviate his worries. These are just some of the things I think on and not the darkest of them either.

Sometimes I find myself wanting to shut the entire world out. I find myself just wanting to be all alone so that I do not have to deal with anything outside my pain, illness and depression. My stuff is heavy enough without adding worldly things on top of it. It gets hard to work, parent, love, welcome, and interact.

Some are probably wondering if I have a relationship with God or a higher power. I do and maybe that is why I have made it as far as I have in my life conquering all the terrible events that have happened and demons that I carry. Maybe that relationship is the strength that keeps me going towards success against the suicidal thoughts and loneliness I feel. I would like to believe that I would never end my life on my own. I love life, I do. I love being a mother to my growing daughters. In the back of my mind I think about those who have actually taken their lives and think well they probably loved their kids too. They probably loved life too. What if I get where they were in their final moments? How do I prevent that? Can I prevent that?

I have questioned heaven since my dad passed in 1996. I wonder where it is he rests now. Is he just gone or is he really somewhere living a new life? Is it heaven? Has he any recollection of his life he left? Does he know I am here still? Does he see me? Does he live pain free and cured of all ailments? Can he hear me? Why can’t we communicate if these things existed? I would love it if it were all true, the story of heaven and angels silently flying around us, remembering who we were to them, but I have serious doubts that exists. I do not ask these questions just about my dad but everyone I have ever lost. I guess this is where faith comes into play. Faith is a very hard thing to understand. How do some people have such strong faith and others have little to none? Why do they differ so much? What is it about the person who has strong faith that lacks in the other? So many questions with no definite answer make spirituality and religion the most confusing thing I have ever seen.

Do I need to remind you I have serious trust issues? The circle of people who surrounds me closest knows the most about me, but still they do not have a complete picture of who Rachel really is. I am not sure they ever will. I have only had two people I can say knew me completely. Those two people are gone now. It isn’t that I don’t want my closest circle of friends to know all of me, I do! I just find myself struggling with allowing them to know my every thought because I have let people in who have burned me deeply. So that leaves me with thoughts I do not share with anyone at all. I hold them in and lock them away inside. So internally I struggle daily on my own with those secrets. Eventually I come here to my keys to release some of those secrets because most who read this blog do not know me from Jane next door. I am somewhat protected here. Even here I hold back because of the people who read this DO know who I am have used what I put here against me and it is very hurtful. I have no place to be completely open about WHOM I REALLY am inside.

The best example I can give you would be the loss of my friend Andrew. It never crossed my mind that I would go home to bury him. I always imagined he would out live me. I always thought he would just be there. I can’t share some of my feelings with anyone because some it would be hurtful maybe to others. Maybe it would be wrong to say it out loud or maybe it is wrong to feel it. Maybe I shouldn’t miss him as much as I do. Maybe if I say it out loud it will be a bullet used to shoot back at me. Just some things I see as complications that I am not ready to tackle so I hold it all close to myself. I also wonder what it all means. Why has losing him been such an impact on me internally? It makes me question so many things.

Another example is my struggle with sobriety. I cannot even release thoughts on that here out of fear it will be used against me.

Some are probably wondering why I do not just keep a private diary. The main reason is I want and need feedback about my thoughts. I need people to interact with me and tell me if I seem crazy or if I seem to normal. I also wonder if my thoughts are normal. Do others have these battles etc? It feels good knowing others struggle with the same sort of thoughts, and problems. It helps getting advice too on these subjects.

I think I worry too much. I worry about being sick. I worry about my health preventing me from being successful in college. Am I biting off more than I can chew? Will I have the support in my life to finish and not give up to quit once I start? I need peace. I want peace.

I am finding it harder to find peace. I use to be able to go out into nature and have peace. I do not seem to get that anymore. My constant worry and thoughts seem to always be there. They never seem to quiet. It has gotten so much worse since Drew has passed. I loved him and I have no one who would really understand what that means or why it is that way. I miss him every day and if I would say that out loud it would be used against me I know it. It might even get used against me being put here. I feel wrong for loving him and missing him and that is not fair to me. He is gone forever. There is no chance of me EVER hearing his voice, getting his advice, joking with him, or telling him how important of a friend he was to me. So this is just one thing I am alone with.

I do not write posts here very often. I am guarded with my thoughts because it can be used against me; it has been used against me. Yes, I have serious trust issues.

This is for you Drew….

Drew Lykins

(9/16/1977-7/24/2014)

 

It’s funny all the things in this world that don’t have much meaning to them. Well, until you lose someone special to you. Things such as lightning bugs at night, a day that mimics a distant old memory of a moment you spent with that person, things like the smell of fresh cut grass, a color you look upon from an old clothing article worn, the sound of a motorcycle revving its engine, or the smell of an oil spill from a mechanics garage….

I believe these things finally retain some sort of meaning to us after we lose someone because we want so badly to be near the person who is gone…

I find myself wanting to see stars in the night sky and lightning bugs flying around freely. I find myself wanting to see a red bandana; I want to smell the fresh grass after a rainfall, even a certain smell from the mud beneath my feet just to catch a glimpse of a childhood memory I know is there and I want to just be in that moment again even if it is only in my mind. That sound from a familiar song that reminds you of a smile they had.  I find myself wanting to lie in the grass gazing it up at the stars smoking that old familiar brand of cigarettes just to feel close to a memory.

You find yourself going over all the time and space in between the years that have passed. Dredging up, from deep inside, this solemn feeling of regret; regret that you have taken advantage of the fact that nothing lasts forever like you hoped.  Regret that you kept telling yourself there is always time. Saying quietly next time I will or I always have tomorrow. Then the day comes when someone tells you that special person is gone forever. You realize in that exact moment of the receiving the news how wrong you were about time, wrong about how life is tough not fragile, and how you wish you could have made just a few more memories, just a few more to add meaning to all the things you thought were miniscule, things surrounding you like the sound of rushing traffic, a cotton ball travelling in the wind, or the smell of brownies in the oven.

My dear friend Drew is gone. He left this world Thursday afternoon and these are the things I’ve been going through the last few days. I am heartbroken and I haven’t figured out how to start the healing process yet. I do not believe you heal from loss completely, you just learn to go on in a new normal of existence with that person absent. This will be the first friend I’ve gone back home to say goodbye too and that is because I loved that boy so much. I have memories with him as far back as I can remember. I feel good about a few things. I feel good that he did know I loved him and he knew he was an important friend of mine. He knew I would have moved the world for him if I had the power. I feel good that I believe deep in my heart he felt the same. The streets we grew up on were tough sometimes. Life at home wasn’t always pancakes and soda pop. School wasn’t always a playground. One thing was always constant though Drew and Rachel running together.

I look back on days of summer when I couldn’t wait to get outside to my bike so I could ride to see him. I look back at the times he snuck to my bedroom window at dark just to say what was up. What a ride. Many people around the neighborhood and school thought for sure we would have ended up being romantically involved, married, boyfriend/girlfriend but it never went that way. I think he loved me and he knew it would have ruined the years of memories we had built. It would have ruined our friendship. He was right if that is what he was thinking. Our love was more of a brotherly/sisterly love than a long lasting love that goes into marriage.

I can see him walking though our old high school, sitting at a desk in some classroom, smoking a cigarette across from the band rooms annex, walking down Hanna towards my bus stop, smiling or giving me a hand gesture as I held a camera, I can see him sitting in the back of the bus saving me a seat, looking back as I was deciding to flee the hometown to better myself with him telling me to go and I can’t help but smile.

Tears start to fall when I am done rolling those memories through my mind because I realize there is no chance of creating new memories, no more conversations, no more pictures to be taken, no more time left….because life is so fragile.

Drew I will love you forever my friend. Save me a seat up there …in the back…I remember we like it there…