Leave...

Recently I have been feeling discouraged and weighed down.  This August will be 12 years since I left my mother's house.  Twelve years I have been an adult on my own...and yet she is still with me.  Slowly, so slowly, I have been able to chop her up and toss the pieces away (in a figurative sense...I promise hehehehehehehe;-))  I rarely hear her voice and my body is safe from her ever touching me again.  So why am I the way I am?  Why do I struggle?  Why do I feel fear deep in my bones and not even know why?  A few times this week I have noticed "habits" that I have that I don't even think about as I am doing them.  One night I woke to Eli opening his bedroom door to go to the bathroom.  It had startled me from a deep sleep.  As I lay in bed waiting to hear him finish and return to his bed I felt a small pain in my hand.  It was clenched in a tight fist.  I fell back asleep.  The next morning I couldn't get that fist out of my mind.  I have often woken up and seen that both of my hands are in fists as long as I am lying on my back.  I have tried to lay my hands flat as I fall asleep but it is impossible.  I feel exposed in that position.  Of course I know why I do this.  Nighttime was a particularly fearful time in my childhood.  I think of the way animals will instinctively positionn themselves when they sleep so that they are safe or prepared in case a predator comes along.  I was no different.  Often I would wedge my body between the mattress and the wall to fall asleep.  Bunk beds were an extra protection.  I know I fell asleep under my bed a few times.  When I was sure it was safe I would climb back into bed.  I still feel exposed at night.  I am afraid of being caught off guard....a surprise attack where I will be unable to defend myself.  I am not sure I have ever been able to fall asleep without doing some protective ritual.  It might be making sure my back is to the door...hitting me in the back wouldn't hurt as much as my front and I could collect myself before being struck again.  I do this without thinking as if I were an animal and the simple truth was that my enemies would seek to devour me in the darkness.

A second habit I noticed just this afternoon.  My sweet Madeline is so much different than my Eli.  Eli's tantrums were rare even after he hit two.  Either that or I have permanently blocked it from my memory.  Madeline is so much more defiant.  She will clench her teeth and growl at me until she turns red.  Other times she will just scream.  She has been known to try and wedge herself between me and whatever surface I am working on.  It literally feels like she is taking a fork and scraping it across my nerves.  I try to ignore but she is a persistent little girl.  At the first sound of her screaming it is as if someone turns the burner on under the pot that is my anger.  The longer she screams the hotter I get, even trying to ignore her, and then it boils over and mommy screams.  This sequence of events was particularly bothering me today.  I have noticed another feeling in the midst of that...it is a jolt of fear.  I HAVE to keep her quiet!  I was bringing in the groceries today.  Madeline had wanted to go and visit with the neighbor's dog.  I was trying to figure out what I could distract her with because I didn't want her playing with the dog because it was raining.  I then reminded myself she doesn't NEED to see that dog and if I say No than I say NO!  She cried, of course, and I asked myself why it was so so so hard for me to hear her cry without feeling I had to stop it.  The answer flooded to my mind.  I had to keep my brother's and sister's quiet whenever I was home.  She didn't want to "hear" us.  "If you all don't shut up I am going to come back there!"  We knew what that meant.  I can remember being hit on the side of my head when one of the babies was crying.  As my mother left the room I was cradling a crying baby crying myself.  So from the time they were babies I would jump at the sound of them crying.  I reached for a toy or anything in desperation.  I was afraid it would make her come to where we were.  The only time I felt relief was when they stopped crying.  It wasn't just crying that made her mad.  I can remember playing in a bedroom with my brother and sisters.  I can remember running and I must have been laughing or yelling something in play and my mother burst through the door with a strip of duct tape and put it over my mouth.  I cried silently at the shame.  What is worse is the memory of being home to visit while I was in college and someone had just gotten in trouble.  My mother was pissed and told us all to shut up because she was going to go take a nap.  The kids were being kids but I took the role of keeping them quiet.  I got out the duct tape.  In my love for them, not wanting to hurt their souls, I made a game of it.  I drew funny mouths on the tape and we all took pictures together.  They never knew I was acting in deepest fear. When my daughter cries I get a jolt of fear.  I will often search the room for what she might need or what could distract her from her tantrum.  Until today this was a subconscious reaction.  I know babies and toddlers cry...but there were just another set of rules for me.  I didn't know about them but my kids were just not allowed to cry.  If they did and I wasn't enough to make them stop then that was proof I wasn't good enough.  I feel exposed when I can't "control" my children...everyone will know I am not good enough.  Thank you God for showing this to me.  Thank you for giving me this chance to seek how to correct this in me so that I don't have to connect my children's behavior with my own worth.  Thank you for showing me if I control them in this way...I become my mother and would devour the souls you gave them.  

It is really gonna suck having to separate this one from my "self". 

I found a new song for living inside a tutu.  I had actually been able to forget just how much I had wanted to "leave" my mothers house when it was impossible to do so.  I was seconds from cutting into my wrists a few times...I swallowed more pills at a time than I should have just to be able to "leave".  Whatever "childhood" I had was spent dreaming of being 25-30 and living in my own house...I just wanted to leave.  A full moon always reminds me of sitting in my bedroom window watch the cars drive by on the highway...wishing DESPERATELY that I would open my eyes and be sitting in one of the cars headed somewhere else.  I would sit at the Post Office down the block after being dropped off by the school bus as long as I could without getting into trouble for being late.  I needed to soak up every millisecond of "peace" before I walked through that door.  Each step closer to the house was a reminder to put my guard up...protect my body and my mind...don't listen to what she says...walk in fast and get up stairs to "prepare" for whatEVER will come.  Michael W. Smith sings this amazing song.  I wonder if he found my missing diary before this song was written?  I cried out to God like He were my only lifeline at times.  I had NO concept of Him but I was so desperate to "believe".  I wonder, can God be a safe place and give peace to those who don't or can't "know" Him?  If God hadn't filled some of the darkness in my life as a child I would be dead.  As I got older I had to take a more active role in my relationship with God.  I had to study and seek...but as a child God comforted me even when I didn't know to give Him the credit.  I can say it felt like God was farther away as soon as I walked on my college campus...a Christian campus at that.  But I can see now why it felt like He had left.  God wanted me to seek with all my heart...I needed to begin a journey that would reveal God as a reality instead of a "feeling".  I believe God's soft spot for children is proof that I was never alone even when I felt so lonely. 

LEAVE
Daddy's on the sofa, turning up another bottle to unleash when I get home

I pretend he doesn't hit me
Momma just pretends that she don't know.

I used to think of talking
Talking to my preacher
He says I should just forgive and forget.
Now my baby brother just sits and recollects the same regrets.

And I just wanna leave
Oh, God, please help me now, I wanna leave.

As if that's not enough
We're the new family around here
Guess that's all the reason some kids need
'Cause they all call me names, and say I should just take it on the chin.

If I'm overreacting, then why is it so cold here
Why is it so cold here, in this hell
Why would my friend Suzy
Tell me I should just go kill myself?

And I just wanna leave
Oh, God, please help me now, I wanna leave
And I, I just wanna leave
Oh, God, please help me now, I wanna leave

Oh, I wanna get out of here
Oh, God, help me now, I really wanna leave,

(oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, ohh)

And I, just wanna leave
Oh, God, please help me now, I wanna leave
Oh, but I, I just wanna believe
Oh, God, please hear me now, I wanna believe
I just need to know, that You're really out there
Tell me if You're really out there, 'cause I believe.