My mother was not equipped to have a child. She and my dad got married because of a pregnancy scare. I came along over a year later so I was not that scare. I was a surprise for my dad though. One fast weekend while he was at AIT and along came Debby. She confessed once when I was in my 30's that in my infancy she hit me in the head with a hammer. I was just big enough to turn my head on my own so it was just a glancing blow. I suppose she took me to my grandparents for a few days after that. She was hard on me.
Fast forward a few years. My sister was born and we shared a bedroom. She was big enough to be able to stand in her crib and throw toys out. It was her favorite game. I was responsible for picking them up and putting them back. So my mother says something like, "Have these toys picked up before I finish with my bath or you're going to get a spanking." I tried but my sister was up for a game of 40 toy pick up and I just knew I was going to get that spanking. I did get that spanking and more for crying because I was already crying before she laid a hand on me. She wouldn't accept my explanation that my sister contributed to the mess. It was not fair to me. "Life is not fair."
So a little further down the road of my life and she's divorced and lonely. Horny is really what she was. She would cry for someone to love her and being the pleasers we tried to be we would respond. "We love you mommy" but she always said "That's not good enough." She meant that's not the same as what she wanted but she just couldn't put that in words. I turned myself inside out to make that woman happy. I worried about it so much I had ulcers at 10 years old.
My mother refused to let me have my medication after a month or so. She didn't want me to get addicted to it. Turns out Ulcers run in the family. My grandfather coped with his by eating cereal with Milnot, an evaporated milk product. I drank milk to help with mine. I got a lot of flack about drinking milk. I turned to other foods to help, toast, crackers, or oatmeal but milk was faster. My own boys do the same although one also takes Famotadine every morning.
One time when I was 13, she and I were fighting about chores and she hit me and I fell down a flight of stairs. I managed to smack her back on my way down. I broke out one of her false teeth from her upper plate. I broke my glasses, twisted my trick knee, and hurt one wrist. I was lucky. That knee, I had it replaced in August 2018. My mom had me in her hands at the age of 1 or 2, and dropped me by accident onto the edge of a coffee table that I never knew was in the living room at my grandparent's house. Explains why we didn't have one. It was dismantled and kept behind the couch. I think my little knee swelled up. For nearly 5 decades that knee gave me so much trouble.
My mom, she was either so depressed she could barely function or so hyped on life that she would clean house in the middle of the night. Now we lived in a Tulsa Housing Authority low income neighborhood/apartment complex. They have monthly inspections and exterminator visits. So my mom would stress out about these visits and push herself into a Manic (cleaning in the middle of the night) phase. Another manic phase was when we would buy our months allotment of groceries on the day we got our food stamps. Sugar highs would come that day. We bought cake.
I weigh 335 lbs right now. I was a heavy kid. Tall and a little too much weight but not that bad as I look at girls and women in "healthy bodies" now. My convex belly was just right for my frame although, it was supposed to be concave and my hip bones were supposed to show to fit the illusion of beauty for a couple of boyfriends. So I ate my feelings. Then one year I ate 10K calories per meal MREs. I packed on pounds then. Everyone thought I was pregnant. I haven't dropped that weight. I went from 220 to nearly 300. Earlier this year, I was 378. I've been too stressed to eat a lot this year. Too stressed to feel hungry.
Not eating has been a big change for me. It's helped my tummy trouble though. My Citalopram helps too. At least I understand that I need to take it everyday. My mother didn't. She would take it until she started feeling better then think she was doing to well to need it and start spiraling down to a suicide attempt. Every 18 months for most of my life we would deal with this. Her early death was due to all the damage she did with all the drugs she used to try to overdose in the past. I know one attempt with Glucophage, damaged her heart. When I realized she would rather create havoc in our lives than to live and give us a stable home, I started hating my mother.
I stayed though. I was still busting my hump to make her happy. She needed me if only to cook, clean and do laundry. Then I learned about having my own life. I worked, had a boyfriend, and was making plans for the future. Then Jeffy came along. He altered my plans for the future. If I had been about to get mental healthcare back then I think would have been so different for him, and my marriage to his dad. I thank God often that mental health is covered now. We're having trouble with getting Gerald's medication but we have other options for him when there's a gap.
So every time my mother had a suicide attempt she would go back through her history. She had to talk about her history some of it wasn't correct history but made her more sympathetic. I bought into the lies a lot of my life. There were times when she would have to change therapists too and the stories would come back out. She would accuse this man of child rape or inappropriate advances when she was older. One husband or boyfriend was abusive or forced her to swing. It's all very sordid. Eventually I was tired of the history and it's changing accounts. Eddie kept her from abusing me with her lies. It was rough. By that time, I had 2 more kids and was in need of all the mental health support I could get. I couldn't be that support for my mother.
I understand my mother and some of her motives now that I'm older. I've experienced some things that would lead me to make the same choices she made but my medication always brings me back to center. I just hope my boys learn that same lesson. Take your medicine.
this will be an on going series... more some other day.
