Tag: Bipolar.

When Randy’s job on Long Island, New York was ending and his company was transferring him to California it was a very scary time for me. I had lived on Long Island my entire life, my whole life was there, my family, friends and my job. Without a doubt, the hardest person to leave would be my youngest brother. My mother had made it impossible for me to have a relationship with him but, leaving him would be like leaving my child behind. If things were going well with my family, if I had the big happy family that I had always dreamed about, I probably would have asked Randy to look for another job before we took the transfer but, things were not going well – at all.

As I wrote in a previous blog, my mother was making my life unbearable. Even after nearly a full year of marriage, she refused to accept that I was now a married woman. She refused to visit me in my new home, when I spoke to her she was always putting me and Randy down and making me feel as if I had to choose between being his wife and being her daughter. When I was with Randy in our own cocoon, I was so incredibly happy with my life. But when she would call or when I felt that I had to visit her, which was pretty much every day, I hated my life!

Believe it or not, the scariest part of the whole move was the anticipation of having to tell my mother. Even though she didn’t seem to care that I was living so close, I knew that she wasn’t going to take the news of our moving very well. The night Randy and I were going over to my parents house to tell them, I was so nervous I was sick to my stomach. I’m not even sure if we had dinner with them that night. All I remember is sitting at the kitchen table talking about everything other than the move because I was so afraid to start the conversation. Randy and I kept making eye contact trying to decide when would be a good time.

When we finally began to tell them, my mother started screaming that she knew this was going to happen. She stood up from the table and went into the bathroom. We could hear screaming, banging and crashing sounds, I just wanted to get up and leave, she had totally lost it. My dad just sat there not saying or doing anything. My mother finally came out of the bathroom with blood all over her hands and dripping down her arms. She had punched the washing machine and dryer and pulled the sink off the wall. My dad proceeded to get up and go to the garage to get his tools to put the sink back on the wall, that was all he did! It was like being in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

My mother continued to scream horrible things at both of us. We quickly left and headed back to our house. I knew that it wasn’t going to go well but I never would have expected the insanity that went on in that house that night, it was like some crazy nightmare. When we got home I threw myself into Randy’s arms and cried. Everything that we had just experienced made it so clear to me, for the first time, that we had to leave. I don’t think I had ever experienced just how incredibly dysfunctional my parents where from an outside perspective before, it was shocking.

Within the next few weeks, Randy and I began packing and mailing our essentials to his new office location. His company said they would take care of our things until we found a place to live. Foolishly, as was my cycle, when my mother was a little nice to me I would believe that I could trust her, I asked her if she could store our personal items for me until I was able to come back and sort through them. She ended up throwing away all of our wedding pictures, my wedding dress, and all of our personal items we left in the house. She also had an Estate Sale and sold most of our furniture and belongings for significantly less than they were worth. She made sure that she got back at us for leaving or for getting married to begin with, who knows.

We ended up having to hire someone to take care of the house for us, which we should have done from the very beginning. If we had, I would have my wedding gown to pass onto my daughters and wedding pictures to show my children. Maybe one day Randy and I will renew our vows and our children will be there to see it all for themselves.

As I said, my cycle was that every single time she was nice to me I wanted so badly to believe that she had changed. I would honestly convince myself that she was finally going to be the mom that I dreamed of always having. I did this for almost 40 years of my life.

If you’re in this same situation, and your abuser isn’t seeking help, stop believing that they are going to change! They will not change until they admit they have a problem and seek help. I just wanted a mother that loved me so badly that I just couldn’t let the dream go and saw things that just weren’t there. I believe that I ended up abusing myself by putting myself in the same position over and over and over again for so many years. She was never going to say “I’m sorry”. Even when I thought I let go, I still hadn’t because when I found out that she passed away, I cried all over again for the dream that died again.

I don’t believe it was an option for me to continue the cycle of abuse.  It just seems unfathomable to me to treat the four people I love most in this world, my children, in the same horrible, heinous way I was treated as a child.

In raising my children I didn’t have role models to show me what was “normal” so I pretty much just followed my heart. I’ve definitely had to use my husband, therapists and friends to help me set the proper boundaries for a lot of things. I didn’t always know where the healthy lines were because they were never drawn for me. Things like helping them to spread their wings to grow up normal and healthy while keeping them safe. I also had a lot trouble with discipline because I never saw it given without pain and humiliation. My fear was that any discipline would be seen, in their eyes, as my love being taken away from them, it was a very emotional slope for me. I would primarily talk them through situations and put them in timeouts. My daughter, who was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder has been much more of a challenge for me because she’s always been more rebellious, I will go into that more in a future blog.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about my older brother when it comes to continuing the cycle of abuse:

At some point during 2005, my brother’s second wife got in touch with me via email and asked me to call her. I was very surprised by this email because I hadn’t talked to my family in about three years and was very concerned about what this could be about. I certainly didn’t want to be pulled back into anything having to do with my family. It had taken me so long to finally free myself from them, there was no way I was going to get back into any of it. I had three beautiful children and we had just found out that we had a fourth one on the way, life was really, really good for me.

After talking it over with my husband for a few days we decided that I should just find out what it was that she wanted because it would probably just drive me crazy not knowing. When I called her I quickly found out that she and my brother were divorced and they were in the midst of a custody battle over their two children. She said that she and the kids needed family. Knowing that they weren’t connected with my family anymore I thought it would be safe to have some communication with them.

We met with the three of them a few times when I found out that the real reason she contacted me was that my brother had continued the cycle of abuse with their children. She asked me if I could give a statement to a guardian ad litem on the children’s behalf. She wanted me to tell them about the environment my brother and I had grown up in and how he’d become quite a bit like my mother once he’d reached his teen years. When I say this I mean that he was very moody and he could be very dark, mean, and emotionally and mentally abusive. He also had a face that he put on in public so no one knew what he was really like behind closed doors.

I prayed about giving my testimony because once I did I knew there would be no turning back. Any kind of relationship with my brother or anyone else in my family would definitely be out of the question, not that I wanted one but, this would really seal the deal. It didn’t take very long for me to know that I had to do this. I could not allow their children to continue to be abused by him, especially since they would have to be alone with him when it was his turn to take them.

I made my statement and haven’t spoken to him since and never spoke to my mother again. To this day, I know that I did the right thing. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I hadn’t done it. I honestly don’t understand continuing the cycle of abuse. If you didn’t like being treated that way, why would you treat the people you love most in the world that way…I just don’t get it.