An Open Letter to Whom It May Concern

I loved you once, and I love you still, same as I do your boy.  I understand how scared and confused you must've been those many years ago when trying to decide to stay in that abusive marriage or leave.  I know the abuse continued even after the kids grew up.  I remember you going to S.A.F.E. place after Thanksgiving one year, but you soon returned.  You slipped me some literature on what to pack and how to get away safely- your silent acknowledgment that you knew what I was going through in my little apartment with the apple of your eye.

I wish you'd been strong enough to leave when your kids were young before they soaked up all those experiences, and formed those hard-wired pathways in their growing brains.  They were fed; they were clothed; they had a roof over their heads, but what had they begun to consider normal?

You never deserved that abuse.  People would've helped you.  When you were lucky enough to have professionals to come to you when your boy was eight and tell you he needed mental health services, it may have drastically changed his life course if you'd ignored your fear, ignored the stigma, and accepted the help- the kind of help I wouldn't be offered until my baby girl was fifteen.  I can only look back and wish I'd known what to look for in Cory's behavior or what it meant.  To get her help before she ended puberty would've changed everything- so much time and productivity saved.

If I prayed, I'd pray for you laying your head down on your pillow at night, knowing all the horrors you've seen and experienced.  I have so much empathy for you.  But there is also anger, because I remember you telling me sometimes two people, no matter how much they love each other, just can't be together in that way; it's not safe.  You loved him madly, didn't you? You must have loved him the way I loved your boy.  He was the air I breathed.   Part of you still must..  You loved him so madly that you put the mental and physical health of your children at risk in order to stay.

You forgave.  You rationalized.  You set boundaries that he laughed off- drunk, and throwing take-out over the canal.

"I'm sorry my son is a monster."  you told me once.

He's not a monster.  He has an untreated mental illness.  He has a good heart.  He's wildly intelligent.  He loves helping people.
And even though his touch sent shivers down my spine, I will pass.  My kids deserve that.

By the way, Cory's illness, her mental illness, was called Schizoaffective Disorder.  It wasn't a chess move from Satan.  It wasn't caused by medications.  It is a brain disorder that is highly hereditary.  And it's treatable.  Even though you unknowingly or knowingly set your son up to have some major challenges in life, I'll never understand how you wrote her off the moment you realized what was wrong with her.  You told me the enemy was working for her soul.  You told me I should go to church more. You told me to beware of those pharmaceutical companies.  Never did you acknowledge that there is a prevalence of mental illness in your family history or in your husbands.

  All those little hello cards filled with trinkets sent to Cory when your son and I were making a go of it had stopped long ago, of course. Apparently, she stopped being your grandchild, the moment I stopped being Bob's significant other and subsequent caregiver.

But after?  After you knew what she was going through?  Three hospitalizations- one of which lasted 11 days.  A struggle to get an Individualized Education Plan to secure her high school diploma.  Not one card?  Flowers?  Nothing?  That I just can't get my head around.  She deserved some encouragement for doing something you yourself couldn't do for her father- fight the stigma, get the help, and get healthy without hurting anyone else to do it.  She was freaking amazing.

That is all.

The Turkey Is Done

Thanksgiving sucked, and I will be sitting Christmas out.

I had to threaten Tim within an inch of a divorce decree to get him to come with me, and he only caved under the pressure of these heavy reminders: he refused to go with me to the police station to get Cory's affects, he refused to go to the first wedding I attended after her death, he was not present when Jake and I put the fifteen year old family dog to sleep, and if I am going to to continue to do these sort of things alone, we don't have to live under the same roof to do so.  I can do it alone.  I did for four years.  Remember?

He was thrilled.  So at my sister's house it was a caravan of faces, some old and well-loved and others still changing under the planes of time.  All of them were happy.  There was teasing and silliness, and my soul just froze shut.  There would be no goofy coming from my direction.  I sat silently and waited for a reasonable time to leave, at which time, I made a bee line for the door.

Later that night, Tim yelled at me for being hateful.  He says I hate the kids who are alive, I hate the parents whose children are alive, I hate the young couple just starting at on paths Cory will never set a precious foot on.  He demanded that I turn all that hatred to the driver instead- blame the person at fault.

I don't hate everyone.  I am  more jealous that I could ever convey in a million years.  I feel cheated.  I  feel punished.  These feelings sit in my mouth and make it hard to have light hearted chatter.  In fact, at times such as Thursday in the light of all that gratitude, there's not a word I can think of to say.

Tim is wrong you know.  The hate comes right to me.  I was her legal guardian.  And if anywhere else, maybe to God, if there is such an all-knowing being who rescues certain people's children from the brink of death, but leaves mine to bleed out on the street.

For two days, all I've done is take more and more pills and decide dubiously that if I don't believe in God, who cares if I go to hell.  I already feel like I'm being burned alive every day.  Every single Cory-less day.

My Big Voice

I'm not afraid anymore.  Did you know that?

After your worst fear in your life has been realized, some things just don't seem to matter as much anymore.   One of them is what people think of you.

One thing I've gained out of surviving the horrific loss of a child who meant absolutely everything in this world to me is my voice.  I can be heard now.  I can share art- scribbles though they may be- ,this blog, and my experiences to put a face on mental illness, and to let others know they are not alone.  I can speak up as a survivor of domestic violence.  What's Bob going to do about it?  Walk across town and call me names in the street?  Stop paying my cellphone bill?  No, at most he will tell me I fried Cory's brain with shock therapy and experimental meds and she was never the same after.

Really?  You get to criticize the way I got your daughter the very best care available?  The way I kept  her ALIVE?  The nights I spent awake with her when the voices were tormenting her, the way I locked up the sharps every single night to protect her from what the voices told her to do, the endless doctor appointments and lab visits...all as a single parent. Where were you?  Where WERE YOU? No, you don't get a say.  Or actually, say it all you want.  No one who matters cares.
 I can say with pride that she never put her hands on other person in anger after she was medicated.  I can say with pride she never took street drugs or drank alcohol to self-medicate. I only wish someone had been smart enough and brave enough to do the same for you and change the course of your life for the better. I bet once and awhile, your mom does, too.

 The ECT brought her relief.  The voices returned, but the delusions stayed away...and my friend that was a battle worth celebrating.  She wasn't AFRAID anymore.  Do you even understand how huge that was?  If you've never spent months watching a loved one struggle in psychosis, you probably can't.  She could walk around her house and the neighborhood without thinking she was being followed and that people wanted to kill her. The phone was just a phone again. The computer wasn't bugged.  Her arm had a Mersa scar, not a tracking device.  The only camera she was worried about was the one on her I-phone. Fried her brain? No, those treatments settled her brain. The fact that Bob thinks ECT fries people's brains just speaks to his ignorance on the topic.  I have 5 books on the topic, Bob, if you'd like to borrow them.  

I wish he had seen her in the last few months before the accident- saw her healthy and vibrant, silly and hopeful. I wish he'd seen her long-term memory was not "fried" and their her cognition was intact.   Maybe then he would not make such unkind remarks.  Maybe.

What I can say is this:  she was not a drop-out, she was not an addict, she was not an abuser.  She was kind; she was smart; she was a fighter.  She was an artist, and she spoke out to others about mental illness-before her death and after.  I could not be more proud of the life she lived and the strength she displayed daily.

I'm not afraid to say that I had EVERYTHING to do with that.  And I'm not afraid to say Bob didn't.

Push and Shove, Twenty Five Years Later

The domestic violence I went through with Bob when we were young seems like something that happened a life time ago.  Most of the time, it could almost have happened to someone else.  But then I'll see something on tv or hear someone talk about domestic violence, and I am taken right back to a different time, a different place, and being a different person.

Even now, one of the things that infuriates me most is that Bob won't own up to what he did.  But then, expecting your abuser to label what he did as abuse is ridiculous.  Of course he thinks it was okay.  Of course he'll avoid the question with come-backs meant to push the blame back on you, "if it was so bad, why'd you stick around?  why'd you always take me back?"

Sometimes I even forget just how bad it got.  I was talking with a co-worker today about domestic violence and he shared what he'd gone through when he was a child.  He asked me how bad things were for me.  I told him about finally leaving Bob when Cory was 8 weeks old, and how he showed up about a month later, punching his way in through a window to unlock the door, cutting his arm, slinging blood all over my house, and proceeding to drag me out of the house by my hair.  I stood there a moment in my dress and boots, safe and sane just outside of my office door at my place of work and relived the police coming, staring up into the branches of my pine tree where my phone dangled by its tangled cord.  Nowadays, they call that interference and in some states, it's a felony.  I just shook my head bitterly at this information.  Tearing the phone out of the wall and blocking the exit were the first things he'd do.  PTSD?  I think I had that a long time ago.  No wonder it's so hard to shake.

I stood there and thought about that girl. She was seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.  I thought about how she'd been afraid to stay with him and afraid to leave, all at the same time.  I thought about how much she loved him, how she loved him with her entire body, soul, and being. I thought about how the good in him always shone through brighter than the sun and it blinded her... how sometimes the good times seemed worth any cost.   I thought about how she never wanted the relationship to end, she only wanted the behavior to stop.  I thought about how she'd thought if she did everything right, if she kept him happy, he wouldn't lose his temper anymore. He had succeeded at making her think it was her fault.

I thought about how alone she was.  I thought about how she was too ashamed to go to anyone in her family. And some of it was just too awful to explain to someone who had no idea what in the world you were talking about.  It was like living on a different planet.

"Why don't you just leave?"

 I thought about how discouraged people who meant to help her became when she did leave, but went right back.  Over and over and over again.

It took me nearly twenty years, all told, to finally say I won't accept that treatment.  The last go round never got physical, but the emotional abuse was still there. And he did, on one memorable occasion, threaten to come over and cut me into 86 pieces.

I finally had to say "I am not your mother."  I won't be treated this way, and I won't let my kids see me treated that way. 

 The last thing I wanted was to perpetuate the cycle by raising a boy who thinks abuse is okay or a girl who thinks she deserves it. No Cory, you deserve so much better.

 It doesn't matter one flying fuck how Bob views what took place between us.  What matters is that I know I made the right decision.  He doesn't think it was wrong?  He doesn't think it was abuse? 

Well, then, if I'd stayed, he'd still be doing it, wouldn't he?

I can wish him well from the safety of my home with my son who will never think it's okay to push a girl or call her a cunt.  I can love the parts of him that I love and treasure the good memories from a distance.  I can always wish things had turned out differently, but I won't gamble my emotional health or physical safety on that wish ever again.

I am not his mother.  Turns out, I never was.

All I Want Is You

Her wind chimes are playing again.  The wind has picked up enough to move them often in the middle of the night, so I have some company when I'm missing her too much to sleep.  The days haven't gotten easier, so much, but maybe...fuller.  There is a puppy in the house now, so there is always someone who needs me, which makes the fact that Jake doesn't need me quite so much these days a little easier to take.

Work is busy; stressful.  At times it is a little overwhelming, but the routine is a good thing for my brain.  I recognize this now.  The purpose is good for my soul.  Helping others is the thing that helps me most.  And if I get a little passionate about my children at work, well...I don't apologize.

The holidays have snuck up on me this year with a little less foreboding.  Maybe I've just been too distracted.  I guess we'll see how I'm feeling when the turkey actually hits the table.  I remain cautiously optimistic, which is about forty steps ahead from last year.

But tonight, I want to take a moment to cave in and give over.  My pain deserves a seat and a proper conversation.  Grief may be put off if you can get yourself busy enough, but it is a stalker of singular purpose.  You will be cornered at some point.  You will be forced to see that face again.  That old familiar pain will be back, and although it burns and strips and whips you to the bone, it also connects you to your child.  Give that up?  Give her up?  Never.
 Tie me to the post, but let me look at her face while I scream.

Winston

Tim seems less than happy that we got a puppy so soon after Gizmo died.  I asked Jake how he felt about this, and his answer was short, but succinct, "It's a good distraction."

I agree.  If not for a tiny new being to care for, I'd be sleeping round the clock.  Instead, Jake and I have been making the rounds showing off Winston, busy with feeding and potty runs, crate training and play sessions.

Replace Gizmo?  Are you kidding me?  There is no way, nor would I want to.  How could a tiny stranger infringe on what Gizmo meant to me?  He can't.

For the very first time, I am trying to accept a death as a death, and move on with my life in a way that honors my loved one, giving my love to someone who is currently alive.  It's sort of a big deal for me,

If you're not ok, that's fine.  But damn, let me be ok if I can.