childhood

Momster, life as a ‘mean’ mom

/ Outrunning my demons / 3 Comments

And just like that summer is unofficially over…It is windy, rainy, and cool with high temps in the lower 60’s. For today, I put the shorts and t-shirts away…oh and…THE KIDS ARE ALL BACK IN SCHOOL!

My youngest child just started her first year of high school today. How do I feel? To be completely honest…I just want this parenting thing to be over right now. Harsh, I know. Perhaps this won’t be a popular post, unless you are or have recently been parents of teenagers. Then I don’t even have to explain and probably wasted my time writing this post..

A few weeks ago, we took our oldest back to college for her second year. It does get a lot easier the second time around. We moved her in early since she had practice before school started. She was the first roommate to arrive on an unseasonably warm day. Her apartment was stifling hot and did not cool off quickly. She decided to sleep that first night in her underwear. She wasn’t aware that her foreign roommate would be moving in that night at 3 AM. Welcome to America! Awkward!

I received another call this past weekend about my son and the underage drinking party he attended at a cabin last month. To recap, my son was supposed to pick up a girl to take to her family’s cabin (to be more exact, to the cabin of her recently widowed grandmother) but she got busted by her parents with alcohol. So she told her friends to party without her. She explained how to get in if the door was locked. About 20 kids showed up and trashed the place.

The parents of this girl spent Labor Day weekend up north at the cabin and found more disturbing things. They left a message for me to call them back. As far as I know, they have not been in contact with any of the other parents.

Naturally, I was upset all over again and called back inquiring about the disturbing things. Apparently, the disturbing things were broken glass and blood on the carpet. My idea of disturbing things are needles, drug paraphernalia, and evidence of satanic rituals. They called several times now to just talk about things, to commiserate.

I am starting to wonder if this is the start of some bizarre friendship.

At freshman orientation, I spoke to Arabella’s teacher. She ran her first marathon last year when I ran my second. I felt like we had this quasi-competitive relationship. She is an attractive woman in my age group. We finished a few seconds apart. I asked her if she competed in anymore marathons since last summer. She said that she was trying to get back into shape. She also commented on how popular my posts are on Facebook. We are not Facebook friends and I didn’t think she even knew my first name. Although, she did call me about once a week when my son was in her class over nothing much really. Does that make us friends?

These relationships with other parents are so confusing! I wonder if she will call now that my daughter is in her class since she is a straight A student.

I have been the mother of teenagers for 6 years now. I have over 5 years to go..3 years, 8 months, and 10 days until my youngest is an adult. But who’s counting??

I am growing weary of it…the constant stress, the constant worry…the constant feeling of poking myself in the eyeball with stick pins..make sure to put your clean laundry away instead of leaving it on a pile with the dirty clothes on the floor.

If my son decides to go to college, and decides to go to a school nearby, I don’t want him to live at home to save money as previously discussed. I want him to leave and live his own life. I already nag my husband enough and don’t need another adult to nag..

I suppose this is a natural part of parenting teenagers…the not wanting to let go followed immediately by the desire to set them free..

A good friend of mine said that we shouldn’t make our home too comfortable for our adult children to return to. They should want to leave. Although her son flunked out of college and moved back home. So the whole idea is not working out great for her. She is beside herself.

So I am happy as another school year starts. I want my kids to mature, to grow up. I want to be their friend someday as adults like I am with my oldest child. I am ready for the work to be over and the fun to start! My adult daughter calls me her best friend…sometimes she tells me too much about what is happening in her life..

I no longer want to be the ‘mean mom’ that enforces curfews, grounds them when they have drinking parties at someone’s cabin, makes them clean their rooms, and otherwise teaches them responsibility as they resist my efforts to nag them into becoming fully functioning adult members of society.

 

Autism heard

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Matt was a normal baby, very bright actually. He knew the alphabet and was saying simple words at age 2. But that all went away.

Even his birth was not a normal event. After crushing back labor, he entered the world with broken bones.

One day the words went away. He stopped talking. He started having nightmares. He screamed instead of sleeping. But I was too young to remember that.

How could such a brilliant mind be stunted? As an adult he can neither read nor write. He cannot solve simple math problems.

For a long time, Matt did not even talk. But the strangest thing happened. He started talking again. But not in the same way that you or I do. He got his pronouns all mixed up. Matt eat..he never referred to himself as I. He also has a speech impediment that makes him difficult to understand by those who did not know him well. This seemed to frustrate him in his younger years and he hit his head with his fist.

The things he said didn’t always make sense to us.

For awhile he repeated the same song in a monotone voice…hands on the table won’t come off, now the hands are stuck on the beard. He would scream if he saw a man with a beard.

But a man with a beard never hurt him.

He was also terrified of tires. He would kick the tires and throw stones at them if people showed up in their cars.

He also heard sticky noises. He would smack his lips to mock the sounds he was hearing. It was a disconcerting sound like chewing with your mouth open times ten.

He also heard the sound of girls laughing at him. Back in the day, he was sent out to recess with the rest of the kids. The older girls teased and mocked his bizarre behaviors. I was there and saw it but was helpless to do anything about it. I didn’t fit in with the other kids because they made fun of my brother. He was an easy target. It made me angry all of the time. But I wasn’t allowed to feel anger. Anger was wrong and it upset Matt. Angry emotions set Matt off and he would hurt himself, my mother, or me. So I withdrew to survive.

Recently Matt was taken off of his anti-psychotic medication due to liver strain. He started to hear voices again. This time the voices were telling him to hurt my niece. But not just hurt her, to kill her.

Fifteen years ago, Matt hurt my daughter. The voices told him to do it. He started to obsess about her, so we limited their contact at the time. It was on her 4th birthday. We didn’t think it would happen…

Afterwards, he muttered to the voices for hours and couldn’t be brought out of it. He didn’t respond when spoken to.

For many years after that my brother was not allowed around my children or any children. He became home bound and isolated from the general population. If it happened again, he was going to be locked up with the violently mentally ill. He started a new medication and silently gently the violent whispers faded away.

My mother asked lately if he was misdiagnosed. Is he schizophrenic too? Or is this some unusual symptom of autism? The doctor said that at this point it really doesn’t matter since it will be treated the same way.

Matt was violent before he hurt my daughter. If we were vigilant enough, we could see it coming on. His jaw would clench, his face contorted, his pupils constricted, and his ears turned bright red.

Sometimes after he hurt someone he seemed very upset about what he had done. Other times he would laugh. It was such an evil laugh that a few asked and we wondered if it was possible that he was demon possessed.

He struggled to differentiate between reality and what the voices were telling him. The voices are very frightening to him.

I think he always had auditory hallucinations, but couldn’t verbalize it to us.

It made me wonder…what if other violent autistic nonverbal people also hear the same voices but can’t tell anyone? How terrifying that would be. What if they think they are being hurt or are hearing a voice that tells them to hurt someone or themselves?

If I would go back to school to get a Master’s degree or PhD in Psychology, I think I would devote time researching this. I couldn’t find a lot of information online. But what is there to find if those who suffer cannot communicate?

This has been incredibly hard for my mom. She can’t mention my niece’s name around Matt. He obsesses about her. He is angry if he thinks that she likes the same things he does and talks about hurting her.

It is hard for us all. I love my brother and don’t want to see him suffer. I love my niece and I don’t want her to be hurt.

How long will it take for the medicine to work?

 

Survival stories

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Over this past week, we have been hit by several severe storms. There was one day that it didn’t storm. Tornadoes blew through the area.

My daughter, Arabella, was at camp all week. They had to take shelter several times due to the severe storms. For once, I didn’t worry too much. I grew up fairly close to the area that my daughter went to camp. I knew exactly where the storms hit. I knew the campers weren’t in the storms path. By the time I knew a storm was coming, it had already passed that area.

After I picked up my daughter from camp, I went to the cemetery to see if my grandparents ‘survived’ the storm. I checked on their parents and siblings too. It seemed like a strange thing to do, since they all have been dead for almost a decade or more. I don’t get out that way to visit too often.

I remember going as a child along with my grandma and Aunt Grace to check on our family at the cemetery after a storm. Now, regrettably, it felt like my turn.

I drove by my grandparents house. The new owners put up a decorative fence in the front yard. At Aunt Grace’s house, the new owners put in a new front door and constructed a flower bed where a tree used to be. It is still painful to drive by.

I stopped at my parents house, but they weren’t home. It was oddly silent. I feel a certain sadness when I go home. I can’t explain it. I feel nostalgia for what was. I feel grief for things that happened that shouldn’t have. I feel an emptiness, a sense of being alone. It is a painful feeling, but ever so slightly, an uneasiness that almost cannot be pinpointed.

I picked asparagus in my parents backyard as I saw lightening and heard the rumble of distant thunder. I felt empty, alone, and a little afraid. Afraid of being vulnerable out in the open. I felt the emptiness of it all. Soon my parents will be gone. I still regret not spending every moment with my loved ones that I could before they were gone. Guilt. But not even deserved. I spent a lot of time with my family. My mother didn’t want to let me go, so I stayed. I’m the dutiful firstborn that never went far from home. I was needed.

As I ventured out and about this week, I talked to others that faced the storm. People are drawn to tales of destruction, to view the carnage. People want to share their survival stories. I spoke to a stranger that said his family had several collector cars that were destroyed by the tornado after the shed they were in blew away. Cars that were loved, the original parts sought after. I saw pictures. How often does a stranger show you picture after picture on their phone??

I heard the story of a barn the was destroyed in the storm. The cows were lost and some blew away. Half of the cows were found down the road impaled into the ground. These are survival stories being told by people grasping for others who can relate.

I thought about the stories I heard, then realized that I am the same way. I want to tell my story. I want to feel united in life’s collective struggle. They may not be the same stories, but have the common key of surviving something difficult.

I told you this week about a couple of stories where we survived sailing under difficult circumstances that were unexpected. I tell you about my races, how grueling the last triathlon and marathon were. My struggles as a parent, spouse, business owner, and with my own personal issues. I speak of surviving a very difficult childhood. I often feel alone because I don’t hear a lot of people with a similar story.

Who else out there has a severely mentally ill sibling that threatened to kill the youngest most vulnerable family members? Beside my siblings, I know of no other person who has that story to tell. It is lonely struggling alone.

My favorite bloggers are those that have struggled too. I don’t read your stories because I like to see you in pain or your failure. Your stories motivate me to go the extra mile. They inspire me to keep telling my story.

I almost feel sorry for people that don’t have a story to tell.

The same old demons, shaken and stirred

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Once again, I don’t particularly feel like writing. But here I am sucked into this strange compulsion to tell my story.

My youngest daughter, Arabella, was planning on having a friend up north with us this past weekend. We had to cancel those plans. The old Matt was back in town.

When Matt went off of his medication, the voices came back…the ones that told him to hurt little girls. He said that he wanted to kill our 10 year old niece. He said the voices scared him.

Matt was going to be up north this weekend. Arabella wanted to bring a friend that had long glossy hair down to her waist. She was the kind of girl that Matt might want to wrap his fingers around. He might want to pull her hair and make her cry. Or maybe he would sink his nails into her skin. I imagine those things because those things are possible.

Arabella didn’t understand why I changed my mind about letting her have a friend up north. She never saw the old Matt. She didn’t understand not being able to have friends over like I did. She was angry at me.

At first, I felt a great sadness over the whole situation. But it is strange how soon it became normal again. The agitated Matt…the man with fire red ears and constricted pupils muttering like a mad man. The Matt that flapped his hands together against his chest and paced the floors. The same Matt that hurt me…my family…my mother…my friends…my oldest daughter.

Isolation…but this time it won’t be me. Luke will have to spend some time away. He can’t risk his daughters being hurt.

I feel his pain.

I know what it feels like to see someone I love hurt by someone I love…the conflicting emotions of anger and compassion.

Matt’s needs were always and will always be more important than that of us, his siblings.

All of the old feelings popped up again. It probably didn’t help that I was already diving into it by reading old journals.

I was stirring up old demons while being shaken by the new ones.

I feel bad that I probably won’t be able to see Luke and his family much this summer. I hope that this passes soon now that Matt is back on his medicine again.

What I truly want for Mother’s Day

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What I truly want for Mother’s Day…

Baby, I want to hold your tiny hand in mine one more time.

I want to gather you back into the safety of my nest.

I want to be able to kiss your owwies and take away your pain.

I want you to still think that I have all of the answers and that the world is a good and magical place.

I want to sit you on my lap and read your favorite stories…I can’t seem to remember the day it all ended.

I want to laugh off the people that say it goes by so fast as I hold a crying baby in my arms.

What I truly want for Mother’s Day…

Mother, I want to see the excitement in your eyes as I give you my scribbles on a piece of pink construction paper.

I want to see the beauty of your young face and the natural color of your hair. I don’t want to see signs of you slipping away from me.

I don’t want to think that this could be our last year together like last year was for my husband’s mother.

I want to think that the little things I do or say give you lasting happiness more than flowers or a card someone else wrote on this one day of the year.

What I truly want for Mother’s Day…

Grandma, how I long to hear your voice again…to hear you sing like a bird…to tell you that you gave my daughter your gift. I want you to fully understand the influence you have had on my life and how that impacted my children.

I want to smell fresh cookies as I walk into your house and know that you made a special batch just for me.

I want you to answer the phone when I call.

I long to see your house again, the way it was before the new people moved in.

I want to smell your sweet perfume, even the scent that remains in the half empty bottle is beginning to fade.

I wish you could walk alongside of me on this journey again..

This is what I truly want for Mother’s Day.

Autism’s sibling, journal 3 part 2

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One time when mom’s old friend stopped by, Matt threw rocks at her car and she left..

What I don’t understand is why the nice friendly Christian ladies at church didn’t offer to give us an hour break from Matt. We never got a break. I only had two friends that lived with me, my two cats. But Matt was mean to them and they eventually ran away. Life with him has been hell. Even though Matt is small, he is very strong.

I also have a lot of nausea. Once my depression and nausea got so bad I couldn’t eat. Nobody cared about me. Nobody cared about Mark either. They cared about Luke because he was a troublemaker and got a lot of attention. Sometimes he would even be as bad as Matt.

What I hated most was talking to relatives. They always asked how Matt was. That really hurt because it is like I don’t exist. Usually people ask how you are. But imagine if they asked about your brother and not you. It hurts to know that people really don’t care if I’m alive.

I remember when the three boys were wild at the table. Mom had to feed them. Mom and dad would fight. Mom would get upset and go upstairs to cry. I was her best friend. I would talk to her and tell her that things would be better tomorrow, but it never did. There were always more problems or more doctor bills. Things are better now, but I still feel the pain and it’s holding me back from being happy.

I had a friend that stayed over once in awhile until Matt kicked her. She never wrote back to me after that.

Alissa, 1990

Isolation…being completely alone…emptiness…a cold barren winter devoid of color….loneliness…the crying of the wind…sadness…the darkest days of the year.

Isolation…for three years Matt had a school teacher come out to the house to educate him. He was deemed too violent to attend school. My mom took a leave of absence from work and pulled my younger brothers and I out of school as well. Sometimes we only left the house once a week to go to church. I spent a lot of time alone in my room writing in my journals.

Emptiness…Robbed of joy and childhood magic…My dad couldn’t handle the stress…he was there physically, but he was gone emotionally…I had to step up to the plate…the firstborn…the caregiver…the fixer…weighed down with adult worries…numb to pain, numb to joy…Pushing all feelings away…left empty inside…Not able to feel anything.

Loneliness…Friendships were severed. When friends came over, it was a disaster. We only had people over once or twice a year and it usually did not go well. My mom and my cats were my best friends. I had more pen pals than actual friends, it was safer…the friends we had went away and never came back…

Sadness…My mother, the kindest and most compassionate person that you would ever meet. I think that it truly hurt others when they had to kick us out of public places because of Matt’s violence…he hurt someone…I have to kick you out…you are welcome back again, but give it some time…Those were the years when I saw my mother’s tears more than I heard her laughter.

Isolation…being completely alone…emptiness…a cold barren winter devoid of color….loneliness…the crying of the wind…sadness…the darkest days of the year.

I spent three teenage years completely alone..Those were the darkest years of my life. Years that I don’t talk about.

 

Autism’s sibling, journal 3 part 1

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Now I am ready to tell you about myself, my family, and you will understand everything..

Everyday Matt would be violent. He would bite me and claw up my arms. I have the scars to prove it, although they faded a little because he’s a little better. But it was awful. Everyday he would be uncontrollable. It was always me he hit.

Once he had this thing about men with beards. He would scream and be awful. Once Matt, mom, and I went grocery shopping and Matt saw a guy with a beard. He got really mad. When mom was checking out, she had to hold him down on the floor because he could hurt someone. 

Or how about the time when we had to move the knives because he took one out and threatened to stab my eyes out.

Or when my mom got a bloody lip because he threw his head back on her. She started crying and it really upset me when I heard her say, “What kid would do this to his mother?”.

The stress was unbearable.

I couldn’t have any friends over because they might have on a fragrance and he might react. So you could say that I never really had many friends over because he would hurt them or me. I couldn’t wear any hair spray or anything with a fragrance.

Other times he would hurt small kids.

We had to do different things. We had to get unfragranced soap, shampoo, deodorant, and laundry soap. We had to close the windows when there was an east wind because the auto exhaust would bother him.

He couldn’t leave the house. He had to eat special foods. We never had anyone over because Matt might hurt them.

He can’t read and when he was younger, he couldn’t talk. He would do weird things like grind his teeth and hit his head. He broke about 5 stereos, one of mine, one of mom’s, and the rest were his.

He couldn’t go swimming because of the chlorine. He would be wild for two or three days in a row. He threatened to run away.

Alissa, 1990

Over time, I have forgotten the magnitude of the stories written by a younger me.

To be honest, something has been scratching at my mind since I stirred up my demons.

My last post was on locker rooms of all things..Talking about locker rooms seemed to bother me more than it should have..Memories swirl through my mind. My mom taking a too old Matt into the girls locker room? There weren’t options back then like there are now. A too old screaming autistic boy in the ladies locker room would have been memorable back then, but I don’t remember more than a flicker.

There are whispers quietly echoing through my mind, but I can’t make out the words.

I am nervous as I type.

Do I really want to remember?

Places where the past and present collide

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The last few days I haven’t been feeling much like writing. I toy with the temptation of disappearing and being totally anonymous again. Strange thoughts trickle through my mind. I worry that my anonymity has been compromised when the phone rings. I get the pseudonyms crossed in my mind. Will I call someone by the wrong name in real life? Will I use their real name here? The boundaries blur…the wires cross…in my mind..

Time zigzags between the past and present…I enjoyed having Angel home over Easter break, but it blurred the adulthood with childhood in my mind. Is she still my child after childhood fades?

We had a bowling party for Matt’s birthday and a family get together for Easter. Right before the party on Saturday morning, I started feeling depressed and a tad bit angry. I didn’t want to share anything with anybody.

I always feel edgy right before family occasions. Matt’s party went great. We had a fun time. It’s just that sometimes in my head the past blends in with the present and I start feeling or thinking the way I felt or thought back then when Matt was violent.

A group of young laughing girls walked by Matt. I remembered the old Matt…the Matt that would attack them…the Matt that would pull their hair and kick them.

Fear trickled through me.

But the new Matt paid no attention as the girls walked by.

I can’t separate the past from the present. The old triggers still flip a switch in my mind that I can’t seem to turn off.

Yesterday, I pulled out another old diary from 1990. This was something I willingly decided to do in my writing process to confront my demons.

But sometimes I fear that this may trigger memories that are darkly hidden. I am afraid sometimes that I won’t be able to handle what I find…what I remember…and the feelings those memories trigger.

It seems insurmountable to me right now. Like running a marathon right up a mountain.

But once I make it to the top of the mountain, I will see things that I have never been able to see before…new insight, new understanding, a deeper knowledge…peace.

Sometimes I need to take a step back to go forward…too see where I’ve been…to notice how far I’ve already climbed.

I want to be able to put the past behind me so it doesn’t mingle with the present anymore. I think it is going to be a long and difficult hike up the mountain, but well worth the view at the top.

Maybe at the end of my climb, I can finally put my demons to rest.

Suppertime sadness

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The tool box clanks on the floor…It’s 6 PM…Dad gets home from work…Supper is on the table…Matt and Luke are tied to their chairs with my mom’s apron…otherwise they don’t stay…

Dad bangs his fist on the table…This dog shit you call supper…He roars as he walks away…The TV is turned on in the next room…laughter on the screen…laughter from my dad…my mom cries…The boys struggle against their restraints…

My stomach hurts…I don’t want to eat…But I have to stay until all of my food is gone..

Some harmless, some hidden

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Memories swirl around in my mind. Some harmless, some hidden..

…laughter of teenage girls…the lighter flicks…not to smoke…melting the tip of the eye liner so it glides on easier…

I put on eye liner for the show. It goes on easy. It almost smears, unlike the sharp pencil of my younger years…Does anyone use a lighter anymore to soften their eye liner pencils?

…I see a younger face in the mirror, then she is gone..

A harmless memory..

An interview for the show…

Were you ever involved in theater before you came to this theater?

…My dad dropped me off at the theater before work…I was the little girl with a small part in the show…I was dropped off early before everyone else…I walked the trails alone in the woods surrounding the theater, sometimes afraid…but it was only a deer…alone…fun on stage…the big kids…the costumes, the makeup…

…The only time alone with my dad…his boss taking him for lunch…maybe I can go too since I ride with him…laughter…why would I take you??

The next summer, I got a part in another play. I was a princess.

…Reading my lines out loud with the other princesses on the grass in a circle in the summer sun…gone…have to drop out…Matt is sick…my mom left for the summer to go to a hospital out of state with Matt…selfish…how could you still want to be in the show…your brother is sick…so lucky that you are not sick…so lucky…anger and tears…some things are more important…crying…no ride…alone…loneliness…missing my mom…fragments of memories reflect off the surface of the dark murkiness in my mind…

Were you ever involved in theater before you came to this theater?

Just one innocent question scratched the surface…I don’t answer…

It has happened before over the years…innocent questions avoided…the explanations too personal…too painful…they shouldn’t be, but are.

Over 20 years later, I walked through the doors of another theater…in another town…and left all those old hidden painful memories behind me..

Or did I?