troubledpast

Strong and Silent

/ Laurie / Leave a comment

Nearly three weeks ago, I received an early morning text from my younger brother. Which is a bit out of the ordinary, because we don’t talk a bunch. He said he wanted me to know he had been up early reading, my sister-in-law had directed him here, to my blog and he had read it all. He told me “the good Lord made you a talented writer and you need to tell your story” He also told me he loved me, but those words, the latter of his sentence, brought tears to my eyes. They were words that I thought, wouldn’t have believed he would ever say. I simply could have NEVER have imagined him saying, and I was indeed overwhelmed.

You see, I love my little brother, who is not so little any more, very much. We were very close growing up and he was always much more of an “older” brother in the way he acted, he was very protective and when we were both in trouble, he always had my back. We drifted apart when our parents divorced the summer I turned 14. I stayed with mom and he lived with dad, but I’m getting ahead of myself… let’s get back to why my hearing my brother telling me I should share my story moved me to tears.

Well, because my story, my TRUTH, which is also our story, is a hard story to tell, an even harder pill to swallow. Which I suppose is why I have continued to sit in the silence and this unbearable holding pattern, waiting for something, SOMEONE to give me the signal to move on; to move forward, outside the dark and quiet void. So for years I have waited in the void, rehashing old demons, creating and battling new ones; shedding armor only to put on more. All the while, quietly waiting to tell my story, to be given the opportunity to speak my truth.

The summer I was 12, was the summer my story began; or at least my most vivid memories. There was a day, that there had been an incident, and I was on the stairs crying. My brother came in and found me, he was 10 and being a pest and wouldn’t let up until I told him why I had been crying. He didn’t believe nothing and whatever else I must have told him, so I told him the truth… he freaked out, called me a liar and ran to his room. He took a nap and he forgot it all, because he never sad a word. So I decided right then and there to never say another word, if my own brother didn’t believe me, why would anyone?

So that Monday morning, in one quiet gesture, in a loving text, my brother gave me the nod to move forward – forward in the final phase of healing from the trauma I endured so many decades ago. Its like I have finally been given the permission to get up of the stairs in that old farmhouse where it all started. As if I have been sitting there ALL these years and now I am finally FREE! No more softly weeping, unable to move, afraid to do so; because if I did; the walls would come tumbling down around me.

Today, I am good, truly, my wounds are healed. I’ve been thru therapy, twice; and after 20 years of self medicating with alcohol and drugs, and basically marrying my father three different times; I found recovery, including out-patient treatment and started seeing myself differently and moving forward there were much fewer self inflicted wounds. Its been another 20 plus years, living life sober and today I know make better choices and I am living a life I am much prouder of. I still have struggles, that comes with life. But today, I know much better ways to deal with them.

As previous posts have revealed, the last two years proved especially difficult as I experienced more loss and grief than I could have imagined, and I did get caught up in the void, the isolation of that staircase, sitting there, alone and crying and just lost in the sadness. I used to pray on that staircase, and to my naïve and traumatized young self, I simply thought that God either didn’t hear me, or worse… didn’t care. Today, I know better, with FAITH, even in my sadness and sitting on those stairs again, I prayed, asking God to help me through.

So while there can be strength in silence, I am here to say, I have been silent for far too long. And if my not so “little” strong and silent brother can give this tortured writer the gentle and encouraging nod that I have been waiting for… if as I standup and start to walk away, I can hear the quiet rumble and feel the trembling around me, as the walls do come crumbling down. When the dust settles, I turn to see that the stairs are all that remains. Someone still sits there and I take a step back, raise my hand to shield my eyes and I see that it is 12yo me. She lifts her hand to wave and she smiles, and then she walks away, a skip in her step, nothing to fear.

I turn to do the same, maybe not skip (my 58 yo back and knees would not agree) but walk, away from the wreckage of my past, trudging along on a beautiful new path, that is filled with it’s own uncertainties, but today I am more than strong enough to do what needs to be done, including shatter the silence and stand strong.

OK God, I Hear You

/ Laurie / 2 Comments

Hello again, I know it’s been another bit of time since I’ve written. But… I did say this journey may be silent. The road these past few months has been busy, life busy as we all can expect, and as I have shared before, I don’t always adjust to that well. Busy can be distracting and it certainly has been. And per my usual fashion, I tried to use my distractions as a way to hide, managing to stay away from the pit this time (progress) but, simply not feeling that I was/am ready for the task that God keeps placing before me.

Disclaimer: Its not like this task is anything new. It is not a surprise by any means. In fact, He has been preparing me for this task for nearly forty years. Forty, considering we have just started the Lenten season, I am sitting here once again, silently saying, “OK God I hear you.”

You see, I’ve known for quite some time, that one day, I would share my story. I just never knew the when. That was His timing, and it has become very clear recently that the time has come. I always wanted to wait until I knew I was strong enough. I have also worried about who in my immediate family, might not want the story told, but again, it’s my story, my truth and its always been something that I have needed to do. The later, the fear factor, has had the biggest hold on me, but God isn’t letting that be an excuse anymore.

Sharing a life story, my life story, a story of survival is easier said than done, especially when four decades have past and I spent two of them in active alcoholism. Yet, what led me to the alcohol and drugs, the thing that were dark enough, that filled me with so much pain and shame. Alcohol was only thing I thought could make that dark and ugly feeling go away, even if only temporarily… that is the story that must be shared.

So I find myself firmly grounded back in my sobriety, walking this silent path hand in hand with my God. Today I have the most beautiful and intimate relationship I have ever had with the God who never left me, even in the darkest moments as a child, even when I cursed Him and turned my back and walked away. It is today, back in this beautiful relationship with my God, my Father, my Friend, I am not only reminded how whole I am, but how strong I have always been. How strong He made me. Strong enough to share my story, from the depths of my soul, even if its a little scary, even if its difficult.

You know how they say God has three answers to our questions, Yes / No / Not Yet? Well I have been saying “Not Yet” to God for awhile now and He just keeps laughing at me. Laughing at me by, putting a reading or verse or TV show or something, anything in my direct attention to say, “Do you hear Me?” I can only look at all these coincidences, “Godwinks” and say “Ok God I hear You.”

Guide me Lord, may the words I use be the words that others need to hear. What each hurting girl/woman needs to hear…

  • I can close my eyes and be silently transported back forty years to a living room in an old farmhouse in the county. I am lying on my stomach on the floor to watch TV, along with my brother. My dad and his girlfriend are sitting in the armchairs. We are watching one of those made for TV movies. It is about this young girl, (my age) who is being sexually abused by her father. I lie there unable to make eye contact with anyone, holding back tears. My dad’s girlfriend is making comments on what she would do if… he is silent. I can’t leave the room. At the end of the movie they provide a phone number, I memorize it. I tried to call it once, but he walked in on me…

So here I am, now it’s my turn to relay a message of hope to the next generation of the broken and hurting; to the girl or woman who is trying to find a way to hide her own pain and shame. I didn’t get to use the phone number from that movie, but the message from it did give me enough courage to find a way to finally speak up, and I got help. Yet, for so many years I continued to feel broken, used and ugly. I believed that was all anyone would ever see. It took a few decades and God patiently waiting for this prodigal daughter to return to Him, and once I did, He revealed to me, that my brokenness, the flaws I kept trying to hide, are the some of the most precious pieces that He used to make me ME. His Light shines through those cracks and flaws, through the broken pieces of me, like “Kintsugi” celebrating the flaws. In the program, it says, “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.”

Today I understand and celebrate that my past is just that, the past. I try and live for today and I thank God every morning and again every night. I am learning to enjoy the silent moments He offers and to listen and respond into the silence.

Radio Silence & Brutal Honesty

/ Laurie / Leave a comment

Here I go again, all prepared to start off this entry with an apology for why its been four months since I have written and my only excuse is… I have no real excuse. Living alone has been a weird adjustment, and even thought I have been doing it for nearly two years now, it took me not having the dog to be responsible for, to see how it really changed and affected me. I no longer had to take him for walks, so I should have the extra time to get back into my yoga, meditation, and better yet, more time for my writing. Right? Right?? Wrong! I merely had more time to park my procrastinating butt on the couch and binge something on Netflix or Hulu and if I am being brutally honest, it was often something I had probably already seen before (more than once)! I kept saying “Ok Laurie, this is the day, I will start my new routine” But then something weird would come up and overturn my applecart and I couldn’t restart the next day but instead, have to wait an entire week… because I couldn’t possible start something in the middle of the week, now could I??

But that’s my thought process, the broken part of me, thinking that I have to start at the beginning of the week and can not start something the middle! I also had issues with my health (my migraines), new grandchild (welcome Conrad David) and moving to my new apartment. I’ll admit I have been the queen of excuses in my past, but if I allow that again, then I that means I am am falling back into old patterns; which in turn just might be taking me down a path that sooner or later, could certainly, if I am not aware – lead to a drink.

Recovery, and living life here in it, can be a difficult road. Because once we defeat the disease, we also have to learn to daily live life on life’s terms and sometimes, sometimes it is loud and ugly and I don’t know about you, but, there are times when I would much prefer to run to the comfort of the warm, dark pit that I used to hide in;when things were not going the way I liked, where in the moment… I had the illusion of comfort and safety.

I spend one evening a week with two different groups of women, both who love me unconditionally as I do them. We lean on each other and simply help each other try to live life in the best way possible, the second group of women and myself are studying a book which shared the Portia Nelson poem:

An Autobiography in Five Chapters

Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in. I am lost….I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the side walk.
I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I fall in….it’s a habit…but my eyes are open.
I know where I am. It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter 5
I walk down a different street.

Today, I have too, learned to walk down a different street. But it took time and some days, that street is lonely and quiet. It is on that quiet street that I find myself listening for His voice, guiding me further down the street, this street of unknowns. I need you here, He says. I have people for you to meet ahead, people to guide and travel with… I smile as His voice is always so comforting, so familiar, all I will ever need.

Join me on this silent journey, He will fill our hearts with all we need.

The Silence That Nearly Killed Me

/ Laurie / Leave a comment

Each fall, each late September, early October, as the beautiful golden colors erupt; reds, yellows, oranges, golds – crisp, bright, bold. These colors are instead eclipsed by an overwhelming darkness. An immense and heavy void that weighs me down–pinning me back in time to moments that won’t set me free.

My heart would ache, physically ache, to the point that I literally thought that I might die, at the time… I wanted to. So each fall, for those few short weeks, I would trudge through the void, live in the darkness, at one with the silence. Until, it was silent no more. The fallen leaves would have lost their brilliance, now simply dull and brown. Crunching under foot, as I would walk along, the darkness fading to grey, the skies are themselves once again.

Through the recent completion of grief counseling, and understanding my loss, something I had never addressed; I brought a lot of things to the surface, without even realizing it. In doing so, I left myself open for easier access to old memories and having said memories trigger old feelings.

Within a brief period of time, the same incident happened twice, but it was the second incident that had me traveling back in hyper-speed fashion to an event nearly 27 years ago… My three oldest children were 3, 2 and the youngest just a few months old. There was a knock at the door-

What would happen next is all such a blur, but if I close my eyes I can see it in my mind, watching it replay like a silent movie. I would tell my two older children that we were playing a game, a “game” that consisted of seeing how quickly we could put all our necessary belongings into large hefty trash bags (we had no boxes) and put them outside before we go to Grandma and Papa’s house. We would play this “game” while the Fulton County Police looked on, so I had them go outside and put the baby in the swing and started packing.

I decided my little game excluded anything that belonged to my husband and tossed all his belongings into a spare room as I proceeded along, mumbling and cursing under my breath. I was so angry and embarrassed. One of the officers approached me, trying to say I could not leave the belongings I was throwing into the separate room, our friend who had arrived with him and his partner intervened, I heard him say he would take care of it. I simply looked at the officer and said something about “he didn’t care enough to make sure he paid our bills, I don’t give a shit out his stuff” and he nodded and backed away.

I don’t know how long it took, how quickly it takes one person, a mad (literally crazy and angry) woman to throw clothes and dishes and pictures and the things that within five mins you deem important into trash bags, but I got it done. The officers there, nor my friend, were not allowed to help me. I got all the kids favorite toys into the toy box, which they did carry outside for me. And when I said I was done, they barred the door shut and drove away. My friend loaded up the back of his truck with all our things and took the kids and I to my in-laws, my husband was still at this moment in time, MIA.

Once at my in-laws, we had a very frank conversation, “this is what he does” they said to me. They also told me when I had “had enough” they would help me get home. Home was Nebraska, and I know they were saying this because they would be leaving soon themselves, as they were preparing to move to Florida and my support system would be gone if something like this happened again. I merely smiled at them, stuck in denial and so blindly in love with their son. I told them I wanted to give him another chance. I would confront him about all this, his using, make him get help, but I wasn’t ready to give up on him. They said, OK, but I saw the worry, the disappointment in their eyes.

When my husband came home that night, to his parent’s home we did talk, he was full of regret and remorse, and full of promises to do better… he promised to get clean.

The next few weeks were pure chaos, he was gone either looking for work, working, or “at a meeting” and I really wanted to believe him, but all to often things didn’t stack up and I was just overwhelmed with the kids. His parents were often gone to Florida house hunting and their house was on the market and constantly in “stage” mode. Thank goodness they didn’t judge parents about screen time 30 years ago because my kids watched a lot of movies! It is the only way we could assure we kept grandma and papa’s house clean.

One of the last weekends at the very end, his parents were gone again, he was out working, this time supposedly on the house we would be living in when his folks moved. His new job included a house if he did some work on it before we moved in. So he was working on our house and I thought it would be nice to have a romantic dinner before his folks got back. I put the kids to bed early that night, and I as I sat there waiting for him, our dinner getting cold, my mind wandered back to just a few weeks before.

In all the weeks, even before the evection, since the baby had been born, I had felt so distant from him; this man whom I knew from the depths of my soul was indeed the love of my life, my soul mate, the one person who had seen the most broken pieces of me and didn’t care… who in fact had fixed so many of those broken pieces, but now, now he was breaking me in new places and I didn’t understand why? One evening we set there in our dimly lit living room, “borrowing” electricity from the neighbor’s outside outlet and he lit up his little pipe in front of me as he set there drinking another beer. By this time, he had stopped hiding it from me, and in that moment, all I wanted was to join him. To crack open a beer of my own and take a drag, or two, or three… but then something happened, the spell was broken, it was no longer silent. My youngest child, my sweet baby girl was crying from her bassinet, and I know God intervened, reminding me I had a baby to feed and care for and on that night I didn’t drink or use.

Instead I fed my child and was silently angry, quietly resentful to the man who sat across the room from me, oblivious to our presence. Why did I have to be the responsible one? Why did I have to be the one to do all the right things and he go to do whatever he wanted? Did he even care about what happened to us?

I would wake later that night, just after midnight, my fire nothing but embers, fueled with new anger by my memory/dream. I looked in the driveway, to see it empty, no surprise, and simply went to bed.

The next morning, my sleeping husband would be lying next to me. I would get up, check on the kids and walk the dog. My husband was supposed to bring home some boxes for me to be able to pack up our few belongings, as his parents were moving in less than two weeks. I walked around the car, we had one of those old long panel station wagons. When I got to the end, I saw the rear window rolled all the way down and the back was empty, I sighed, because I knew what was next- some sort of story, a lie.

I went back to the house, woke the kids, fed them breakfast, and then sent them outside to play, putting the baby in the swing and then and went upstairs to wake their father. I kicked the end of the bed and yelled at him asking where were the boxes. When he didn’t respond, I hit his legs and asked louder, where are the boxes, cursing and using his name. He sat up mumbling and rubbing his eyes and said they were in the car. When I said they were not, mentioning I had been out with the dog. He then started to tell me about how many he had gotten and a couple we bigger and he had to put the rear window down so he could get them all to fit, and maybe some of the fell out. By this time I think I threw an extra pillow or something at him because I am so angry at him… why was he lying to me?

He just sat there staring at me, I was crying, I told him I was scared because his parents were leaving and I was worried where we would be living in two weeks and sometimes I even wondered if there really was a house. When I said that, his face changed and his eyes dropped away from mine. When he looked back up there where tears of his own and he was mumbling, but he said that there wasn’t a house, yet… but there might be. But we could rent a hotel room for a few weeks while he figures it out, while he keeps looking.

I LOST IT!!! I asked him if he really expected me to live in a hotel room with three little children all day long for even a week, let alone week to week… until he figured it out???

I told him I needed to check on the kids and suggested he go to a meeting, to talk to someone about his priorities. Before he left the house that morning, he must have said he was sorry at least a dozen times and told me that he loved me and the kids a dozen more. I know, I love you too, I told him, which I did, but the truth was I needed him to leave so I could call his parents – I had finally had enough.

So this extended entry has been cathartic as I uncovered one extremely concealed resentment, one so gracefully disguised for the past quarter century. There is a saying that if you tell a lie long enough (especially to yourself) you will begin to believe it. That is exactly what happened to me with my ex-husband, the father of my oldest three children. He was the love of my life, my soulmate, my best friend. I was so worried about my children having a negative memory in their minds when it came to their absent father, so I created this picture-perfect image. Always, saying “He was a good father, a good husband, a good man, the disease took him away from us.” Over and over and over, when people asked, that was my only response… rote, robotic, and in doing so, I forgot how it really was. I forgot how broken and ugly it was, how angry I was in the end.

The truth is our sweet little family was no longer sweet and life as I knew it had been shattered. That life would/will never be the same and it is time I put those memories away. The man I once loved more than anything, will always have a place in my heart, he gave me my children. But by getting stuck each fall, by living in that void, in that dark silent place; I was keeping myself from the beauty of the true sunlight of the spirit and all the beautiful songs that can be heard when we allow ourselves to be still and listen.

UnRaveled

/ Laurie / Leave a comment

I’m feeling bit muddled these days, completely lost in my thoughts, certainly lost in their silence. So many of these thoughts are tethered to a particular relationship, bond to memories that I hold dear. But these memories seem to me, all I have to cling to.

It is this relationship, years in the making that I want to understand more; understand better, I want it to be a more significant part of my life today. Yet, today that does not seem to be possible, because the relationship that used to come so easy, that was perhaps once something I took for granted, is now almost unattainable.

So, it is now when the questions come. These are tough questions that I must ask myself. How? When? Why?

I need to, I must; take the step back, to look back and examine myself, asking myself those tough questions. I must try and decipher through my harried and troubled past, especially focusing in on the past few years, in order to determine how did I let this happen? When did things truly start to unravel? Why didn’t I try to stop it? Where did it all go wrong? Did I see that the cord was starting to fray? Was it subtle, or was it glaring? Did I make any effort, or simply turn a blind eye?

Today I have learned, today I understand; that I need to ask myself, what was my part in the unraveling. What did I do to create the inner turmoil that I struggle with in the most quiet moments of the night? How did I contribute to the darkness that exists in the deepest parts of my heart and soul, where that unravel was created, where there is so much unrest? How is it that I couldn’t find a way to simply reach out into the slowing growing void, before it outgrew both our reaches? Thus, finding ourselves at a place, unable to allow our fingers to intertwine, unable pull the other to safety. Our lives continuing to unravel, and in the darkness of the void, remain unseen and unheard.

Today I look across the void, slight reflections of light surprise me; tiny glimmers of hope. Hope that perhaps in time, the void can be filled; the cord tightened and reinforced to bring us close once again. Creating perhaps, a suspension bridge across the void, allowing us to meet in the middle of all that vast and vacant darkness. Then, once again being brought to a common point, allowing us to fill the void together, speaking our individual truths. And with each spoken word, each healing expression, the void will indeed fill with sounds of encouragement, love and healing.

Once again, breaking the silence.

Forgive me, I got lost in the silence.

/ Laurie / 2 Comments

I need to start with the disclaimer that I intentionally chose this name and wanted to start this blog as a continuation of my previous, which had been My Nearly Empty Nest, in which I had chronicled my life as my older children were leaving home and heading out into the world. This left me with their younger sister as she would wrestle the likes of middle and high school.

Life, as we all know has a funny way of taking us down paths we don’t expect. That guiding power, that isn’t us… my higher power, whom I call God, has always had different plans for me. I being a stubborn, and often defiant firstborn child (to name a few of my defects) doesn’t always listen. I still tried to do things my own way, to come up with my own fix. Trying and retrying the same thing over and over and over again… ah, the insanity of it all.

Needless to say, God did indeed have bigger plans for me. So in the fall of 2017 He ever so lovingly nudged me, by allowing a series of very uncomfortable events to push me to just reach out for council and I instead was provided an open door. It was then that my then 15yo daughter and I would leave the only home she ever knew in a small rural community, to the bright lights of a big city. It was here, that we, my daughter doing so first, found solace. I watched this young girl, so broken and damaged from her previous environment, begin to thrive… she had finally found her place. She excelled in the classroom, extra-circular activities and even finished all required classes a semester early, doing all of this during a pandemic! She is now in the second semester of her sophomore year at college, where she continues to thrive and works hard and perusing her dreams. She once was the little caterpillar that perhaps maybe even got knocked of the leaf it tried to attach to, but God placed her on a firmer branch and allowed her to stay safe and warm, to thrive and grow until it was time for her to spread her wings and fly.

I told you that God had bigger plans for me, and our move to the “big city” allowed me to find something that I didn’t realize I had even lost, that is until I found it once again. Because of my job, I couldn’t move immediately with my daughter, and the time separated from her was difficult. But what was more difficult, was packing up the chaos that had been my life in that little town for nearly 18 years. I found myself trying to pack and being overwhelmed, trying to downsize, purging a lot of things for the sake of my sanity. I would love to be able to say that I took things to our local thrift shop or to the Goodwill that was 20 miles away, but sadly I took most of the things I didn’t keep to the local dump. It wasn’t worth anything to anyone and it simply needed to be done, little did I know there would be internal purging in the months to come.

The first year was a time of settling in, getting used to all new things around us and trying to learn to manage in the new environment. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but it was an improvement of our life the year before, and for the first time in a long time, it had promise. Yet, in the midst of all the adjusting, trying to manage the changes, I knew I needed help; some comfort from the only true safe place I knew. It was a place that was easy to find, as easy as pulling out my phone and doing a google search… but more about that later.

I want to end with a follow up to the above mentioned disclaimer. The name of this blog, this platform allowing me to toss my words onto… is now about the silence that surrounds me when I take the time to truly listen to what He might be trying to tell me. Another disclaimer, fully honest, I don’t always listen well, as He has been quietly telling me for some time now, months really, that I need to be writing. You see as much as I have loved sharing my real-life happenings, sharing the joys and accomplishments of my children over the past years with past sites. For years, I have known, without a doubt, and especially once I finished my degree in 2020, that I need to share my story, to write the memoir of my survival of the abuse I endured as a child and teen at the hands of my father. I have been silent far too long, it is time to speak up, to share my words, my heart and soul; so that I might just maybe help one girl, one woman who is still hurting from the same pain and hurt. Perhaps buried and never spoken, silent.

Join me in the silence, that it might be broken.