A cry for help

There is a little girl across the street from my sister’s house who is a couple of years older than my five year old niece and the two of them hit it off and became fast friends. She comes over almost every day to play with my niece (I will refer to the girl as A.) A. has two older brothers and her parents spoil her lot (she seems to really rule the roost at her house), but they often take advantage of my sister’s generosity when it comes to watching their child. A. is bossy to my niece and often does not have the best manners. My family nicknamed her “Kimmy Gibbler” (Lol! If you know, you know…). I find A. quite annoying and I do not think she is a great influence on my niece’s behavior, but she still is a child, so I always try to be nice to her. If I pick up a little gift or candy or balloons for my nieces and I know A. is at the house, I get an extra one for her. My sister makes sure she has A.’s favorite juice boxes, even though her girls do not ever drink them, and she often makes her plain, buttered noodles for dinner since she is a picky eater.

I think my sister and I both got the impression early on that A. gravitates to my sister’s house for a reason and that something was not right at A.’s house. A.’s mother is originally from Russia and is a very sweet woman. When I first met A.’s father I definitely got a negative vibe from him. Another neighbor told my sister that she had once called the police out of concern after overhearing loud arguing coming from A.’s family’s house. A. would occasionally say disturbing things about her family. When my niece had her first wiggly tooth, we were having dinner and talking about it. A. said something about her older brother losing a tooth when their dad hit him in the face. My sister and immediately locked eyes across the table.

One day over the summer, A. had eaten dinner at my sister’s house and it was getting dark out, so I offered to walk her home. She told me just her dad was home and that she needed to use the back door, so we headed to the back of the house. The back door was locked. She rang the doorbell and no one came to the door. A. started to knock loudly on the door and I heard her father scream, “fucking go away and stop fucking knocking!” in a really furious voice. My heart immediately started to race and I swear I had a moment of PTSD of my father yelling at me in the same kind of tone. I calmly took A.’s hand and said, “let’s go back to my sister’s and wait for your mom.” This was the first of two occasions that I heard her father scream at his seven year old daughter like that . It bothered so much and my sister and I talked about it a lot, but both agreed there really was not much we could do, except to offer A. a safe space. My heart went out to a little girl that I could unfortunately relate to all too well. Even though no one explicitly said it, I just assumed her father was a drinker, most likely because of the parallels to my own dad.

The other day, A.’s mother confided in my sister that things have gotten worse and that she is concerned that all of the fighting that has been happening between her and her husband has been negatively affecting their children. Their middle school aged son has been suspended two times from school for fighting. She told my sister that her husband has been drinking more and is in “denial”. I feel so bad for her and the children, and it is a helpless feeling to know that someone is in a bad situation like that. It is also bringing up a lot of negative memories about my own childhood and what my sister and I experienced with my parents.

It makes me wonder if my mom ever tried to ask anyone for help or how many people tried to help her. A lot of our neighbors knew that my dad was abusive, evidenced by how often they called to police to come to our house. My paternal grandmother supposedly offered to give my mother money to divorce and leave my father. I just don’t know what my sister can- or should- do. I said that we should put together some resources for her. My sister is in a group text with a few other women on her street, who are all concerned and are on alert to watch out for the children if they need help.

It is just SUCH a sad situation. As much as “Kimmy Gibbler” drives me crazy when she is at my sister’s house, I have so much empathy for her. Being the child of an alcoholic, and an abusive one, has defined and shaped a lot of my life. It is difficult to reflect back on how terribly my father treated my mother and my sister and me. I never want anyone else, especially a child, to experience that. I know I am making assumptions and I do not really know what is going on in A.’s house, but I do know that she wants to be at my sister’s house for hours and hours every day and there is most likely a reason why. I am so proud of my sister for breaking the cycle and creating such a safe and happy home for my nieces…and for A.

“Normals”

I feel a new type of insecurity in my relationship that I have never experienced before. It is not due to jealousy, rather it is because of fear. I never worried about getting my heart broken before. I knew it was a possibility, but I did not think about it much. In my last relationship, I sort of felt like I always had the upper hand because he dealt with a lot of issues, including alcoholism. That sounds REALLY terrible now that I wrote it down, but it is true, and I promised myself I would always tell the truth on my blog- the good, the bad, and the ugly. Both M. and I dealt with mental illness, but mine was much more controlled. I had my shit together and he didn’t and that gave me a false sense of security in our relationship. I knew that he loved me, but I also knew that he depended on me, too.

I recently was with two friends of mine who are a married couple. She had a lovely, happy childhood and he did not. His parents were both abusive and were very hard on him. My friends also are friendly with my current boyfriend and I was trying to explain to them how I feel about my relationship with him. I said something, more directed to my male friend, like, “he (my boyfriend) is just SO normal. He had a normal childhood and a normal life and even his divorce was really amicable and normal. I don’t mean he has never had problems or faced challenges, but his family and his life are just really functional. He must listen to the stories of my family and my previous relationships and my problems with anxiety and secretly think ‘man, she is really fucked up.’ and it makes me wonder why he wants to be with me.” My girlfriend immediately jumped in to reassure me that my boyfriend loves me and what happened to me in my childhood was not my fault. But my male friend…he got it. He said he feels the same way sometimes, which made me feel better. And listen, I know that the word “normal” is incredibly difficult to define and super subjective. In my mind, normal equates to a lack of trauma and dysfunction. Being normal might seem like an insult to some people who interpret it to be synonymous with boring and ordinary. But to me, normal has a positive connotation and means safe and secure and healthy and functional.

A good example of this just happened recently. I had to get a CT scan of my sinuses. When my ENT called to give me the results he mentioned that I have a deviated septum. When I told my boyfriend this, he asked me if I had ever had a nose injury. I know he was thinking about whether I got smacked with a basketball in high school gym class. I thought about it for a minute and was like, “no, I don’t think so….oh wait! When I was 18 my dad got arrested because he head-butted me in the face and I thought he broke my nose.” I said it so casually because honestly I don’t really think about that event much and it was over 20 years ago, but my boyfriend looked taken aback. It was sort of a funny conversation, but also incredibly sad. It almost made me feel lonely and for a second, I missed my ex-boyfriend, M., because I knew he could relate and understand to having a screwed up family and childhood.

My friend and my boyfriend- they are “normals”. I, for sure, am not. I try to have the appearance of having it all together and I am very successful in a lot of different ways, but deep down I feel broken and dysfunctional and different and less than. I know a lot of this is my own self-perception and I am working on that. My boyfriend is the most amazing man I have ever known and I pinch myself every single day that we are together. I feel so lucky to have him in my life, but the problem is that I don’t always think he is lucky to have me in his (I am certain he would beg to differ). And that is what creates insecurity for me…because if I don’t think I am good enough for him, when is he going to realize that?

The tooth (and truth) hurts

My father has been having some dental issues lately and had to have a tooth pulled. We were talking about it the last time I saw him and I was empathizing with him, as I have had dental woes of my own. He then casually asked me if I had my wisdom teeth removed. I told him that I did have all four removed when I was a teenager, to which he responded, “I don’t remember that at all.” I was SHOCKED because although I do jot remember a lot from my childhood, it is one of my most vivid memories.

Let me take you back and set the scene…I was probably around 16 and it was over the summer. My dentist recommended I get all four wisdom teeth removed, as they were all impacted. When an oral surgeon performs that surgery, you have to be put under anesthesia. I was very nervous. I had never had any kind of surgery or anesthesia before. I don’t remember anything from the actual surgery (although my mom tells a funny story about how in a panic I thought the surgeon removed my tongue when I woke up and kept touching it to see if it was still there).

What I do remember was how uncomfortable I was afterwards. I had stitches in four parts of my mouth, which was also packed with cotton. I had to take both antibiotics and codeine. When I got home, all I wanted to do was go to bed. My father, however, had different plans. He was incredibly drunk and a few hours later he began arguing with my mother. He told her, my sister, and me that we had to leave the house and forced us out of the front door, along with our dog. At that point the combination of anesthesia, painkillers and anxiety kicked in and I spent the next half hour vomiting into our front bushes. In case you ever wondered (although I doubt you have), throwing up with a mouth full of bloody cotton is absolutely disgusting.

Eventually, he must have allowed us to come back into the house, because I don’t really remember much else from that day or night. The bushes part is my most vivid memory.

Back to present day…I spent the whole rest of the night thinking about what my father said. I truly do believe that he honestly did not remember that night. It made me wonder how many other incidents that I remember, many of which scarred my childhood, he simply does not even remember.

For the past 30 years, there’s only been two times when my father was sober. One time was after he had a stroke and did not drink from October of 2013 to October of 2015 and the other time has been since December of 2019. During the first span, I remember having a conversation with him and mentioning a few of the things that he had done while he was drunk. It was clear that he was appalled and did not even believe that he was capable of doing those things. And I really didn’t even tell him any of the truly terrible things he did.

The immature part of me wants to stomp my foot and say that it’s not fair. If I have to live with all of these bad memories, he should be riddled with guilt and tormented by them also. Another part of me feels slightly comforted by the fact that because he does not remember doing these things, it was not really my dad doing them, rather it was this drunk monster that took over his body.

My mouth has long since healed and the memory of that experience has faded. Although I have to admit it did hurt a little to have him admit that he didn’t remember that day- added a little insult to injury.

Holiday Spirits <—-pun intended

I have so many different things to write about, I do not know where to begin.  One of the topics, I am not ready to delve into, so for now I will stick to the one I know best: dealing with alcoholics.  So, here is a special holiday edition of Thanksgiving updates on the three drunks in my life, who coincidentally ALL drink vodka…

1. The ex-boyfriend. Thanksgiving was not as bad as I thought it would be.  I had one 45 minute breakdown.  I know it is not healthy, but I would occasionally “unblock” my ex-boyfriend’s Instagram page to see if he was okay.  It felt like the only last tiny connection I had to him.  When I went to check it on Thanksgiving, I realize that he made his page private.  I was already upset because this was always ‘our” holiday and it was the first one without him, but I felt like him doing that was unexpected.  Maybe he knew I was checking on him.  Maybe he met someone.  Maybe he wants privacy.  I feel so far away from him now.  In nine years, this is the longest I have gone without seeing or speaking to him.  But, I suppose that is what happens in a break up.  And I have to remind myself that I was the one who said I could not be in contact with him anymore.  I don’t know how to ever stop worrying if he is alright, but I know there is nothing I can do if he is not.
2. The father. My dad was good on Thanksgiving, very well-behaved.  I actually took a selfie with him and at one point leaned up against him on the couch.  We took family pictures.  It was nice.  Friday, he was terrible…leaving mean voicemails and sending shitty text messages.  Saturday, my sister and I had already agreed to go to my parent’s house to help them with some things and he was totally fine again.  It is was like a sober-drunk-sober sandwich over the course of three days.  He is truly a Jekyll and Hyde. 
3. The friend’s boyfriend. My good friend, practically my sister, is in a terrible and abusive relationship with an alcoholic.  She is 18 weeks pregnant and he just got his third DWI over the previous weekend.  I felt so badly for her- they were supposed to do the gender reveal for the baby on Thanksgiving.  But, I also do not understand why she stays with him.  I try not to think about it too much, because after 30+ years, I still do not understand why my mother has never left my dad.  Today, my friend’s boyfriend put his hands around her neck and pushed her against a wall.  He threatened her and then pushed her outside into the snow, refusing to let her back in.  My sister (her best friend) called her brother and he ran over to the apartment.  My friend’s boyfriend then assaulted him, was arrested and the brother is pressing charges, although my friend still will not.  I realized while all of this was going on, I was feeling such anxiety.  It is hard for me to be a good friend to her and support her while separating my own experiences and it brings back a lot of my own traumatic memories.  She is safe now and that is all that matters in the moment.

I am so thankful that I do not live with an alcoholic anymore.  My house is so calm and peaceful.  I feel such a sense of independence and freedom.  However, I also know that had my ex not gotten so sick and also cheated, I may not have ever left him.  That is a hard pill to swallow.  So, it makes me less judgmental of other women going through this.  I got an “out” and I took it and for that, I am so grateful.  I may not have shown strength throughout the bad parts of our relationship and I know I should have ended things with him years ago, but at least I put myself first when I got the chance.

Holidays can be so stressful and sad and sentimental.  I am trying to be positive, but I also know I need to allow myself to experience my emotions.  I have been through so much and I do not feel healed, but I know that I am in a much better place than I was a year ago, so if there is any silver lining, it is that.  But I am really tired of alcoholics…

Through my eyes

One of my early childhood memories from before my dad started drinking was standing with my feet on top of his.  I was seven or eight years old, he would hold my hands and I would stand on his feet and hold on as he walked around the room.  We were not really dancing, but it was fun and my sister and I would take turns.  I think a lot of little girls do this with their daddies and it is a sweet memory I have of him.

When I was in college studying literature, I was very drawn to a particular poem:

My Papa’s Waltz 

by Theodore Roethke

 

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

 

There are a lot of different opinions and interpretations about what this poem is describing.  Some readers interpret it as the happy childhood memory of a young boy playfully dancing with his father in their kitchen, while his mother gazes on.  Other readers believe that the dance is a metaphor for physical abuse by a drunk father.  The first time I ever read this poem, I instantly believed it depicted abuse.  However, I wonder if that is because my father became an abusive alcoholic (while my mother helplessly watched on).  I always tell my students that this is the beauty of literature- the reader is able to interpret what they read in their own personal way.  We all (sometimes subconsciously) are influenced by our own life experiences and as a child of an alcoholic, that was the lens I saw the world through.  Yet, I got a feeling that this boy still loved his father, which was another part of the poem I could relate to, because I still love mine.

I know without a doubt that if my father was not an alcoholic, he would have been an awesome dad.  Just like I know that if my exboyfriend did not suffer from the same addiction, he would have been a wonderful life partner.  When I went to an Al-Anon meeting recently, someone used the phrase “detachment with love”.  I realized that I unknowingly started doing this with my father years ago.  I have his nasty emails blocked, his ringtone on my phone is “silent”, I immediately erase his toxic voicemails and I speak to him as minimally as possible, especially if I know he is drunk.  When I see him, if he is sober, I chat with him, but I stopped letting him “in”…I try to no longer let his behavior negatively affect me.  I accepted that I was not going to be able to change him, so I stopped trying to.

I am currently detaching with love from my exboyfriend.  While I never felt responsible for my father, I did feel VERY responsible for my ex.  By protecting him and enabling him, I was actually hurting us both, which I am able to see now that I have some space from the situation.  I cannot protect him from the consequences of his choices and I do not want to continue to suffer because of his actions.  By releasing those feelings of responsibility for him, I was able to start focusing on myself and my needs.

I love my father and I love my exboyfriend, but I hate their alcoholism.  My father, the man who should be the one to protect me, physically hurt me and still verbally abuses me. My exboyfriend, the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, lied to my face and cheated on me, violating my trust.

I think I will always see the world as the child of an alcoholic and as someone who deeply loved and was in an eight year long romantic relationship with an alcoholic.  It is just a part of who I am, woven into the essence of my being.  However, I know that they both made their own choices, but that I also had the ability to make a choice for myself.

And my choice was to detach (with love) from both of them.

Still hurts…

The majority of the time I say to other people (and to myself) that my father’s emails and voicemails don’t bother me.  In a lot of ways, they have just become the norm and I am sort of used to them.  Every once in a while, though, one stands out that is particularly hurtful.  I feel like my mom, sister and I just give him free passes because we know he is drunk.  Today he sent and email copied to all of us where he singled me out and called me a “loser” and he also left me a voicemail calling me a “scumbag”.  I obviously know these things aren’t true- I am a totally respectable member of society, a teacher, a homeowner, etc. but it still is mind-boggling to me that my own father can say these things about his daughter totally unprovoked.  My sister and I have always used humor to deal with my dad and the way he treats us.  She recently began seeing a therapist (I have gone for years, so I am super proud of her for starting to go!) and the woman said to my sister, “you talk about the things your father has done like it was only in your childhood, like he is deceased…this is still active abuse.”  That really made me think.  I do consider what my father did to us growing up as abuse, no doubt about it, but I guess since I don’t live with him and rarely see him in person, I didn’t really consider it to be current as well.  But it totally is.  His emails and voicemails are verbally and emotionally abusive and total harassment as well.  People always ask my sister and me why we don’t just block his number and his emails (I have a totally separate email address just for him so they don’t go into my regular email inbox) and neither of us have a good answer for that question.  I don’t know why I don’t just block him…I should.  He deserves it.  I honestly don’t even know if he would notice, because no one ever responds to his emails.  It is like the same way I can’t answer why my mom never left him…I kind of write it off as her being a “battered wife” and I guess in a lot of ways I am a “battered daughter”.

Auntie Bear

Ever since my niece was born, I more clearly understand the concept of being a “Mama Bear”.  I do not have children of my own and she is the absolute best thing that has ever happened to me.  I would do ANYTHING to protect her.  She is only four months old, but it is already frightening to think about all the things in the world that could hurt her- both physically and emotionally.

Growing up, I was super protective of my younger sister.  It was always just the two of us and having an alcoholic father made us incredibly close.  She is only three and a half years younger than me, but a lot of the time I felt partly responsible for her.  And now she has this beautiful, innocent daughter of her own.  Our childhood was so painful and traumatic…I just want my niece’s childhood to be a happy one.  I want her to look forward to holidays instead of dreading them.  I want her to be excited to spend time with her family rather than hating every second of it.  I want her to be able to look back on her childhood as an adult and be full of happy, fun memories.

Today, my sister brought the baby to my parent’s house.  My dad has only seen his granddaughter a handful of times since she has been born, although my parents only live 45 minutes away.  My mom and sister were out together and my mom convinced my sister to bring the baby inside.  Dropping by my parent’s house unexpectedly has always been a wildcard and it is something that is generally always avoided.  It is just too much of a risk, not knowing if my father is going to be drunk or not.  Long story short, against her gut instincts, my sister reluctantly agreed to go inside and my dad was indeed drunk. While she was pregnant, my sister told my mom she was not going to have the baby around my father if he had been drinking.  My mom tried to convince my sister to stay and even wanted to placate my father by letting him hold the baby for a few minutes. Luckily, my sister did not have to stay at the house long and was able to make a quick escape before anything bad happened.  My dad was sloppy and yelled as she was leaving, but it obviously could have been worse.

On her way home she called me and was upset with herself that she allowed my dad to see the baby after he had been drinking.  We both agreed that my mom put her in an awkward spot, which made me recollect a lot of times my mother did that throughout our childhood.  Strangely, I have never really held a lot of resentment towards my mom and she, my sister and I are very close.  I think I always thought of my mother as a victim, too.  However, there are memories I have where she should have protected us more.  My sister has made the point that my mother “sacrificed” us- making us bring my dad dinner so she didn’t have to or forcing us to confront him about his drinking.

I hate thinking about my baby niece in that situation.  I don’t want her life being influenced in any way by alcoholism or addiction.  I also know that I can’t control that 100% or prevent other bad things from happening in her life.  I am just incredibly grateful that I am able to be a part of her life (and am able to spoil her!) and I will always do whatever I can to make sure her childhood is as happy as possible.

Remembering…

This is going to sound incredibly weird and very morose and a little disturbing, but I created this blog to be completely honest with myself and with anyone who happens to read it.  Sometimes when I am in bed at night and I am having trouble falling asleep, I imagine writing and delivering my father’s eulogy.  My father is still alive, yet I have been doing this for years.  I just realized that I have never even told my therapist that I do this!

I picture myself looking out among the mourners who have gathered in a funeral home to say goodbye to my dad, with my mother and sister sitting in the front row.  I imagine that I am up at a podium, dressed in all black.  Every single time I picture this scenario, I begin by saying, “My father was not a very good man…”   I envision that the already quiet room goes completely still.  Some people who are there do not know the whole truth about my father.  The rest of the eulogy changes from time to time…different stories, different memories, but for the most part it goes like this:

“My father was not a very good man.  As many of you know, my father struggled with alcoholism for the majority of his adult life.  This impacted and complicated many of the relationships he had with those of you here, but mostly this had a horrible effect on our family.  My father did a lot of terrible, hurtful, unspeakable things to us.  But I can stand here and tell you one thing with 100% certainty.  My father loved me.  He loved my mother and he loved my sister.  He would have done anything in the world for us.  I never have questioned this fact.  And I- we- loved him, too.  I know the irony of this statement, but I also remember the man my father was before he started drinking.  So many of my happy childhood memories included him.  He was the ‘fun’ dad…the one who would pile all the neighborhood kids into the wagon of his tractor and pull us up and down the street.  He was the dad who would do an amazing cannonball into the pool and then would spend countless hours throwing my sister and I up into the air so we would splash into the water.  He was the dad who impulsively bought a Porsche, but got the model with the tiny backseat, so my sister and I could squeeze in and go for rides with him.  I have so many memories of being in that car, him blasting “Addicted to Love” by Robert Palmer and steering the wheel with his knee…”

This is about how far I normally get before I fall asleep.  I have often wondered why I do this, but maybe it is just to remind myself that for all of the bad, there has been some good.  I have a poor memory and often cannot remember my early childhood memories.  Over the years, I have stopped trying to do so because so many of them are painful.  Perhaps this is my way of recalling that life with my father has not been all bad…and that some of it is worth remembering.

Uncomfortable much?

One topic I hate to address is how inappropriate my father can be when it comes to issues related to sex.  In his emails, he will bring up how he and my mother are not intimate.  This is hardly a surprise considering he is drunk almost every day and he and my mom have had separate bedrooms for years.  My sister and I will sometimes tease my mom about this and she gets visibly grossed out.  As a woman, I can completely understand why my mother is not attracted to my father- both physically and emotionally.  As their daughter, I want to think about their sex life about as much as any one else would want to think about their parents having sex…AKA: NEVER.

My father, however, crossed the line recently.  Instead of a casual mention of my mother “not being a wife” (which is the euphemism he usually writes), he went into great detail about his libido, watching online porn, my mother refusing to have sex, him wanting to get Viagra and having erections during the night.  This was all in an email he sent…to his two daughters.  My sister and I were both completely disgusted and called my mother to tell her (she was horrified, of course).  She obviously yelled about my father about being so offensively inappropriate because we received an “apology” email the next day.  He seemed confused as to why my sister and I were so upset and stated that he would have thought that as his children, we would wanted to know about any medical issues he has.  Clearly if my father has a disease that affected his private parts or anything like that, we would be sympathetic, but being a horny old man is not a medical condition last time I checked.  What is almost worse than my father sending the email was his really not thinking that it was inappropriate.

When my sister and me (and my boyfriend) first read the email, we all kind of laughed it off, then got understandably grossed out.  It was only after an hour or two that my boyfriend and I talked about it in more detail and I realized how upset I was by it.  I have a lot of memories, some clear, some blurry, about my father saying and doing inappropriate things when I was younger.  One example that stands out is when I was a teenager and went to the mall with my friends.  I got home with a bunch of shopping bags from various stores, one of which was Victoria’s Secret.  My father insisted that I show him what I bought.  It didn’t come off like “I’m concerned that you bought age-inappropriate underwear so let your mom see and decide” kind of thing…it was creepy.  My dad was always a butt-pincher (like when we walked by him or stood in front of the open fridge), he made a lot of comments about my body (like calling me “thunder thighs”), he made funny, but sexual, jokes about waitresses and actresses on TV (“look at the boobs on her!”).  When he was drunk (which was most nights during my teenage years), my mother would ask my sister or me to go tell my dad dinner was ready.  He would slur that my mother had to put on a skirt, pantyhose and high heels or he wasn’t coming to eat.  He would lay out sexy lingerie on my mom’s side of the bed during the day (not exactly a subtle hint).  All of this is just to prove that my father has always been a bit perverted and there have been many times in my life that he has made me uncomfortable.

It is sometimes hard to reconcile all the different aspects of my dad.  I feel like if he read this, he would be genuinely appalled that I think these things about him.  During the two year period he was sober, my mother explained to him all the abuse that she and my sister and I suffered from over the years by him and he was flabbergasted.  I mean, unless my dad has Academy Award winning acting skills (doubtful) or is a complete sociopath (possible?), he truly did not believe he was capable of doing the things she told him he did.  If he was sober, I know he would not be saying the things he is about sex to my sister and me, especially not in the blunt, very descriptive way he did.  But him being drunk as an excuse is getting really old.

Should she stay or should she go…

One of the most difficult questions that I have been asked in my life is “why does your mom stay with your father?”.  I wish I knew (and I wish I had $1 for every time someone has asked me!)  I will never minimize how hard it is to leave a marriage…I am divorced myself and it was the most difficult experience I have ever had to go through.  I also did not have children, which can theoretically be a reason why someone might stay or leave a marriage. I have never believed a couple should stay married “for the kids” because I know my sister and I would have been much better off if my mother had left and we had not been exposed to the terrible things my father did.

On the phone with my mother last week, she was particularly upset with my father.  She was venting to me, which she rarely does, and said something along the lines of “I should have left him years ago.  I have had every reason in the book to leave him!”  I let her vent, but also reminded her that she actually had a reason to leave him even BEFORE he started drinking and being abusive, which is that he had an affair when they were first married.  She then confessed to me that my father had three affairs over the course of their marriage and that one of them was with a “mutual friend” of theirs.  I was floored!  I was not surprised when my mother confided in me a couple of years ago about my father’s initial affair.  By the time I found out it was almost 30 years after the fact and my dad had committed much more egregious acts against my mother than sleeping with a babysitter.  When I found out that he committed adultery several times, it brought me back to that age-old question of why she never left him.  I know that she cannot even answer that question with a satisfying response, but it does make me feel both sad for her, disgusted by her choices and a little impressed with her.  Sad because I always believed the breakdown of my parents’ marriage happened because of my dad’s alcoholism, when clearly there were major problems before that.  I always thought we had a “perfect family” when I was little and that it only changed when he started drinking.  I am sad for my mother that she has suffered so long because of my father.  I feel disgusted by her choice to stay with him because I know she deserves better than how she has been treated and that she allowed him to treat my sister and me the way he did.  However, there is a part of me that is impressed with my mother and her stoicism.  I know that sounds contradictory and it is- in some respects I feel like my mother is SO weak and in other regards she is SO strong.  She has a superhumanly high pain tolerance (which I did not inherit!).  She is almost 70 years old and still mows over an acre of lawn because it is “fun”.  She has rescued more stray and injured animals than anyone else I know…from birds to cats to turtles.  She lost both her parents within a one month period and at the same time still supported me through my divorce.

I can go on and on about all the wonderful traits about my mother, as well as some of her flaws, but if you gave me the rest of my life to do it in, I would still never be able to explain why she has never left my father.