I wanted to call my daughter and tell her that Red Dye #40 and other food dyes that have been banned: “West Virginia has outlawed foods that contain some artificial dyes or other additives…” I wanted to at least text her over my excitement, even though it took over 30 years for…
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FAMILY
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EMOTIONS
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GROWING OLD
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BEING MOM
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SELECTIVE MUTISM
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Isolation
It has taken sixty some odd years to finally regulate my emotions, somewhat. I was isolated for the sixteen years I lived at home while growing up. My brothers and their friends had their fun with my gullibility and while I looked up to them they took advantage of my…
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How Now
Life is difficult. Is it really possible that my mother ingrained in me not to speak up because I was such a pain in the ass on the spectrum, she didn’t know how to handle me so as an obedient child she kept me quiet? Or was I on the…
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The Cult
I know what it’s like to lose a child, I lost two. It was subtle and I didn’t see it coming. It actually started when Ashley was born. No, actually when we started dating. A planned alienation that continues to this day. I never realized the man I got involved…
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Selectively Mute
People don’t get it. I didn’t get it. My family doesn’t get it. I cannot speak. Stuck in silence and don’t know what to say or how to start a conversation after not able to talk for so many years. It’s not in my head or something I can just…
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Mirror Mirror
I looked in the mirror and seemed so old. It’s like I’ve aged 10 years in the past 2. When I married Peter he called me “Wifey Face” because I was quite the looker. I just wanted to get married, it didn’t matter with whom. After all, my oldest brother…
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Life Is Unfair
It doesn’t seem fair sometimes when I think about my life, I had so many things going for me, but I was repeatedly flattened like kryptonite. I worked for school system and developed a database which integrated their payroll in time and substitute pay payroll and new time off record.…
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Ouch!
One of the most painful things I’ve had to endure in my life is hearing my children speak the words verbatim that I heard from my husband for many years. My daughter Ashley told me to stop being a victim and also to just get over it, that my childhood…
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Ashley Baby
I settled into motherhood and enjoyed taking my new daughter everywhere. Family and friends were regulars in the house, it was a booming time. I would take her to parks, zoos, museums, play dates, fun excursions regularly. By the time she was 5 she had more friends than I had…
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Mom is Mom
When my first child was born my mother told me not to expect her to be a babysitting grandmother. I never asked. Years went by and she asked in tears why I never asked her to babysit. It was frustrating and made me crazy. In the end, she had dementia…
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I WAS the Mistake!
Later in life I became fully aware of what my father meant about the forces against him. I read my mother’s divorce agreement when I was 9 and again after my mother died. According to her words he was the worst person in the world. He forced himself on her…
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Dad
My Mother would use the Italian expression, “Come si chiama” (What’s his name) to refer to my Father. He was nameless or non-existent in her world. She bad-mouthed him and made no effort to include him in my life. I went to see him a few times from when I…
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Shrinks
During this period of my life I needed counseling help more than ever. I went to a Psychologist but he told me anything I said could be used in court. What’s the point? I never went back and dealt with it best I could. I had to not only pay…
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Goodbye Motherhood
One of the last things I spoke to Peter before all hell broke loose was, “Don’t fuck with my motherhood.” That’s exactly what he did since I spoke those words. He pushed my buttons and sent me in a whirlwind. More like a tornado out of control. What shred of…
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My Mother The Narcissist
My mother was everything I would not become. I was convinced I would have a close relationship with my children, I would treat them with respect as a person, and never say, “because I said so” without a rationale. I vowed to help them be social and learn from the…
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Mother’s Day
I’ll never forget my first Mother’s Day. Ashley was just a week old. During my young life all I wanted to be was a mother. I went to college to be a Secretary because I had no guidance and that’s what women did. It would provide a good foundation with…
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Fifty Nifty
Shortly after I turned 50 the ground beneath my feet was torn away. Like an explosion that left me shell-shocked. The gravity shifted and time warped because I was suddenly 9 years old again. The lost little girl trying to convince everyone around her that life was good, everything was…
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Stop Being The Victim
The blasts happened almost every time he drank too much – weekly. Walking on eggshells was a way of life. Sadly Peter’s way did not have room for childhood sexual abuse. He told me, “stop being the victim.” I look at this with outrageous irony because he later acquired 2…
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The Honeymoon’s Over
Shortly after I was married (a week or so), I learned my new husband’s idea of breaking a person like a horse was more intention than idea. The only sex we had our first year of marriage was on our honeymoon. The reason given was that I was not a…
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Break ‘em Like a Horse
Peter’s wisdom was to break down a person to the bare core then build back up properly, undoing the bad and starting over. His best friend influenced him to try EST. Erhard Seminars Training, an organization founded by Werner Erhard in 1971, offered a two-weekend (60-hour) course known officially as…
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Job Creation
Meeting Peter I was going to be “normal.” Post-divorce it became more of a career morph. In a part-time night job while being housewife and mother during the day, I watched professors at the college teach computers. That’s what I wanted to do so I got job as a computer…
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Love is… Who The Fuck Really Knows?
I didn’t know what love was, just what I learned on TV. I was never in love. A couple people tried to talk me out of marrying Peter – his own brother told me not to do it, that Peter had serious issues. My brother Craig sat me down on…
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Peter the Narcissist
Peter came along with low self-esteem, awkward with women, abused physically and emotionally by his father, forced into an endless pursuit of perfection by his mother, probably abused by priests based on his apprehension and awkwardness with sex and women in general. Growing up in a loose environment and being…
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Married into Family
I was stuck on gaining a large family and Peter’s “potential” to be a good man. He had many good qualities, lots of friends, good looking, charismatic, and a big family. He was into some hippie things also – E.S.T., Macrobiotics, Primal Scream (although only vicariously through his best friend),…
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About Peter
Peter was from another place. He was the oldest of seven. His mother’s life goal was perfection and raising the children from “The Sound of Music.” I was told stories of how she would have to stand at attention with her brother to be inspected when her father came home…
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Sweetless Sixteen
When I was sixteen I got pregnant. I was betrayed by my boyfriend, who was five years older, who was responsible for “pulling out.” “It felt so good,” he said. I was too young to know about consequences and Karma. It was just four years after abortion became legal. No…
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Dating
Dating in the shadow of the sixties was a new dawn for women. Helen Reddy sand, “I am woman,” the same year as Roe vs Wade in 1972. The era of women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen was ending and the start of burning bras and women’s lib. TIME’s…
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Peter and Loveless
Peter never loved me according to Corinthians, the highest authority on love and how Christians should love others. The Bible, the word, the way of the Lord. I don’t go to church and not clear on God but always tried to live as a Christian as I was taught. My…
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Cous’ Steve
Seven years ago I was hanging with my cousin-buddies and it quickly turned into early morning. Quite often they hosted karaoke parties in a pine plank finished loft over the barn. Cousin was a geek and had a full band-jam setup with a drum kit, keyboard, guitars, multiple microphones on…
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Cousins
When I moved to Massachusetts I met my family of ten cousins, aunt, uncle, second and third cousins, plus a few adopted ex-cons and young pregnant girls my aunt saved. Every Christmas they rented a community house to fit the 60+ people and growing. Growing is an understatement as many…