Truth Is the Dare

I feel like it might be time to take it down a notch.

The last few posts I’ve written have been gut wrenching. I’ve been working through some of the emotional feedback that comes with the territory I’m in at the moment and thought to myself that maybe it was time for a little change in the menu.

So….

Truth or dare time.

Okay….truth, which in my book is the equivalent of a dare.

I am a bit of an introvert (and I just laughed out loud because I wrote ‘a bit’). I think there are very few people who know much about me and I do mean very few.

Let’s change that.

I think I’ve opened up and bled a little on these pages but how well do you really know me? Today I am giving you a chance to do just that.

I am opening the cracked door and am going to do my best to kick back and honestly answer any questions that my readers might have. I know I always wonder things about people and would never ask without being prompted and maybe some of you feel the same.

So ask. And I will tell.

Probably.

Maybe.

Leave your question in the comments and I will publish a post next week with the answers. Pull me out of my comfort zone and get to know me.

Ask for my truth and I will dare.

First truth: I’m terrifed.

 

 

 

Photo credit: Morguefile/greyerbaby

The Help of My Soul

I will not be commanded,
I will not be controlled
And I will not let my future go on,
Without the help of my soul

~Greg Holden, The Lost Boy

I hunkered down in my tunnel. I know there is a light and I know how to find it but I chose to sit in the darkness and wrap it around me like a comfortable blanket, oblivious to the shimmer I see out of the corner of my eye known as hope.

After all, everyone else is allowed. So why not me? Why can I not wallow in self pity and feel sorry for the fact that I have to do something I really don’t want to do and then let the guilt of that knowledge eat me alive from the inside out? Why should I not be able to blame everyone else in the world for my sadness, my anger, my stress, the unfair hand my family has been dealt?

I recently wrote about the fact that I am raising my grandson, have been for what will soon be four years. His mother is an addict, his formative years were chaotic and he has pieces missing that we may never be able to find.

His mother, my oldest daughter, recently came back into the picture and for the first time in a long time, I felt hope. I thought she had finally had enough and would slowly take the steps to heal herself and eventually be able to mother her son.

I no longer hold that hope.

I suppose when you step out of the prison yard and are just grateful to be free you will make promises to back up your foxhole prayers and put on the face you suspect everyone wants to see. Then the day will come when you feel a little more sure footed and small step by small step you will walk backward into old habits and behaviors, because trying to do things a different way will just be too fucking hard.

You will look at your own son, being raised by someone else but still accessible to you and you will think, NO. Too fucking hard.

You will make plans to spend time with him and tell him of these plans and when they fall into the hole that is the chaos you create, you will leave it to someone else to break his heart. Again.

What you don’t know is that his heart didn’t break. He took the news with the composure of a person much older than his seven years because he is used to being disappointed by you. He doesn’t expect anything from you. I bought him a sub and took him to the park. He swung like a madman and enjoyed every moment. Are you disappointed?

Good.

I wanted to tell you about the meeting I will have at the school on Monday, the day kids return from Spring Break. You see, I’ve had all of this week to think about it. To wonder and project how it will turn out.

This meeting is with his first grade teacher, the principal, and the guidance counselor. This boy has had so many possessions taken from him in the most important years of his life, material and otherwise, that when his teacher tried to take a beloved item from him that he was distracting the class with, he grabbed her hand and tried to twist it. As it turns out, her hand has a possible fracture.

He is seven.

Seven.

In the end I won’t tell you because really it is not your business and it serves absolutely no purpose.

I haven’t always gotten and still don’t always get it right. I, like many other parents, get it wrong. Probably far more often than I care to admit. But I get up every day and I start over. I don’t take the easy way out.

And yes, I believe you are taking the easy way out. You are still blaming everyone for all the things wrong with your life, especially me. But guess what! I have made my amends and I have made my peace. This is all you.

In the past week, I sat in my car at a stoplight more than once and thought about driving away. I thought about leaving the car and walking away. I have contemplated throwing plates of food across the room. I have screamed into pillows in the privacy of my bedroom. I have cried in the shower. I have hidden in the closet with the kids blissfully unaware that my heart is racing, I cannot feel my hands and feet or catch my breath, and wondered how long it would take before someone found me because I knew I would die in that closet.

I cannot take it anymore. I will not do this anymore.

I don’t know what will happen at the meeting on Monday. I don’t know what I’m going to decide about you and the fact that J has taken three steps backward since you came back into the picture.

What I do know is that you aren’t coming back for him. I know this in the depths of my soul. It doesn’t matter if you do because soon enough the choice won’t be yours anymore. It will be his. And he will not choose you.

And so, I will now turn my head toward the light. I will walk to the light that symbolizes hope. With every step I will remember to be grateful that this is all I have been given to deal with, that I’m strong enough to do it, and that I am not alone in it.

You will have to find your way. I am tired and my rescuing days are over. Live your life how you wish. It is yours to piss away.

I still feel the remnants of the depression and anger right at the edges, but they are beginning to fray.

It is fucking hard.

But I’ve done it before. And I’ll do it again.

 

 

photo credit: The girl in the pink scarf…. via photopin (license)

How To Save A Life

I’ll be your keeper for life as your guardian
I’ll be your warrior of care your first warden
I’ll be your angel on call, I’ll be on demand
The greatest honor of all, as your guardian

~ Guardian, Alanis Morissette

I opened the door and there they stood. My drug addicted daughter, who had the good sense to leave her piece of shit husband in the car, and my 3 year old grandson. My first thought is always that he looked so pale and dirty. And unhappy.

They walked in with his tiny suitcase, which I will open later and find it holds only a few items of clothing, most of which don’t fit. There were no toys. No stuffed animals. No books. Nothing offering the comforts of ‘home’.

That is likely because he didn’t have any of those things. Including a home.

She walked in to the kitchen where my husband and a notary are waiting, papers lined up on the kitchen table.

Two days prior, my daughter called me and asked me if we would take her son. They had no home. She and her husband fought all the time. He was a thief and a drug addict. Come to think of it, so was she. They needed someone to take this boy…because he’d become inconvenient.

My husband and I scrambled to find a family lawyer that could get this done quickly before she had a chance to change her mind and take off because neither of us believed this little boy would survive what was coming.

I don’t believe she doesn’t love him. I know that she does and I know the pain she was in at that moment as she approached the table and eyed the words on paper that, instead of legal jargon, said in her eyes, “I’m a failure as a mother. I am giving up the right to call my son…my son. I will have no rights to him. He will no longer be mine. I am giving up this little person who loves me more than anything, despite my faults.”

She signed the papers and with a quick goodbye, she walked out the door. She walked out the door without her son. For all intents and purposes, he was now mine.

In the midst of lawyers and judges all in a span of two days, I had made him a room in this, his new home. There was a big bed with clean sheets. There were toys offered up by my then seven-year old son. There were stuffed animals lovingly placed on the bed from the stash of my then eight-year old daughter. Clothes that my son had outgrown that I had been saving for him were now clean and folded, stored in the drawers of his very own dresser.

The delight in his eyes was heartwarming yet sad because there is something he didn’t know.

He doesn’t know she isn’t coming back. The task of telling him has been left up to me. What is worse? He doesn’t know who I am. He thinks I am a random stranger because in their whirlwind life of addiction and chaos we didn’t see him much for two years. The only time he’s ever stayed at our house overnight was the night my daughter was being arrested for shoplifting at Macy’s and I had to go pick him up so they wouldn’t call social services.

He came to live with us on September 15th, 2011. My daughter asked us to keep him for six months.

He is still here.

I love him and I’m happy to have him. I think my daughter did the right thing and I never in a million years would have said no. Never.

Since the day she left, she stayed high. She’s called me suicidal and I’ve spoken to her on a cell phone, trying to find out where she is while having my mom on the land line calling 911 to send help to her. I’ve put her in rehab facilities, hospitals, and pulled strings to get her into a domestic violence shelter while her husband was sitting in jail, only to have her leave and go back to him as soon as he was freed.

For two years I raised a troubled kid, because all that he had witnessed and been subjected to had fucked him up. He was holed up in dark places with only God knows what going on, moved from place to place. The first time I put him in a bathtub to clean his dirty body and hair, he screamed like a wild animal the whole time. Why? He was three and couldn’t tell me so I had to let my imagination take flight which wasn’t a good thing. He wasn’t potty trained and wouldn’t be until well into his sixth year. He was prone to violent outbursts. He didn’t have any idea how to interact with other children. To this day he has a hard time making friends. He had no filter and no boundaries and they are minimal today, at best. As recently as this past December at a family dinner he asked me how I knew his mother. WHAT? He still has no idea how he fits in with all of us even though it’s been explained several times.

He didn’t hug. He had never been read a bedtime story. It took him two years to say I love you in response to the same. If I told him I loved him he’d say, ‘Okay’.

She filed for divorce from the asshat but didn’t leave the addict life. She did what she had to in order to feed her demon and I never saw her or heard from her. I think she was just quietly waiting to die while I quietly waited to find out she had.

Her addict lifestyle eventually caught up with her and she went to jail. Then she went to prison. The downward spiral was quick and, I’m sure, very painful.

Whether or not there is a happy ending to this story for them as mother and son remains to be seen. She was released in December 2014. She is living with her grandparents and, thanks to having a family owned business, is gainfully employed. She is working on one thing at a time, keeping her expectations low so as not to overwhelm herself with all that needs to be done to once more become a responsible member of society. She sees her son every week at our home. He deals with it the best he can, usually by becoming obnoxious, because he has no idea how to play the hand he’s been dealt.

Because it sucks.

Except for the fact that he has a very good life. It has had its challenges and not just for him. My other children have had to make adjustments over the past three and a half years and not all of them have been easy.

I had never, ever been called to the principal’s office at school. I have now. Twice.

I’d never been physically pushed into a bathtub by a four-year old. I have now.

I’d never carried a crazed screaming child across a parking lot in 100 degree weather with strangers staring at me like I was a kidnapper. I have now.

I have never felt like I’d saved someone’s life.

I do now.

He has lived with us now for what will be four years this September and there is no doubt he will be with us longer. His mom has a long way to go and being a recovering addict myself I know it’s a tough road she has ahead. I know life would be less stressful if he could just be our grandson, visiting on weekends so we could spoil him and send him home to his mother.

Sometimes that’s just not how things work.

I don’t write this so that others will stand me on a pedestal and tell me how wonderful I am. I’m no saint. I realize that my own active addiction had an impact on my daughter. I am not a victim of circumstance. I am not a victim by any stretch of the imagination.

These are consequences of a chain of addiction, silence, shame, and fear in our family history. I know I am not alone.

That is why I write this.

 
photo credit: Teddy via photopin (license)

Burning Down the House

In a week where compassion is the topic on everyone’s mind, I was somewhat reluctant to write these words. This hesitation only lasted for a moment. You see, I write from my heart, sometimes my head has no say, and when I hear or read a story that shouts to me OUT LOUD I just cannot be quiet. If I have a strong reaction to something I feel a sense of duty to myself to let the words loose on the page rather than to allow them an opportunity to smolder and singe my soul.

The interpretation of these words will be left to the individual reader. Some will say it is about closure. Some will say it is about revenge. Others might even venture to the outer realms and consider this about compassion or lack thereof. I may come under fire, seeming a hypocrite for recently posting about non-judgment although I was referring to less despicable acts.

I guess we shall see.

I remember the story of  seven year old Somer Thompson very well. She lived in Orange Park, Florida, about three hours from where I live so the story was all over the local news. Making it more personal for me was the fact that my own daughter had just turned seven years old.

In October of 2009 Somer was walking home from school with her twin brother, her sister, and a friend when she got into an argument with another child, walked off ahead of the other kids and wasn’t seen again until two days later when her body was found in a landfill in Georgia, 50 miles away.

On her walk home she passed a house. In that house was a 24 year old predator, a child molester and pornographer, who lived with his parents. This piece of garbage was found in Mississippi where he was being held for charges in child pornography.

In February 2012, after being tried on 14 counts of molestation and producing child pornography, he stood trial for multiple charges in Somer’s murder. He would escape the deserved death penalty by accepting a plea deal. In exchange for not appealing the sentence, he will spend the rest of his days in prison without the possibility of parole. I personally hope, without regret, he is being served a special brand of justice.

This week I came across a news story that caught, and held, my attention. The home where he lived with his parents that Somer was lured into and murdered was in foreclosure and was purchased by the Somer Thompson Foundation which was started by Somer’s mother, Diena. She donated the house to the Orange Park Fire Department for training exercises.

Last week, on February 12th, as part of a live training exercise, Dieana Thompson tossed a live flare into the house and watched the house where her daughter’s life ended burn to the ground.

“I get to burn their house down,” Thompson said. “I’m the big bad wolf this time knocking down your door, not the other way around. It’s really nice to know that I’m not ever going to have to drive in this neighborhood again and see this piece of trash.” – Diena Thompson

I know this act will never bring her daughter back but I do hope it brought this mother some level of closure. To destroy the place where evil reared its head and took up residence may have symbolically destroyed the evil itself to some extent. But was it enough?

I can only imagine that there can be no greater pain than to lose a loved one, most especially a child, to disgusting and inhuman violence.

Actually I can’t. I cannot make my mind go to that place because I know it is much more terrible than the worst nightmare I have ever had. I know that if I give myself even a nanosecond to think about it the first words that comes to my mind are an eye for an eye.

I consider myself a rational and compassionate person. I know right from wrong and the thought of taking another human life is an abhorrent one. I can say the words ‘I could just kill you’ in the zero-probability sense because it just isn’t something I would ever really do. I cannot fathom what happens in a person’s mind that allows them to commit homicide.

Until I think, in that nanosecond, that someone hurts one of my children. In that same nanosecond, I can see myself becoming a real life monster slayer. I see red and rage and death.

A lot can go through my head in a nanosecond, no?

The reality is I would think about it. I might even go so far as to plan it. But would I do it? I can’t help but wonder.

I think about Diena Thompson throwing that flare into that house. Did she wish silently that her daughter’s killer had been inside that house?

I know I would have.

I am not an overly political person. I don’t have a passionate view on the death penalty. I also lean more toward the spiritual rather than religious. I won’t debate translation of the Bible with anyone as I don’t believe, even after years of Baptist schooling,  I know enough to make an intelligent argument. No statement in this post is being made to hit a political or religious target.

Here is what I do believe:

Some people endure upbringings that bring them to the blurred edge of human vs. animal. Some people are born with missing pieces that make them unable to control urges that bring them to the same blurred edge. Sometimes people cross that line and do things that no one ever has the right to do to another human being, adult or child. I believe that the people who do commit these repulsive acts should be relieved of their place in society with the rest of us. One way or another. Period.

I can find no compassion in my heart for this man or anyone like him.

My compassion lies with the Thompson family, and I wish them peace.

And to Somer’s rapist and murderer, may you find fresh hell every day for the rest of your life.

Judge Not

How would your life be different if you stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day you look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey. – Steve Maraboli ~ Life, the Truth, and Being Free

As a human, a person with emotions often worn on my sleeve, I find that I don’t like being judged. Who does?

However, in the past week…or more, I have found myself doing the one thing I try not to do. I have found myself judging another person, making assumptions about another human while not having even the slightest clue what makes them the person they are.

Every one of us are born and from that day experience joy, sorrow, love, hate, happiness, anger…the normal range of emotions. However, some of us also get the added struggle of abuse, addiction, soul damaging heartbreak, sickness of the mind or body, or the involuntary participation in watching someone we love fight their own battle, be it mental or physical.

These parts of our personal history form us, can jade us, and sometimes defeat us. At the very least they can catapult us into a darkness that we might manage to climb out of only to find that the person we once were….is gone. Someone else has taken up residence in our soul and no matter how hard we try, that new part of our personality digs in its heels and becomes part of our permanent make-up.

It happens.

If I sit and wonder what is wrong with the world today I would need to look at my small part in it. I sit in judgement of someone, knowing they have not been dealt a perfect hand in their past. This would be the time for me to take a long, hard look at myself and wonder what gives me the right to appraise this person’s individuality.

We all sin differently.

Truth number one: There are no rules that state that just because you play on the same playground you have to like everyone on it. I don’t have to like all the people. And all the people don’t have to like me.

Truth number two: As long as I get up every morning and try my best to do the next right thing and I can put my head on my pillow at night knowing that I did just that, then what other people think of me…well, it’s really none of my business.

I don’t always get it right. Many, many times I get it wrong. It would be easy for someone to look at where I came from and who I used to be and judge me accordingly. Since I don’t live there anymore, that would be wrong. I have managed to leave that person and most of her shortcomings behind. I say most because I am still a very flawed human but have made my peace with it.

Not everyone has found that peace. I need to be more aware of that and show some grace.

That is, after all, the next right thing.

photo credit: Gavel via photopin (license)