How Did I Get Here?

At 56 years of age, divorced three times, two of them from the same person, yes I married my abusive-second husband twice, no savings, no formal education, unemployed, with a very dismal outlook on my future, the only fitting question is, how the hell did I get here?

It is my belief that I was set up for this from a combination of two components; a predisposition in my personality and growing up in a dysfunctional home. As a disclaimer, none of my blogs will ever be about blaming my parents. I’ve already gone down that path and worked through the realization that my parents did the best they could with the knowledge they had been given by their parents.

My home life growing up was a mix of; freedom, fun, laughter, neglect, fear, anger, anxiety. Most of my years were spent living out in the country in Oregon, running free. There was an extreme contrast in my parent’s temperaments though. There was no discipline what so ever from my dad and too much from my mom. It took me years of counseling to realize and understand this. The contrast can produce a lot of anxiety in children, especially if the child is more sensitive, which it seems I was.

Mom did try to give us guidance and discipline but she was an alcoholic so it would be very sporadic with her. Sometimes she was “there” (mentally and emotionally) and sometimes she wasn’t. If us kids didn’t like her discipline we would just run to my dad and he would not back her up. That was just the dynamic. After a while, my mom gave up and went deeper into her alcoholism. She came from a very dysfunctional home herself, as my dad did, so they brought their own issues into the marriage.

With my dad working all the time and my mom often on alcoholic binges, us kids were left to our own devices, for the most part. I didn’t know anything was wrong with our family. Like most, I thought we were normal, maybe better than normal. One thing my family had was humor. We really laughed a lot. My dad was hilarious, my mom was pretty funny and my siblings were/are funny. That’s one thing we had was a lot of laughter. Unfortunately, us 5 kids, lacked direction and discipline. My brother was the oldest and there were 4 girls including myself.

As my mom was unavailable more and more due to her alcoholism, my dad was the main person we could depend on. And I am so thankful we had him. We always knew we would have a roof over our heads, cars to drive, horses, motorcycles, farm animals, etc. Dad made sure we had all the things he didn’t, growing up, because he grew up very poor. Plus I deeply believe my dad spoiled us girls, not only because we were “daddy’s girls” but because of my mom’s alcoholism. I’m sure somehow he wanted to make up for that.

The problem was that not only was there chaos around because of my mom, the person us girls counted on for guidance, wasn’t able to give us that guidance we so desperately needed. You see, my dad was the most enjoyable person to be around that I have known. He had the best sense of humor and you knew with Dad, it would be fun, he made life amusing, enjoyable, agreeable, being around him made life just better. A simple trip to the grocery store was fun. All of us girls absolutely adored my dad. He was the kindest, sweetest, most handsome man on the planet, but he wasn’t able to discipline us, give us direction or have real conversations with us. growing up.

For me, life around my dad seemed like being in a bubble. Tomorrow didn’t exist. I guess, growing up, I always thought it would be like this forever, somehow stuck in time, never one thought into the future. Never a thought as to what I was going to do “when I grew up.” I know it sounds strange and may seem impossible to be that delusional, but it was a general feeling with some of us siblings. Dad just had a way of making life feel like that.

I had no idea that someday I would have to take care of myself. I had no idea how important education was. I ended up dropping out of high school at the beginning of eleventh grade because I didn’t think I needed school and my mom was completely out of it most of the time so I wanted to be there for my younger sisters. My mom physically threatened my dad a lot so I was always concerned about that and protecting my siblings and probably my dad too. My mom had broken into our house one night, once she had moved out, she came through the laundry room window. and proceeded to tell my dad that he better sleep with one eye open because she was going to kill him. There were many nights that my two sisters and I would sit at the top of the stairs and listen to mom and dad fight. It was scary.

Things got more and more chaotic with my mom. One time we even witnessed her getting arrested in our front yard. Talk about trauma. Watching your mom running from the police in your front yard in the middle of the night, then get handcuffed and put into a police car has got to affect a child, at whatever age. My two older siblings had already moved out long before that, so even though my one younger sister was only 14 months younger than me, I still felt like the older sister and responsible for her. The youngest was 8 years younger and I felt really responsible for her.

Eventually my dad wanted to move back to California, where he was originally from. He talked a lot about California and how someday he wanted to go back. One day he woke up and said “whoever wants to move to California with me, get in the truck.” It sounds so funny now but at the time, the youngest was only 9 years old so that was a given, but my sister and I were 17 and 18 and we could decide for ourselves. I can’t say this is a true memory but it seems like we took one look at each other and started packing. It was a no brainer to us. Dad was all we had and it just made sense that we would go with him. Our town was small and a little boring, so going to California sounded exciting.

Dad and the youngest drove a moving truck with my dads little Toyota truck in tow. My sister and I followed behind in dad’s Ford LTD. It was a harrowing drive but all the stops we made were fun, because of my dad. That man never complained about anything, ever. When we finally made it to California. It would be an extreme understatement, to say we had no idea what we had gotten into. We were all like fish out of water. A total culture shock.

I still had no direction. I didn’t know what I was doing. Just partying. Working different jobs here and there. I was so lost but I didn’t know it. I somehow managed to go to manicuring school but never pursued it. I even won a lawsuit for a car accident I was in and piddled the money away. I had absolutely no concept of my future. One thing I did with some of the money was to visit my sister, closest in age to me, in Germany. At some point in all the chaos, she had the wherewithal to join the Army. We were all just flopping around with no direction. No one was at the helm of the ship, ever.

At around age 22, I was lost as ever, even though I didn’t know it. I was living with my dad and my youngest sister who was 14/15 at the time. My dad was going to move in with his girlfriend and the youngest was going to move in with our oldest sibling. I had no one and nowhere to go. I felt dropped. I guess my dependency on my family was taking care of them. Once again, I want to point out that this is my experience and how I interpreted it. I am not speaking for anyone else.

So, with my dad going in one direction and my baby sister going in the other, I basically had a breakdown. I was having horrible panic attacks. I didn’t know what they were. I just thought I was losing my mind. I was in fear all the time with extreme anxiety. Somehow I got into counseling. That was my first look into the realities that I came from a dysfunctional home.

My family had pretty much disowned me a bit after I went through my breakdown. The sister that went into the Army was still in Germany. But the oldest sibling and the youngest had ostracized me. I was called “crazy”, “out of my mind” and “delusional.” I see now that neither of them wanted to admit or know the truth of our family. They were both very cruel to me and tried to break my relationship with my dad. It’s a horrible feeling when your own flesh and blood turns on you.

The thing that was hard about my dad is that he never wanted to go up against my youngest and oldest sisters. They were two peas in a pod with very strong personalities; mean. Dad was very gentle and kind and he never really stood up to them. They both had decided I was crazy and an outcast and he never said anything about it. Today I know that he just couldn’t. He had all his baggage from his childhood that bled into his marriage and the raising of his kids. That doesn’t take away, however, how much it hurt me.

I eventually found a room to rent as my dad and youngest moved out of our apartment. I was lonely and alone. I didn’t really have any friends that I could count on, especially since we had only been in California for a short time. We left all our roots in Oregon. I truly had no one, no education, no career, no money. This is when I met my first ex-husband. Which began a 10-year abusive marriage, that led to another 16-year abusive marriage. It seems like over the next 35 years, I kept recreating chaos, disappointment, loss, and heartbreak in my life.

Thoughts:

If a person could go back in time, would they really do things differently? Or did everything have to happen exactly like it did for lessons that need to be learned in this life?