Oh Goddess here we go again!

I just got off the floor doing exercises and I am just soundly pissed.  Went to pen the goats and Mr. Henry in the rain, and my heart beat is racing.  I hate exercises.  It’s got to go back to the days of mom forcing me to walk.  One day she was going walking with a friend, I told her I would be right there.  I laid on the floor and pretended I tripped and fell, and was unconscious till she got back.  I think she got the point.  She never asked me to go walk with her again.

She was obsessed with her weight and made me weigh everyday for a long time, till I think I finally raised enough hell.  She used to write her weight down on a sheet of paper hanging on the wall above the scale.  Mine was beside her’s.  She always weighed naked too, first thing in the morning.  She would get up at 4 and blaring Gloria Estefan and ride her stationary bike or walk on the treadmill, even at one time bouncing on her little trampoline.  Then of course there was the bar under the door so she could do sit ups.  I think the funniest thing that ever happened, was one time she was doing pushups or leg lifts or something like that on the floor, and the dog came up and humped her arm.    

She was obsessed with her diet too.  She made us all eat wheat germ, she measured her food, and ate off a little plate for years and years.  I would go to school and come home and suddenly be on a slim fast diet when I came home.  Every time ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­she started me on a diet or told me we were going to start exercising.  I always felt inadequate.  Why did she want to change me? Why wasn’t I fine the way I was?  I look back at the pictures now and do not see a fat woman, perhaps a bit chunky, but dear Gods not fat.  Was it her way to control me, to compete with me, or was she trying to set a good example and be concerned about my weight?

At some point I think it all became a revolt.  Not just to her regime, but to her entire way of life.  If this was what it was to be a woman, I didn’t want it.  I didn’t want to cry all the time, manipulate people, be two faced, exercise all the time, and be obsessed with my health and what others ate around me.  But I fear I am repeating myself.  I have talked about this subject at length in both Blood in the Water and Behind a big woman’s eyes.

I have shared on my Facebook, but not recorded it here yet about the health problems I have been having recently.  On the weekend of March 13^th, 2016 was a good one.  It was a payday weekend so Jay and I had been grocery shopping, both Saturday and Sunday.  I am so pleased to say that with the breathing exercises , it has been 6 months since I have had an panic attack strong enough to require a pill.  I can count on my hand the number of times I have even come close in that time frame.  With all that has come to light about my mom in the last few months (All her sins laid bare), my anxiety is almost completely gone, as I begin to understand its true root.  I have been to the new Wal-mart on North Market, twice without the need for Sophia.  In fact I have not needed her assistance in 3 or 4 months.  Just me and Jay, by ourselves going to Sam’s, Wal-Mart, and Brookshire’s, like normal people.  It has been extremely freeing.  I understand now that just because I panicked in a place once, does not necessarily mean I will panic there again.  I am treading carefully, but so far it all seems to be working.

So we are getting in bed Sunday night and I notice that my feet and legs are really swollen and my toes are red, and they hurt.  I thought what the hell is this!  Oh crap I am going to have to go to the Dr.  So I cancel my councilor for the next day and spend all that Monday the 14^th, trying to reach my Dr.  When I do hear from them at 5 they say, “If you are having pain go to the ER.  It may be a blood clot.”  Jay comes home and I tell him the news. 

We go across the street to the fire station and get in the ambulance, because we know we will be seen faster in the ER if I come in this way.  They get me in the back of the ambulance and they go to take my pressure with that little machine they have.  It is so high it won’t register.  I saw it pump up past 252.  I am in agony with this thing around my arm.  I try to be good and not scream.  I grab Jay’s hand to get threw the pain.  It is hurting me so bad I left claw marks and bruises on his hand.  After the 3^rd time of it trying to take my pressure and failing, I tell the EMT.  Please no.  Don’t let it do it again.  At that point he takes it off.  When we finally do get a pressure a few minutes later it is 220/100 or so.  We thought oh this is just a fluke.  Nope!

While I am at the ER it never drops below about 160/90, several times registering over 200.  They do an ultrasound of my legs, no clot!  Thank Holda!  X-ray my knee, cause it has been hurting since I slipped in the bath in December, and do blood work.  Nothing.  Dr. walks in after two hours and goes, “I don’t know what is wrong with you.  All your test are fine.  Follow up with your Primary Care Physician (PCP).”

So I do.  Dr. Warren, pcp, and I have been together lots of years, and I really like him.  He’s good people, as my daddy says.  I go see him that Wednesday the 16^th.  He says, “Ilsa I think your pain level is so high that it has jacked your blood pressure, and that is making you swell.” He puts me on a new blood pressure med with a diuretic in it.  So far it is working.  I had gained almost 10 pounds in just water weight. 

 In December I took a gamble and told him again, for the first time in 8 years, that the pain in my hip never went away.  He believed me and took x-rays of my hip.  He did not see anything.  When I go to see him recently he asks after my hip pain.  I tell him the steroids he gave me last time helped, but we all know we can’t live on steroids forever.  They are bad for your liver and they make you fat.  I tell him, that no, the pain is less now that I am on daily pain meds, but it still flares up.  He takes x-rays of my back, and says, “I don’t think it is your hip.  I think it is your back.  We are going to set you up with an Orthopedist.” 

I went to see the Orthopedist on the 29^th, and he diagnosed me with Pelvic Girdle Dysfunction.  He and I believe the pain is not coming from my hip, but instead from my sacroiliac joint.  An anatomy lesson for a moment, when your spine quits it forms your sacrum, and that is what your pelvis is attached to, at the end of your sacrum is your tailbone.  This sacroiliac joint is where your sacrum and your tailbone attach.  That is where my pain is coming from, for years from the left and now from the right as well, also the pelvic bone in the front, over you bladder and uterus can be infected and inflamed as well.  There seems to be some kind of imbalance there.  It can happen for no reason at all, or after a trauma.  I have no idea what has caused this.  I know a lot of pregnant women get this, and there is little information out there, on those that have it, but have never been pregnant.  We also discussed my weight did not help all this.

I am still working on finding out more about this disease.  The Dr. wanted to send me to Physical Therapy.  The insurance says, no probable.  You are covered.  It’s a $100 per visit.  So if I am to go 3 times a week, it will be $300 a week.  Um, no.  Sorry.  So I am going to have to do the exercises I have in the little book the Orthopedist sent me home with, and whatever information I can find on line. 

And on top of everything else, cause you know the Gods love me so much, I got Pink Eye.  From where and who, I know not.  So I go see Dr. Warren on the 30^th.  He says, blood pressure is a little better, but he wants to up me on meds again.  Warren confirms Pink Eye, and then begins to have the dreaded weight talk with me.  We have been down this road many times before.  I tell him I am walking, in short spurts everyday.  It is one of the few things that helps the pain in my legs.  He tells me to cut out carbs and eat more vegetables.  I tell him I can’t afford vegetables.  I tell him I can’t cut out carbs with a husband who loves rice, gravy, sweet tea, and biscuits, and does not considerate a complete meal without a carb in it!  So poor Dr. Warren is trying to fight poverty and hundreds of years of Southern tradition.  We talk about me seeing a nutritionist.  I am down for that.  Insurance says, sure no probable.  You are covered.  It’s a $100 a visit.  Ugh!  Beat head against the desk!

So it looks like my options are grow my own food, walk, and do floor exercises at home.    We have been here before, and failed many, many times.  I have no idea why this time would be any different.  Just, just when I am getting to a point about changing my relationship with food, they ask me to lose weight again, and all this garbage starts coming up.  I was just beginning to think of food as magic.  And seeing that I am classist when it comes to eating some of the poverty foods that others in the South grew up on, that experts are now saying are so good for us, beans and greens, squash and tomatoes.  Y’all know when I ended up in the hospital (A little crazy, just like me) a week after I saw the nutritionist.  I tried following it for a week, but felt such pressure I believe that is what caused that first major panic attack.  That and it was close to Oma’s death date. 

All of this has happened just as I was having a small miracle in my life occur.  I love sweets, and I am crazy for chocolate.  I have been for years.  But I think I am losing my obsession with it?  I am not sure about all of this myself.  It is too new for me.  The girls in OA used to say that after they had been off of sugar for a while, they were relieved of their sugar cravings.  Not me.  There was never a day that I didn’t crave sugar, even though I had been abstinent from it for almost a year.  It never left me. 

Now I am doing things like sitting on the couch with a bag of carrots, munching my heart out.  Weeks before Dr. Warren told me to lose weight.  When I want crunch and sweet, I am craving apples, not fiddle faddle.  I am even now interested in learning how to cook more fresh vegetables, like greens.  I am serious here people, if you know how to message me.  It’s odd and bizarre to me.  I have changed nothing in my diet to have this occur.  The only thing I can tie this all to is a recurring thought I have had. 

As a child I remember thinking, I need to gain weight so that people will think that I am Daddy (Jef’s) child, to hide and conceal the fact that I was a Smith, that I was really Beau’s child.  In the last few months as I have begun to understand the depths of my mother’s lies and the affect it has had on my psyche.  I have come to believe it is not a bad think to be Beau Smith’s child.  It is nothing I need to conceal, or hide, or fight.  That it is perfectly fine for me to go back to being the thin, athletic, and beautiful girl I was like when I was 6 years old. 

As I have sat with the Smith family over these last few holidays, and I as I plan for more with them, they are not that much different than the Fisher’s.  They love each other, they try to understand and support each other, even if they don’t agree with what the other is doing.  Yes some of them are confused as to who their real dad is.  It doesn’t matter.  They are not the bad, stupid, dirty, disgusting people, I was told they were.  I feel loved and accepted when I am with them, although I am not sure they all understand that I am a witch and democrat.   I am not sure I will tell them, I am terrified they will ask me to leave, but then again I have a lingering suspicion that they might not.  Every time I am with them, just like every time I am with JM, Elisha, and Ashley they heal me.  I come home smiling so much my face hurts. 

I am just not sure of any of this.  It is all still a work in progress.  I will keep y’all up to date.

Ilsa

 

 

All her sins laid bare

I have tried really hard to delay the writing of this article as long as possible, but like any good pot left to cook on the stove, my cauldron is boiling over.  This might be a little long so grab your drink and follow along if you can.

In October, Jay and I headed to Desoto Parish for a cousin’s baby shower.  We never made it.  We blew a tire, and having no spare, ‘cause you know, we are poor like that, we called for a tow truck to get us home.  It was only free for the first 15 miles, so we were towed to my parent’s house.  It was a pleasant afternoon and we had several dogs with us.  I called my parents to come and rescue us.  They came and picked me and the fur kids up, while Jay waited in the car, with lots of water, his book, and his phone for several hours, until the tow truck arrived.  Meanwhile I went home with my folks. 

I spent the next few hours on the back porch working on sketching out my book, reading, and talking to mom.  I began to talk about writing and asked if she was reading my blog.  She told me point blank, “I don’t have time for that.”  And then the story gets very strange.  She begins to tell me that someone in the family has called her, and told her how upset they are about my blog, but she refuses to tell me who it is.  She says, this person is very upset over what I have been writing, is considering blocking me, and can’t believe some of the things I have said, especially what I said about Grandpa possible molesting me.  When I confirm with mom that yes in fact I believe this happened to me, she dismisses it out of hand.  I then ask her a question about something that happened in my childhood, something I have had confirmed by others that I know did in fact happen.  She blows me off and then tells me, “Hump, You must have dreamed that.” 

The finally straw of that afternoon was mom telling me she loved me, to which I responded, “How nice.”  She then pipes up and says, “What you don’t love me too?”  I then have to explain to her, that after all she has done to me, including robbing me, I don’t know that I will ever love her again.  She seems to be devastated and is unable to comprehend this.  She has since thrown this back in my face a time or two.  Saying, “Well I know you don’t love me, but I will do this for you anyways.”

Seven months later she finally tells me who it was that called her.  This family member said that it was not fair me coming forward with my story of Grandpa abusing me, because he was not here to defend himself.  That’s right people as if it was not hard enough to tell y’all this.  I should take my attackers emotions and motives into consideration.  But hey, he is still trying to think the best of him.  More power to him.  He doesn’t want to be part of my life because I spoke my truth, more power to him. 

Even though now I know my mom was not lying about his part, this conversation on the back porch planted the seeds y’all.  My councilor, Barb, had said after my mother robbed me in March of 2012, (Read about that here in My Mother - Part 2) that she was probable a narcissist.  I had of course done the research, and yes in many ways she fit the profile, but I knew she never had lied to me, so I was unsure.  All my growing up, she would tell me, “Don’t lie to me, you will make it worse!”  and my personal favorite, “I would never lie to you!  I am your mother!!”  And I believed her.

The day this conversation took place, I had actually just started working on my book, that morning.  I was making notes, drawing up genealogy charts, and figuring out names for my characters.  As time went on, I began to delve into the psychology of some of them.  I began to look at the characteristics of emotional and mental abuse, now simply called psychological abuse.  I began to ask friends who had dealt with similar parents in their lives, how they have coped with a mother like mine. 

I was discussing all this one day on-line with Aunt Cathy’s daughter.  She had grown up knowing Beau, my mother, and me.  She said, “You know my parents lamented the fact that it seemed your mom was brainwashing you.”  I was confused and befuddled.  I asked what she meant?  She then goes on to tell me that Beau had tried to see me, and my mother would not let him.  I was taken aback.  I knew for a fact that he had not, that is what my mother had told me my entire life, “Your father abandoned us!” again and again since I can remember.  I had even recently asked her if she thought he ever loved me.  I believe mom answered with, “I don’t know, or I don’t think so.”  Sorry little fuzzy there. 

As I began to look into psychological abuse, I saw how much of that fit my life.  I decided to try a little experiment.  My mom called to ask what I wanted for my Christmas.  I told her nothing.  I knew they were struggling to put food on the table, and I said I wanted nothing. I put out an article that week or so called, Christmas 2015.  In it, I said the only thing I wanted for Christmas was socks.  I never told my mom this.  Christmas Eve, on the Christmas tree, is a pair of socks.  When I saw those socks, I knew she was reading along.  She had lied to me, point blank.  She was in fact reading along. 

A month or so later I got the chance to go to a house warming party down in Longstreet with Beau’s family.  I had the opportunity to sit down with Bobby Joe.  He was one of the few family members that were allowed to stay in my life.  I knew he loved me.  I knew he would be impartial, just as he always had been about all this.  He had always been a great resource for me to talk to about all things.  So at the party I got the chance to talk to Bobby Joe at length about these things. 

I said, “I think my Mother is lying to me.  I have lots of questions.  Things are not adding up.” 

He said, “You ask the questions and I will tell you what’s true and what’s not.”

I asked the following questions:

I: Does Beau lie?

BJ:  He would have no reason to.

I: Did Beau try to see me?  I was told he did not.

BJ:  Yes, but your Mom would not allow it.  Beau kept trying, but he finally, gave up.  After the day you came home talking about Elisha (my sister), your Mom was pissed and told Beau he was not to bring you around Sandy (Beau’s new wife) or Elisha.  Basically she cut him off and told him he couldn’t see you anymore.

 

I:  Why didn’t he sue for parental rights?

BJ: In Louisiana at that time, a man had no rights to his kids.  (It is still damned impossible in this state for a man to get sole custody of his kids, and this was 40 years ago. Judges still almost always find in favor of the mother.  The two men I know that have sole custody of their kids, got it because the mother surrendered her rights.)

I:  I know I stayed with Aunt Ruby, while mom was in the hospital, recovering from brain surgery?  Did Beau pick me up in the evening times and take me home?  I was told he did not.

BJ:  Yes, Aunt Ruby had a have a break.  Beau picked you up every night and took you home.

I:  Did Beau come to see Mom in the hospital?  I was told he only came a few times.

BJ:  That’s a lie.  Beau came every day or every other day.  He came to pick up your mom’s clothes, took them home, washed them, and brought them back.

I:  Did Beau pay child support?  I was told he did not.

BJ:  When your Beau worked for UPS it was deducted from his pay check.  He paid so much child support, he couldn’t rent a place to live.

Another family member chimed in to confirm all of this.  They then talked at length about which relatives Beau had lived with, while all this was going on.  So now I have three independent, non bias sources tell me, basically that everything that my mother told me was a lie, but then again she has been telling this story so long, she probable believes all of it.  The above conversation has had a profound impact on my life. 

In February, I dispatched an email to Beau, telling him most of what I have just told you, and with the above conversation between Bobby Joe and me.  Within a few days I received a wonderful reply back to my letter.  Confirming yes, all of the above was true.  He was so grateful that all this had come to light.  He felt like his heart was healing from all this.  I wrote to tell him how sorry I was, that for years I had continued to tell these lies.  And that now I finally believed what I had felt all along in my heart.  He loved me, he tried to see me, my mother kept him from me, and he did not abandon me. 

I have talked with councilors, family, friends, and strangers about how does one stay in relationship with a person like my mother after all this, yet keep a relationship with my Dad, Jef.  I do not want to lose him.  I love him so dearly.  Even Beau has great respect for him, because he is such an awesome guy.  And to Beau’s great testament, he refuses to speak ill of either one.  I have thought of trying to warn Dad, and tell him about all this, but I know he would side with mom, and just see it as me trying to hurt and upset his dear precious, emotional disturbed wife.  He has no idea she is a psychic vampire and has been draining both of us for years.  It’s not like they would break up, or she would get help.  He would not divorce her.  He loves her too much.

There are days I don’t want to believe all of this.  Days I just want to go back in my shell, say they are all liars, confess my sin of betraying my mother to her.  The sin you know of loving, being with, and believing my other family, beg and grovel to her, and hope above all hope she will forgive me, and give me just a morsel of the unconditional love that I need.  There are days I want to blame this all on her surgery.  There are days I want to say, “If you had a father like Grandpa you would be fucked up too, and not know how to love.”  But most of all, I worry about the phone call that will come from my Daddy Jef, when this is posted.  Saying, “Your momma’s in there crying again.  She had to take one of her panic pills and lay down.  You hurt her real bad this time Ilsa, real bad.  Those people have an agenda.”  Which will make me cry and grieve, and hurt and panic, but I am not the one who lied here, and the evidence is overwhelming.  As of this writing I now have 5 sources confirming this story.  I am not the one who is playing mind games.  It is a vicious loop, the snake biting its tail, consuming itself. 

The stress she has put me under for so long has taken a tremendous toll on my health.  My blood pressure is through the roof.  In the last year since I have started talking to her again, my periods have become all out of wack again.  In those two years while I didn’t talk to her, they were damn near perfect.  I have anxiety and panic attacks, because I am so afraid all the time of who will emotional attack me next, and not being able to get my life perfect so my mom will stop critiquing what I do, even if it is just with her tone of voice or body language.  In so many ways it has become her or me. 

As I have thought on all of this I have also considered how she has treated not just Beau’s side of the family, but other family members as well.  Her brothers she adores, their wives she calls bitches, and I have often seen her have contempt for her nieces as well.  All behind closed doors you understand.  She is polite to your face, and stabs you in the back as soon as the door closes.  Everyone she seems to find flawed and horrible. 

All of this has had a profound effect on me.  For the first time, in probable 30 years, I no longer believe I am crazy.  I am perhaps troubled, scared, gifted and / or mental ill, but not crazy, a word that has defined me for so long.  I believe that living under her rule, was like trying to build a house with broken bricks.  It just won’t stand very long.  She lied to me.  She gaslighted me, basically told me I was crazy or wrong for believing things I knew to be true, therefore making me question everything I did and not believing in myself, or that I had a stable mind.  She kept me isolated, and lied to me and made nasty comments, so I would hate not just Beau’s family, but my other family as well, at the very least keeping strong bonds from forming with those around me.  Making it seem like it was just me and her against the world. 

You know I was the good kid.  I never got in Jef’s face and said, “You’re not my real Daddy!”  I never threatened to leave and go live with Beau.  I toed the line and hated Beau, just the way she taught me too.  And in the process I hated myself because I was half his.  I wonder now if she did all this so I would not run away, or fight her, and she could keep control over me, so she could keep using me.  So she could keep me to herself and feed off of me.  No longer.

The idea that I can trust myself, and that I am not crazy, and that people are not just waiting around to hurt me, has changed my outlook on life, so has learning the truth about Beau.  I am beginning to think maybe all men are not bad, and I am beginning to lose my fear of them.  But I can still hear her in my head saying, “Don’t you ever trust no man!  You better be able to do it on your own!” 

As all this began to come to the surface, as it all began to bubble and boil if you will, it felt really familiar.  It felt like Mike.  It felt like Melinda, Marie, and Paige all over again.  In my mind, once a liar, always a liar.  I felt like I had been used all over again, like I had been a pawn in her sick game, like I had been run over by this truck before.  I began to see the connections and of course the psychological abuse all in my life.  It began to answer the questions I had of why I got involved with these people, even all the way back to Sonya in grade school.  Why I had fought for them, been so fiercely loyal to them?  They were all copies of my mother.  They say you attract to you what you want to heal, people with issues you are not done with yet.  I always thought I chose, on a subconscious level, to be an abusive relationship with Michael, because of issues with my Grandfather.  I think now it was because of issues with my mom.  All five of them were in many ways very much alike.  So much of my life has been a repeating pattern.  Here I am trying to hang on to people, and be good to them, when they didn’t deserve it.  All in the hopes they would love me back. 

For so long I have associated being loved, with being controlled.  I think that’s part of what has been hardest on my relationship with Jay, is that because he has always been so wonderful to me, there was always this thought in my mind that it was somehow not real, or I didn’t deserve it.  I know now, I am worthy of his love, and I love him more deeply today, then I did 6 month or 6 years ago.

I have yet to reveal any of this to my mother, like any of it would make a difference.  Those of you who are following along know she has seizures from her brain surgery 38 years ago.  If not you can read all about that in, Hello Ilsa, Goodbye Beau.  My mom goes for long periods of time without being nasty to me, or lying to me.  The other day she calls me and says she, “had a night seizure.”  Now she had not had a seizure in 30 or so years, not since they got her meds right.  I remember being about 5 or so, when she had her last one.  She has had no more since then.  So mom proceeds to tell me about this night seizure. 

She says, “I sat bolt right up in bed and said, ‘oh no!’  Then I saw a seizure in my head.” 

I ask if she is trying to tell me it was a “Focal Aura,” which feels like a mini seizure.  It is what would have been a seizure, had she not been on meds. 

She tells me, “No”

I said, “Wow you haven’t had a seizure in 30 years.”

She says, “Well I’ve had my night seizures.”

I am like, “What?  What the hell are you talking about?!  This is the first time you have ever said this to me!  You have consistently told me for 30 years, that you have been seizure free all these years!  No!  I think this was something else.”  She forgets I have seen her have a seizures.  She has Grand Mal’s.  She falls out on the floor, and has no memory of what has happened to her. 

She then corrects herself and says, “Oh well, maybe it was something else then.”

She’s on the phone fucking trying to lie to me, gaslight me.  And in my head I am screaming she is fucking lying to me again!  She’s still doing this to me.’  I got off the phone real quick and hung up with her. 

My parents came the other day for my birthday.  I begged them not to spend money on me.  That the greatest gift to me would be for them to buy some food, cause I knew she was going to guilt trip me and tell me how little they had at home.  They came to see me and brought pizza, at least I talked them down from taking me out to dinner. 

As she is getting ready to leave, I show her a few things with her camera, and before she leaves I show her my binder, with the first 100 pages of my book in it.  She looks up at me kind of dumbstruck and says, “Ilsa this could really turn into an income for you.”  I said, “That is what I am hoping for.”  In my mind I am thinking, you should have told me that, all the years before when you saw that I could write.  “Darling you are so talented,” is not, “Darling I think you could make a career out of this.  I believe in you.  Do what you dream.”  We have a nice time, she goes to leave and wants to kiss me.  I kiss her on the cheek.  She says no she wants a lip kiss, just as we always do.  Instead of standing my ground and saying, “No,” I kissed her.  When she left I smeared hand sanitizer on my lips.  It felt so dirty, ‘cause I know I don’t love her.  How could I?

One more thing, and then I am going to quit for the day.  My mother’s childhood friend, who I call Aunt Diane, calls me the other day, and we chat and visit about mom and other things.  I tell her about the book and then I ask her if she is following along, reading my blog. 

She says, “Ilsa, I didn’t know you were writing a blog or a book!  Why didn’t your mom tell me all this?” 

I said, “Guess it wasn’t high on her priority list.”

And I don’t want y’all to read this, and think, “Oh she’s just ragging on her mom.  Everybody’s got troubles, and crazy parents.”  And that is so true.  Beau even told me the other day, “remember your mom fed you when you were hungry, and took care of you.”  So writing this article feels in many ways like a betrayal.  But I have to tell y’all.  I think I owe that much to y’all, to keep telling you what is going on in my life.  Y’all know I do a lot of thinking on paper, it helps me to get all this stuff out.  But for those of you who know me, in person, have been concerned about over the years, have loved me, I wanted you to know I feel as if I have turned another corner, come back to myself, grown a back bone, and have become hellaciously stronger in the last few months. 

And I have tried, and tried, and tried, and I have given her every opportunity to right these wrongs and the ways she treats me.  I get nothing in return.  I have begged and pleaded for her to go to counseling.  She refuses.  I have even said I would sit down with her and her priest or her pastor.  Nothing.  She still continues to believe there is nothing wrong with her, or our relationship.  She makes me feel it is all my fault. 

I have been sitting on this article for over a month, because mom is playing nice at the moment, even pretending to care.  But as I was doing some reading this morning, I realized I was trying to give her one more chance.  If she hurt me again, I would publish this article.  She will hurt me again.  She will say nasty things to me again, that is her nature.  So to wait is kind of moot point.  I am just so very tired of all of this.  I have tried for the last year and a half to play nice for the sake of my dad, but it continues to take an emotional and physical toll on me.  I have to be content that I have done everything in this relationship I could.  I will not continue to jump across an ocean for a woman who won’t cross a puddle for me.  A woman who’s hate has consumed her so much that she has destroyed lives in the process.  Hate is the enemy, love and truth are the answer. 

Writing this will not fix her, will not change her.  I will only change me.  I feel like a shield maiden, a warrior queen, Freya, Boudicca, Xena, and Holda and Kali in their dark mother furry.  I am mad as hell.  I have given up hope I will ever please her, or that she will ever stop playing games with me.  I am just going to have to release her in light and love, and give her to the Gods, ‘cause there is not a damn thing I can do with her.  As my mother always says, “A leopard, don’t change its spots.”

Ilsa

 

Hello Ilsa, Goodbye Beau

My mother and my biological father, Beau, met in school in the early 1970’s.  He was a few years older than her.  They were introduced by mutual friends at a local festival. My mother graduated high school in 1973.  She and Beau married the following year in May of 1974.  They were married in Oma’s living room by a Justice of the Peace.

The story goes that I am conceived in a hotel room in Texarkana, after a Star Trek episode in June or July of 1975.  I am born in March of 1976, in a hospital in Shreveport, just like most people from Desoto Parish are.  In the days before ultrasounds, the old women told my mom she would have a boy, because of the way she was carrying me.  She was going to name me Mike, after her brother.  When I was born a girl they were all surprised, but happy.  Mom took a bit to figure out what to name me.  She settled on Ilse in honor of her mother.  Oma begged Momma not to name me Ilse, she says, “They will never say it right.  They will never spell it right.”  And what she said is still most defiantly true, but Mom decided to name me Ilse anyways. 

I am glad to have a unique name, even if I can’t find it on a cup or a key chain.  Well I can now, because of the internet.  I think unique names make unique people, never wanted to be a Jennifer anyways.  Sorry to you Jennifer’s ahead of time.  If you have a unique name, you always know when someone is about to say your name for the first time, by that confused look on their face.  I’ve always said I would answer to anything but, “Hey Bitch!” 

My first few years seem to have been uneventful.  We were living at the time, in a yellow and white little trailer next door to my great Aunt Ruby, outside of Longstreet.  Beau worked for UPS driving a truck and mom stayed home with me. 

Now here is where things seem to get kind of murky.  In the Spring of 1978 my mother became very ill.  She began to have paralysis on the right side of her body.  It took them several weeks, to come up with a reason, why a healthy 23 year old would be having these types of problems.  Many theories were thrown around.  In conversations, I would have with Beau later in my life. He would tell me, that the Doctors came to him, and believed that he may have unintentionally spread a Zoonosis to mom, from the cows he had been keeping. 

Mom had 13 CAT scans during this time.  The Doctors saw what they believed to be a tumor in her frontal lobe region. She was taken into surgery on April 13^th, 1978, after 13 ½ hours she immerged alive.  They found no tumor.  They did try to grow a culture, on what I don’t know, but it did not work.  During surgery they had scratched a nerve and this permanently left Mom with seizures.  She remains on medications today, due to complications of this surgery.  Before the statue of limitations ran out on filling a malpractice suit, Mom went to her pastor to ask what she should do.  He told her she should not file a suit.  She has also been denied disability. 

There are many things I still do not know about this time period in my life.  Many of the players are dead, won’t talk about this, or are no longer involved in my life.  My mother would suffer a mild stroke on December 9^th, 2014.  We learned a lot during that stroke.  As they loaded Mom into the MRI machine they asked, “Do you have any metal in your body?”  She said, “No.”   She got in the machine and they found that she did in fact have metal in her body.  She has a metal plate in her head, put there during the 1978 surgery.  No one had ever told her that.  They also find evidence that she has had two significant strokes in her life time.  I believe that one of these strokes, may explain the events surrounding the 1978 brain surgery.  My mother does not share that belief.  There were no MRI machines around, in this area in 1978, and a CAT scan would not have necessarily picked up a stoke. 

Beau decided to take the events surrounding Mom’s 1978 surgery as a chance to leave.  He tells me years later that he had gone to my mother, while she is sick in the hospital bed, and asked her to choose him or her family.  She chose her family.  My mother has no memory of any such conversation ever taking place.  But then her memories of her being in the hospital seem to be a bit hazy.  Something from that time she remembers and something’s she does not.

While all this is going on you’ve got to remember, my Grandpa is right in the center of all of this.  He was a controlling, manipulative, conniving, brilliant, mother fucker.   It is my guess, that he had a hand in all that went down.  Grandpa, I am sure, was trying to assert his dominance in the situation.  What he and Oma wanted to have happen.  As for me, I am with family members at this time. 

After Mom’s surgery she was given Amphotericin B, is an antifungal drug often used intravenously for systemic fungal infections.  It made her deathly sick.  After the surgery Mom had to walk and talk all over again.  She was never given rehab.  Oma helped her to relearn all these things. After 3 months Mom is sent home. Divorce papers for her and Beau had been filed, and our little trailer had been moved, about 15 miles south to Logansport, next door to Oma’s house.  It is on this 5 acre spread that I would grow up, constantly going between Oma’s house and my own. 

Mom would begin to make trips to a place called Scott and White Hospital in Texas, for her follow up care.  She and the rest of the family could no longer trust the doctors here, after what they had done to her.  Scott and White hospital was very advanced for its time.  They believed that Mom had an abscess from a tooth go to her brain and cause her paralysis.  She had gone in to have some dental work three months before she became ill.  Funny thing is Mom never remembers having had the pain of an abscessed tooth.  Mom would continue to go to Scott and White for a good majority of my life.  She recently told me she has made peace with the man who butchered her, Neurologist, Dr. Donald Smith.  Maybe one day I will be able to too. 

I have watched the story of what Beau did change over the years.  At first I was told he left mom for a 17 year old.  Now it has become a 16 year old, who was pregnant at the time.  Part of this is a lie.  My sister Elisha was not born until the 1980’s.  When Beau began his relationship with his second wife Sandy, and the mother of my 3 siblings, is really of no consequence to me.  Beau and Sandy have both told me they do not remember when they met.  Sandy has assured me she was of age at the time of their meeting.  I have not felt it is my place to dig into her life.  The important thing is that Beau chose to leave this situation, maybe he had been looking for an out for a while.  I don’t know.

In the few years that I have known Sandy, she has been nothing but gracious to me, including opening her home, so that I might meet and visit with my siblings. I am not sure, if I was in her shoes, that I would have been so kind. The first time I met all of them, which you can read about in My Mother, I learned a few things. 

It was hammered into me, from the time I could remember, “Beau left US!  Your Daddy left US!”  US is an awful big word to use for a kid.  It means me and you.  For most of my life I felt Beau had left me.  Sometimes I felt that it was because of something I did, even if that was just existing.  It took a lot of therapy for me to understand that Beau did not leave US.  Beau left my mother.  I was a causality of a war that I never even knew was being fought. Nothing I ever could have done, could have resulted in this outcome.  One day I had a father and the next day I didn’t.   I still have abandonment issues because of it, and a deep distrust of all men.  From an early age I remember my mother telling me, “Don’t ever trust a man!”

My mother never spoke a kind word about Beau in my life, or shared with me a pleasant memory of him.  I grew up hating him, and any part of me that reminded her of him.  Anything that I knew was like Beau I squashed and dismissed.  When I smile you can see my teeth.  It’s a natural response on my part.  My mother would tell me, “You smile like Beau.”  I learned to smile without showing my teeth.  I remember this often the moment, before a photo is snapped.  For years I wanted to rip out my brown eyes, because they were his.  I wanted to rip out my own DNA. 

For most of my life, I would not even look, at his old family home in Longstreet, as I passed by it. One day I would have a large family that loved me and one day I wouldn’t. When Mom erased Beau from my life, she erased the whole family.  He’s extended family, who carried for me while Mom was in the hospital, was forbidden to see me, or have any contact with me.  Attempts to visit me were met by my shotgun wielding Grandpa.  I was taught to hate all of them, as much as I was taught to hate Beau.  I was told how horrible they were, how dirty they were, and what white trash they were.  Only two members of that family were ever allowed to have anything to do with me, Aunt Ruby and my cousin Bobby Joe.

I remember receiving a phone call, from Beau’s mother, around my 18^th birthday.  I thought she was someone else, so I talked to her at length.  It wasn’t until the end of the conversation that I began to understand who she was.  No caller Id back in those days kido’s.  She told me, “Well you are 18 now darling.  You can make your own decisions.”  When she said that, and I realized who she was I hung up on her.  I have no idea how long she had waited to make that call. I see now what courage it took for her to call.  She died a few years later, and I never got to say how sorry I was, about what I had done. 

My mother destroyed all pictures of Beau.  What few I found I horded.  After spending a summer putting together photo albums, when I was 19, I found about 5 or 6 that had not been destroyed.  I put them in a little yellow photo album that I kept hid under my bed for years.  I was terrified she would find them and destroy them too.  When I had my bad days I would pull it out, and stare at them and wonder.  Wonder what he was like and why he didn’t want me. 

Even my own name, part of my identity was taken from me.  Not long after Jef, my Daddy, legal adopted me, which I wanted.  I came home with my birth last name on one of my school papers.  I remember my mom telling me, this is not your name anymore, and making me erase it and put my new name.  While I was proud to be Daddy’s, it came at the price of having to erase who I felt I was at the time, who I knew myself to be.  It caused a shit storm in my family, when I added my birth last name back to my Facebook page.  It was a way to reclaim my identity, and help others in the family find me.  I am proud now to be associated with the rest of my birth family and with Beau. 

If Beau had not left Mom, I would never have had Jef, my Dad.  I asked Beau why he never fought for me.  He said, “I knew Jef.   I knew he was a good man and would be a good father to you.  I did not want to disrupt your life.”  I am glad for what he did.   

The moral of this part of the story is if you are angry at your partner due to divorce or whatever, PLEASE I implore you, don’t bad mouth them in front of the kids, or even in the same house!!!  Those little ears are listening.  You never know how a child will take this kind of stuff, how they will internalize it, and how long they will carry it.  Your anger at your partner may make your kids hate who they are, what they are, and anything that came from that parent.  Clean up your own shit!  Don’t make your kids carry it too!  If you need to vent do it away from them, do it with a friend, or better yet in therapy.  These kids already have enough to deal with, having a parent gone, without having to hating themselves too, because of your anger.   

Ilsa

My Mother - Part 2

Beau and I continued emailing, instant messaging, and phone calling for almost a year.  I learned I had 2 sisters and a brother outside of Tyler, Texas.  That his new wife had a daughter in Carthage.  I made plans to meet her soon.  Not long after I spoke with my siblings on the phone for the first time.  They had not always known of my existence.  They were of some age before they were told.  It was not long before we all became friends on Facebook.  

My relationship with Beau continued for almost a year.  His new wife did not like me much.  When I told her I wanted to come up with her daughter and her grandchildren to see Beau, I was told, “When my grandchildren come to see me, I want to visit with them, not you.  Y’all are always so needy.”  I would call and she would not give him the phone.  He was in the shower, at work, in the shop, or taking a nap.  Finally I began to understand that one or both of them did not want to talk to me anymore.  He promised me things that still have not come about.  I sent him a message and told him that I saw him as a coward, because he would not stand up and fight for me against his wife.*

I still get a birthday email from him, but I have little communication with him other than that.  I did not tell my mother I had been in contact with Beau until it was all over with.  Keeping that secret from her was one of the hardest things I have ever done. 

I told Jay that for my 36^th birthday, I wanted to meet my siblings.  So in March of 2012 plans were made to meet and visit with them.  I asked my mom to watch the farm for me, so she spent the night.  The house had been cleaned top to bottom, before she came to stay.  As I got in the truck I told her we would be meeting at my siblings mother’s house.  “You’re going to Sandy’s house.  The woman your father left me for,” she said.  I told her yes.  She walked in the house and that would be one of the last conversation she and I would have for 2 ½ years.  I have never heard her call Beau my father at any other time in my life, before or since.

We drove to Texas on a Saturday morning.  We met that afternoon.  Oh I will never forget seeing JM, my baby brother, for the first time.  He just embraced me and would not let me go.  I instantly fell in love with him.  JM stared back at me with the same brown eyes, that I saw every day.  The same ones that so many times in my life I had wanted to ripe out.  No one in my family had brown eyes but me.  But JM did.  I never understood why I am artistic. But JM did, he’s an incredible metal artist and painter.  I just could not physically let go of him.  I felt he would slip away.  My sister Ashley was beautiful, warm, loving, and a really good mom. My sister Elisha and I had history.

When I was a senior in high school Elisha had been having trouble in her life.  She transferred to my school and lived with family.  One of the cousins had warned me that she intended to whoop my ass, because of the way I talked about Beau.  I avoided her at all costs.  She never got a hold of me.  Years later our meeting would be tense, but cordial. 

In later conversations with my siblings I would find that Beau really could have cared less for Elisha and Ashley.  He loved them, but took no interest in their lives. It was JM he lavished attention on.  A cross that JM still caries to this day, that he was more loved by Beau then his sisters were. 

Sandy, Beau’s second wife, was gracious and pleasant to me.  I am not sure that I could have done the same thing in her spot.  I sat and talked with her for a few minutes to show her the few treasured photos I had of Beau.  I also showed her photos of my mother in the hospital.  She never knew.  She told me, she had not known about me, until later in her and Beau’s relationship.  Out of respect for my mother I have had very limited contact with Sandy. 

 I had the best time visiting with my family.  I was coming home, riding on a cloud.  I felt so good.  I could not stop smiling.  My face hurt from smiling so much.  I felt whole for one of the first times in my life.  I got a call from my mom.  I don’t remember what she told me.  She made allusions to the fact that I was with Sandy, and I had better come find somebody else to watch my farm, because she was leaving.  I hung up with her and called Melinda.  It would still be a few hours before I was home. 

Melinda was there when I arrived.  My goats were screaming.  When we looked in on them we found grain on the ground.  I had explained to my mother very clearly that you have to put the grain in their bowls, or they will not eat.  So basically my goats had not eaten in two days.  No wonder they were screaming.  They were starving! 

Punka was lying in a pile of her own piss.  She had obviously not been peed that morning.  There were dirty dishes in my sink, when the dishwasher was empty and magazines thrown about my bedroom floor.  If I had done this in my mother’s home, she would have said that I had “trashed” it.  There was a nasty note taped to my refrigerator.  Basically don’t call me, I’ll call you.  I was devastated.  I sank in the chair and cried.  I don’t care what you do to me, but YOU DON’T EVER FUCK WITH MY ANIMALS!  We took poor Punka, peed her, and bathed her.  Poor child, I have no idea how she was like that. 

It took us a day or two, but we began to notice things that were missing.  Weird things, some things my mother had given me: my red lawn chair and a bag of oranges.  I would not notice the main thing for six months.  My Oma had a large collection of amber.  In Germany it is considered very valuable.  We have large pieces and necklaces that had been passed down in the family.  I wore these pieces in ritual.  My mother knew this.  I thought they were locked in the safe. 

I made a new apron dress, and from it’s hooks I intended to hang my three large strands of amber.  I went looking for them.  I could not find them.  I tore up the house looking for them.  I could not find them.  Finally I put in a call to my father, who I still had a relationship with.  He laughed.  “You just now realized they are gone.  Yeh your mom took them to punish you!”  I wanted to come through the phone and strangle both of them.  I said you need to return them to me now.  You have 24 hours or I will call the cops.  He told me, “No.”  Twenty four hours later I called the cops on her ass.  Oh that shut her up!  Within a few hours one of the three strands was returned to me.  To this day she says she cannot find the other two.  I believe that is a bold faced lie.  Either that or Holda has hid them from her, so she cannot find them.  

My mother stole them from what I call my working altar, where my book of shadows lies.  I still in many ways consider it a hate crime.  Imagine if someone came in to your church and stole your candle sticks off the altar, same kind of thing.  The only reason she did not steal the rest of my amber is it was locked up in the safe. 

I finally called the cops off of her.  Mom said they belonged to her, and I said they belonged to me.  There was no documentation either way.  I begged her to get counseling.  She refused.  She would tell me later that she stole from me because, she was afraid I was going to move in with Sandy and like her better.  What???  I’m a grown ass woman, with a husband, a home, a farm, and animals.  Yes I am going to sell everything and move in with her.  How fucking stupid can you get!  So she decides to hurt me, because she can’t get over her own shit?  Fuck her!  It’s been 35 years!  Give it up and move on!

After she robbed me, we did not speak for 2 ½ years.  We began talking about 9 months ago, two days before her stroke, because I could no longer stand to see my father in such distress over us not speaking.  It is only for my love of him that I do this.  My relationship with my mother is still complex and difficult at times.  I have slipped up and told her that I loved her a few times, since we began speaking again.  I don’t know after what she has done to me, if I will ever really love her again.  I damn sure don’t trust her. 

She has begged me for forgiveness, and tried to explain her actions.  I have told her repeatedly that forgiveness is a Christian concept and one I am not obligated to follow it.  We are our deeds.  She must take culpability for her actions in her life, and how she treats others.  I believe she will never do that.  I had a councilor once tell me that given the father my mother had, it is surprising she learned to love at all.  I learned long ago, the kind of love she gives, I don’t want.

Ilsa

*Beau would tell me years later when I reestablished a relationship with him that, he had felt like I “put him on trial.”  I was very much my mother’s mouth piece.  Beau was the one who avoiding me, Nancy was being protective of him.