Harvard Reunion–no

Well i really blew it. I mean, i did the right thing in tbe end, God showed me this morning what to do and i did it but that doesn’t always make the path easier. My mother has been on a rampage since getting a visitor to heed her tears last week, she literally made a splash and all it is is masturbation, she’s too frigging stupid to understand. She wants to WIN but thats was what this fight cones diwn to, she wants to impose masturbatory will and be right and no one gets it, its been playing like an unsatisfied viola in an eerie symphony all my life, she TOUCHES and it hurts and that upsets her and people feel sorry for HER, she sidles up and presses her body against you, i called on that years ago.

So shes stuck in this place where someone noticed her tears, meanwhile ny reunion tanked, the pressure was too intense and GOD called it off this morning. I couldnt even make it to church i was so psyched out with stress.

Calli g off tbe reunion was a mess. Veruzon has been manipulating my email, i swear its true. They delayed sending my cancellation email, anyway there was a mixup and i have been walking a tight rope with reunion staffers who were providing me with financial addustance and i think i crossed tbe line today but theres nothing i can do except keep moving through the moments and praying to God. Its about pride righr niw and a lot of things are coming out in tbe wash.

Tomorrow is another day.

Harvard Reunion

On a brighter note it looks like i will be able to go to the 35th reunion this year. I havent made it to a single high school or college reunion all my life. I was a regular writer in to the Harvard red book which comes out every 5 years at reunion time for each class. I havent even visited Boston but once after leaving there in flames in 1986. Thats a metaphor.

Wow. It must really be true that i was a Harvard student once. I have no obligations that prevent me from going and if i don’t go this year i never will. Last chance to make good on a lifetime.

Miraculously i have a windfall savings account that permits me to go despite my father’s refusal. Nuf said.

So the dont know im going yet. (My parents.) Makes it just a little tense for me. Ill probably spring it to them on Monday when i have to pay for the reunion event tickets.

Johns Hopkins (pursuant to my last post)

I left out the hospitalization at Johns Hopkins Affective Disorders Unit in 1994. The bothered to send me there (because my husband was involved. That was the story with my MH treatment. After i got married i received treatment where before that i was ignored.)

But they couldnt allow that it was for my sake except insofar as it was a credit to them. That would mean i was “getting attention” which was strictly out of the question. The whole point of ny being there was to get a fresh shot at the diagnosis. They had a already decided what it was and wouldnt take no for an answer. To this day my father is incensed by the doctors dismissive attitude toward him. He had better luck with the second atternding physician, a woman and a Canadian, to whom he passed a “chivalrous” note “oh oh oh i am a gentleman in despair” saying i could not stay with them unless i was on a mood stabilizer. I had just saud something in the public hallway about his tryung ro touch my breast They wanted a diagnosis of manic depression because it includes psychosis but sounds very sympathetic. I didnt want it because it wasnt true. Well at that time that was what i would have said. Today i might accept it if ssomebody sat down with me and teased out that thread if my illness. These days doctors do that. To them it was a question of what it said to them i WASNT. I WASNT sexually abused, i wasnt dangerously deranged, my story about the sexual damage ironically happening twice, once in my childhood and then with the catheter in rhe ICU–which at that time still hung in an aura of unreality–all this was untrue.

So they gave me an antidepressant which.oh so desperately WORKED. I had to accept lithium “for manic depression” to not rock the boat. I cant tell the story of the lithium because its too long and depressing but i will say that i stopped taking it when i furst got out of tbe hospital. The anti depressant was WORKING. It was a MIRACLE. It takes that long to work. And lithium helps depression as well as the manic phase. I had bern sufferring from SERIIUS MAJOR depression for the second tjme in my life. But my mother didnt have tbe grace to acknowledge that this could be true, did not support me, was preoccupued with the final phases of my sisters court hearings of the man who shot her in the foot and didnt even remember my birthday.

The casualty here is my son. Flash forward to Maryland, few months later and i lost it.

“Who What When Where Why How! Wh am i Where am i What am i now!”

I handed my son to my mother. They took me from the townhouse screaming

I understand my mother was dealing with a lot, my father had had a minor stroke just after my son was born.

Jesus saves.

Horse

Im finally getting it all figured out. My life in my family since i was 28 years imd has been dictated entirely by tbe death if my sister’s horse. This is exactly as crazy as it sounds. They got a backhoe to BURY HER ON THE PROPERTY. (The horse, not my sister.) (Did i mention we draw water here from the ground?) The horse was a pretty, grey, Arab mare, she was 20 or 21. My sister had a little girl fantasy relationship with her, she wanted to breed her even though she was so old and had never foaled before.

As i write i see the part of this i didnt see then. I was living here with them, my sister had gone away to college leaving her horse here. I was sardonic, diseased, fresh out of the state hospital, crudely damaged. They were muddling around, my mother and father, not knowing what to do. I gather gave them the common sense advice NOT to show up in MASSACHUSETTS (we are un PA) unannounced without stopping for dinner. So they went to Friendlys and had a nice time. Then they called her and told her and she was hysterical i gather, i was in my little room without a door and my mother came in, said sonething–I dont remember what, and turned on her heel and walked out. She hasnt stopped punishing me and siding with my sister ever since. Its been 32 YEARS.

I remember that when we (my ex and i) came back from Callornia) i couldnt figure them, i knew there wss something in the pipeline thst i wasnt getting and THIS IS WHAT IT WAS. I had a sick baby and was sick myself and needed all kinds of help. My brother was on this crazy/desperate project if building his own house in the Hamptons. So my sister got shot in the foot by a mentally ill man outside a club in the city near here and guess who got frozen out? It is literally making me sick to my stomach to remember all this.

Ive been living in a dream all this time. My mother punished me. I had a mother cat and her four kittens. After the mare died, my mother sent one of the (grown) kittens to the back road. Sbes uncanny like that. He got killed. “He’s been missing for 3 days” she said to me. The next day she told me she had found his remains on the road. She looked at me quizzically. It hit me very badly and i git stuck on it. She let it sit there without an iota of comfort and she knew exactly what she was doing. Then i met my ex husband: a Scottish man from the Clan of the Cat. Thus has other “cat” antecedencies that i wont go into here but in tbe end all I need to know us that Jesus saves and she didnt need to hurt me and my SON that way.

This is one piece of fabric in a larger clorh that is sowly unfolding. Ther was a knot in the weave from 31 years ago that was marring and stopping things that has finally come undone (through incessant prayer.)

Allelujah!

Amen.

So anyway my sister acted like an unbelieavable smartass to me during my state hospital days when i was desperate, i forgave her for this but i wasnt disposed to protect her about her horse, where was their common sense in handling this situation? It eould be nice if i could say that my heart was a stone and that i didnt have any feelings back then and it took me all this time to learn, but i dont see them meetung me half way. What about their behaviour towards me, the little girl who was handicapped becasuse of being kneed in the crotch by my brother? What about me, who had to run away to college because i was afraid to be at home with my father?

And the beating. My mother got hurt. WHAT ABOUT ME?

Did nobody even for a moment think to go back and inquire WHY that young woman on tbe gurney in the ER was kicking the air and screaming her lungs out uncontrollably? WHAT ABOUT ME? I almost died. All rhey saud was, “You assaulted your mother.” Which wasnt true. It wasnt an assault. It wasnt an asssult. That’s not true. It was a lie. My faher lied. Im sorry Mom. I didnt mean to hurt you. I got hurt myself. Nobody knew. Now i know. Now everybody knows.

Allelujah.

Amen.

My Weight

I remember despairing down in St. Petersburg, Florida, when i heard somebody say on the radio they just had to “lose weight and quit smokimg.” Thzt was what it came down to.

I dont want to dismay my reader with a report of my weight except to say that for a long time it has been quite high. After my son was born i got put on some crazy bad weight gain meds and put on 50 pounds. Twice i lost the weight and then put it back on again. Twice it shot up over 200 and i couldnt cut my toenails. My son had a fat mom. It drove me crazy. I was in unreality over it. I had been crazy into dieting when i was young, my mother started me on it when i was 12 and chubby, the doctor told her that if i went into puberty chubby id stay that way. So instead, i went into puberty dieting and i stayed that way. My weight was always up or down, never the same. It was a problem, an obsesession, it was OCD.

Anyway, my weight has been creeping down for months and i havent really noticed but all of a sudden i made the connection: at the extended acute care unit i was broken of the cigarette addiction, there was just no way out of it, and now the weight is going: im turning Catholic! Jesus is doing this for me.

So at a certain point you get your priorities in order and thats what it comes down to: lose weight and quit smoking.

Im keeping busy, working nerves and musckes and sinews that havent been exercised in 30 years. I weigh 161. Im worried that when it comes down to it i wont be able to STOP losing weight. I have to trust that its a positive process and that it really is Jesus working in my life.

Meanwhike everything else is coming out in the wash. I was afraid to pray for weight loss, it was too painful an issue. No natter what i did the weight just wouldnt go. My mother was heavy throughout my youth and i hated how she let that harm things. Finally i accepted the weight and this was liberating. The Hollwood ideal was silly in the end. I just went to shave my legs in my mother’s shower so that i can wear a dress to church tomorrow, which brought an association of weight loss with sexuality– the scale is in her bathroom, thats where i had just weighed myself. But, my ex-usband told me not to tell (lol!): sex with a wonan who has a little weight on her frame feels good.

Hell Month

April–Hell month–is finally over. It spilled over into today: i had the apex of Hell month on Monday, the 30th, wben i saw my lawyer in the morning, after doing bloodwork first thing, then a yearly appointment with my PCP to catch up on this Hell Year-and-a-half of continuous hospitalization+boarding home. It was the 1s t time i had seen her since the suicide attempt. Then i had three important phone calls. Then i was on the computer in a panic for the rest of the day finally figuring out how to get a screen shot for something financial that the lawyer needed.

Tuesday i took it on myself to make public assistance applications and do a few other things online that i cant mention that took hours.

In the meantime im fighting with my mother all day lo g and trying to follow the presence of my son. All day long im dealing with his cats, who i love but he controls them and also my mother demonically possesses them, so im constantly looking out for misplaced behavior, it drives me crazy. Im always reminded that by being kind to them im helping my son. As a rule i wouldnt have a pet at this time in my life, but i dont mind taking care if them for now.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (today) i had appointments. Now im kicking back and realizing its finally over. The big push to get settled here is finished, the boundaries are more or less established, i have the mony i need. My medical care is established. My Catholic Education has begun and i have been welcomed at the Catholic Church. It all took a month and 5 days. It has been scary and it has felt dangerous but the Lord has been with me and he wouldnt leave me here without a plan. He has taken over my waking up, which became treacherous on the extended acute care unit for 8 months: vital signs 6 am meds breakfast menus and meds: hurry up and wait oh, and bloodwork.

Here i can sleep in, or set an alarm. But the cats want to be fed. Here its pets, smoke tea and lay out my meds, it all depends on me.

Ill let God help me take it step by step.

Holy blessed name of the Lord

Then during the rest of the day first there are early morning prayers first thing. But after i smoke. Then, the Rosary during the day, then stretches from my physicsl therapist, now, as of today’s appointment, a ten minute breathing exercise. Then 8 to 9 cigarettes spread out through the day. This is the really big thing.

I actually have broken the smoking habit

I smoke outside only, 1 every 1 1/2 hours. I dont desire any more. The 8 months on the acute care unit broke me. Its beautiful. I am in possession of my life again instead of in possession if a pack of cigarettes. That was my first prayer request when i went to the Catholic radio prayer request line in South Florida. To be able to quit smoking. In the meantime everything else has gotten answered and now all i really want is Jesus .

In the mean time my whole fay is filled up with OCD but in the LORD there is the promise of redemption and that he will lead me out of it or to somewhere, its all going on as we speak.

Hallelujah

Amen

Continuing prayers for me and my son.

Pride

Reading C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity.” It is an absolutely fabulous book. In it i find ALL my father’s faith and life issues laid out (he has agreed to read it when im done) and my faith life is laid out on the table like a dissected frog. I just read the chapter on Pride as the deadliest sin and boy am i blown away.

READ THIS BOOK

Lewis is writing in postwar England (WWII) which is wbere i was coming from most of my life. It is freedom to read this book, its like the song “killing me softly with his song” which i heard the day i got my first kiss from a graduating Guatemalan gentleman at my boatdibg school in Connecticut, freshman year, 1979. I didnt know what it meant. The following year he returned on Alumni Day and i left the dance where i was waiting for my boyfriend to return from the Cross Country meet, to go with him, the Guatemalan. Nobody wanted to date me after that.

I was dufferent. I was Britush and foreign like him. That turned into a very painful e perience if pride which NOBODY understood and in fact i was ridiculed for my straight A’s down in the boys campus. Then i got into Harvard, and that would have helped me to find my place but my Dad ruined it by upsetting my MOTHER’s pride wben he lost it and tried to touch me, here i am almost 40 years later trying to figure out the paradigm . I want to make it a novel.