My Mom The Deceiver (Part 4)

From the Webster Dictionary:: Enabler: One that enables another to achieve an end. ESPECIALLY one who enables another to persist in self destructive behaviour (as in substance abuse or (my addition) abuse towards others) by providing excuses or by making it possible for that person to avoid the consequense of that behaviour".
Ug...My father LOVED using the word. Consequense and the word OBEY. He once told me I should obey, just like our DOG did. He said he kicked the dog when the dog didn't obey. Nice comparison.

My mother was ALWAYS making excuses for my father. She was his enabler.. The night I almost died she told the cops that we both had "The same temperment" (My councilor gave me a copy of the officers report) from what one of my sisters said, when my dad beat me, the cops showed up and dad would end up on the floor, trying to make it look as if I had been the one whaling on him, not the other way around. Honesty wasn't important at my house. Only deceit. You could get away with anything as long as you had a good excuse. I never was very good at deceit. I always said things like I saw them.. But then again, I was never very good at defending myself. I never had the chance to even learn HOW. I wasn't left alone long enough.

After Jr high  into the second year of high school the bullying at school became almost non existant (At least at school cause I finally stood up for myself, If you haven't heard about that  look up  "Bullies SUCK! Or the Ugly Duck That Turned Into A Swan"  in my April blogs) I also had Jennie- The story of me n Jenn is coming up soon) but the bullying continued at home. In my moms journal she talks about "The little wild thing Heidi had become" but what about her husband?? (My dad told Ava once when she asked why he beat me that "She was out of control". What...for EATING?) The only mention of his MANY beatings from  my mother was "Heidi went at it and so did her dad" in ONE place in the journal.  and she couldn't even tell the truth about the order of it!

 My sister Ava said that the only "wild little creature " she saw was the freak she saw sitting on top of me harming me. He was not human at all"

I believe that story more. I LIVED it.

What I am gathering here makes me think of Cinderella. (DAMN! Wheres my GOWN!:p) My mom was like the wicked step mother..All nice to my face when others were around, and at lots of  times to me when we were alone, but a whole different creature behind my back. My sister Lillian is a lot like her, all sweet as honey, one way one minute, another the next, two faced. I suppose thats why Lillian was her favorite. It was Betrugerin (I can't believe I havent' put up a name for her yet- it fits...look up what it means in German...thought it fit since I had to change her name.) in miniature. She is just as deceptive as my mom is. My mom always gave her the best of everything she had, she still does. Lillian got to drive the car, long after she was a teenager. I didn't. When my mom got some really pretty patterned stonewear dishes. Guess who got first pick? Lillian. And she still gets money from my mom, and groceries. I'm sure it helps a lot, but its my moms way of keeping people on her apron strings. She actually did bring me groceries when I was first married, I am guessing she was doing the same thing.

BUT...Not everyone talks to my parents in my family. Theres good reason.

When I got married my mom said "don't come live with me, and I won't take care of your kids, I'm not a babysitter" Honestly, I didn't want her advice on children and NO WAY was I ever going to live with her after I got married! SO...oh daaaaaaaaaarn..I missed that chance! hey, my kids could have ended up messed up too! Thanks for the non offer....NO thanks!

 mom took care of  Lillians kids all their childhood, all day as kids, and through high school. At one point they even lived so close the kids could just go in to the house through my parents back yard. In all honesty, I would never have wanted the same thing. I would be afraid one of my kids would be molested or who knows what by my dad. One of Lillians girls has said she thinks she was molested so thank GOD I got them out of my life.

I have given my husband and daughter permission to go there but supervised. I haven't gone for 10 years. When my daughter visited when she got  older she actually found a HOLE in their bathroom wall that if you stood at the other end you could see into the bathroom. She called me frantic about it. But she stuffed the hole with a rag when she was in the bathroom. Shes 19 now and I have told her what I know about my parents,but she says that she just wants to go to see "Oma".  (Grandma in German)I don't understand it,I have told her how I feel about how deceptive they are, and the hole proves that hes as big a pervert as I thought he was, but she is deturmined to see my mom so what can this mom do?

The hole is really creepy. Years ago I was there, USING THAT SAME BATHROOM.  Did he have his own private little peep show? It makes me shudder to think about it, But since that part of my life is over, I choose to look forward without him getting anwhere near me.

On that happy note...going back to the story ...

I hate to say my sisters were like the wicked step sisters, but they were GROOMED by my father to be the way they were towards me. Not only were they groomed by my father, they were groomed by my mother too. I had NO ally. No one to have my back. I was desperately and utterly ALONE..

There were times Lillian would pick on me and then get my parents. (Lauren and Ava wouldn't always get mom and dad, they tried to AVOID them, though not always.)and Lillian was going to school, being driven by my mom, but NOT driving me. When she was in the house right before mom drove here Lillian told me to turn down the radio, like she was the parent or something. Why would she do that right before she left? She wouldn't be hearing the radio anyway. Just to get me in trouble, thats why. Mom took away the radio and she went out the door with it, Lillian smugly in tow, on the way to the car where LIllain, was getting a ride, but I wasn't.

My parents were so cheap when it came to cars that when I slammed the car door shut because I was mad, the handle actually came off .:p

Too bad I didn't hold the handle for ransom so I could get my radio back.:p

As retribution for her taking the radio I consoled myself by going to Marissas room, got HER radio and bounced it down the stairs as I  dragged it by the cord to my room..:p

If I got to do anything (I was grounded so much! As my sister Ava said...they would ground at their whim) its becasue I disobeyed and ran off. I ran off once to get to my friend Amy's (She was in Jr high) birthday party. My dad threw his wallet  FULL of keys at me. I remember it was a LOT of keys.Why did he have like 50 keys or more in a wallet? (That is a question in itself. What were they to?) I don't get that. He threw it at my head to stop me. I STILL remember the kaCHING sound it made as it hit my head with full force. It was SO painful!  I was stunned, it hurt SO bad. I couldn't even function. I stopped and got dragged back into the house to who knows WHAT punishment.  I never made it to that party.

I do know this. My friends felt sorry for me. One time Amy and Julie (They lived a long ways away but a lot of times I walked there) were off to get pizza and I was grounded, AGAIN. I was at home, really sad, when the doorbell rang. My friends had gone off to get pizza, and had decided to come all that way to bring somepizza  back to ME. That was an act of kindness I'll never forget. I actually have a piece of the pizza box in my old journal.

 Every once in a while,just when I thought I was drowning,.God threw me a life line. I think he wanted me to know that I WASN'T ALONE. Now I understand.

The Miracle Worker

I am absolutely floored to find out what a GOOD counselor can do.

That the healing it involves can change you, mentally AND physically. I had NO idea how much.

When I moved from my old stomping grounds in the Seattle area to our new house, I knew that my house here had been one of those "God" things. Where you know, the minute you see it, that it’s destined to be your house and you look up at the sky saying, "REALLY"? This beautiful house?? THIS is for me?

God is too kind. He always has been.

Even when I didn’t see it.

I had no idea that God was leading me, mercifully, thankfully, to this amazing, gentle soul of a woman who has already, in this short time, completely changed my life.

What a glaring difference from the woman who was my "mother" (So called) who told us (Taken from my sister Ava’s book "Other People's Messes- This amazing book is on Amazon, by the way) http://www.amazon.com/Other-Peoples-Messes-riches-ebook/product-reviews/B004P1J268/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btmie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending ) That we should "Never go into counseling. They're all crazy and they never make any money".

I had thought that there was no way I could go get counseling. Not with the new house, all the expenses and everything else that comes with being a new home owner. BUT I had counseling a while back, and I thought I had some money coming back from insurance, so I called the insurance company to try to get the money. It was around $200 or so, I had paid out of my own pocket and they STILL hadn’t paid me back.

The woman I talked to told me that unless I called the counselor and got proof that she faxed all the info was there from payment, I wouldn’t get anything. So I called my old counselors office, and they got the ball rolling.

Just as I was about to hang up, I had a thought.

I said

“Do you have the names of the EMDR counselors in the area”? (If you don't know what it is, look it up...amazing therapy)

She said she’d get back to me, and I got a message, giving me the good counselors in the area.

Sooooo…I called the insurance company, AGAIN, said everything was going to them. And then I asked about the counselors, saying I probably couldn’t go because we were still paying for the house and couldn’t afford it. She looked them up and then said “You know, one of these counselors is paid by your insurance 80 percent”. I had heard at most, 60% was paid for. This could be do-able!  After all the nightmares, all the, “I wonder why’s”, all the questions that seemingly had no answers over the years I had the chance to go to counseling. But I was apprehensive.  Scared even. And yet something told me I would be ok.

The day I walked up to her office door by her home, I was terrified. Would she believe me? Would it just be another person who had no clue and discounted everything that I felt?

As the weeks went by, Things started to come together, like the answers that I had been waiting for were falling into place. I can’t say I wasn’t still scared, I was TERRIFIED.

There was a time when I first started going to her that she asked me about my sister Lauren, who had been the second most violent to me while I was growing up, and she asked me if it had been the regular kind of tussles that siblings go through.

I froze, and suddenly, I felt like that scared little kid at home that  had tripped all over her words;  like I was outside myself banging on the door to my brain, but no one was there…:p It was paralyzing.

That day when I went home, I had an idea;  to bring my blogs, and the part of my sisters book that talked about my father stalking her, and the court case that ensued, and tell her, through my blogs, and my sister’s court case what kind of monster my father really was. Suddenly, as I was reading, I could focus.

I wasn’t scared anymore. I let the words do the work for me.

My sister’s words were easier for me to read than my own.  Which got me to the point where I finally COULD read my “Unbreakable”  book that I’m working on to her without falling apart.

As I was reading my sisters account on the court case with my father, it seemed something started to click. With her and with me.  It felt that she was really starting to understand how mentally ill my father is. The one thing she had to say about my father and the crazy things he was saying in the court case with my sister was. ... with a fire in her eyes she said;

“Your father has NO idea how sick he really is”.

Finally, VALIDATION!

This is a woman, who listened to my blogs and even listened to my blog about spiders.:p (Some of you have read that blog http://songsofaletheia.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-do-spiders-like-me.html) This is what my counselor calls my "Random Abstract" personality moment...more like moments ha)  comes in:p) on the very same day that I saw her take a spider (that had decided to crawl right towards me, of course ) on a piece of paper and in her gentle way, gingerly, kindly, took it outside like it was a china doll (Ok, an 8 legged china doll…lol)) and let it go. Then she taught me some techniques that really work for fear. So any time I see a spider, I do these techniques and the fear goes away. (Here is the book for the techniques if your curious...it really works. Shes been doing this with people for years. http://www.amazon.com/Tapping-Healer-Within-Thought-Field-Instantly/dp/0809298805/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354920239&sr=8-1&keywords=tapping+the+healer+within#_ )

Hey, maybe someday I’ll be able to do what SHE did with a spider.

One session  I told her that pretty much every night, I woke up gasping for air because my airways kept closing up during the night. I literally could not breathe, and waking up that way thinking I might die was horrifying. It would happen even when I was laying on my side. Sometimes 2 or 3 times a night. It was so bad that I would stay awake afterwords for hours, scared that it would happen again. I couldn't go back to sleep. My counselor told me that I probably had sleep apnea and that someday that would not happen anymore. That it happened because I had been choked by my father, that’s WHY it was happening. From THAT day, it started to happen less and less, until now I hardly ever have it happen.

I had an epiphany today. It was so monumental to me that I sat up in bed at 6:30 in the morning and had to go here right away and put the date, time and year. Holy CRAP. It is amazing to me how things come together when your mind is in the right place. (Asleep? lol...hah:p) Today (6:30 December 5th 2012) I realized something that I think is monumental. I think the reason I felt that way when its happened, even though my airways really did close up, is that when my father WAS choking me, I WAS literally dying. When it happened, it was that old "invisible" hands around my throat, that SAME familiar, mind blowing, freeezing in place,terrifying, there's nothing I can do about it feeling, that I'm dying and theres NOTHING I can do. It goes further for me BECAUSE I stopped breathing when my father choked me. (If you haven't read about when that happened, this is one of the first blogs I wrote...THIS is what happened http://songsofaletheia.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-do-you-do-when-u-stop-breathing.html) When it does happen now I do what she told me to do…shake my head a few times, and now if it happens, my airways instantly clear up. Isn't that how life is anyway? Sometimes you have to shake yourself to wake yourself up, no matter what is going on in your life. The difference for me is now, that 16 year old  that gave my father the power he didn't deserve, has taken that power AWAY. It is GONE. That sick bastard has no power over me anymore.

I told my counselor that day waking up gasping for air hardly happens anymore. She said  that the REASON it doesn’t happen anymore, is because FINALLY someone is listening to me.

FINALLY Somebody who GETS it.

Someone who has my back.

 I think I’ll call her “The miracle worker”.:)