My Near Death Experience

The last EMDR (Eye movement desensitization reprogramming therapy) session I had with my counselor was on my father strangling me. The vision in my head of it then, is so different from what it is now. 

I loved to dance. I still do.

Back then my best friend Jennie and I would go tearing down the road in the middle of winter in what we called our “slidey shoes” whipping down the side roads that were covered in ice. She would pull me down the road like a racehorse, both of us giggling like a couple school girls… then I would pull her…I’m sure there were times that we played “crack the whip” …kind of like you do in roller skating days back…and I’m sure the both of us ended up flat on our backs on the road laughing like a couple of crazy teenage girls. What a memory. We’d go racing down the hill fast as we could to get to the galleria. A dance place that no matter what the weather was like outside, there you could let off steam.

 One weekend they had an all-night party at the Gallereia all the way into the wee hours of the morning. Jenn and I were the last to leave. We were there till 7 am!

But this is not that memory. There’s nothing happy about it.

The night I came home from dancing and tried to sneak Spaghetti out of the fridge.

In my house eating after 10 was a cardinal sin.  You ate after 10 am for breakfast or 10 pm for dinner you were in trouble. That I almost died for eating is laughable. It doesn’t make any sense. But in my parents’ house, nothing made sense.

Many times before, when he beat me, I would pass out. I know what passing out feels like. Many times over.

Everything goes black. When my dad hit my head against the wall and I passed out, I was not coherent and not hearing anyone till I came to.

One week before I almost died, I had a gym class where they had taught self-defense.  I had thought at the time that maybe I could finally fight him off.  I learned the techniques. I realize now how sad that is, that I even had to feel that way.

I remember opening the fridge because I was hungry and the next thing I knew, I was staring into the angry eyes of my father.

He started to attack me, and I did the first thing I could think of that they had told us to do with an attacker.

I grabbed at the softest part of his body parts, if you get my drift.

That took a hell of a lot of guts for me. Usually, when he attacked me, I would go completely limp. Like someone who had just given up. Like a prize fighter who realizes they have just lost a fight and all the light goes out of their eyes.

But I should not have had to feel like a prize fighter. I should have been allowed to be a kid.

I should have been allowed to eat, damn it.

Instead, any time I went the least bit out of what THEY thought was out of line, (Eating for instance) I got beaten into submission.

I swatted weakly at my father, who now had his hands around my throat.

I was looking up into the face of a mad man, completely out of control. It didn’t even look like him to me; it looked like a man possessed, someone alien to me, this red faced, spitting monster with his hands so tight around my throat. It felt like he wanted to will me out of existence with his bare hands.

Suddenly everything went black.  I stopped struggling because it didn’t hurt anymore.

I didn’t feel his hands around my neck and I didn’t have to struggle to breathe anymore. And strangely, there was peace. I have never felt anything like it in this life.

There was chaos all around me. One of my sisters told me my face was blue.  I could still feel myself there even though I was gone. I could hear EVERYTHING going on around me. I had a heightened sense of awareness even. And I could hear my mother yelling “You killed her”!!! And though I was trying to move to let them know that they were wrong that no, I was still alive, I couldn’t move.  Which led me to believe, maybe I wasn’t  breathing. All I could think was…huh….I’m not breathing. It doesn’t hurt anymore.

All around me there was chaos.

All I could see was blackness, but there was an indescribable love. Pure, unadulterated love that just flowed through me. Told me everything would be ok, that even though I wasn’t breathing, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was love. Everything that I had felt was in the past.

I have heard people who have had near death experiences say that they felt that love and weren’t worried.

I wasn’t worried.

One woman even said that when she was in a car accident and lost a daughter she felt that love. As she was walking down a corridor with her little one, that little one kept walking to the end of the corridor without her and she knew it was ok to let her daughter go.

That feeling she had is what I believe I felt.  It was ok to let go because she felt that love. She felt that peace and she was able to let go.

I was able to feel that love. I was enveloped in it. I knew it. It was familiar. Everything else didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that love. I was held in it. Cradled in it.

It was like God held me in his hands. I was held by love. Telling me that despite it all, he has always been the one in control.

People talk about that darkness before they go through the tunnel.

I think I didn’t go “far enough down the rabbit hole” to see that tunnel.

Suddenly I gasped

I felt the air suddenly fill my lungs and I was back.

When I got up, my mother gasped. The whole family stared at me like they saw a ghost.

Nobody said a word.

The only thing I could think of, in that awkward moment was “I had to get a drink of water”.

My throat was on fire. For at least a week afterwords, I was hoarse. It was hard to talk.

Out of habit, and out of a feeling of after that experience, I desperately wanted comfort.

So I walked to the sink, and picked up a tiny red plastic cup that I had been using since childhood. When I was little I would beg my mother to get me water from that cup. Whwn I was little I always thought it "tasted" better when she filled it. It must have been so annoying for her to fill it soooo many times because it was a tiny cup. BUT, she would fill it over and over for me.

I realized that I had so many eyes on me, but that I was totally alone. 

I filled up that cup on my own this time.

I took a sip, and this intense, burning hatred just welled up in me. 

Such a different feeling as compared to where I had just been.

I just couldn’t stand it anymore.  I threw the cup, water and all at my father.

Terrified,but full of rage after what my father had done to me, I ran down the stairs to the bathroom and  slammed the door shut. He tore after me down the stairs and, as usual, shoved the door to the downstairs bathroom right over my foot.

 Usually after he beat me he’d come in and force me to let him clean me up, which was even more humiliating.  THIS time, he came right in and started in on me again. Bam bam bam…my blood from my nose going everywhere…

Next thing I knew, our neighbor was standing in the doorway of the bathroom. I have NO idea how she got into the house.

“GEORGE!!!” She screamed.

What happened after that was a whirlwind of police, going to the police station, questions, answers, and a terrified 16 year old girl, cracking jokes and pretending to be ok when inside I wished I really WAS dead so I didn’t have to go back to who knows what punishment.

My sister said that one other time I was choked, but I don’t remember.  Ava called the cops, or tried to. He stopped strangling me and said to her “What are you doing!”  To which she said “What am I doing?? Look what YOUR doing!” And he stopped.

After that incident, the phone was always dead. No one could call the cops whenever I was being abused. Which I have said before is a strange, STRANGE coincidence. (Did my father take it off the hook before he beat me? Or did my mother do it?) My sister Lauren had to desperately run to the neighbor’s house 3 doors down to finally call the cops on the day I almost died.

That God that  is out there had my life in their hand and didn't end it speaks volumes to me. 

In my mind God CHOSE not to end it. I had so much left to learn.

My life had only JUST begun.

Mom, the pandoras box and EMDR on my father bringing me to a mental hospital

I did EMDR today on my father bringing me to a mental hospital to scare me, and was feeling pretty enthused about writing about it today, till somebody I know called and said my mother called her.  

Instantly my “Danger” antennae went up.

In December my mother had tried to send a package full of old pictures, things I would rather forget , and she told somebody done somebody wrong song (Ok, its getting harder every time to think up a name:P and I am in a silly mood:P) that it somehow got sent to my old address.

That the truth is my mother really DOES know my new address is a whole other big ball a big freakin wax.

I have gotten birthday cards, Mother’s day cards, my husband’s birthday cards. AT MY NEW ADDRESS.

She used to send me these sappy, full of things to try to manipulate me cards, but when she realized that didn’t work, now she just sends cards to my husband for his birthday. Things like “To a wonderful Son In Law” and when my daughter lived at home “To a Wonderful Granddaughter”. On each card.

Ok. I get it. She’s trying to tell me I suck. For a lot of people in a normal family situation this would be hard to understand. Its her way of trying to manipulate me.

Well who’s harassing who?(And with a husband who has a restraining order against him, she’s learned from a master, I am really honestly sad to say.)  I told her she’s going to get a cease and desist letter the next time she harassed me in a text message when I realized after all these years, I still have her cell phone #.

She thinks I’m kidding?  Wait till she gets the letter!

So if that package sent in December to my old address never got to me she said to she who shant be named that  “years of photographs would be lost”. Boo hoo. Big deal. That’s a part of my life that I’d rather forget. What, was I supposed to feel bad?

Pictures of me and my so called “dad” that I don’t have to look at? Nooooot a problem.:)

Again, now I hear suddenly from someone who now will remain completely nameless that my mother called, that after 3 months that mysteriously, the people who have the package at my old address called my mother, wanting the package to get to the right place.  I don’t even know if that’s true. (But I CAN get in contact with the people who live at my old house and find out.)

So, when my husband got home from work and found out about the call from my mother to she who I will not name (SHe didn't ask me to make her nameless but I am realizing her name on this page isn't a good thing and I want to protect her) about the package, he said “Let’s go to the old house and find out RIGHT now if it’s true or not that they called her. Then you’ll know if they called your mother, or if she’s lying”.

Well I found out that it IS true, (when I went  to the old address we had lived at) they called, ( I also told the people there the entire situation so my mother or father can NEVER snow them again…good heck… my parents are STILL trying to control me…and this time through complete strangers????Who live in my old house? What the FRAK????)

So… they DID call my mother, but there’s a catch.

  When I went to our old house, the people who now lived there gave me a letter they had opened from my mother that said “Current resident”.  My mother sent a letter to that address with a sob story about how “her daughter has decided to estrange herself (Nice word mommie dearest!) from us”.  I saw my mother had written down their phone # too, and MY NEW address, which I already knew she had . This just proves that she lied to this mystery person about them just calling her. My mother instigated the whole thing. WITH COMPLETE STRANGERS.

I ripped up the letter up before I read anything else.  They (The people who lived there) gave the pictures to me but the entire box is sitting smoldering in my garden.

Hey, at least it can put some good stuff in the soil and feed my plants instead of dragging me
down. It’s an old part of my life. I have moved on.

NOW...
Not long ago, someone wrote on this blog saying that someone "told my mother to write to the "current resident". This person said she told me that, but I remember what she told me. That fact didn't even enter the conversation.

Whether she is telling the truth or not there is only one thing that really matters. My MOTHER involved complete strangers telling them her daughter was "estranged", gave them their phone # of all things to talk to those complete strangers about her estranged daughter. WHY??? Because my mother IS chaos. SHE is the one who sent the letter. No one forced her.

My mother the detective.

She always SO prided herself on being one. But when the family gave me the package and letter, I now knew the WHOLE story. Some detective she is…

So, I have her caught red handed lying to she who can't be named (Ok they didn't ask to be nameless but again...I'm trying to be creative- and protect them)... Again…now I have PROOF. She LIED. I guess I could look at it as mother conveniently left out that she wrote them a letter instigating the whole thing.

Yee haw! Monster Mama on the loose! Mommie dearest to the rescue!:p

She just can’t let this go!

When I was young she told me that I would be the one to take care of her and that I would never leave her alone. Spoon fed brainwashing. That’s what that was.

I have said before that they are chaos and where there isn’t any, they create it. No thanks. I have a pretty peaceful life…until they wham bam themselves smack dab into a life that’s NOT theirs to get into.

Well guess what? My so called parents can stay in their own little dust devil until the big ol wad of dust settles and she revs herself up again! Damn woman!! Good heck. You’d think my life was a soap opera.

Nope, Never again.

Burn baby burn.

Well at least this isn’t as bad as exploding rolls. Lol (Ok…I’m trying  to make light of a crappy situation…lol)

Is it NORMAL for a father to bring his daughter to a MENTAL hospital??

Funny…writing about my experiences doesn’t wear me out like it used to. 

The only thing holding me back sometimes is laziness. And I know I’m not lazy, it’s just getting up the gumption to write it all, if I think about it too much and analyze it to death, I can talk myself right out of doing it. I have too much going through my head. 

An artist whos working on my kids book to talk to and make sure I pay, and THIS "Unbreakable" book to work on, and food to cook,(All organic, and made by me, thank you:) and guitar to play, piano to learn, and french and spanish, and songwriting to do, And my Nia training I'm getting ready to do to become a Nia instructor (AMAZING dance/martial Arts/and healing arts classes- A teacher there who teaches Nia recommended me for a scholarship!) , And flowers to look at, and running off to chase butterflies…(so to speak) la de da de daaaaa…

Makes me think of a book, a “Spell for Chameleon”, (by Piers Anthony) where there are actual “bumble “bees… if they catch your attention, they make you bumble off the path and before you know it, you’re totally and completely LOST.

My problem is sometimes, I don’t even know where to start. 

So it might take me a bit longer to get everything that’s jumbled up in my head straightened out to where I can put it on paper (or the computer)

AWARENESS.

Without it, we can become so skewed.  We can become SO wrapped up in what is all around us, that we can’t see what’s right in front of our face.

 I could sit for an entire day psycho analyzing myself, but unless I’m really, truly aware, I can miss what’s important.

What parent starts out life with a child thinking they are going to beat a child?
( I learned that from Brad Yates, the tapping guru;  (Look him up, hes on YouTube)  as I sat in on one of his seminars)

Whether someone believes it or not, it’s a conscious choice to hurt someone. 

What we say, what we do. Monkey see…monkey do. We may not be so far from primates after all.:p

 In the end everything that has to do with our well being is ultimately up to us, no matter what our circumstance. 

Yes other people can be ridiculous, can be cruel, and can be abusive but the difference is, WHAT are we willing to do to get ourselves OUT of it? 

A child doesn’t have a choice. But an adult who should be protecting that child DOES. (Whether the person abusing them tries to make them feel powerless or not) 

It all comes down to this. Am I going to allow myself to be powerless? Am I going to let someone hurt; maim or kill my child, or even myself? 

Do I really feel THAT worthless that I allow myself to be powerless? 

It IS a conscious CHOICE. Period. 

Whether leaving means that our financial situation is seriously screwed or not, what will happen to our children? Sometimes I think were so worried about ourselves that our children become 2^nd. With how precious our children really are, we forget that they should be first when it it comes to their well being.  

As long as they are living with us at least. 

Yes, you need to take care of yourself first to be able to take care of the child, but you get my drift, right?

There are NO excuses.

A child has no choice. 

But we are not children anymore.

I am learning that I have been stuck in child mode for far, FAR too many years.

Sure, the me looking out from behind these eyes LOOKS like an adult, but until I faced those issues that have haunted me like the old monsters in the closet, that little kid is just waiting to jump out at me, grabbing at my clothes, screaming, crying, throwing a GIANT fit.

Throwing herself back, like so many kids do, EXPECTING someone to be there to catch that fall. 

Problem is, we have to be the one there to catch ourselves and we can’t be two places at once, no matter how  good we women (In my case anyway) tend to think we are at multitasking.:P

When I go to these EMDR sessions, that child, hesitantly timidly pokes her head out as if to see if it’s really ok to show herself.

For some reason, through all these sessions, I’ve hardly cried at all. The last session I went through I realized I keep feeling like I should be bawling my eyes out, but I’m not.

My counselor told me to ask the little girl inside why she is afraid of crying…

I think it’s because she’s afraid she may never stop.

So, what parent starts out life with a child thinking they are going to beat that child?

Whether they believe it or not, it’s a conscious choice.

I don’t think, in my child’s mind, I realized my father had a CHOICE.

It was up to him, NOT his child, to decide for him how he would treat her.

All I wanted was an out. 

Most kids won’t admit it, but what they are begging for, DYING for, is LOVE. It’s behind what everyone ultimately in the world wants. Behind fear, behind anger, beyond anything else, is that so many times unspoken word. LOVE.  It’s all we really, ultimately want.

When I think about what I should have gotten as a child from my father, behind the anger, behind the pain, the being scared, and all the unfairness I felt as a child was one thing.

A child’s birthright should be, plain and simple:

LOVE.

That I didn’t get it wasn’t my fault. That my father couldn’t give it isn’t my fault. He didn’t have it to give.

I see kids on Fathers day. I saw my daughter with my husband on Fathers day. Not afraid to give him a hug, kids throwing themselves at their fathers with an abandon that I was never allowed. 

I was like a bird in a cage stuck in a coal mine, any minute could be my last.

 Every time I see kids around a dad that so obviously loves them, I ‘m more than a little jealous. I have a hard time not tearing up even. I’m happy for them but sad for myself.

I never had that.

WHY couldn’t I have one of those dads?

You know, the kind that PROTECTED me.

That he was not capable of it began long before I was born.

He was born with club feet. And the story that I was told by him was that his mother spent YEARS working on his legs when the doctors told her he would never walk. I imagine, in his little boy mind, that’s the story he told himself as he sat alone, in a hospital, scared to death, without his parents.  The REAL story, the one I now know, is one where his parents were only there on occasion. That nurses would take care of him and work on his feet. His mother may have never really worried that he wouldn’t walk.

I wonder if that’s where his hatred of women started? What happened to him there at that hospital I’ll never know, but when he came into the world, the name he should have had, his father’s name, disappeared the minute his father saw his club feet. Instead, his father gave that name to his younger brother.

Then he was stuck in a hospital all alone. I can’t even imagine what that did to him. If the nurses were cruel that would have been even worse. I don’t know what being in that hospital did to him.

That he threatened to stick me in a hospital as a teenager…albeit it wasn’t a normal hospital, it was a mental hospital… and how a kid, who was stuck in a hospital as a child, could think about doing that to another human being, his DAUGHTER even, shows me how unstable he really was. 

I was terrified when all alone he showed ME the padded walls of a solitary cell…He worked at that hospital. Who knows what he would have done to me there.

The only thing I can think of that stopped him was providence. 

And again I realize that, just like when I almost drowned, just like when my father choked me and I thought that it was all over, I was shown that there was a love in a whole different place where things are as they always were from the beginning. There have been two times in my life where I've felt that kind of love. Both times I almost died.

(If you don't know those stories and are curious, they are here...http://songsofaletheia.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-do-you-do-when-u-stop-breathing.html and. ...http://songsofaletheia.blogspot.com/2011/10/almost-drowning-at-erie-lake-peninsula.html)

I have no doubt now. God had my back.