My name is Josie and I'm a forty something wife and mother of two teenage boys. Well I really am not sure about the wife part as my husband announced two weeks ago that he was unhappy and wanted some time apart to sort things out for himself. So was I surprised? Not completely as things hadn't been great for awhile but his mind had already been made up about moving out so rather than try to fight with him over his decision I let him go. That sounds alot like being a doormat but it's symbolic of how things have been for the last few years - tap dancing around our feelings towards each other and not wanting to make a decision that would cause conflict. "Well at least we don't fight", I said to him trying to rationalize that things really weren't as bad as they could be.
So what do you do when after being married for twenty two years, your husband walks out with no promises as to when and if he's going to return? If you're me you spend alot of time on the internet trying to figure out what the hell happened to get you to this point. And then it hit and I felt like the whole house of cards was collapsing.
Let's back up, way back up to when I was growing up. I am the youngest by far of three daughters with my sisters being ten and fifteen years older than me. Yup I'm the baby and while I fit much of the typical description of the baby, with the age gap I grew up more as an only child. My parents had a horrible relationship. It wasn't always that way but in my era it was endless fighting. Fighting over stupid things, fighting just to fight. Often times my Mother would be screaming at the top of her lungs at my father and would often wind up throwing some glass object at the wall. One morning while my father was out she called my sister to tell her that she had drunk a bottle of vodka and was going to kill herself. Why no one checked her into a facility I'll never know but I think it was just swept under the rug. My not understanding what was happening would cause me to shriek and cry which just made things worse. My father hated any kind of emotional demonstration especially crying and of course crying is what I did because I internalized everything.
My sisters were either in college or out of college so I was home alone with my parents. When we did all get together my mother and my older sister would fight constantly. They were like oil and vinegar yet they liked many of the same things. She was the successful one. First to graduate college, first to marry, first to divorce and first to have a good career. My other sister shared many activities with my Dad and she tried to stay clear of my Mother. Then there was me.
My memories of my mother are not good. She was controlling and vindictive. She would smile to your face and turn around and rip you to shreds. It's funny because at my Father's memorial mass my cousin spoke about my parents, fondly remembering my Mom as a beautiful woman with Grace Kelly looks and a gracious, outgoing personality. "If you only knew", I thought to myself how far from the truth his observations were. My father was a "Male Chauvinist Pig" (this was the seventies), and came from a shanty Irish family according to her. My father spent his day working in the city as President of the company he worked for back in the day of martini fueled lunches. He would come home at 7:30 after my Mom and I had eaten dinner and would make a sandwich and head upstairs. Unless I went up and spent time with him at night I didn't really see him.
My days were spent in school which were a refuge from my mother's increasing number of rants against my father and sisters. When I was not in school I was tightly controlled by her. I was limited in the friends I had because according to her the families weren't good enough and the kids were messed up so I spent alot of my childhood playing alone or else being stuck in the car listening to her endless stream of complaints. If I tried to stop it I was quickly admonished with the words "Children should be seen and not heard." I was powerless with no voice.
On her good days she would tell me how I was her only hope, her ray of sunshine but as I got older and more upset by her tirades her comments quickly turned to predicting that I would soon be just like my father and sisters. I was ten or eleven years old at this point and realized that no matter what I was going to disappoint her.
Was my mother suffering from some sort of mental illness? Probably but this was the 1970's and marital problems were not discussed outside of the family nor was mental illness so I'll never know for sure. I remember one day where I was swimming in our pool when a thunder storm began to roll in. I wanted to get out because I was afraid but my mother told me I wasn't allowed to. She had to go inside for some reason and I wasn't allowed to leave the pool. Did I risk disobeying my mother by getting out of the pool or stay in and risk getting caught in the storm and lightning. Who does that to their child?
Things continued to slide downward between my mother and father and my oldest sister's divorce didn't help matters. She went so far as to pack my sister's wedding dress in a Mr. Coffee box and send it with my father when he visited my sister. The ranting steadily increased and my mother's mantra became "When you turn fourteen I'm taking you and divorcing your father." I was either eleven or twelve and was fearful of this ever happening. Then my oldest sister came home for one last visit and after a big blowout with my mother vowed that the next time she came home it would be to get me away from my mother. I just remember laying on the couch crying my eyes out. I had no understanding of what was going on. All I knew is that it hurt.
Where was my father during all of this? Well the weekends he spent playing tennis in the morning until noon and the afternoons were spent mowing the lawn. I don't remember much about him ever trying to stop the fighting or trying to come to a solution or get my mother help. He would just retreat upstairs. He would take me to an amusement park sometimes on Sunday afternoons and I would ride the Merry Go Round dreaming of Black Beauty and of riding and horses; my escape. We would occasionally go to the track which furthered my growing love of horses. My mother was intensely jealous of the time I spent with my Dad and hated horses. She put up with my growing interest in riding but made no effort to hide her disdain for horse people. I didn't care what she thought. That one hour a week spent in a riding lesson was like heaven to me.
Riding in the car with my mother became like torture. Her new favorite rant was to talk about how she wanted to die in her sleep. I can't say how many times I heard her say this but I remember distinctly where I was on a few occasions when she said it. I was silenced if I tried to say anything so I sat alone in the back seat of the car.
Well my mother got what she wished for.......
To be continued tomorrow. I think we all need a breather.
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