Amber Lisa
Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 10:23AM BIO
Hello. My name is Amber Lisa and I’m a survivor. Typically I would say something clever or funny to deflect from the pain and grief of this experience. But not this time. I’m dead serious. I am a survivor. What does that mean? Well, it’s like this, in my childhood, starting at birth until about age thirteen, my father did many extreme, severe and abusive things to me. My mother, for the most part, pretended that none of it was happening. There were times when I thought I would die. But I didn’t. I survived. That is why I am a survivor.
But, I’m more than that now. Today, thirty-five years later, I am a thrivor. (Yeah I made that word up- so what!) My point is there is another side to every one’s survivor story. We can all overcome our past histories of trauma and abuse, and lead lives that are fulfilled, and full of wonder and joy. It takes work. It is a very frightening journey, until you realize that all of that fear- isn’t real. Through the power of your own mind, you can overcome that fear, and do anything.
Today, I am married to a wonderful man and father. I call him Cosby…as in Bill Cosby. We’ve been married for fifteen years- he is a guidance counselor; and he is good at what he does! He helps people. He is a wonderful husband and a wonderful father. I love him so much. I also have three boys, love them like crazy! They are thirteen, eleven and eight. I am proud because they are being raised in a stable, happy family, not the pure insanity that I knew when I was growing up. We live in a big house in the suburbs, we take family vacations every summer, to the mountain, to the beach, we even went to Disneyland! I wanted to do everything that I believed good, normal happy families did. Disneyland was very expensive - and my kids didn’t even like it…too many lines…too hot. But I have bent over backwards to give my kids the life that I so badly wanted…and I am proud of myself for doing that. It is my greatest accomplishment in life.
I am also proud of my career accomplishments. I have spent the last fifteen years working in civil rights. I am an attorney. It is so rewarding to have a career where you can make a positive difference in other people’s lives. I am very drawn to the underdog. And it doesn’t matter what it is that makes them the underdog, whether it be their gender, race, lack of education, a disability, poverty, immigrant status…I see myself in every one of them. I know what it is like to be powerless. As a child, I watched my mother being beaten bloody and there was nothing I could do. I ran to a neighbor’s house in the middle of the night barefoot, terrified asking for help. I know what it is like to be the underdog.
One of my career accomplishments of which I am most proud was the revision of my former company’s sexual harassment policy. I am proud to have been the woman who spoke up to a roomful of male executives and said, “This behavior is unacceptable and we need a policy that clearly states so. It is the law.” I am proud of my courage, proud of my voice. After the policy was revised, several women actually came into my office to personally thank me. “One of them said, Amber I know you were responsible for this.” Even though she had no way of knowing that for a fact. (The whole process was highly confidential.) It made me feel really good to know that people believed in my integrity, and my vision that we should all be respected in the workplace.
Right now I am actually in the process of switching my career path. I had a good run in civil rights, but I’ve always had a dream, a dream that I was too afraid to pursue, but I’m done with fear now. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. So I left behind my civil rights career in July of 2005, and have been pursuing writing every since. It’s been wonderful. I love it. I have written two books in a series on domestic violence. The purpose of the series is to examine the effect of domestic violence on a family from start to finish. It is called The Diamond Life series. I may change the title, I am not really good with titles. I really hope that it can get message out not just to women- but to men and even children- this is a terrible tragedy that affects the entire human race. We all need to stand together to fight it. I believe we have to get more men involved in this cause. It affects them too, male children raised in violent homes can and often do grow up to become abusers themselves. They hate themselves because of it. We have to help everyone with this. Not only do I want to use the power of my own words to heal others, I also want to encourage others to tell their stories as well. It is very empowering, it is also a vital part of the healing process; and yet it is so hard. But I do know this, in telling my own story; I encourage others to tell theirs. Through this process we all win.
This is my mission statement: It is my intention to write powerful, healing books about love life and the journey. It is my intention to connect with others like me and help them heal through education and expression.
I have no doubt that I will succeed in my mission. My intentions are good, this is in the name of love, and I can’t fail…because I’m a survivor!
Q & A
1. What is your favorite coping skill?
I have more than one, I have a few. I would describe my most valuable coping skills as:
1. Creative escape and; 2. Over-achieving.
Creative Escape
When you are living in darkness, it is only human to do whatever it takes to escape it and find light. A lot of people turn to drugs. But that is just exchanging one prison for another. This is happened to my baby sister. This decision is destroying her life. But me? I wanted to escape too, but by the grace of God, drugs never caught me. My escape was through reading and writing. As a child I would read anything! As long as it provided that escape. Open a book and visit a whole other world, where the good always win at the end of the story. I guess because I could read, I also picked up writing. I wrote stories about people who lived the lives I wanted to live. I wrote poetry (wasn’t very good though) and lastly I sung.
Can I sing? No, I can’t sing! Are you kidding me? But whenever I could, I sung my lil broken heart out, to sad, sad songs. I had to. It was my life line. Being a little crazy black girl, growing up in the ghetto inside the insanity that was my home, I wasn’t permitted to talk about any of it. Not the insanity, not the abuse…there was always the fear and the threat of what would be done to us if the authority’s found out about any of it. We would all be in trouble. We would all suffer dearly, me, my mother, my father, and my siblings. On the rare occasions when the police were called, ironically, they never did much of anything. This was the eighties. They had a line, Domestic affairs; we can’t get involved in domestic affairs unless someone is killed. Oh.
And so, what do you do? You just learn to endure it and cope. Luckily the laws changed drastically in the nineties. (The OJ effect- in the way the truth is stranger than fiction, OJ actually was good for the domestic violence movement. He raised awareness. Laws were passed. Systems are in place now, to assist. They are not perfect, but at least they are there.)
But for me, twenty years before, there was only shame and silence. And that was the worst of it all. The shame and the silence. It felt like being suffocated over and over again. There are many things that can complicate domestic violence situations- many times there are other factors affecting it, like drug abuse by a parent, alcoholism. In my case, my father was mentally ill: bipolar disorder. It is a genetic illness. There was, and still is to a certain extent, so much stigma surrounding mental illness, that we were all incredibly ashamed of him and ourselves. We worked hard to cover this shame. We laughed and choked on lies. Add also to the mix the fact that we are black. While mental illness is stigmatized generally, it was even more heavily stigmatized in my all black community. No one had any answers; no one wanted to get involved, everyone was afraid.
I felt so alone. Everyone in the family decided the best course of action was not to talk about the illness at all. Since I wasn’t allowed to talk about how crazy my father was, and how on a whim he might just kick me from one side of the room to another, I would sing about it! At the top of my lungs. Oh God, how I would sing! As a teen, Laura Nyro was one of my favorite artists: My tears in the gutter are flooding the sea why was I born? It seemed like an excellent question to me, I just wanted to know why? What did I do to deserve such terrible, horrible treatment? What powerful being in the universe did I offend? Why was I born? As an adult I graduated to Alanis Morisette, still screaming at the top of my lungs. And crying and singing: IT’S NOT FAIR TO DENY ME THE CROSS I BARE THAT YOU GAVE TO ME…YOU….YOU….YOU OGHTTA KNOW! I was singing to my daddy.
Over-achieving
As a child, I just couldn’t understand it! What did I do? Why doesn’t he love me? Why? Why? Why? It was a question that just ran through the back of my mind constantly. I felt like, he must have thought, my mother must have thought, everyone, even God, must have thought that I was such a bad, horrible, ugly, damaged, garbage girl. I thought if I could just be perfect, if I could just always say and do the right thing, at the right time, then I could just go from nothing to something. And then they’d all be sorry, then they’d all wish that they had loved me better, they’d all realize that they were wrong. And that struck inside of me this obsessive desire for success and achievement.
I was determined to prove them all wrong. I was addicted to accomplishments the way my sister is addicted to drugs. In a way this desire to succeed has served me well, it was the way that I was able to build such a good life for my family. On the flip side though, and addiction is an addiction, until I went into therapy, there was never any achievement that was enough. I walked around trying to fill this big hole- and nothing I ever satisfied me for long. No matter how good my grades where, no matter how popular I was in school, no matter how many degrees I obtained, no matter how much my employer valued and paid me, at the end of the day I was always filled with this overwhelming since of damage, confusion and emptiness.
2. What was the best piece of healing advice you have ever received?
It’s not your fault.
It’s ridiculous how children’s mind work. For some reason, even though we are the most innocent, the most blameless in a world where adults are supposed to love us and protect us and provide for us, we for some reason internalize everything around us, and blame ourselves. Yes. I always thought that it was my fault my daddy was crazy and abusive. I thought I was responsible for all of the havoc and danger and violence he brought into our lives. I felt guilty. I felt ashamed. I felt like I deserved to die. I felt the need to make it all right. I was the oldest girl; it was my responsibility to fix it all, right? That’s what mama and daddy always said. I had to be responsible. I had to hold it all together. When dad was totally flipping out, I had to be the one to try to soothe him, because ma was too scared and she said I could get through to him, better. I could say to him, take your medicine- and he would, or at least that was what she told me. I had to watch the little ones. I had to make sure they were safe; I had to feed them, and clean them and console them. I had to beat them into submission when their little brains exploded from the fear and anxiety of the situation. Me, me, me, I had to do it all, and if I didn’t, then I had failed and I was guilty and it was all my fault.
“It’s not your fault.” That was what, Pat Fahey, my therapist (the best therapist in the world!) said when I sat in her office crying over the fate of my brothers who grew up to be abusive, alcoholic, criminals. I was shaken and raked with shame and guilt about it. But Pat said, “It is sad about your brothers…but it’s not your fault.” It was as if a one thousand pound concrete boulder had been lifted off of my shoulders. It is not my fault. None of it was ever my fault. I was a child who did the best I could with what I had, and none of it was my fault.
3. What was the worst piece of healing advice you ever received?
Get Over It.
You hear this all the time. Mainly, I hear it from people talking about other people who are going through the healing process. They say it behind their backs. “Well he or she should just get over it.” It enrages me. Does anyone ever get over having the core of their being ripped into two? I’m sorry. I am so much healthier than I have ever been, but I am still not completely over it. I don’t know if I will ever be.
The first person who said this to me? My mama. I was coming back from my grandfather’s funeral, so sad, because I felt like my grandfather was one of the very few people in this world who loved me, unconditionally for me and had never, ever in life raised a hurtful hand to me. He had always been there for me.
I had just begun my therapy, which was scary enough. I was driving my sister and her daughter home from the funeral, my mother was in the car with me. My sister was upset about our grandfather’s death too; and so in a fit of grief and depression she violently ripped her young daughter, my niece out of her car seat. Well we were all on edge, but that particular action sent me over it! I hate to see small children abused, reminds me so much of my own childhood. And so I got into a fight - yes a physical fight - with my sister. I’m not proud of it. It was definitely one of my worst moments. I just lost it. I flipped out. My mother jumped in between and broke us up. After it was over, she said to me, I can’t believe it! You are just as crazy as the rest of them! She was talking about my father and my siblings. In a sense it is true, I am just as crazy as them. When she said that, I just lost it. I started crying hysterically as my sister stomped off with her daughter and went inside her house. Back in the car, my mom asked me what that was all about, and I told her I just could not deal with anything that reminded me of my childhood. That was when she said it, Well just get over it! That was years ago! (She always says this when faced with the past. She left my father when I was thirteen and, for her the whole story ended long ago. Not so, for us, the children of that god-awful union, those thirteen years left permanent scars for us.) Her comment made me so angry, I lost it again. I screamed at her, I wish I could! Don’t you think I want to? Do you really think I want to be, thirty years old crying in your car over things that happened twenty years ago?
To her credit, she apologized. The following day, when she was taking me to the airport my mother told me that I needed to stay in therapy and that she would love me, no matter what. It was one of the most powerful moments of my life. She said the right thing, at just the right time, because that was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment.
4. What were the three hardest obstacles to overcome?
1. The stigma of the insanity;
2. The shame of the abuse and the insanity and;
3. The grief over my losses.
The Stigma of the Insanity
I could not admit to myself I was crazy. To me, it would have been better to just die…and it almost came to that. For years I suffered in silence. My first clinical depression hit when I was thirteen, and they continued increasing in severity until I went to a psychiatrist at age twenty-nine. The first time I saw my psychiatrist, he said to me, “with a background like yours it’s unbelievable that you made it this far without any therapy or medication, with nothing more than the strength of your own will.”
It was true, I had made off of the strength of my own will, because I kept telling myself, you are not crazy! NO! NO! And going to see a psychiatrist…admitting to, finally that yes, indeed I was in fact crazy, it was the scariest thing I had ever done. I thought I might lose my job because of it. (A lawyer can’t be crazy!) I believed everyone would despise me and I would lose everything, my home, my family, and my friends, because of this admission. I believed that because those things pretty much happened to my father. But I was at a point, where my depression was so deep, I was going to lose my life. So none of the stigma was going to matter anyway, not if I was dead.
So I went to the psychiatrist, and I went to a therapist too (My Pat!) What I learned is that you cannot experience the kind of things that I experienced and NOT be crazy! Those kinds of things MAKE you crazy, even if you were totally normally to begin with. And all my fears were totally unfounded. My home, my family, my friends…they all supported me. Almost all my close friends said: We love you for you are, how could you have ever thought any different?
The Shame of the Abuse and Insanity
I’ve spent most of my life (except the past five years of healing) covered in shame. I was ashamed of my father’s mental illness, ashamed of my own mental illness. I was terrified of anyone finding out about either. While I logically remembered everything that happened to me as a child, I couldn’t process or deal with the information. I felt like it proved that I was this cosmically flawed, forever damaged human being. The shame kept me paralyzed. I couldn’t move forward. I spent all of my energy trying to hide the shame and cover up flaws... I was dishonest with myself and everyone else. I hated myself for being crazy. I didn’t know myself, and was afraid to even try. What kind of craziness would I find inside of me?
The Grief Over My Losses
For years I was in incredible pain for no apparent reason. People looked at my life and told me I had it all, good husband, a family, a career. One woman even told me I was her role model. I hated that. Because I always walked around feeling like garbage, and a fraud. And I didn’t even know why I felt this way. For the most part, I never thought about the past, what had happened, when I turned eighteen and left home for college, I vowed to leave it all behind - and I did. Or at least I thought so.
I was thirty years old when it happened. I was taking a writing class with one of the best writing professors ever! Don Gallhere. He introduced us to a technique called free-writing. Where we would just write whatever popped into our heads- until he said stop. No censoring yourself, no thinking about- just go! I thought it would be fun! This free writing.
Oh my God, I could not believe what popped out on to my pages. Memories, memories, memories from the past, in vivid detail, just like I was there! Just like it was happening all over again. It was the most terrifying thing that had happened to me since childhood. And the worse part of it was it was like a flood gate. Once those memories surfaced, they would not go back down. They just kept popping up, everywhere, all the time. It was as involuntary as vomiting.
I thought surely I would lose my mind. I was so upset and agitated by all of this, even my antidepressants were not helping. I could not sleep. I believed this was the end, I was going to die. Dealing with these memories, well this was the fight of my life.
Luckily there was Pat! Pat explained to me that while these memories were quite painful, it was only because they had been repressed. And what that means is that, that even though all of these horrible things had happened, they had not been processed emotionally. I had never grieved all of these losses in my life. She explained that I had a lot of work to do on what she called grief issues. I was not trying to hear that because; it meant dealing with these awful memories!
But I did the work. I grieved it all. I grieved my loss of myself, that innocent, hopeful child who had once believed in being loved, and safe, and cared for, but who had been let down by the very people who were supposed to protect her. I grieved the loss of the healthy, wonderful, loving father I never had, but always wanted so badly. The reality for me was a sick, unhealthy, crazy, abusive man I called daddy. I still don’t know what I feel for him. I grieved the loss of the healthy, nurturing, understanding mother. My mama was always too tired, too abused, to oppressed to ever be there for me as a child.
I grieved the loss of a happy family. I grieved the pain and dysfunction that still exists in my family and especially amongst my siblings to this day. They haven’t found their way out yet, they are still lost. I pray for them. I hope they can find their way. But I did have, and (still do have) a tremendous amount of grief.
5. Have you ever hit "rock bottom"? What kept you going?
I’d say my suicide attempts were rock bottom. The first real attempt happened when I was thirteen. That happened when my mother left my father. When she did that, he entered into a violent, stalking rampage against her that was so extreme and severe - we all thought we were going to die. Me, my mama, my siblings. We were terrified that we would break into my grandparent’s house one night with an ax and chop us all to pieces, or a gun and kill us all execution style. These were the kind of things that he threatened, and he actually made several attempts. The police were always called, but were never much help. It’s a long story, but to make it short, I couldn’t take all that kind of stress and trauma. I took a lot of pills and poison, wrecked my kidneys, stayed in the hospital for a week.
The second time that I was seriously considering suicide, I was twenty-nine. I was extremely depressed and did not know why. (Now, I know it was all the unprocessed grief and related emotions.) What was happening was that my brain was shutting down completely. I was in such incredible, severe pain from the lack of brain functioning. I wanted to die. I don’t think people realize how incredibly painful clinical depression can be. At that time, nothing was actually wrong with my life. Great husband, kids, and career, still - I was extremely unhappy. I was going to either drink bleach or run my car head on into a tractor trailer truck. What stopped me? My love for my children. I wanted to be around to raise them, even though I was doing a terrible job due to the depression. I made an appointment with a psychiatrist as a last resort option (figured I try it, since bleach tastes so nasty!) He put me on antidepressants immediately. They saved my life. I don’t care what Tom Cruise says.
6. What does forgiveness mean to you?
It starts with you. You have to forgive yourself, first and foremost. I had to forgive myself for things that I had imagined I was responsible for, and thing that really were my responsibility. A lot of guilt and shame had been put upon me; and I also put a lot of it on myself, as a child. I had to forgive myself for all of that, and also realize that a lot of it wasn’t even my fault. I was a child and I did the best I could do with the power that I had.
Then, this was even harder; I had to first of all accept responsibility for the wrongs that were my responsibility - abusive behaviors that I had actually engaged in with my children. I had to ask them for my forgiveness. I had to learn how to change my behavior and break the cycle. That was my forgiveness reaching forward.
Then this was the hardest. I had to look back. I had to forgive my mother and father for what they had done to me and my siblings. I was able to do this by realizing that both of my parents had been abused as children in their homes, in one way or another; and they were once, just like me, powerless children caught up in torrential storms of dysfunction and insanity. Understanding that about them, I was able to see how they became what they became. It’s just a sad, sad cycle that probably reaches back as far as human kind. Everyone was innocent and blameless at some point. And no one is completely at fault. I was able to forgive them, because I wanted someone to forgive me. Because I wanted the cycle to end with me. That was my forgiveness reaching back.
7. When did you know that everything was going to be okay -- that you were going to make it through your life/healing?
When I really began to love myself and be honest with myself. For along time I didn’t even know myself. I had no idea who I was, really! I had no idea because I had spent my life just trying to be what I thought other people wanted me to be. That left me feeling empty. I was afraid to get to know myself because I was afraid that my worst fears were true. I was afraid that I had some how some way brought all that trauma, horror and abuse on myself, because I was ugly, crazy, damaged, defective…not normal. I was afraid of me. But through therapy, I was able to look at myself realistically, and realize that even though I am crazy (Bipolar Disorder is my exact diagnosis), I’m also funny. I’ve always been popular no matter where I go. I listen when people talk. I care. I’m reliable and responsible. I try to do the right thing, always. I have integrity and people respect me for that. I'm honest. I look out for my kids. I love my husband. I really want to be a good person. I’m okay.
8. Is there anything that you would like to say to someone just beginning their journey?
Oh it is so hard at first. At least it was for me. Pat, my beloved therapist, actually went through her own healing process, before she became a therapist. And she would say to me, I know this is hard sweetie, I know you would rather cut your arm off than go through this. I know because I’ve done this work, and it’s hard. But once you do it, and you get trough it, you will feel so much better.
And she was right! (So I guess that is really Pat’s advice.) But I can vouch for her, it is the truth. It is so hard to start. It takes so much courage! You can’t do it alone. Get a great therapist - or if you can’t afford one - find a good friend. Research support groups in your area. Go to the library and read books about surviving trauma and healing. Join an internet group.
9. If there was one piece of advice you would give, or one thing you would want the significant other, best friend, etc. of a survivor to keep in mind through out the survivors healing process, what would that be?
The healing process is extremely difficult. As a result it takes a tremendous amount of patience, love and kindness to see someone through the healing process. During this process, the survivor’s personality may seem to change. They may appear to become more selfish, self-absorbed, moody, difficult, erratic and unstable. Please understand that this is all part of the process and it will pass, as the survivor progresses through her recovery. During this time your support is critical. It is so important that you listen to their stories and their perspectives without judgment; encourage and reinforce the positive changes they are trying to make in their lives. Help them articulate their truths and protect them from people who want to silence them for their own ignorant and selfish reasons. This process takes tremendous courage; and it takes a special person to see a survivor through. But with the right support, a survivivor will not just survive, but thrive!
LITERATURE
FORGIVENESS & HEALING
Excerpts from "A True Love Story"
This piece is actually a result of my free writing that brought forth my repressed memories. This stuff popped up when I was thirty. I had no idea all of this was inside of my head. I have pulled these pieces of free writing together, and hope to write a book about them, called A True Love Story.
Jonah and Mae never saw me as a person. No. They thought that I was their rubber doll, some indestructible thing that you could stretch and stomp and stab and bend...and it would not break…the Lisa would not break…no matter what they did to me…Jonah and Mae. I had to be great in a crisis. They left me no choice because my life was crisis. One big huge crisis! One after another, after another, after another…there was never any time to recover.
Crisis after crisis. Because of the stream of constant crisis, I knew there was something inside of me, something hard and heavy, thick and strong. It screamed SURVIVE!
No matter what the costs. And it had meant doing a lot of ugly things. It had meant crawling, hands and knees cleaning the kitchen floor at 1 am in the morning while Jonah stood over me screaming at the top of his lungs. It meant waiting for Mae to save me, waiting while she instead lay upstairs in her bed doing nothing…nothing.
It had meant huddling up in the back seat of an old beat up punchbug in the dead of the winter, in a snowstorm because Mae was gone. Had run away in sheer terror…from Jonah. And Jonah was gone too…and the house was all locked up...and I was just out in the cold, freezing, hoping, praying, in the back of this beat up punchbug. Couldn’t dare tell the neighbors, couldn’t dare ask for help...shhhhhhhh. It was a secret...
It meant starving in Mexico, weeks upon weeks and no food.
It meant listening to Mae and Jonah go round and round in arguments that would always, always end in violence that made me so sick that I would vomit just from listening...and then I cleaned up the vomit myself, because my house was a mad house and no one else was going to do it if I didn’t do it.
SURVIVE! SURVIVE! SURVIVE!
I was good at it.
Oddly enough… I had become completely uninterested. I sort of drifted outside of myself, looking at myself, my parents, Jonah, Mae, my school, my home, which was not home at all…my life…in shambles, shambles, shambles. I looked at my life and myself and wished it gone.
Days in Autumn
“Day’s in Autumn” could be classified as a lyrical essay, I guess. It explores how I have dealt with depression prior to my therapy. (Since therapy and due to my medication, I rarely get this depressed anymore.)
There are days in autumn when I just want to sleep. Sleep. I am so sleepy. The bed beckons and there is nothing more enticing, alluring, persuasive than sweet sleep. Then too, there is this sadness. It hangs over me like a shadow and follows me everywhere. It lives in my heart, my heart is heavy. I don’t know why.
It’s like falling. It’s like falling down into something rich, deep, slow. When I get down, down, I know I need to get up but it’s hard. It’s so hard to wake up and get up and live. I don’t really want to. I just don’t feel like it.
But I do try. I try to figure out where I am. Then I realize I am where I’ve always been and I feel like nothing ever changes. For as long as I can remember, there has been this. It starts with the desire to sleep and sadness, this unrelenting sadness that suffocates. It’s like being in a dream and knowing it, and knowing that everything that I do, say, think, feel, isn’t even real, and life, yes, life seems pointless. I have lost sight of the point. I wonder if there ever was a point. I know that at times in my life, I seemed to think that there was a point. That’s how I made it this far.
I remember when it hit me. I remember when I began to understand my father’s illness. I was standing in the bathroom of his little rinky-dink apartment, the kind of apartment that says “I’m divorced and I only see my kids on the weekends.” I remember standing in his bathroom looking in his medicine cabinet at all the pills, all the different colored pills, and instructions, long involved instructions posted on his mirror. I realized that my dad had to take pills, lots of pills every day for the rest of his life, just to stay sane. I was struck with a profound sadness - and that time there was a reason. My dad was sick, he really was sick. But it wasn’t the kind of sick that you could see like cancer. It was inside his brain, a lot more frightening. My dad was sick in his brain and years and years had come and gone and there was no magic cure. Just these pills, blue and purple and yellow, and pink….
My husband shakes me. He pulls me and I slowly, reluctantly release my sleep, although I feel like the only thing I was born for is sleep. It is 6:30 in the morning. It is dark because it is September. I was born in September, sad September, and melancholy September. In September the year begins to die. Leaves are falling, darkness comes early to kiss the day because the year is dying and sometimes I think, so should I. Wouldn’t it be so much easier to sleep and die?
No, no no. There is a part of my brain, and I guess it is the sane part, it says to me, “Get up, get coffee, get to your little green pills.” Then I am sad, and there is a reason. I never wanted to take green pills, never. But I go downstairs, I make my coffee and pull down my pills out of my kitchen cabinet. It’s 6:45 and in fifteen minutes I have to wake my kids up and feed them breakfast and sing and play with them to get them on their big yellow bus at 8:30. Then I will go to work and I will try to smile when it’s appropriate. I will try to pretend that I care about my Friday presentation, and the November Board Report, and all the big fish in my little sea. I will try to care because that’s what I’m supposed to do and there may be better days, when I really do care. Always the better days, my saner self talks of better days. “Hang in there, get through this, there will be better days and times. You will smile again, you will laugh again.” I go back upstairs I lay on my bed, I drink my coffee and take my pill. I hope I won’t be sad today. I hope that I won’t want to cry today.
I hope that I don’t want to die today.
I could wonder why. I could say why is this my legacy...my gift? I could wish for normal. I used to wish for normal. But what is normal? Everybody’s got bags, this is mine. I get a little sad. I get a little sleepy. There are days in autumn when I just want to die.
LETTER
Stevie Knicks, “Landslide”
Dear Daddy:
This is good-bye. I’m serious this time. I’m done. I am thirty-five years old, but so many times, whenever I think of you I still feel like that heartbroken girl hovelling in the corner terrified of you. Did you ever love me? I don’t know. After all these years I still don’t know. I am tired of running the question over and over in my mind. I think you might even be tired of it too. At this point, does it even matter?
I was always looking for the day when you would become everything I ever wanted you to be. When you would take all of the pain of the past and make it go away by becoming that wonderful, perfect TV kind of daddy, Ward Cleaver, Mike Brady, Bill Cosby. The kind of dad that goes to work every day, never “goes crazy” and loves his kids, unconditionally; the kind of dad that would do anything for them.
I’ve developed fantasy after fantasy of how it was really meant to be. I’ve thought about all of the ways that you could apologize and show me how much you really and truly loved me. And in my dreams, we get together and talk and laugh and heal from all of the hurt between us. And in my dreams, it is the way it was always meant to be. But that is just a fantasy. I keep reaching for beautiful parts of you, only to be rejected time and time again. You will never love me the way it was meant to be. You will never love me the way I need you to. Sad, but true. And here we are, back to day one, the way it feels to confront the insanity and abuse that sucks the life out of me and makes me just want to escape you.
Did you ever really love me? What is love? How can I understand it when you claimed to love me but treated me, my mother, my sister, and my brothers so horribly? Is that love? How can it be? You seem to care so little about us (about me.) We have issues that go round and round and never get resolved. It’s exhausting and I can’t do it anymore. I have to let you go, now. I have to accept you for who you are, not who I wanted you to be.
For so long, I was afraid of changing, because I did build my life around you. But not anymore. I can’t have a relationship with you, anymore. Too much water under the bridge, too much unresolved hurt and pain, too much damage done that can never be undone. I can’t make you love me if you don’t. The only person I am responsible for is myself. I can only decide whether I love you and whether I love myself. I do love you daddy. Always did, always will, but I also love myself. Loving myself means not accepting controlling, abusive and dysfunctional behaviors from anyone. I don’t want that pain and grief in my life. I can’t condone the choices you have made with your life. I can’t keep accepting the pain and grief you always, inevitably bring. I’ve stopped dreaming, and stopped believing. The landslide brought it down. I’m sorry….but this really is goodbye. I hope that you find your way some day. It is my genuine and true wish for you, that you can one day understand real love. Until then I will keep you, though not in my life, in my thoughts and my prayers. Peace to Blessings, your daughter,
Amber Lisa
Amber Lisa - Author of the Diamond Life Series
www.myspace.com/amberlisa
amberlisa1971@aol.com
Reader Comments (1)
thank you for your input
keepers and john