Today I have felt like the taunted kitten. The one that bites and mars, keeps getting the feather dangled to make it happy then yanked away before the joy sets in too deeply. I’m still over thinking so many things. Thinking too much and making myself angry. The one peaceful thought that comes to mind is how much I wish my mother was here so I could ask for a hug like I had when I really needed it, and ask her what should I do. It’s been a long while since I’ve dreamt of her. There is a lot I feel I need to vent and reflect on. Why am I this way when I used to be happy. Days I could work and have a good time letting go of all the bad so easily. I can’t blame the fact of becoming a mother. I can’t really blame anyone, because I let everything get this far.
So deep breath and soft exhale… here goes. I met my husband while I was in highschool. I was 14, and attending a Harley Owners Group meeting with my father and his girlfriend. My husband and his father were members of the club as well. He and I hit it off joking and teasing. I secretly had a highschool girl crush on him, and admittedly his bike. I was embarrassed when my father suggested I pair up with him for picnic games but it was fun, I even kept the string and busted balloon from one of the events. We stayed friends, I teased him about how when he least expected he would have an egg broken on him for when he busted one on mine at the same picnic.
Time went on, and after school I helped at my father’s business helping with customers, the front desk and the like. My husband often visited, keeping me company when business was slow, or calling me because he needed a ride home from the bar. Being 16 then I was sent out on a lot of odd jobs to include picking up a drunk friend and making sure he had food and made it to where he needed to go safely. Then then my senior year came about. He started teasing me how he was going to date me when I turned 18. It had become a running joke, no one took seriously. He was much older than I was and up until a few months previously I had been dating someone else. Being my senior year and not having a date to Prom, my dad suggested I take my husband. I was shocked to say the least that my dad would allow me to date him, let alone trust him to take me to prom.
Teasing went from telling him that he was like a brother, to sneaking off to the Dairy Queen to make out in my Dad’s pick up. Then January came. My mother passed. I had received the call from my father while I was visiting my grandmother in California for the first time. I caught a red eye flight home, then I was stuck with my father hiding in his room, postponing when we were to leave for my mothers home town for the funeral. There were a lot of issues then I had not been aware of until later that year. But my sister had lived with my mom and when she was with my Dad and I she was often off doing her thing. My husband spoke up, since he had a new credit card offering to rent a car to get us up to say good bye to my mother. One of the most horrific moments in my life and he was there when my father procrastinated for his own reasons. My uncles telling him to go to me at the funeral, so he could hold me and make sure I held together. My father had told him to give me space, not to go near me when I stood over my mother’s body. I was thankful to him and to my uncles for that support.
A few weeks later I returned to school, I knew Momma didn’t want me to fail my senior year. My father started hiding more in his room, locking his door, spending hours in the bathroom, going off for days with a buddy and couldn’t be reached. My sister went to stay with friends helping them with their horses, and mostly staying out of trouble. Graduation came up quickly. And my husband and I as most teens do get more involved than we probably should have been. Then he was my rock, the one sturdy thing about my life. My father never took me to get birth control as I had told him I wanted. I remember him telling me, “Tell me if you are going to become sexually active, we’ll make sure to get you birth control.” And so on about knowing I was going to have sex eventually, I was young after all. He never took me to the doctor. So I took myself to the health department, got my own birth control.
Little did I know the effects the decision would have on me. My grand parents aunts and cousins came down when graduation came around. I remember staying the night before with them in the hotel along with my sister. By this time I had been on birth control for two months. When I woke for graduation practice I noticed in the shower my left leg was stiff to bend, by the time I got to practice it had become painful. I made it through practice though, holding onto the railing to walk. I took Advil to help with the swelling and even tried a soak in the cool waters of the hotel pool. Nothing seemed to change graduation came and went, I vaguely remember looking up and seeing my husband and family in the stands of the auditorium. Tears made it difficult to see, crying because I wished my mother could have been there, and crying because the pain slowly started to become unbearable.
When I got home, I showed my father my leg, and got the response, “Only time I know a woman’s leg swells like that is when she’s pregnant.” I swore up and down I wasn’t explaining that I had been on birth control for the past two months. The exposing my purpling swelling leg had ended up causing an argument. So my husband and I went to a friend’s house for a graduation party. Most of my class mates had turned 18 at the time I still had two months to go. My husband acted as my crutch and did what he could to make sure I was able to enjoy my graduation. That night I woke up and couldn’t put any weight on my leg. I cried out for some one to help me, but no one came. I called my father’s cell phone as well as his girlfriend’s cell phone, and no one came. By morning I was still in tears, my father finally seeing a reason to take me to the hospital.
When I arrived, I was given a heavy dose of morphine and had an ultrasound of my leg which exposed the issue of my leg swelling was a number of clots through out my left thigh and calf. After that, I was rushed to a major hospital out of town, and put in the ICU for about a week along with surgery and doses of morphine and anti coagulants. When I needed him my husband was there. Still the rock he had become through the argumentative year. The cause of the clots was later found to be my birth control mixed with hereditary disorders I never knew I had which cause my blood to clot more easily than normal.
Time passed again I finally was able to walk but now on a daily regimine of anticoagulants. I had started a summer course at a local community college, I had gotten a job, saved up to take my friends to Six Flags. We made the trip, friends, my husband, and sister. We made it home about 2 am and my father had told my husband before we left that he could crash at our place on the couch since it was going to be so late when we got home. However upon returning home, another argument started. My husband (Boyfriend) at the time was not allowed all of a sudden to stay the night, because my father believed he and I went out of town to get married instead of to an amuzement park.
By the end of the week of my 18th Birthday, there had been so many arguments between my father and I. Mostly how I had gotten married with out his consent, which I hadn’t but trying to tell him other wise was worse that getting a donkey to play basketball. I was told to get out, and so I turned to pack my things and found myself followed and slapped for turning my back. Instead of packing I just took what little clothes I carried in the car for changes between work and school and I left. First I went to talk to my Dad’s girlfriend, and to talk to my husband. Both were at my Dad’s shop while my father hid. I ended up getting a phone call from my father disowning me as his daughter, that all my things were going to the dump and have a good life.
This killed me inside, he was doing to me exactly what my mother’s parents had done to him and my mother. He swore he would never do that, but there he was doing it. After talking to my husband and his father, they gave me a place to stay. Out in the country, a place I could focus on school and work and just being me. Eventually yes my father and I made up. But I would never move in with him again, for the fact I refused to be verbally and emotionally abused. Which irony has it’s sore hand and finding myself in a very similar situation now. Then my husband was good to me. He did all he could to show how he cared for me. we went out with friends, bike runs, even camping.
That is how it all started. I know I am not 17 anymore, but there is evidence that once our love thrived when all else seemed to be raining down on me. He kept me strong through thick and thin, and age as it was then was just a number, mind you it was a reasonable number, not like I was seeing a man old enough to be my grand father, just one old enough to be my oldest brother. He had my back when I was falling, he helped me back onto my feet when I thought I couldn’t see the ground. To me that is what love is. Learning how to be there for each other, no matter who is telling you what’s wrong and right. Trusting each other to have good guiding morals. There were arguments and rough patches that first year. To this day I still say it was the worst year of my life. Maybe that’s why i have let things get as far as they have. My biggest question, is where did this man go, that one time fought with my father just to spend a few hours in supervised company? Was he ever really there, or did all the bad things in my life raise him up on a pedastool to make me so blind as to ignore the fact I would marry into a like wise abusive relationship?
All my love,
Ellsah
Psalm 46:1 (NIV) God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
Cascading Contemplations 