In her eyes, I see pure love

Well since my Costco moment and my last post I have to say that I managed to pull the rug right out from under my feet and it has taken this long to get back up and ready to go for another round in the boxing ring of life!

I know that my blog is kinda all over the map - it's not in chronological order at the moment but one day it will be in a book and with the help of a wise editor ( thank you Darcy) it will be much more linear. What I am finding at the moment is that writing about some of these earlier experiences in life does seem to be "retraumatizing" ( a therapeutic description for when life bites you on the butt again) and for me, I need to take some time between those posts to keep myself on track.

Let me tell you the story of how an angel with 4 paws, deep brown eyes and blonde hair came into my life.  I've never had a dog, wasn't getting a dog, wasn't up for discussion - talk to the hand.  My doctor and my therapist both worked me over pretty good - in a kind and methodical way! - that I needed a dog to help me cope with my anxiety, panic disorder and PTSD.  I do wear a Medic Alert bracelet - which I did have to use once - but the idea was to try to find a way to grasp onto to something that was calming and reassuring and could be my words for me when I could not use them myself.  Being a runner myself it was also a chance for me to have a companion on the trails with me running like the wind together!

Life comes at you fast man.......on Tuesday May 11, 2009 I was not getting a dog.  Oh I had explored the idea mostly to placate everyone but frankly, the thought of looking after any creature other than myself was daunting to say the least.  A friend of a friend who's daughter was friends with another lady's daughter told my friend that there was about to be a litter of golden retrievers born any day and I needed to get my act together and get one of those puppies. Huh?  You're kidding me right? I need a puppy?  NOT.  But what had led to this point was the fact that I had been dog sitting for my friend's mom off and on and they have the most awesome 10 year old Golden named Scout.  It did not go unseen by those that were campaining for me to have a dog that when I was with Scout I was a much calmer and collected human being.

And so on the morning of May 13th, 2009 into the world came 8 puppies.  Being that I was the last one to the party I had to wait for 2 other people to pick their choice of the 3 little girls left but I knew which one I wanted the moment I saw them at 48 hours old. She was the littlest girl and the blondest and I just felt in my heart that she was sent from "above" to fall into my life and I needed her as much as she needed me.  I was so blessed to have had the chance to have a family raised puppy and because they lived 4 blocks away I was invited and welcomed to come over anytime and visit all of the puppies and the momma and the grandma. I spent so many hours in Laurel's backyard that summer - the puppies would be out on a blanket in the sunshine and I could just be there with them and hold them and feel "love".  Some days I just sat there and cried.  When the last puppy was chosen I was so lucky to have Esme saved for me.  Esme is from the Old French and means "beloved".  Laurel guided me thru the new mom stage - first Esme came home for 2 hours at a time, then she came for overnight visits and then finally, one Monday at lunchtime - I took my puppy home.  Now, I have never had children so this was my "deer in the headlights" experience of taking home a "baby" that I knew nothing about raising.  Laurel very wisely and calmly told me "Michelle, she will tell you what she needs".  And so off we went to puppyhood and all the joys and trials that that brings.

Today Esme is almost 2 years old.  She goes everywhere with me that we can go and sometimes she has to wait in the car but often times she gets to come into the "dog" friendly stores that we have made a conscience choice to shop at. They know her and love her visits and she is treated like a queen! As a matter of fact when we go to Windsor Plywood it's all about the dog and I am just kinda on the end of the leash - one would think that she had the Visa card and list of things to buy!!  She and I have been in obedience classes since she was 12 weeks old and she is now a St. John's Ambulance accredited therapy dog. Sharing her love and comfort is a great gift for both her and I. 

Esme follows me everywhere - she lays on the bathmat while I have a shower! and she knows immediately when I am having a bad day or about to crash and burn.  She never leaves my side in those moments and has been known to stand between me and someone else when she knows I am struggling. 

This precious angel was truly sent especially for me at a time when I was ready for her ( but didn't know it!) and she has been my saviour so many many times. In her eyes, I see pure love.  I see the trust that she has in me, the need for her to be my protector and the bond that we have is unbelieveably strong. She came to me as a therapy dog and now I am so blessed to be able to share her amazing gifts with other people who need a moment of pure unconditional deep true love.

Lost and all alone..........

Our new life - my mom, my 2 sisters and I.......my brother had stayed with my dad........ left the only world we knew and moved into the city, to an area that was not the most pleasant, to a life we had never imagined would be ours.

My father had laid down the gauntlet with the ultimatum that if my brother went with his mom and his sisters he would never ever inherit the family farm.  My brother was the only son of a man who was the only child so the bloodline ended there.  At 8 years old my poor brother was forced to make a decision that most adults could not even dream of making.  Sadly, my father was far from a great role model and my brother more or less raised himself. Today my brother is an amazing man.......he married a wonderful girl that he met at high school and they raised a beautiful, intelligent daughter who is now in University. 

One important note:  My mother had given my father an amazing opportunity - clean up your act, stop drinking, stay sober for a year and we will be back. What a gift - which was thrown out with yesterday's trash.  My father not only continued to drink but with wild abandon and created oh so much heartache and headache for those in his life.

My mother's divorce decree nici came thru and although she was granted sole custody of all of her children her lawyer gave her some very very wise advice - leave my brother with my father and allow my brother to come to her on his terms willingly.  To force him to move would be disastrous.  Weekend visitations arrived.......each of us saw those weekends thru different eyes.  I was angry with my father, angry that he was articulate in his disgust for me because in his eyes " I had sided with my mother".  I was angry because the first Friday that he picked us up he took us to dinner at the K Motel restaurant and what did he do? He cried.  Mortifying to a 15 year old.  Ridiculous to a 15 year old who knew that he had brought all of this on himself. Disgust because it was "all about him".  Another Saturday morning he took us into town and to visit one of his drinking buddies.  So our visit with our dad took place watching him visit with his crony.  I was so done with that sideshow. 

By then my mother had taken her portion of the divorce settlement and bought a sweet older house up near the hospital.  She was into "Flip That House" before HGTV even existed!! She turned it into a delightful house and promptly put it up for sale and moved kitty corner across the street to a bigger house and "Flip That House" started all over again! I loved both of those houses and the joy it brought to my mom to be busy and happy.  I spent most weekends on my own as my mom worked part time at a flower show - but I loved being on my own.  I baked, I sewed, I puttered.......my siblings were at my dad's and the house was quiet.

But as per usual.......no gentle serene life for us.......no siree........for some reason I think my dad wanted my mom to fail and to fall on her face and come running back to him. This was the beginning of the second perfect storm.

Three things that I remember vividly as if they happened yesterday.........in the days of simpler life all kids walked to school - from kindergarten to Grade 12.  My littlest sister walked to and from kindergarten freely but one day.....she did not come home.  And oh my God.......the world blew apart. She was with my dad but how she came to be with my dad has so many variations of the "truth".  There are many stories but I think the realisitic person would say that a 5 year old did not walk 5 miles from school to my dad's farm.  But that was one of the version of events.  It was said that she walked out that way and my father saw her and picked her up.  Ok....highly unlikely but everyone is entitled their version of events no matter how screwed up they are.  The police organized her safe return.

My father also disowned me.  He had his will changed.  In his mind I had abandoned him.  I did not receive birthday cards, Christmas cards .......and the piece d'restance was the year he outfitted all 3 of my siblings with new ski equipment from top to bottom and took then to Lake Louise/Banff to ski.  I, on the other hand.....had become invisible.  Whether he knew it or not it was my mother that he hurt the most with these actions. I came to expect nothing and then I wasn't surprised.  I grew to hate a man who would cast aside his daughter because she didn't give him the "pass" that the rest of the world continually did. 

The final blow was a direct hit. Unbeknownst to my dad the fellow who had moved in across the street from us was an RCMP officer.  The police contacted my mother and told her that my father had been spotted on numerous occasions parked kitty corner from our house ( we lived on a corner lot) with his car facing our house and had open liquor in the car. A stalker ahead of his time!  His last hurrah was to be caught in this position with a loaded shotgun in the car.  Now, nothing good can ever come from an inebriated man with a weapon. The police advised my mom that my father's actions were escalating and now would be a very good time to leave the city.  Huh, so my dad doesn't get his sorry ass hauled off to jail but we get to put our house up for sale and my mother and my sisters moved 2 provinces away.  This was the summer of my graduation ( and what a fiasco that was until my father just announced he would not be attending because he did not have a daughter in Grade 12) and things moved fast.  The For Sale sign went up on the house, the moving van came and loaded up and headed west with my mom, her new beau ( my father in carnate) and my 2 sisters - both very upset about moving.  The house sold weeks after they left. I stayed with friends because I was working for the summer and then off to University in the fall.  The day the moving van left and I said good bye to my family I walked into that empty, sad house where so many hopes and dreams lay shattered amongst the dust and I sank down on the living room carpet and sobbed.  I cried for a life that should never have come to this.  I cried for a "normal" world that I wanted so badly.  I missed my family so much and I knew that my world was forever changed.  Well, I thought my world was forever changed - what I did't know is that in about 3 months time it was going to be CHANGED forever. Sad sad times. 17 years old, a father who really hated me and whom I hated just as much, a mother so far away and buried in a brand new mess and I was lost. So very very lost.

The Emporer's New Clothes

Abandoned child syndrome is a behavioral or psychological condition that results from the loss of one or both parents. Abandonment may be physical (the parent is not present in the child's life) or emotional (the parent withholds affection, nurturing, or stimulation).

From Wikipedia

Here I am in Costco about to heave a 50 pound bag of dog food into my cart when I am struck by a direct hit to the heart by the Abandoment Fairy. Suddenly, I cannot breathe, my heart hurts and feels like it is about to fracture into pieces, the tears are pouring down my cheeks and I feel liked a complete idiot in front of all of these people who are trying so hard not to look at me. I am trapped at the back of the store in the back corner and I cannot bring myself to do anything more than lean against my cart and hope that I can become as invisible as the Emporer's New Clothes.

My friend who is an RCMP officer is on duty so I send her a text - please help me - I am having an all out melt down in Costo.  She is my one hope for this moment as my therapist is booked with clients and just cannot jump to my rescue even tho if he could he would. I don't even care if she arrives in her uniform in a marked car - I just want someone to come and get me.  She texts me back that she is so tied up that she cannot come to get me but she would phone my therapist. I know she feels badly that she can't come and that adds another layer of "guilt" because I try so hard not to be a "needy" friend.  Won't work I text her back.  Now I am really lost and on my own. Esme is in the car and if I can just find my way out of the store, past all of the people in the food court, past all of the people in line at customer service, past all of the people waiting to be checked out with their purchases then I can get to Esme and she will help me breathe.  Damn you Costco for not allowing my therapy dog to come with me into the store. I get to the car, I sit with Esme, she rests her soft and gentle head on me and I look deep into her beautiful brown eyes into that soul of pure love and slowly I can start to breathe enough to gather myself  to drive home and there Esme and I stay for the next 2 days......we go out only for her bathroom breaks. We go to the river once by ourselves for her to swim and for me to sit on the shore and cry.  This happened 3 weeks ago today at about 11am. It seems that I will forever be haunted.

What triggered this episode?  Well the "perfect storm" that blew in layer by layer for about 4 days.  Each layer on its own is manageable but when the layers come one on top of each other I simply cannot hang on and gradually I feel that smothering " I can't breathe" feeling and then when I least expect it - wham, a direct blow to the heart. I want to crawl into the fetal position and just lay down and die but I can't.  Life does not afford me that luxury.  I have to "fake it 'til I make it" or in this case - get the heck out of the store.

My parents never ever meant for this legacy of lost love to be my consant source of challenge.  They parented the best that they could, given the parenting practices of that generation and based on their own childhood experiences with their parents.  What happened to their marriage and to the subsequent experiences we 4 children had were not in their master game plan.  I do not blame them directly for what I live with on a daily basis.  It is what it is. 

Children suffer many forms of "abandonment" and often no one actually physically abandons them but rather it is the emotional and pyschological abandonment that can often create the life long battle. In my life, I was "abandoned" on every level........not to sound dramatic but to just be "textbook" about this issue. At 17 years of age the "abandonment" set me up for 20 years of sexual abuse at the hands of a relative. I was very much a young 17 year old.......far from the 17 year olds of today.  I was starving for attention and "love" and I became the prey that walked right into the crosshairs of a champion bounty hunter. Once I started the process with the RCMP and they began their direct and forcefull interrogation of this molester information started to be unearthed that has led my police officer, my therapist, my trauma worker and I to all believe that there is a very good chance that my mother knew what was going on but for some reason felt unable to intervene.  Abandoment at its most sublest and it hits like a sledge hammer 25 years after the abuse began.

I am unable to share those thoughts because even tho the police recommended a laundry list of charges against this person the Crown Counsel could not follow thru due to a change in the Criminal Code years ago and thus, hands tied, they could not formally charge this person and so, there are "facts", etc. that I have to be very careful about speaking about.  But know this - this abuser did actually admit to this abuse in front of my therapist - so we all know that he knows he did it, the police know that he did it (they interrogated him so well that they got him to the point of almost saying THE WORD but they just could not get that word on tape.) Crown knows that he did it but......a change in the Criminal Code saved his sorry ass from being hung out to dry. Sexual abuse cases have no statute of limitations but they are subject to being handled under the Code as it was written at the time of the offense.  We have a "legal" system not a "justice" system.

And so yesterday I saw my therapist for the first time since my experience in Costco and I explain the layers that led up to the final trigger that led to the implosion.  I cry, he listens, I cry some more and he nods his head.  He knows that I can verbalize the feelings and the triggers and that I learned what this heart shattering feeling is.  He knows that he has taught me the pyschological underpinnings of this issue. But he also knows that knowing the facts is not the same as feeling the feeling. We talk some more and I leave - completely exhausted and drained from reliving the moments and sharing that hurt and trying to box it up and put it up on the shelf with the other boxes labelled "Abandonment Issues".  I walk out into the sunshine and I vow to try to make it a better day.  And it was......and it always will be. Time does not heal all wounds but time affords me the luxury of learning how to live with the fallout.

There will be many more "Costco" moments to come - this I know. It is what it is. 

One piece at a time

How would I describe the last 4 years of "work" - which therapy is by the way! How would I describe myself then - when I arrived at my first therapy appointment I felt quite confident, quite in control and really, I just needed a few excercises to help me deal with this anxiety thing that had cropped up over the past few months.  Surely, some techniques on a hand out would be just the ticket.  Apparently not. My therapist has had 30+ years of experience working with all types of clients and he can spot a problem a mile away.  He is also wise enough to know that that problem must rise to the surface on its own - one cannot read a book or do some breathing excercises and all will be well.  Anxiety is a symptom of something much deeper. So, we chit chatted and for a few weeks danced around the elephant in the room and then........it happened.......I needed to disclose what had happened.  He nodded.....wise man that he is he knew that I would find my trust, my time and my safe spot to blurt it out.  And with that we started our long road together.

What happened over the course of the first year is that I became this jigsaw puzzle of various pieces of my life.  I was a box of loose pieces that needed to be put together in order to be a whole picture. So many many times I felt like my puzzle was coming together and then something would happen and I ended up feeling like my puzzle had been knocked onto the floor and had broken apart yet again.  " A million little pieces" is a phrase I wore out I used it so often.  Week by week and month by month more of the puzzle would be assembled before it was knocked off the table yet again. I learned how to put that puzzle back together faster each time but still when I was knocked off of the table I felt broken and scattered and a heap of pieces on the floor. There were police interviews, court dates set and cancelled the day before, emails and voice mails left for someone, anyone to tell me what the hell was going on with my file, files sent to Crown Counsel where they entered into the great white abyss known as the gatekeeping committee, files were sent back to the police, more interviewing, more messages left trying to find out why and what to do.  An endless stream of your life being paraded in front of people who are trying so hard to help you but the "system" keeps getting in the way.

Many times I sat under the quilt on the couch, shaking, crying, feeling completely abandoned and scared to even breathe. Broken again into a million little pieces laying on the floor and no energy left to try to even pick them up. But piece by piece I have put my puzzle back together and yes, even today those pieces sometimes end up back on the floor but my puzzle stays on the table waiting for the holes to be refilled.  Piece by piece I have worked to put together my new life. One piece at a time.

Don't stop picking up your pieces and putting them back together.  Sometimes it is one piece a day and sometimes you find all of the blue sky pieces and suddenly you have sky in your puzzle.  Don't be afraid if your puzzle falls off the table - just breathe.......and pick it up one piece at a time.

The Summer of '72

The summer that changed the direction of 6 peoples' lives. I was 14 years old with 2 months of summer fun ahead of me that only a kid can look forward to! It was 1972 - which seems a life time ago and yet seems like yesterday.  My youngest sister was 4 years old and had beautiful long blonde hair. From the moment we started summer vacation there seemed to be a huge shift of "normalcy" in our world. 

My mother disappeared for the summer. No, she did not go far away - just down the hall to her bedroom where she took to her bed for the summer. At the time it was just understood that she was not feeling well. As the oldest it fell upon me to look after the household, cook, clean, can the fruit that my mother always had in previous summers, make the jams and jellies to be stored along side the quarts and quarts of fruit and look after my 4 year old sister as best I could.  My other siblings were 8 and 12 at the time and they just floated along somewhere in between the silent chaos and the turbulent flareups.  Our grandparents lived in a house right next door to us on our farm and once a week my grandmother would take me to town so that I could do the grocery shopping. One day my mother called me into the bedroom and handed me some money.  Her request - that I take my 4 year old sister and have her long beautiful hair cut.  It seems that I had not been able to keep it braided and tidy as my mom had done for all of her girls when we were young.  French braids that were so tight they pulled your eyes back to the side of your head!  Done every Sunday night after bathtime and then the bottoms undone every morning and rebraided.  Once a week the entire braids came out and our heads hurt like crazy! My mother was very upset about having my sister's hair cut - at 14 I didn't understand the deep underlying meaning of this request - now, to me it seems like she knew she was losing a battle with her "illness".  The summer went on and soon it was time to go back to school. The fall of Grade 9 - my last year of junior high.  One day, off we 3 went to school on the bus and when we came home my Grandmother met us at the door and told us that our mother was in the hospital.  According to my Grandmother, my father had come in from outside and been unable to rouse my mother and called an ambulance.  Very frightening times for 4 children who really had no idea just what demons were lurking in our home.

Today, I now recognize that my mother was severely depressed.  It is my belief that once she saw her children off to school that she attempted suicide. I have no proof of that but having battled depression, anxiety, PTSD and panic disorder myself I see the undeniable symptoms of a woman in deep deep depression.  A subject that the medical community did not really understand or talk about 40 years ago.  My mother was deemed to have had a nervous breakdown and one day when I was visiting her in the hospital she told me that our doctor had told her that he would not release her from the hospital until she agreed to seperate from my father.  She was a patient in the hospital for over 2 weeks. By this time my father was a full fledged member of the Drinking and Driving club and more than once was told by a judge to join AA. 

I have another memory of Hallowe'en that year where my mother was not present.  I can't recall where she was but I just know that she wasn't home and Hallowe'en costumes and trick or treating were not the happy memories of years prior.  I wish I could remember more of this time but it's gone or tucked away somewhere deep inside my head.

The fundamental explosion in our family occured the weekend of Nov 11th.  My birthday is Nov 8 and that year I turned 15.  It was so obvious that our parents were headed for a seperation and the mood in our home had become very tense and a bit of a battlefield.  My father was very drunk that night and had issued the threat that he was going to go downstairs and shoot himself. With that he staggered downstairs to his office where he had some of his hunting rifles.  I followed in hot pursuit to try to "talk" to him and ended up wrestling a rifle out of his hands.  Now, in hindsight he was probably too drunk to even load the damn thing never mind shoot straight but when you are 15 years old you don't have that kind of foresight.  And that night......was the beginning of the formal end to my parents' marriage and our home broke apart.  My mother took me with her to see a lawyer - an act that my father never forgot or forgave me for - and in short order had rented a house, spoke to all of our teachers to advise them of what was transpiring and ordered a moving van. The day the moving van arrived we were at school however my father had one last hurrah - he took the keys to the car away from my mother and she and my little sister rode to town with the movers who then took her to a car rental agency where she rented a cute dark blue Volkswagon bug!  And thus began our new life - single parent kids in a dual parent society living in a rental home in one of the less than desireable areas and with no money. Happy 15th birthday to me.