“Kids are resilient — they can bounce back from anything.”
I’ve heard these words often. I’ve repeated them myself, especially to myself. I meant them without question. Until I started having conversations about healthy relationships with youth who were kept in cages.
Our society refers to these structures as juvenile detention centers — a facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state as a form of punishment after being convicted of crimes. Quite a sentence for youth who don’t have fully developed brains until the age of 25 — the development of the prefrontal cortex affects how to regulate emotions, control impulsive behavior, assess risk and make long-term plans. In addition, the cerebellum affects cognitive maturity, but unlike the prefrontal cortex, the development of the cerebellum appears to largely depend on environment, as Dr. Jay Giedd at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego told PBS.
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Karma is only a bitch if you are.
I thought we were rolling steady, though slow. Until I noticed he always seemed ready to get off the road. One tire in, one tire out? Dangerous, exhilarating, and exhausting. I had to decide if I was ready to ride or die. I wasn’t down for either, until I was.
After he decided to leave me in the dust and drive back to his hometown with our daughter, I picked up my bags and have been crashing on my Mom’s couch since mid-February. When I met him five Februarys ago, he was living with a longtime friend, sleeping on his couch.
Karma is only a bitch if you are.
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“Wow, he really hurt you, didn’t he?”
I looked at her puzzled, “John?”
“Have you dealt with it? Let it go?”
That was last week. Since then, I’ve dealt with it. But not without a little help from my friends — real and surreal. For days my activities revolved around crying my face off to music, one song in particular, paying close attention to the shit talk that arose as I listened, and breathing through the passages of pain.
I listened and wrote, forgetting facts about Covid-19 and wiping tears and snot from face to sleeve. I lost my appetite, wanting to feed myself answers instead. Why was I hurt? Why was I being led to find the answers in music? Why was I unable to stop listening to the song?
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As a survivor of child abuse and sexual assault, April 1st not only starts month-long awareness campaigns for both causes, but commemorates my three-month sobriety. I share my story to raise awareness that victims and survivors of these types of traumas are more likely to use and abuse alcohol, at times losing their lives and closest relationships.
I started drinking soon after I was raped. I was fifteen and was told booze made you feel good. I didn’t know what that meant.
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I have work to do, but I can’t stop crying. I have to get it out first. I have to be with this. I have to feel it all. Even when my breath tightens, even when my legs can’t stop shaking, even when I have to pause typing for every word to cry. I have to understand why I feel like such a failure. I have to know to go forward. Deep down I already know what it is, I’ve just never named it. Only shamed and blamed it in others.
This is my mid-life crisis. This is where I see all of my shit. Where I face my shadows, the darker parts of myself that I don’t want you to know. So why am I telling you now? Because I’m done hiding.
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Sharing helps me process this new reality, and quite frankly, it leaves a record of what I know to be true. I do my best to share my truths, my perspectives, as I can only assume why others do what they do and choose not to look like an ass in doing so. Been there, done plenty of that. Case in point, today’s entry. John has defended that I assumed his actions or lack thereof. Perhaps. Or perhaps life is the one who said, “Nah, people aren’t here for that, they’re here for this.”
I tried to play it safe, but facts have a way of turning my stories into fairy-tales.
Awww… y’all are getting along? That’s great.
What happens when you don’t?
How do you deal when shit gets real?
Not good.
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I knew next to nothing about the fathers of my children. All three of them. Third times the charm? In the sense that I‘m certain I’ll never have another baby with a man I barely know? Absolutely. Not only because I’m 44, but because I’m over the concept that I need to be with the father to be there for our child. We are. We will be. I’m trusting that John and I will show up for Sophia in the ways she needs, since we weren’t showing up for each other, which was unfair to us all.
I’ve been here before. I know what usually happens... I get the kid and he and I hate each other, forever. As if that tactic worked with my first two children who have since confessed that I regularly crossed their boundaries by sharing too much, and rarely got consent from their fathers for making choices that concerned our children. Not this time.
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You know how you know something, but you don’t know how you know it?
That’s my life in a nutshell right now. A total shit show. I’m about to lose the only home I’ve known for the past four years. The longest I’ve lived with a man since my father. Ironic considering I began to see John as my father... secretive, aloof, unavailable.
Is it inevitable? Do we end up with people like our parents?
Maybe. Or maybe we settle for the stories they showed us.
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A friend checked in with me asking if John and I had talked. We had. We came to a compromise. She asked if I was happy with the plan.
I’m not happy, but… I know it needs to happen. I know we need to be the trusted adults Sophia needs. We need to show up for her. It’s not about us, beyond how our co-parenting will impact her life.
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