MUMMY DEAREST

“TOXIC MOTHER”

It has been a while since I have sat down to think or even write about my mother, I have long dealt with my hurt and pain which she inflicted on me. Before I write this post I want to just say that I do love my mother but in the way that God loves all his creations. I have forgiven her but I remember the suffering she caused me. I have no desire to be spiteful or vengeful but I can only accept hope through working through my memories so that I can reach a point I can truly say I can look back and have no remnant negativities. It’s not easy to really admit that you have had a parent who was abusive, and when I speak of abuse I mean here physical, psychological and emotional. For a long time I lived making excuses and really living that victims’ stance that it was “my fault”. People expect that a mother is supposed to protect and nurture, not abuse. I know it is not easy for anyone who lives under the shadow of their dominating mother to see anything else and I only recognized and took charge of my life, one she controlled, when I got married.

My mom brought me into the world and the first thing that comes to mind was that she said that she had forgotten to take her birth control pill on that occasion. Nice thing to say, don’t you think? I know from looking at early pictures of me as a child that she seemed happy to have me around, but then pictures can be deceiving. As a child, as I noted in another post, my hyper behaviour really frustrated my mother and she used to tear her hair out dealing with me. She had no patience with me and expressed it by giving me some good blows. Her erratic behaviour could be seen in her daily routine, one minute she would be loving and then in the next breath she would literally throw me in my room and shout or slap me for such minor things as wetting my bed. Even worse there were nights I had to sleep in the wet bed and I remember getting up and trying to change the sheets all before I reached the age of 8.

When my brother came along, C, as I will call her, told me that because I was the first grand child and spoilt she had to balance it out and take special care of my brother. Mind you it ended up where she treated him well while I began to feel left out and unwanted. There were times my curiosity with my brother led to mischief, on one occasion I climbed into his crib and plastered him with lipstick and my mother gave me licks. On another occasion I bit my brother and my mother bit me so hard that it left marks. There were many occasions she would brag about this to people and I would get very upset that she took pride in it. I was always told that I was the older son and thus must be more responsible and honest, so much so that when my brother and I got into trouble together it was usually me who got the harsher punishment. The most scary experience as a child occurred when I was with my mother and we went shopping in the capital city of Port of Spain at the age of 5 or 6. I got separated from my mother and began to frantically search for her and cry. People tried to help me and when I found her again she quarreled that I looked so foolish and said she was watching me all the time. Now that I look back at it she sounded as though she enjoyed my pain and fear.

Every time I got into trouble as a child the licks would be dished out, my dad had given up the right to punish us since he had said that his father abused him and he did not want to abuse us. There were times he did discipline us with his belt and my brother and I would hide it after, but for the rest of my child and teenage years it was my mother who disciplined. She always said it was her right that “she made us and she could kill us”. We were responsible for taking care of her and it was our duty to serve her even if we hated her for it in the end. She said she would have created a good person, one that would not embarrass her. Sometimes I believed her without question and when I did not and argued with her it usually led to blows and being sent to my room. Its scary to describe how she reacted. Without warning while she was talking to us she would swing around and hit me full force or if her hand caught something it was thrown at me. Usually I would get the full brunt of the blows and to try to prevent this I began to lie to escape. Mind you C. always said that we should tell the truth and it would be easy but to be honest or lie, the punishment was the same.

As I got older and my problems at school got worse she did try her best to push me to excel, however it was all wrong because it was all about her not being embarrassed. C. never tried to find out what I was interested in and believed people when they said I was a problem child. When teachers told her that I would get no where in life I remember her agreeing. Yet when I began to excel, finding my niche in life she would pretend that she always believed in me and it was others who did not. Expressing myself had to be according to what she believed and free expression of ideas were not very easy to express with her. Even though we had good conversations on history or geography most conversations revolved around what she knew. My mother was so self involved that no one else in the world was as good as her. C. always said for example, that she could not stand my grandmother because she gossiped a lot and she would not be caught dead doing that, yet C. spent every waking moment on the phone gossiping about others and never coming up for air. Many times I would tell her to stop, that she was really sounding bad but she never stopped. C. even gossiped about me with people I did not know and told them things I had done in such a way to embarrass me. I felt so much hatred towards her that I began to answer her in my head using profanities on every level.

The older I got, the worse it became. She deliberately exploited the differences between my brother and I, causing a series of rifts between us. C. would say that my brother looked so much like her and that he was even born under the same sign as her. I, on the other hand, looked like my father. I felt like the Ugly Duckling. C. would always say that dad’s family was a pack of bums and I would end up like them if I did not try to behave. This made me feel that I was genetically bred with a corrupt gene that would make me evil and that I had to resist it. All I can remember is my mother arguing and quarreling day in and day out. I could not understand why she hated my dad so because all she did was talk about him in a negative light. That he did not think, wasted money, “limed” too much, did not work hard enough, was fat and ugly, a bum like the rest of his family and a real waste of time. I wondered why she stayed with him, then. She would say that he had treated her badly and threatened her with taking my brother and I, and not giving her money to care for us. My brother and I literally hated him and what made it worse was that he came late to pick us up for outings or came home drunk. I learned later from asking him and seeing him really shocked and hurt that all these accusations were untrue and that she was trying to turn us against him.

I feared my mother and really tried not to antagonize her. Lies became so natural and escaping into a world I made up helped deal with the madness at home. This became real to me and when she reacted I would try to escape but C. would wait her anger festering until she could get her hands on us. I remember climbing up a guava tree and staying up there for the whole day in the hope she would cool down, yet it was not to be the licks would come one way or the other. Her determination to punish saw no bounds, as a child I hated breakfast and there was one time I did not want to eat my egg, C. made me sit at that table for the whole day until I had eaten it, cold and am sure stale. C. never said she was sorry even when she was wrong, in fact on the contrary the problem was with everybody else. I can remember once money was missing in the house and c. came to me and accused me of stealing money in my own home, I was hurt and confused, how could she be saying this to me, her flesh and blood, I really hated her. Other times I would run away from school and go home and she would beat me saying she was scared for me or if I went to play with a few friends from school just outside the school compound she would beat me in front of friends. There was one time while we were in church and my brother and I were talking she gave us back hand slaps for causing a disturbance in the mass, which I could tell was exceedingly embarrassing as she felt it reflected more on her than us.

I can’t say I remember seeing or feeling any expression of love from C. C. would say that the way she showed her emotions/love was through giving gifts on special occasions. In fact when I would try to kiss her she would clam up and become cold. There was once when I was on retreat that I got a letter from her expressing how much she cared, but later she said she was forced to do it. C. hated that I took an interest in God, she felt something was wrong with an interest in it more that Sunday mass. C. even banned us from talking to our neighbours who wanted to talk to us about the bible. When we visited people we had to be always on the best behaviour, in fact if we were given food or drink we were to refuse because it would look like we were not being fed. C. was always saying how much she sacrificed for us, gave up her life for us and that we owed her. If she had some money we would get a few nice things but C. always bought the most expensive things for herself. If C. was going away she would not take us saying that it was her time now and she waited all her life without going anywhere. When we grew up and made money we could travel. Every time we broke something in the house she kept a record of it and would say that one day we would have repay her, at one point I believe the amount was over $350, 000 and that was without interest.

We could not try anything without being afraid of her reaction. One time she threatened that if we ever destroyed our toys we would get nothing for Christmas, and so said so done. I had gotten a Robot toy for my birthday and while playing, I decided to throw it off the steps, of course it broke and my mother was so angry that I expected licks to rain down upon me. Yet all she said was that I would get nothing for Christmas and when Christmas came along I got nothing. It was devastating because we always grew up with the knowledge that love was connected with gifts.

I remember her saying that if we ever came home drunk she would lock the house up and throw our clothes outside. This became reality when I had an accident while driving home from a party one night and on being dropped home I called out to her to help me. C. just looked out the window, refused to open the door and said call my father. I stood out there realizing that she thought that I was drunk when I had just not had been sleeping properly for a few night previously. I wondered if my clothes were going to come flying out next. Food was another area C. made me feel guilty about. When she cooked and we ate, asking for seconds was like being Oliver Twist, she would say that there was not enough and I was a glutton, I became so aware of it that I would horde and over eat in one serving fearing I would not get anything again. Even in the girlfriend department she had a say, every girl had to be screened by her and if she did not like them she did a “Monster-In-Law” on them. Once she even made the racist comment that we should not bring home a African girl because she can’t comb any cane-row child head. I was shocked because I never thought my mother was a racist. At one point when I was a grown man she said that C. needed me to be there for her because C. needed a punching bag to release her frustrations.

My grandmother on my dad’s side had from an early period not liked my mom and the feeling was mutual. At one time we lived in the same house and mom would say some really horrible things about her. All of this I believed, because she was my mother.
One time my brother and I fell on an ice-box and broke it and my uncle and grandmother punished us. My mom became enraged and cursed them and she put us on notice that if my brother and I had any dealings with them she would cut us off. C. never forgave people who hurt her or did her something and you as her child had to follow suit.

I found out that my dad had had an affair and I told her about it she said she knew and that is why she loathed him and she only stayed because of us. Yet I began to understand that because I looked like my dad she took out all of her hurts on me and expressed it in physical and emotional form. I realized that C. was out to sabotage my future in a sense because she did not forgive and did not want to. I know C. was hurt bad and healing took time but to hurt your own son because of it was just wrong. This is also really why we could not speak to my father’s side of the family, it was a form of betrayal to her.

C. said that my grandmother hated her so much that she encouraged my dad to have an affair and that we could never speak to that side of the family again or suffer being thrown out and ostracized from her. Once, when Carnival came round, my grandmother on my mom’s side saw my other grandmother and wanted to take us to see her, but because we were in fear of what my mother said we pulled back and started to cry. Every single gift my grandmother sent was sent back and any mention of her was taboo. In dealing with my dad, C. pointed out how wicked he was and how she was tied to him financially and because of us. I really felt responsible for her and even guilty for looking like him. I wondered if I because half of me was part of him would become so wicked and vile.

Because of this I began to really feel that I was a child spawned from the devil himself. It felt like I could do nothing right, as I was always the one in trouble and giving my mother trouble. I remember getting up at night and crying, asking her why it was I was so bad and if I would always be this way. C. never told me it was not so, only that I should resist the “dark side”. I grew up thinking that because I looked like my dad that I was the bad one and my brother was the good one. Even in my thinking C. would make me feel as though my brother’s hands on approach was far superior than my dreaming, intellectual demeanor. These conflicting feelings exacerbated my confusion over having feelings for men. I wondered if it was my destiny to be always hiding my true personality and feelings, because even though my mom said to talk to her about everything, because of how she reacted to things I did not even feel comfortable speaking to her. Yet I was so amazed that when the few friends my brother and I brought home spoke to her they would say that she was so great like one of them so hip and great to “lime” with. After years of wondering why I resented this I realized that it was a competition for her to steal our friends for herself. Because C. with us at home and C. outside were two different people. In fact c. use to tell people that about me, when people tried to tell my mom how impressed they were with me she would say “you don’t know him, he’s only fooling you at home he is a horror” this would make me feel dejected and belittled. In fact I opened myself to a cycle of trying to prove my worth and obtain her respect. Nothing I did in life impressed her and C. was never proud of me. I remember her telling me and my wife that “I don’t stick to things long and I get bored with people and things”, C. was jealous and did not want me to be happy, as I have now come to recognize. At parties and gatherings C. would take pride in telling horrible and embarrassing stories about me and relished talking about how she punished me.

Reading back everything I have written so far brings back so many memories of my mom, I have tried to think of good times I had with her but they are so far and
few between that all I could remember is the bad. I remember I used lies to get her attention and once I told her people at school were stealing my food and when she rang the school and found out that it was a lie, I was beaten to the point that my grandmother had to intervene. That year I spent my whole time in my room and C. constantly made comments that she “hoped I had miserable children when I got married so that I would feel how miserable you make me”. These are the things I remember and they caused me to grow up very passive and not wanting to speak out or try new things. I felt beaten into the ground, I was the one who was always quarreling with her to hear my point and I really felt unheard. I began to hate her and curse her in my head and I began to really look for ways to escape her smothering me. C. was amazed that I could pass exams and when I entered University I knew she did not think I could ever make it. In fact, even after 10 years at a job I like and am good at she was at our last gathering still spouting the idea that I cannot handle it and it is a matter of time before I give it up. The image of me being her punching bag, replacing my dad has an escape for her for the rest of my life really disgusted me and freaked me out. I looked to escape and I did so in defying her with little things. When I was nearing 20 my reasoning could no longer be controlled by her and I recognized that even though she had taught me the basics of life there were a lot of things she left out so that I would be unable to function without her input. When my second girlfriend tried to show me this, my mother demonized her and I believe one of the reasons she broke up with me is because she could not compete with my mom. I did however defy my mother once when she refused to lend me the keys for the car to visit my girlfriend and I picked myself up and took a taxi to see her. I was 19 at the time. My mom later called, very humble, to see if I needed a drop home, which my girlfriend said I did.

To finally escape my mom I decided to take a job so isolated and far away from home that I had to live there during the week. I finally began to become independent, fully recognizing my worth without my mom interfering, yet when I did go home on weekends I reverted to my former passive self. I refused to lay a hand on my mom because I grew up respecting women and knowing that a man who hit a woman was a coward. Also the bible quote of “honour your mother and father” really played in my head. What my C. needed to read was the part right under that said, “parents do not drive your children to resentment”. I had so much resentment built up against her I really felt torn with dutiful love, fear, hate and guilt when it came to her. One thing I said to myself was that I would never treat my spouse or my children so; no one should be put under such torture.

By the time I was 25 years old my mom moved from hitting me to cuffing me for things that were my decisions. C. continued to say that the things I did represented her and don’t embarrass her in public. When I met my future wife it was not a problem it seemed that C. liked her and I was happy. They both seemed to get along and at that time approval from her was important to me. However the love that was developing for my future wife was beginning to threaten her and after 2 years of dating, when I told her we were getting engaged, C. had no emotion. I remember her sitting in the dark watching television; when I told her she never even looked at me. I had prepared my future wife about my mom and it was not a surprise but we decide to wait a year before we got married so that C. could warm up to it. C. never did and instead made life hell for my wife especially. C. spoke badly about her parents, especially her dad and even had my aunt talk to me about the different ethnic and cultural backgrounds that we were from and how it would not work. When it came down to the wedding she used my brother’s working relationship with my future wife’s dad to try to drive a wedge. Finally C. could not help but try with the wedding itself and threatened not to come if certain things were not exactly her way though she refused to contribute anything. C. tried to forbid me from contributing any money and since she did have control of my every being at times I nearly complied. However I loved S. so much that there was nothing my mother could do. You see my mom is a control freak - a woman bent on her own way and everything and everyone who threatens her must be taken out, mostly by destroying them with her tongue which was deadly like poison.

C. never looked happy for me at my wedding and even after, she treated my wife like an outsider. When it came to intimacy with my wife C. had a disastrous effect on how I viewed sex and my self-worth. Because of what my dad had done C. would say that there was nothing good about the male body and that men were built disgusting. I also remembered C. saying that the male genitals were sickening to watch and was like a spear which was deadly. In my minds eye then sex became a very scary and dirty thing, I hated my body and how I looked and because my dad was huge I felt that I was destined to be that way. My mom would say that I had funny hips and that I walked odd. This added to my feeling of especially when it was reinforced every other week. Thus when it came to sexual intercourse, even with my wife, I had a negative view. S. and I felt very awkward when it came to our first time, both of us were virgins, but S. sensed right off that our love making was missing something special. have come to realize this idea also had a part to play in my feelings for men. It became so real in my mind to think that if sex with a woman was so terrible, as my mother had programmed me to think, then sex with a man would be better. Mom really pulled my emotional strings and I allowed her to do so by not standing up to her.

There were many areas in my marriage that she tried to influence from how to budget to when we should have children. Even when I had to buy my wife gifts lie earrings and an engagement ring she was there. I know it upset my wife before and after our marriage and it really was as though I was more interested in my mother and not her. I just know my mom was making bets on how long our marriage would last because she once told my wife that I get bored with things and don’t stick with them for long, in reference to her. After our marriage we moved in with them until things came to ahead when my wife and I decided to give a gift to my third cousin.

I had worked with my third cousin for a year and knew her well. A few years later when she was getting married she could not invite too many people and thus invited my mom to represent the family. S. and I wanted to give a gift so we went to the bridal registry and bought one for her expecting for her to collect it after the wedding as it was so close. We ran into her every so often and just wanted to express our wishes for her happiness and to show our support for her and for marriage in general, especially as we had been so recently married and were still in stage of wanting to share our happiness with the world. We had ourselves really been touched by the unexpected gifts we received from a few well-wishers who had sent them in spite of not having been invited to the wedding because it was limited to close family and friends, and we wanted to pass this on. We included a card saying all of this. My cousin collected her gifts the day before her wedding and she noticed the present from S. and me. My aunt who loves scandal told my mother we had bought a present for my cousin. C. called me up and ranted and raved on how embarrassing it was and how I humiliated her. She said that you’re only supposed to buy a present if you are invited to the wedding. She continued to go on about how I should have asked her first and she would have directed me on the issue, then she proceeded to insult me by saying I do mad things and don’t think. This was an insult to my wife and me, since we made the decision as a couple and a new family. Tensions had risen in that house for some time before this issue and we had left to live elsewhere. S. and I were getting closer to God as a couple, and former friends we worked with who didn’t believe in a couple being too close or being too close to God my mom and said that we were walking around the village with bibles and trying to convert people. Yet we have always felt that people’s religion, politics, all personal business, is no one else’s and no one should try to influence or change anyone. Still, my mom who believed everyone else before her son decided to call me a liar about it and it was only when my wife told her it was untrue that she settled down. This led to us moving out, but with her new interference in our decisions to give gifts at a new stage, the last straw had been broken.

On my 28th birthday I finally got the nerve, boldness to go to speak to her as an adult to an adult about finding a compromise about her role in our marriage. When we reached I asked to speak to her and she became very defensive saying that this was her house and she did not have to listen. I tried to talk to her calmly and lovingly, letting her know that we loved her but she could no longer interfere with our marriage. C. proceeded to iron clothes and tell me that she could do what the hell she wanted and that I was her son. C. then proceeded to lunge at me. By this point, my wife had come in from the porch to suggest that we come back at another time to give my mom space, but my mother reacted by coming towards me threateningly, and when my wife saw what my mother was about (my mom was going to hit me ) stepped between us in automatic protection of me. C. held on to my wife’s arms and shook my wife violently saying don’t get between her and her son, he’s my son and I can do what I want (to him) and my wife said but he’s my husband. At this point my wife said honey, let’s go and my mom tauntingly said here are your presents which I said I did not want. They were then thrown at me while we were leaving. Outside my mother shouted to me that “when you get back your sense and your reason come back alone.” It was those words that really stuck in my head, I knew she hated my wife for loving me and caring to protect me. C. was jealous that someone found me of worth and that all that she said about me could no longer work to destroy me.

My wife and I cut all contact with her and even though it hurt in so many ways especially how she treated us I felt a weight lifted. However my mother being the ever superior Matriarch was able to turn the whole family against me. This just goes to show that even relatives had no mind of their own to decide.

A case in point occurred a year later when I received a letter from my great Aunt who represented all the “piety” in the family. In this long letter she tried to make me feel guilty for all that “I had done to my mother” and how wrong I was and so hurtful to her I was. In the letter were all these clips of prayers and a picture of Mary which I suppose was to make me feel guilty. In fact if the object was to get me to feel guilty it did the opposite. I penned a letter to my mother who I know put my Great Aunt up to the letter. In this letter I told her everything I felt and how much she hurt me, I even told her that if she did not get rid of her hurt, anger, bitterness and pain that it would fester. My wife had recently bought a Emily Post where it showed that gifts do not have to be solicited to be sent. We photocopied it and sent it in the letter because we knew she would not believe it unless she saw it herself.

Yet even before this issue arose, I had known how good her programming was. After I had gotten married, my grandmother on my dad’s side was very sick, in fact I had gotten the word that she might soon breathe her last. I decided that all these years of my mother preventing me from seeing her had gone on long enough. I decided to see her and was courteous enough to tell my mother, who got very cold about it but did not say anything else. My visit was a good one, I told my grandmother I forgave her for everything she had done and she acknowledged it. Then we caught up with everything in my life, I heard in her voice how much she regretted the past and saw her relief and peace at it being put in the past and when I left I felt that a chapter in my life had been closed. However, C. felt betrayed and had my brother tell me this, I was angry that she would have my brother do the dirty work and I really felt it was wrong to hold on to so much unforgiveness and to make me carry it on, it was over 20 of hatred against my grandmother. When my first son was born my wife and I visited and it was my grandmother’s first great-grandchild. Shortly after she died. I know that if I had not gone to speak to her the year before I would have missed that opportunity to have closure and would have forever regretted it and wondered.

My only contact to that family was my dad who really wanted to keep the peace and bring my mother and me back together. However in the time I spent communicating with him, I recognized that my dad was a very caring man who regretted his mistakes but lived in a world of guilt because my mother made him pay every day for it. C. refused to forgive him even when he bought diamonds and paid so much attention to her. With my wife’s help I really recognized that my mother was more of a liar than not only I, but a lot of people I knew. Much of what she told me in my life was based upon what she wanted us to know and twisted to suit her desires. She manipulated events and what people did and said to suit her, My dad was not the devil and he was a loving man, I recognized that he drank to escape her, because in his heart he still loved and loves her and he can’t live without her, though it is hard now to see how he could live with her. With my growing relationship with him developing I recognized he did love me and I heard it from his lips and he started to hug me a lot. With this humbling revelation and all that I was forced to see by my mother, my whole belief in my mother changed. I saw that she was a poisonous person spreading her toxins all over and destroying lives. I also recognized that after 3 years of marriage I was taking my frustrations from all that she had dished out on me on my wife. My wife became my mother in my head and I played out all my emotions, pains, hurts and hatred on her. My wife brought it to my attention and I for one did not want to recognize it, the fact that I was becoming my mother. I remember, too, my mother also saying that she would never become like her mother-in-law and yet she became worse. I for one needed to recognize it as a problem and I needed to confront all the hurt and pain or else it would destroy me and my marriage.

When my first son was born, I called and let her know she had a grandchild and she was welcome to come visit him in the nursery even if she did not want to see us, but she never came. When my wife was pregnant with our second child, she suggested we offer a chance to reestablish communication in case my mother had a change of heart and wanted the chance, and wary communication between my mother and my family began again, first it was phone calls then it was a visit to see her first grand child. But every time we left, a bad feeling followed and my wife would talk about how deliberately uncomfortable she was made to feel but insisted we give it time. As time went on, it became clear that in fact what we were doing was opening her and our sons to abuse. C. would constantly compare S. negatively with my brother’s fiancé or bring up people and past events which were upsetting to my wife. My son was not treated well, she tried to compare him to me using the same destructive criticisms as on me in relation to my father, and when we left, he always felt vaguely uncomfortable but wanted to visit her again because she was his grandmother. When our second son, was born she began to compare the two of them in negative terms and state how he was so much like her and so good etc. and ignore the older one and more overtly denigrate him. There were times she said that he was too fat and he would come home and ask why granny did not love him. In the face of this I realized I was doing a real disservice in bringing my wife and child to receive abuse and this time by my hands, but still I had fallen back into that trap of wanting my mother’s love and approval. My wife finally put her foot down and said she wasn’t going back or allowing her children to be put in that abusive situation anymore and told me I could go to visit my mother if I wanted to, but that the children and she wouldn’t. I said that I wasn’t going without her.

The thing is I was really living out all that C.predicted for me since I believed her so well and because I had such a low self-esteem. I began to try to pressure my children to live up to what I though would be something that would make my mother approve of the way I raise my children. The fact was I was becoming abusive and really destroying my marriage. A lot of my behaviour in my own marriage was based upon my interaction with my mother, which was always defensive and always trying to turn an argument to my advantage. Arguing with my children and quarreling with them sound like deja vu. Even my adulterous affair was part of that constant barrage she spouted that men are destined to cheat and that since my dad did it I would too. I had always said that I would not do that but a part of me believed her. Even C’s response convicted her, when I told her she was not shocked and asked if I loved this woman, but when I told her it was a guy all she said was why did I not experiment before I got married. C. never asked how my wife was and after 3 weeks passed she called again as if nothing had happened, it was not even to find out how my wife was or even I . It was at this point I just told her that she was not a nice person that she never told me sorry in her life and how she treated S. and our children. In the end I told her she did not know how to love that she would never know what it was and that S. really taught me about love by showing me how much she loved me by going through so much pain and hurt which I gave to her and yet sticking by me, then I told her I loved her and to have a great life and good-bye. She has never called back.

A while after that I really sat down and had a heart to heart talk with my dad. I told him all the things mom said about him while I was growing up and wanted to know if these accusations were true. He said even though he did have affairs, which he was sorry for, most of what she said was untrue. For the first time in my life my dad cried with me, something I never expected or thought he was capable of. I got to tell him how I felt, that he needed to be there and take up the father role and not allow mom to have such damaging power over us. What amazed me was his response that C. was so bitter and unforgiving, that she was so stubborn and was always quarreling. But the words that stuck was what he said next that “you can choose your friends but not choose the type of family members you get”. Then I asked why he married her and even though he said he loved her the look in his eyes was one of not being sure anymore.

That was 2½ years ago and since then I have spent my nights really sitting down with my wife and letting out all my hurts and pains. I admit that there are many issues that I unconsciously do like turn an argument against my wife or really say things that hurt my children which still stems from having to deal with C. I am always on the defensive as though every decision I make is wrong and I have to prove them, even argue them. At one point all women were my mother and I was angry all the time. Getting rid of toxins is a long process but I know its no longer going to kill me.