I didn't answer 18 calls he says... what does that say about me?
I can't let anyone in. I can't allow myself to be comforted. When pain happens, I isolate. My friends don't get this. It's more than they've ever seen someone do. It angers them. They want to help. They want to be there for me. I can't let them. Partly I believe I don't deserve it, but the other part is I just can't trust it. And then that insults them more. Why wouldn't I trust them? What have they done? The answer: nothing. They've done nothing. IIIIIIIIIII just can't let anyone in. This has shattered friendships, made others tense, led many people to yell at me or leave me. I get it. It must be frustrating. But I just can't yield. This morning, after I broke down at the DMV because my family couldn't get me my birth certificate on time, which just brought back floods of memories of how my family wasn't like others....even if this wasn't even an example, so after I broke down and left, Jesse called me 18 times (so he tells me), and texted. He couldn't find me. I'd left. Christen was supposed to meet up with me for lunch. I blew her off. My inability even to accept them only further made me angry at myself, and only further made me want to be alone. So I was alone. All morning. And when I came home, Jesse was here, on a call, I tried to hide in Eli's bedroom until Jesse had to leave. He knew I was there though, and tried to talk to me. I wouldn't respond to him. I texted, if anything, I prefer to text, but please go so that I can come out.
What is wrong with me? Why am I like this? I'll tell you. I know the answers. And I try to get OVER the answers and to move on, but it is the hardest thing to do. Overcoming my past trauma is harder than losing Aden. Yes, harder than that.
I have a post I've been meaning to share about life in my house before my parents divorced and then when "we were divorcing" Dad. I just haven't shared it yet. I wrote it July 4th. Part of me has been afraid to share it. I didn't want to hurt Dad who is much different in some ways today.
(Disclaimer: much of what I am about to share are memories that I didn't recall until the past year. Losing Aden pushed me deeper into my own pain and depressions than ever before. And suddenly things clicked. I started to recall. I'd never understood before people who would say they had repressed memories, or that a person could dissociate in order to survive....i never understood any of that, until I realized that was me... and that's what I had done... and that was my tendency even to the present. So much of these things I'm about to share, I've only been finally dealing with since November and December of 2017... It has connected so many dots for me, but I think it will take longer than ''a few months'' to work through.... We are talking about a childhood that I could recall wasn't good but of which I could give few examples for a very long time)
But after my parents divorced, and after Mom, Buffie, Bryant and I lost our house and were forced out- given 30 days from November 30th to find a new place to live, life didn't really get better in many ways. Well, a lot got better, but new things got worse. God gave us a house. It was a miracle how it worked out. I loved that house, and I felt it was going to be our sanctuary. But immediately, we found it hard to relate to one another in a healthy way. We'd spent (well for me) 17 years of operating in hell and hearing things about each other from Dad, being told how each of us felt about each other, and never knowing if it was true.... what was lies? What was truth? Who did you trust? What was real? What was normal? Was this normal? It was all I never knew. Did my sister really hate me? Was she just jealous of me? Could she really not love me because she was only my 'half' sister? Did Mom really love her more and lie each time she said she loved me?
I'd always isolated during the pain before my parents divorced. Most fights, blowups as they were, ended with all of us alone in different rooms, not speaking, and not knowing who to trust. That happened pretty much every day, except Christmas and Easter, and sometimes Halloween. But at our new place, what I thought to be our sanctuary, I ended up isolated even more, even more out of despair. In our old home, isolating felt somewhat normal, and we all did it. In our new house, I had Mom and Buffie saying I could trust them, but this would be right after they hurt me so badly, perhaps accidentally, or hurled a false accusation at me, probably b/c they were still healing too, but I didn't get that at the time. At the time, it just caused me to doubt them and what they said was truth. SO could I trust them? I didn't know? Had dad been right about them? I didn't know.
And then the stalking began. The car that sat outside our house daily, for hours on end, staring straight at our front door. How we could never get the cops out there in time to catch him. But how I was terrified in my new sanctuary. And that car stalked us until my sister, brave, finally ran out there one day and started yelling something at the man inside. Maybe she had a bat? I can't remember. But she was saying something like "I know who you are and who sent you!" The man drove away and didn't return.
But then, we'd come home and find things moved around.... who had moved the furniture? Who had literally turned every magnet on the refrigerator upside down? Who had thrown sunflower seeds all over the backseat of the car? These things seem minuscule, silly even, but we all claimed we hadn't done it....was it one of us? Lying? Being truly crazy? Or were we not safe. Was it Dad? If asked, he denied.... We got an alarm system on our house. It didn't help. Did he know the alarm? Bryant was just a kid. Bryant knew it. Had Dad tricked him? We changed our code. We didn't tell Bryant. No one came in. But we'd get calls often that someone had attempted.
Then came the day we found a man in our garage trying to take our Ford Explorer, the one that Dad won in the divorce but had said I could keep to drive to and from school. He was trying to break into the car. My sister trapped him and called the cops. He told the cops some man had paid him money and told him that his ex wife had stolen this car and to please come take it back. I remember being terrified.... was I going to lose the car? In the South, at 17, having a car is a big deal, even if it's not a fancy car. New Yorkers probably don't understand. But it's like having a metro card. Without, you can go nowhere really. Not even to the store. Every store is at least a mile away. So what did this mean? Would this stranger return? Break in again? Who was he? Would he hurt us?
Then came the worst of it all.... the man at the window. I still can't talk about it without crying and shaking vigorously. I walked out of my Mom's room one day, walked down the hall, and there saw it, a man, a white guy with the face of a 20 year old and in a red ball cap, trying to break into my sister's window. I screamed. I screamed for Mom or Buffie. The man jumped down. I don't remember what happened after that. I was in shock. The man got away somehow. The cops came, but he was gone. The cops questioned me. Was I crazy? I knew what I saw. But we had no evidence except a ladder by my sister's window. And I think my sister and mom couldn't say for sure if they'd left it there. But I knew, knew I wasn't safe. I knew it. How could all this stuff happen? Later, like the next week, my sister said my Dad called her and said, "you know, you shouldn't leave a ladder outside. Someone could put it by the window and climb up." WHAT DID THAT MEAN?????? We hadn't told him what happened....WHAT DID THAT MEAN???????? Would my father really do something like that that could potentially terrify me so deeply??? He swore he didn't.
And then our dogs. We had four dogs in our backyard. That's not a big deal in the South. They didn't make much noise, but suddenly animal control would show up at house weekly because of continual complaints about howling and barking. We had to make them stop or get rid of them. We went around to every neighbor to apologize. No neighbor seemed to know what we were talking about. Some seemed like they didn't know we had a dog. Others had dogs themselves. My sister called animal control. All the reports came from one number, and unidentified caller. The caller requested we get rid of at least 2 of the dogs. We had the mom and the dad dog, they were the whole families, and then my brother and I each had a puppy. For health reasons, my mom chose to keep the Mother, and my puppy... thus she'd chosen between her children in my brother's eyes, and he felt he lost both of his dogs. And that's what Dad told him for sure: Mom chose Megin. She always chooses Megin and Buffie. She doesn't treat you the same. She doesn't care about you the same. We never found out who made the calls. But my brother reported to us that Dad had often asked "Does anyone ever complain about all those dogs y'all have?"
Then came the belongings- Actually this was one of the first things- I'm telling stories out of order.... but everything we took from our house (which was the contents of my room, Bryants, and Buffies, and then mom's clothes, and half of everything else), well Dad wanted those things. We had to go through months of negotiation. Eventually, the kids were allowed to keep their belongings, but mom had to give back the half of everything she took. Dad got to keep anything he used for his business... and it seemed a lot ended up being used for his business. We received very few things, and honestly, we didn't want them and gave them away mostly. I'll never forget watching my mother cry over items her father had handmade for her in his wood-shop, crying as she watched them loaded onto a truck for my father who honestly never cared less about them. But winning. Dad liked to win. And he set those items up in his new house like a shrine. Somehow, we got to keep the piano. Years later, I found out mom told the judge the piano was mine. That was a lie. She lied in court so I could have the piano. She knew music was the only thing that kept me surviving.
So it was during these years that I learned what to do to survive. I learned to keep to myself, not to attach to too many people, and to trust very little people. I learned how to act on the outside like a person I knew the world would like, and I learned NOT to tell them about any of the deep things that happened. And since Mom, Buffie, Bryant and I were not in family counseling together, we weren't really learning how to communicate all that healthy with each other. And my sister thought I was fake. But I wasn't fake. On the outside, that's how I really WANTED to be.... I just couldn't share what was inside. At least I didn't feel so. So I stayed in my room, even when they knocked on the door begging me to come and talk. I read my bible. I memorized scripture. I cried. I clung to any boy who promised he loved me. And I believed him, until he changed his mind. And then I just isolated again, read, prayed, and cried.
By God's sheer, SHEER grace, I made it to Mercer University, and then to Boston, and God began reparenting me and surrounding me with examples of what ''normal'' was. But to survive, I had to basically repress the memory of all that was before. For a long time, I had little contact with my family. It wouldn't really come up again until my mid 20s. That's probably why, if you're reading this and we were close friends between childhood and 26, you've never heard any of it. To this day, I don't know if I ever would have gone back home when I moved to NY if Franklin hadn't been born. He was born, and I had to see him. So I'd visit home. My heart ached for my brother. I felt I left him behind, but I couldn't stay. I prayed he'd be okay. He wasn't. That has been hard to accept.
I fear. I fear who will lie. I fear who will leave. I fear who has said I love you but will leave. I fear who will promise the world through their actions and then be incapable of delivering even the slightest. I fear opening up my heart. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if the only people I've opened my heart to are my nieces and nephews, and of course, my dear Eli. I've done a good job at caring for others, because as I see there pain, I understand it, and I can usually figure out what they need by thinking about what would have surely helped me.
Yet I sit, at 35 years old, hiding in the bedroom and not able to speak to my husband because what comes natural is to be alone. If you never trust, you never get betrayed.
To a great degree, I believe everything I preach. But to one small degree, it is hard to live it for myself. I have seasons... seasons I am strong, but perhaps as my dad often reminds to this day, I really am weak, too emotional. Perhaps as I was told by the first pastor I worked for, I am not cut out for ministry if I have depression. I'm better cut out for office work. Perhaps as friends wonder, I really can't take it all. Part of me says, I've made it this far, and I'm alive, and I still believe in my God.....I am FREAKING STRONG! But then that 17 year old girl comes out, and goes into shock, having just seen the man at the window, and having her father deny he knew anything about it.... having the stalker sit outside our house, a stalker follow my mom and break into her car countless times and leave things to let her know he'd been there.... and to this day, not have it said to me, "I'm sorry Megin. It was me. I shouldn't have done those things." That's when I can't take it. That's when I shut the door. That's when my poor husband deserves a better wife. That's when I know all the guys beforehand dodged a bullet. That's when I know people who have stayed my friends are super faithful and loyal. That's when I fear I am going to ruin Eli's life. And that's when I wonder, God....will I ever grow? Will I ever be of use? Can I praise you from Sheol? Surely not. Will you lift me out?
I share this because too many people don't understand me. Too many people are just befuddled by me, and I'm tired of having to try to explain by just grazing the surface.... but honestly, as I share this, I wonder if this is going to me I am utterly rejected and will lose any reputation I have of being capable.... I wonder if the Psalmists feared that. I wonder if the guy who wrote Psalm 88 remains anonymous for that reason. If so, pretend this isn't me. Pretend this is anonymous, and just remember, that you never understand a person, until you have lived their past and the present... until you have thought of their future and feared it... You never understand a person, or yourself, until you go deep... very, very deep.
What is wrong with me? Why am I like this? I'll tell you. I know the answers. And I try to get OVER the answers and to move on, but it is the hardest thing to do. Overcoming my past trauma is harder than losing Aden. Yes, harder than that.
I have a post I've been meaning to share about life in my house before my parents divorced and then when "we were divorcing" Dad. I just haven't shared it yet. I wrote it July 4th. Part of me has been afraid to share it. I didn't want to hurt Dad who is much different in some ways today.
(Disclaimer: much of what I am about to share are memories that I didn't recall until the past year. Losing Aden pushed me deeper into my own pain and depressions than ever before. And suddenly things clicked. I started to recall. I'd never understood before people who would say they had repressed memories, or that a person could dissociate in order to survive....i never understood any of that, until I realized that was me... and that's what I had done... and that was my tendency even to the present. So much of these things I'm about to share, I've only been finally dealing with since November and December of 2017... It has connected so many dots for me, but I think it will take longer than ''a few months'' to work through.... We are talking about a childhood that I could recall wasn't good but of which I could give few examples for a very long time)
But after my parents divorced, and after Mom, Buffie, Bryant and I lost our house and were forced out- given 30 days from November 30th to find a new place to live, life didn't really get better in many ways. Well, a lot got better, but new things got worse. God gave us a house. It was a miracle how it worked out. I loved that house, and I felt it was going to be our sanctuary. But immediately, we found it hard to relate to one another in a healthy way. We'd spent (well for me) 17 years of operating in hell and hearing things about each other from Dad, being told how each of us felt about each other, and never knowing if it was true.... what was lies? What was truth? Who did you trust? What was real? What was normal? Was this normal? It was all I never knew. Did my sister really hate me? Was she just jealous of me? Could she really not love me because she was only my 'half' sister? Did Mom really love her more and lie each time she said she loved me?
I'd always isolated during the pain before my parents divorced. Most fights, blowups as they were, ended with all of us alone in different rooms, not speaking, and not knowing who to trust. That happened pretty much every day, except Christmas and Easter, and sometimes Halloween. But at our new place, what I thought to be our sanctuary, I ended up isolated even more, even more out of despair. In our old home, isolating felt somewhat normal, and we all did it. In our new house, I had Mom and Buffie saying I could trust them, but this would be right after they hurt me so badly, perhaps accidentally, or hurled a false accusation at me, probably b/c they were still healing too, but I didn't get that at the time. At the time, it just caused me to doubt them and what they said was truth. SO could I trust them? I didn't know? Had dad been right about them? I didn't know.
And then the stalking began. The car that sat outside our house daily, for hours on end, staring straight at our front door. How we could never get the cops out there in time to catch him. But how I was terrified in my new sanctuary. And that car stalked us until my sister, brave, finally ran out there one day and started yelling something at the man inside. Maybe she had a bat? I can't remember. But she was saying something like "I know who you are and who sent you!" The man drove away and didn't return.
But then, we'd come home and find things moved around.... who had moved the furniture? Who had literally turned every magnet on the refrigerator upside down? Who had thrown sunflower seeds all over the backseat of the car? These things seem minuscule, silly even, but we all claimed we hadn't done it....was it one of us? Lying? Being truly crazy? Or were we not safe. Was it Dad? If asked, he denied.... We got an alarm system on our house. It didn't help. Did he know the alarm? Bryant was just a kid. Bryant knew it. Had Dad tricked him? We changed our code. We didn't tell Bryant. No one came in. But we'd get calls often that someone had attempted.
Then came the day we found a man in our garage trying to take our Ford Explorer, the one that Dad won in the divorce but had said I could keep to drive to and from school. He was trying to break into the car. My sister trapped him and called the cops. He told the cops some man had paid him money and told him that his ex wife had stolen this car and to please come take it back. I remember being terrified.... was I going to lose the car? In the South, at 17, having a car is a big deal, even if it's not a fancy car. New Yorkers probably don't understand. But it's like having a metro card. Without, you can go nowhere really. Not even to the store. Every store is at least a mile away. So what did this mean? Would this stranger return? Break in again? Who was he? Would he hurt us?
Then came the worst of it all.... the man at the window. I still can't talk about it without crying and shaking vigorously. I walked out of my Mom's room one day, walked down the hall, and there saw it, a man, a white guy with the face of a 20 year old and in a red ball cap, trying to break into my sister's window. I screamed. I screamed for Mom or Buffie. The man jumped down. I don't remember what happened after that. I was in shock. The man got away somehow. The cops came, but he was gone. The cops questioned me. Was I crazy? I knew what I saw. But we had no evidence except a ladder by my sister's window. And I think my sister and mom couldn't say for sure if they'd left it there. But I knew, knew I wasn't safe. I knew it. How could all this stuff happen? Later, like the next week, my sister said my Dad called her and said, "you know, you shouldn't leave a ladder outside. Someone could put it by the window and climb up." WHAT DID THAT MEAN?????? We hadn't told him what happened....WHAT DID THAT MEAN???????? Would my father really do something like that that could potentially terrify me so deeply??? He swore he didn't.
And then our dogs. We had four dogs in our backyard. That's not a big deal in the South. They didn't make much noise, but suddenly animal control would show up at house weekly because of continual complaints about howling and barking. We had to make them stop or get rid of them. We went around to every neighbor to apologize. No neighbor seemed to know what we were talking about. Some seemed like they didn't know we had a dog. Others had dogs themselves. My sister called animal control. All the reports came from one number, and unidentified caller. The caller requested we get rid of at least 2 of the dogs. We had the mom and the dad dog, they were the whole families, and then my brother and I each had a puppy. For health reasons, my mom chose to keep the Mother, and my puppy... thus she'd chosen between her children in my brother's eyes, and he felt he lost both of his dogs. And that's what Dad told him for sure: Mom chose Megin. She always chooses Megin and Buffie. She doesn't treat you the same. She doesn't care about you the same. We never found out who made the calls. But my brother reported to us that Dad had often asked "Does anyone ever complain about all those dogs y'all have?"
Then came the belongings- Actually this was one of the first things- I'm telling stories out of order.... but everything we took from our house (which was the contents of my room, Bryants, and Buffies, and then mom's clothes, and half of everything else), well Dad wanted those things. We had to go through months of negotiation. Eventually, the kids were allowed to keep their belongings, but mom had to give back the half of everything she took. Dad got to keep anything he used for his business... and it seemed a lot ended up being used for his business. We received very few things, and honestly, we didn't want them and gave them away mostly. I'll never forget watching my mother cry over items her father had handmade for her in his wood-shop, crying as she watched them loaded onto a truck for my father who honestly never cared less about them. But winning. Dad liked to win. And he set those items up in his new house like a shrine. Somehow, we got to keep the piano. Years later, I found out mom told the judge the piano was mine. That was a lie. She lied in court so I could have the piano. She knew music was the only thing that kept me surviving.
So it was during these years that I learned what to do to survive. I learned to keep to myself, not to attach to too many people, and to trust very little people. I learned how to act on the outside like a person I knew the world would like, and I learned NOT to tell them about any of the deep things that happened. And since Mom, Buffie, Bryant and I were not in family counseling together, we weren't really learning how to communicate all that healthy with each other. And my sister thought I was fake. But I wasn't fake. On the outside, that's how I really WANTED to be.... I just couldn't share what was inside. At least I didn't feel so. So I stayed in my room, even when they knocked on the door begging me to come and talk. I read my bible. I memorized scripture. I cried. I clung to any boy who promised he loved me. And I believed him, until he changed his mind. And then I just isolated again, read, prayed, and cried.
By God's sheer, SHEER grace, I made it to Mercer University, and then to Boston, and God began reparenting me and surrounding me with examples of what ''normal'' was. But to survive, I had to basically repress the memory of all that was before. For a long time, I had little contact with my family. It wouldn't really come up again until my mid 20s. That's probably why, if you're reading this and we were close friends between childhood and 26, you've never heard any of it. To this day, I don't know if I ever would have gone back home when I moved to NY if Franklin hadn't been born. He was born, and I had to see him. So I'd visit home. My heart ached for my brother. I felt I left him behind, but I couldn't stay. I prayed he'd be okay. He wasn't. That has been hard to accept.
I fear. I fear who will lie. I fear who will leave. I fear who has said I love you but will leave. I fear who will promise the world through their actions and then be incapable of delivering even the slightest. I fear opening up my heart. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if the only people I've opened my heart to are my nieces and nephews, and of course, my dear Eli. I've done a good job at caring for others, because as I see there pain, I understand it, and I can usually figure out what they need by thinking about what would have surely helped me.
Yet I sit, at 35 years old, hiding in the bedroom and not able to speak to my husband because what comes natural is to be alone. If you never trust, you never get betrayed.
To a great degree, I believe everything I preach. But to one small degree, it is hard to live it for myself. I have seasons... seasons I am strong, but perhaps as my dad often reminds to this day, I really am weak, too emotional. Perhaps as I was told by the first pastor I worked for, I am not cut out for ministry if I have depression. I'm better cut out for office work. Perhaps as friends wonder, I really can't take it all. Part of me says, I've made it this far, and I'm alive, and I still believe in my God.....I am FREAKING STRONG! But then that 17 year old girl comes out, and goes into shock, having just seen the man at the window, and having her father deny he knew anything about it.... having the stalker sit outside our house, a stalker follow my mom and break into her car countless times and leave things to let her know he'd been there.... and to this day, not have it said to me, "I'm sorry Megin. It was me. I shouldn't have done those things." That's when I can't take it. That's when I shut the door. That's when my poor husband deserves a better wife. That's when I know all the guys beforehand dodged a bullet. That's when I know people who have stayed my friends are super faithful and loyal. That's when I fear I am going to ruin Eli's life. And that's when I wonder, God....will I ever grow? Will I ever be of use? Can I praise you from Sheol? Surely not. Will you lift me out?
I share this because too many people don't understand me. Too many people are just befuddled by me, and I'm tired of having to try to explain by just grazing the surface.... but honestly, as I share this, I wonder if this is going to me I am utterly rejected and will lose any reputation I have of being capable.... I wonder if the Psalmists feared that. I wonder if the guy who wrote Psalm 88 remains anonymous for that reason. If so, pretend this isn't me. Pretend this is anonymous, and just remember, that you never understand a person, until you have lived their past and the present... until you have thought of their future and feared it... You never understand a person, or yourself, until you go deep... very, very deep.
Comments