The Nine of Mine

When we talk about emotional baggage, or refer to a person as having baggage, it typically is not suggested as something positive. Whether or not our baggage is a good thing very much depends on how well we manage it. Our emotional baggage can shape us into really great people or we can allow it to make us become baggage for others. I’m not entirely sure if the baggage is the issue or if it is how we deal with it. That brings me to an effect of some my baggage. When I talk about these things or how I handle situations, people, kids, and so on, I feel the urge to explain that I am not perfect or special. That is an effect of my ex-husband baggage.

What better way to show how imperfect I am and to give great insight into my thinking and personality than to examine the bags and bags and bags and bags…and well, more bags I’ve collected and carried around throughout my life. My hope is that maybe someone might read it, find common ground or similar situation and find a way to carry that bag a little further. A long time ago, someone told me that we major in psychology to fix ourselves or to help others. That brings us to why I am here – to finally put it on paper and make it known in an effort to further my healing and to maybe reach someone else.

Emotional baggage often starts with the parents, and I am no different. My parents were both married once before marrying each other. My dad had two children from a previous marriage, a girl and a boy, but he only had custody of my half-sister. That will probably be the only time I refer to her as that because she has always just been my sister no matter the state of our current relationship. My childhood memories are mostly fuzzy, but I do remember my parents being in love. My mom would tell me later in life that my dad would come from work and just say, “Let’s pack up and go camping.” And they would. I remember my dad making me a swing out of a simple board and rope. He made sure to find a campsite each time that would be suitable for my swing. My dad was a welder, so I’m pretty sure he could build, make, or fix anything. I was my daddy’s girl. Before sidewalk chalk was a thing, he let me use his welders’ chalk – or soapstone – to draw on the sidewalks. He would take me to get a coke in a bottle because it is better that way. He taught me to love French fries and salt.

I do not want to give a false impression of my childhood. My parents both had their own baggage, too, and some of their parenting choices were more than questionable. I spent many of my early years in a bar. The bartender served me Roy Rogers drinks with the occasional Shirley Temple. I had my own tip jar to earn money for the jukebox. With that being the only thing to keep me occupied, I’m pretty sure that jukebox laid the foundation for my love of music.

Sometime, when I was around 6 years old, my dad started working out of town. As a child, I had no idea what was happening. All I really can remember is traveling with my mom by car to meet my dad halfway one time. I have a vague memory of my uncle, my mom’s brother, picking me up one day and telling me I was staying with my cousins because my mom had fallen off the porch and hurt her arm. Then, I’m not sure if it was the next day or a couple of days passed, but I was back with my mom. She wore a brace on her arm, and the story remained that she tripped on the dog and fell down the back porch steps. My sense of time as a 6-year-old was not the most accurate. I only remember my mother telling me that she and my dad were getting divorced, and he would not be living with us anymore. It felt like overnight that he was just gone. He called a lot at first, and I saw him a couple of times for short visits. He sent me a birthday gifts in the mail and sporadic letters. His job had him traveling out of the country. He sent pictures of him in Russia and in China. One letter, I believe, said it was written on rice paper.

After those few visits right after I was told about the divorce, I didn’t see him again. My estimate is I did not hear from him at all after the first 6 months to a year from when he left until I was in the 3rd grade. He had come to visit his family for Christmas with his new wife, and my mom found out he was in town. My mom left me with my older sister who was visiting for Christmas so that my dad could visit. I had not seen him in years. It was awkward, but I was so happy to see him. I thought maybe I would see him more often, but I did not see him again until I was 17 and went to his funeral. My dad was the onset of some issues for me – men, trust in people overall, abandonment, and many other things. Later in my teenage years, my mom finally told me he had an affair. His third wife was the one who knowingly was involved with a married man with children, so they both played a role.

I see that I will probably speak about this in more detail in its own blog post as this is more of a preview. Since I did cover my dad, it is only fair to touch on my mom. I will start this by saying my mom and I became very close much later in life. She will definitely have a spot later on because that was absolutely a story of healing. I do need to talk about her some here because she was a part of my emotional baggage growing up. After the divorce, my mom returned to the workforce. I was in school, but I spent a lot of time at my maternal grandmother’s house. It was basically every weekend and most days in the summer. There was a period of time where my grandmother came to live with us while I was in school and my mom worked nights. At some point, my mom would also leave me with one of her friends. Her friend was raising her grandson, who was really mean. I really hated going there because of him, and the house was infected with cockroaches. They left me to sleep in the living room, and the roaches were everywhere. I’m sure that is why bugs – especially cockroaches or anything resembling them – terrify me.

There were times when my mom would leave me with my grandmother or her friend, but she was not working. She would spend time at the bar, and then there were men who started showing up. Some would stay in our lives for a period of time while others were very short-term. Most, if not all, were drunks. I was a quiet, nerdy kid. I liked puzzles and to read. One of the men would save the caps from his beer bottles until he would see me. They had puzzles on the inside of the cap, and he was impressed I could solve them at 7 or 8 years old. He would often get so drunk he would fall asleep sitting up in a barstool at the bar, but he was very nice to me. Another one I had always adored, whom I’ll call Tall Guy, and he adored me. Then, one morning, I saw him coming out of my mom’s bedroom. That was the moment I realized I did not like him that much. I think deep down I already knew he was not what we needed. He also seemed to be shadowed by his rude, overweight man-child best friend and roommate. Even though they were often together, I did not engage with the best friend very much at all. At age 8 or 9, I just had a bad feeling about him and kept my distance. Early on, it was pretty clear he thought he knew everything, but if you paid attention to the content of his incessant rambling, he really did not know much at all.

Tall Guy did not last long. He was in an on-again-off-again relationship with a woman who regularly assaulted him. My mom was unwilling to compete with another woman. After my dad, I can’t say I blame her. However, I did blame her for the choice she made next for a very long time. It was the summer before I turned 10, and she suddenly seemed different. It was not more than about 2 weeks that I had seen the change in her when she told me we would spend time at the lake with Mr. Talks Too Much, or TTM for short, the roommate of the last one. His idea of hanging around me was to go to the lake. We lived in an part of the state where water was scarce, so the “lake” is not really a lake, but it is as close as it gets in that area. To draw in the public, there was a manmade beach. Now, why is this such a terrible idea? I have a fear of water and do not know how to swim. I almost drowned when I was around 3 or 4 years old. In pools, I don’t like my feet to leave the ground or water over my head. At that age and at a “lake,” I might walk out to waist-deep water. TTM thought the best way to get to know me was to taunt me for not knowing how to swim and for my fear of the water. He brought his nephew, who was 2-3 years older than me. After being told I did not like water splashed in my face or over my head, TTM thought it was a great idea for them to splash so much water into my face that I was coughing up water. My mother said nothing other than they risked making me mad. TTM’s nephew put handfuls of wet sand on top of my head, which dripped down my face and into my eyes. It became a favorite story for TTM, who went on to marry my mom despite my instincts it was very bad mistake. The last time TTM told that story in an attempt to humiliate me, I was 42 years old.

TTM ended up having more addictions than alcohol – cocaine, painkillers, benzodiazepines, or really anything he could get. He disappeared at times, sometimes for days. Because of his many habits, we did not have much money. We lived in a small, 2-bedroom house that was only around 900 square feet. We had only one car that he would disappear in, so my mom had to find alternate ways to from and from work. If we had no food, we had to walk to either the convenience story or to the grocery store. My mom and TTM would argue loudly and often. They both repeatedly told me I could never say anything to anyone else about TTM’s substance abuse or his behavior. TTM was the one who started talking about my putting on weight when I was a size 8 and how large my butt was getting. If I tried standing up for myself, I was “talking back,” and setting boundaries meant I was being selfish. He adopted me when I was 12 years old, but the reason my mom and TTM gave was so that he would legally be able to seek medical attention for me if there was ever a need. They really did not supervise me – I did far more than they know and some of my poor decisions led to my story of sexual assault (to be addressed more fully on its own). I will tell you that my mom and TTM did not have any idea it happened despite my staying in bed for days without eating. They went to the bar most weekends, sometimes Friday and Saturday.

I left that house after I turned 18 and graduated, and I only returned for about 3 weeks during Christmas break my first year of college. I started dating boys while I had a very low self-esteem and a distorted view of how relationships should work. All of my early relationships failed with the boys cheating on me. All except for the one I married. He never cheated physically, but it was pretty obvious he had thoughts of who he wanted to be with if I was not in the picture. He very subtly erased my identity and took my self-esteem to an all-new low. We were married for 12 years, lost a child together, and had two more children. I walked on eggshells because you really never knew how he was going to react to anything, and his anger was on another level. The volume of his yelling, the things he would say, and his face turning so red it almost appeared purple forces you to slowly just become what he wants. I lost myself in that marriage, asking God almost daily to take me because I was a terrible mom and wife. We have been divorced almost 8 years, and I still have periods of time where I am recovering from the damage he did. There will be more about our marriage later because what happened over the course of that relationship might be important for someone else to read. It is so easy to dismiss verbal/emotional abuse – “just get over it,” “it’s just words,” “at least he never hit you,” and so on.

At first, I was so broken after my marriage, I let a narcissistic sociopath into my life. I will likely talk about He Who Shall Not Be Named, as he is referenced now by my kids and me, in a later post because I think it is important to understand Narcissistic and Antisocial Personality Disorders. We did not even make it a year, and I have no doubt that he would have been physically violent if I allowed him to remain in my life. Despite the fear of what he would do to retaliate when I told him it was over, I still stood my ground and have become much more diligent in setting and protecting my boundaries.

While I have rebuilt myself and a life for my kids and me, I still catch myself allowing my baggage to interfere at times. There is a long history of abandonment and being ignored that had often led me to wanting to be loved so badly, that I tolerated way too much. Now that I am on the other side of a failed marriage and so many terrible relationships – and not just the romantic ones – I find myself almost closed off from people. I am far more introverted than I have ever been. I am very suspicious of men who try to enter my life. I have dated, but my primary focus has been on being a good mom. The later, more detailed ex-husband stories will shed some light on just how important it is for me to focus on my children. That is why this blog is taking so long to post. I’ve worked on it when I can, but we have had bake sales and other fundraisers, school work, work for school organizations, parent meetings, and I have a full-time job that had a few crazy weeks. I thought it was appropriate that I’m talking about emotional baggage and my guilt for not being able to write as much or as often reminded me of some baggage. That ex-husband of mine told me I had better do something with a story I was writing at the time because he thought it was a waste. He ensured I knew I would probably never do anything with my writing, and even if I tried, it was likely to never go anywhere. The problem is emotional baggage sneaks up on you even when you were certain you unpacked it.

Probably the best thing I did was to learn to acknowledge my baggage and recognize its lasting effects on who I am. In some cases, it was good to accept it; in others, it was good to determine how it sometimes distorts the truth. Tidying up your emotional baggage simply means figuring out how to use it for your good and then putting it away. As I continue to share my history and my current life in this blog, I hope to be able to put some of this away for good.