My story… Really.. my past. LONG!!!!

My husband and I both come from the most dysfunctional families. His father started giving him playboys to look at when he was 8. Always with the instruction of, “Don’t tell your mother.” There are computer programs where you can allow someone else to get into your computer and use it remotely from another computer. Recently his Dad did this so my H could fix some problems he was having. What he found was a slew of teen porn. His mother is bipolar. She’s been married 6 times. When he was a teen she always confided her relationship problems to him. From the time he was born till he turned 18, he had moved 22 times. His mother has never out right said so, but she has said enough to surmise that she and his father were swingers. They divorced when he was 11 after his mother had an affair with his father’s best friend. He didn’t find out any of this till about 5 years ago. So it is amazing how he imitated his Dad’s life. His first wife was a bipolar woman. They were swingers and she had an affair with his best friend.

My family was into extremes. At one extreme everything was so strict. Food restrictions like you can’t imagine. Any grade under an A got you grounded for MONTHS. We weren’t allowed to have friends over. We dare not even mention a holiday, including our birthdays. They weren’t celebrated And it wasn’t religious reasons. We were catholic. Which ADDED to the rigid guidelines. I went to catholic school. And they really do physically punish you there. That’s not just a stereotype. We didn’t see my father’s family and it was as if my mother’s didn’t exist. I am 41 and am still meeting family members I never knew I had. But you can’t allow people “in” to see your real life when you are that dysfunctional. I lived with an aunt for a year when I was 5. To this day I don’t know why. Although I suspect it probably had to do with prison.

My mother was physically disabled, bitter, and wanted everyone to suffer right along with her. She was an alcoholic and a coke/meth addict. My aunt claims she was paranoid schizophrenic. But a cocaine addict and a paranoid schizophrenic are interchangeable. Mostly I literally lived in my walk in closet to hide from it all. My Dad just ignored it all. At the other extreme, my father was a truck driver. And my mother would go along. By the time I was 11 and my brother was 12, we were left home alone for two weeks at a time very frequently. My mother would ground me for 6 months at a shot and I’d laugh. Who was going to be there to enforce it? We lived in the middle of nowhere. My entire childhood was so isolated. I left home at 15. And never looked back. My father died at 44 and my mother at 51.

My brother is now a coke addict too. He has an IQ of 185. Which is INSANE. And what good does it do him? I haven’t spoken to him in 6 years. Our relationship was really close as kids. All we had was each other. But he has been in and out of my life for the past 25 years depending on how bad he is into drugs. I finally couldn’t take it anymore when in a coked out drunken state he made sexual advances towards me. I closed the door on THAT relationship fast. See ya!!!

I got married at 18. 8 years and 3 kids later, I got divorced. My H slept with my best friend. (what the hell is wrong with people?) There were no second chances. Good riddance. He and my ex friend got married. He left her for the woman he was cheating on her with. He has 5 kids with three different woman and he has abandoned all of them. He hasn’t spoken to our 3 kids in 8 years. But not before he put me through hell. Using the kids to get at me whenever possible. He told me I could end the whole nightmare if I would just take him back. He was married at the time! And not to me! It took him 7 years after we divorced to finally walk away and leave me be.

Then I got in a serious relationship. Although I had no name for it then other than “fucked up”, his sex addiction makes my current H look like an amateur. He was violent. Extremely unstable. I liked my life too much to leave. I convinced him to join the military. Took the engagement ring and told him how wonderful our life would be when he got out of basic training. He left and I RAN. All the way from PA to Texas. I’ll be damned if he didn’t get hurt, get out on a medical discharge and move to Texas. We had a daughter together and thankfully he found some girlfriend in a vampire cult in California to go live with and do drugs. (I swear I could not make this shit up!) My current H adopted my daughter when she was 4.

I’m just going to throw in here that I have been stalked four times (all leading to police involvement – and three were strangers.) I was jumped by three guys once. I came out unscathed. Not sure how. It was truly a blur. Although I do remember biting one guy in the testicles. Which is pretty humorous all these years later. And lastly, I was raped once by a virtual stranger. Karma was on my side though and he was killed in a motorcycle wreck a week later. My best friend told me I need to change perfumes or something because who knows how to explain how I attract these guys. It’s not a “I’m so hot” thing either because I’m so NOT. lol

Due to a wicked custody battle with my ex husband and another one between my current H and his ex wife, I have been given intense psychological evaluations twice in my life. Amazingly they can’t find a single messed up thing about me in my profile. My psychologist told me it was quite remarkable that I’m not dead, a drug addict or in prison. I do have an awesome sense of humor though, in my humble opinion. Oh, and I was diagnosed with the same disease as my mother 4 years ago. Life is not kind! There had better be something REALLY frickin great in the next life. Whatever it is.

So I guess the moral of the story is I am tough. I can’t be “broken” easily. The whole codependency BS makes me want to vomit. My mother. My brother. My ex husband. My ex boyfriend. I see dysfunction and I RUN RUN RUN. Far and fast. I guess some would say I can’t cope and run away from my problems. I say it’s just plain smart. I am not weak. I am not needy. I am not a pushover. I don’t even consider myself particularly nice. I think because I grew up in isolation, I never get lonely. I never get bored. I don’t get offended. I don’t even get irritated much. I consider myself unshakable. I am even keeled. Maybe I’m just numb. Who knows.

Here is the kicker… in spite of or maybe even because of all I’ve just typed… I have been a positive upbeat person. I love my life, my family, my home, my husband and my marriage. I honestly have considered myself a lucky and blessed person. So many people have had it so much worse. The people here are a good representation of that. Everyone has their own horror story to tell.
My story of my H isn’t as bad as so many of yours. (I’ll save that story for another day and another chapter) But after all I’ve been through, I feel like I’ve finally just had enough. Maybe it’s the straw that broke the camels back? But I loved that man so much, trusted him more than I have anyone in my life, let him into my very well insulated world… and now I’m on antidepressants and anxiety medication. And for the first time in my life I feel broken. Just plain beat down.