Salehi Six: November 2021

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Abilene

(a repost from 2017) I was in Abilene yesterday, the town that I spent many years in as a child and my early years of marriage. It was a painful walk down memory lane. I had been focused on the excitement of the event we were attending and wasn't thinking about any negative impact from the visit, so I was a bit jolted by it.
We took the kids to see our favorite home but it turned into...
This is the house daddy and I lived in... before the flood that took our car... that cost us our jobs... which cost us our truck... and then our home.
This is the town where I walked to work day after day in the snow and my husband stood alongside the highway in freezing weather to hitch-hike for rides to work for several weeks, until his boss was sick of him being late and fired him.
This is the town where we would walk all the way across town to beg my mother for a ride to work or to the store because we had no other contacts in that town and even though she knew our situation she very rarely checked on us or offered to help us. This is where she begrudgingly helped a few times, then quickly started naming people who lived in other towns that we should ask for help instead, because she didn't want to be up before 9 AM.
This is the town where she would send us walking back home alone (after drilling us on what other options we should be trying and glaring and us in disgust),.
This is the town where I got another job, with full time hours, so that I could make enough money to keep the electricity on but was only allowed rides to (but not from) work off and on for 2 weeks and then had to walk several miles there and back each day.
This is the town where we only had flour and a small amount of meat or cheese to make tortillas and eat the same thing day after day, except for the times we went to a food bank and were treated with complete disgust by the volunteers there, and the time that my sister bought us 40.00 of food with her own money.
My mother didn't have, or want, a job. Her check came each month from social security. I still cannot imagine sleeping in late each morning knowing that my child is working very hard to survive and could easily do it if I would just help her for a few weeks... or ( if it were my child) even months, or..indefinitely.
This is the town where she made one of my sisters tell me that I was not allowed to come to my baby sisters birthday; no reason other than her mood. I still remember the shock and anger and pain all rolled into one giant torpedo that I somehow had known was coming but could not possibly be prepared for.
This is the town where she physically assaulted me because I wasn't leaving her house fast enough, and then called the police on me; lying, and saying that I was the one who was frightening her. Yes, I was upset, and angry, and crying and shaking She banned me from seeing my sister without any provocation and then called the police on my husband when he tried to talk to her about it (and was sitting in his car praying). Never mind that my brother in law was hanging onto my arms and that I was the one with the bruises. This was the closest that I ever came to telling her what I think of her and what she has always needed to be told. She saw the absolute disdain in my eyes and became enraged. Of course this is the part where she tells my siblings and all of her friends that I was possessed by demons and that my anger was coming against her from satan.
This is the town where I later lost one of my babies. I was sitting on the living room floor when I noticed that blood was running out of me. I called my brother and he came as fast as he could to take me to the E.R. By the time I got there the pain was horrific and I was losing consciousness. It was too late.
This is the town where many, many daggers were thrust into my soul but I was so used to being told that I was rebellious, or deceived, or manly, or fat, or whatever other reasons that made me less valuable than everyone else, that I didn't even see that it was evil and that I don't deserve to be hated or to hate myself.
I do have some good memories of Abilene too but the intensity of the pain and betrayal we suffered there is impossible to ignore.
These specific memories are just a very small amount of the instances of disregard, abuse, rejection and attacks that happened during our years there.
I know about the need to forgive, and I have, many, many, many, many times.
I do not need lectured about forgiveness.
If you think that I am wrong for acknowledging a few of my reasons for hurting, for being angry, for weeping in front of my children and for choosing never to trust certain people you can pray about it.
I have allowed myself to be repeatedly badgered by the same person so many times that I lost count. I did so because I believe in forgiveness and was afraid of hell. I still believe in forgiveness but not the kind that keeps you trampled down by abusive people. Now I see that satan uses this mentality to keep his cruel hold on people and to infect future generations.
I still hurt sometimes. Sometimes I suddenly remember something that I have pushed back for many years. Sometimes I look at my teen son and picture what his face would look like if I screamed at him to "get out of my house!!" and proceeded to shove him in front of his little siblings. The pain that I envision on his face breaks my heart and I cannot bear it. Suddenly I see that I too was crushed and that it was not something that I deserved. I suddenly feel the love I have for my son that would prevent me from EVER doing that to him and am struck with the fact that
I WAS NOT LOVED.
I do also have joy and freedom because I will never again think that being treated like a worthless beggar and burden by your own family is anything other than evil.
In a strange way there was some good that came out of it. It pushed me closer and closer to the man she hated because he is the only one who has always been there for me. I learned that I can trust someone, truly and deeply. I may only trust that one person and my own children but without him I would never have experienced love and faithfulness, let alone trust.
I look back to those times, and then I look to now, and I see how very, very, VERY far
we have come and I know that I am truly blessed, because God not only saved my soul, He saved my life.
Because I know what it is to be alone and to have to jump through hoops and beg for any help or vague approval I will not ever make my children suffer alone. My home, my resources and my heart will always be open to my children. And because of THIS revelation my view of God is changing and I am living less and less in fear and more and more in love.
God gave me this husband and these children. God is good.

Bad memories and good lessons on emotional decluttering...

(reposted from 2017) Today I had an emotional encounter with my 10 year old over a decorative box. Well, the literal box was the thing that started to open the figurative "box" that held my long suppressed emotions. 19 years ago I had a very bad miss-carriage. I was about 3 months pregnant when I lost the baby and almost lost my life. It was both physically and emotionally traumatic. It was a long and harrowing experience but the summary is that I was gushing so much blood that I had to sit in the tub and on the toilet. I passed out and had an "out of body experience" where I felt myself getting further and further away from my body and told God that I couldn't go; I couldn't leave. After I came back into my body and regained semi-consciousness my husband carried me down the apartment stairs and to the emergency room. The doctors didn't know how I was conscious after such extreme blood loss. Other than my husband I was alone through this experience. My mother was staying out of my life,because she didn't like that I had married my husband, and was moving all of my siblings to another state to escape the stress that was me not following her dreams. After I was home again my husband drove the 25 miles to my mothers home to tell her what had happened in the hopes that I would have some love and support. My mother wasn't home so he told my little brother. Thanks to the constant input of hate my siblings had been hearing they assumed that my husband was such a wicked sinner that he was probably lying and didn't bother to relay the message. Months later my mother found out and thought that giving me a memorial for my baby in the form of a tiny ring, on a pillow, in a box, would be appropriate. So for 19 years I kept this box. I kept a constant reminder of one of the worst periods in my life. I kept a reminder of death, abandonment, nightly sobbing, rejection, loss and sorrow. Every time I looked at that box I relived that horrible part of my life...and yet I kept it. so many times I thought about throwing it away but didn't. Today I asked myself "why?" and I decided that I felt like that box was somehow connected to the baby and so I'd feel guilty about getting rid of it. But today I got past that. I know that thinking about my pain and about my mothers abandonment is not how I want to remember my baby. That was MY baby, and she had nothing to do with it. She wasn't happy that I was pregnant or an encouragement in any way. If the baby would have lived she probably would have gained interest in being around, but because of the baby, not out of motherly love. Yes, I know that she "didn't know" and that my siblings get to take the blame for that, but to be honest, that is nonsense. If she had been around she would have known. She would have been checking on me and we wouldn't have been having phone calls rejected and messages ignored. So....today. Today my child sees the box in the trash and RUNS in to ask me why I would do that, with a bit of an accusatory tone, and I was too put off and emotional not to tell her. So I was crying, and she was crying, and she told me that she would have been there for me if she could have been. I told her that there is nothing she could ever do to make me cut her off and abandon her; I told her that real love means that mommy's love their children NO MATTER WHAT. We cried. And I felt bad. But it was kind of good in the end. It was good to actually SAY how that box made me feel and to face the needy, guilt- burdened part of me that lets people and things cause me pain...year...after year...after year. It was good for me to throw it away, and NOT hide it. It was also good to remember that my husband was there for me, even back then. He has always been the one who doesn't run away. He is the one who cleaned up my blood, wiped my tears, held me when I wept, brought me food, called the doctors and kept me going. God used a horrible time to show me that someone can love me in BAD times. And because of those horrible experiences we love each other more and TRULY appreciate each of our children as the gifts that they are. So, there is a lesson to be learned. If you have objects that make you keep past pains and wounds raw in your mind get rid of them. Material things should be useful, beautiful, or pleasant. Things can keep us weighted down if they do not qualify for any of the aforementioned attributes.