The Many Of Me

The first serious boyfriend was a guy I met at church camp shortly after the move to the coastal state. We went steady for about a year before I felt the relationship was too serious for my age and broke it off. Shortly after that I started a steady relationship that grew even more serious and lasted three years. Eventually I felt God lead me to break off that relationship which I did but it nearly broke my heart to do it. The guy was in the Navy at the time of the break-up. I’m sure I will write much more about this relationship in time to come because it was a huge deal for me and impacted my life in very good and very bad ways.

As I said, I was heartsick after that break-up even though I initiated it; and the guy I mentioned first in this post came over to my house often as a friend of my brother. Even though he came to visit my brother, he often ended up taking me out just to cheer me up. After months of this he confessed that he had never stopped loving me even from that very young age. He didn’t ask me to love him in return, but only to let him spend time with me to take my mind off the loss of my dearly loved ex-boyfriend. Eventually I returned his love and we dated steady again most of our first two years of college. The relationship got pretty rocky when his social group at college and I were antagonistic to each other. I transferred colleges away from the small, private one that he and I attended together out-of-state to a public college close to home where I could commute.

The second college had a program that fit much better with my educational objectives than the first one did. I intensified my course work and completed 6 1/2 years of college in 4 years, and worked so that I could avoid taking on any loan debt. I dated a little bit during the last two years of college but not seriously with anyone. My heart remained true to the first guy.

However, my life changed dramatically during my junior and senior years of college. During my junior year my grandmother (my father’s mother) had some strokes which left her in need of constant care. She came to live with us, and my mother taught me how to care for her. The second semester of my junior year my mother was diagnosed with cancer. My grandmother went to live with my father’s brother’s family. It wasn’t too long before I became my mother’s primary care giver along with my father. My senior year in the fall I took 18 credits, did my student teaching, and helped my father care for my mother, who’s needs became increasingly intensive.

During this time I was in close communication with a friend who had been my  boyfriend’s room mate and fraternity brother in the out-of-state college. My mother shocked me when she casually said she didn’t believe I loved that ex-boyfriend as much as I thought I did and she wouldn’t be surprised if this fraternity brother and I were married within a years time.  This was almost alarming because he wasn’t even a member of our denomination and we were visiting each other strictly as friends with no thought of dating at all. Still, as Mother got progressively worse and this friend proved devotedly supportive, we did start to contemplate marriage. My mother died on Jan. 2, 1980; and this guy and I were married almost to the exact day one year after my mother had made that casual comment.

I can’t honestly say I was in love with him at the time of our wedding, though I had convinced myself that I did at the time. The fact was I was still in love with ex-boyfriend but saw that as an impossible situation; and besides, I did believe it was God’s will for me to marry the fraternity brother. The rest of this story needs to be told in a few more posts to come.

For Christmas when I was nine years old I got a diary. It started me on a very important journey in my life. I set out determined to write every day, but when entries deteriorated to very mundane, meaningless entries I became less regular in writing in my diary. Still, when something I felt was significant did happen, I did write it down in  my journal.

I don’t know what ever became of that diary; but the habit of writing my thoughts and feelings down proved very helpful later after we moved. Every few days I would get a feeling almost like a compulsion to write. I always wrote in the form of a prayer, addressing each entry to God and asking Him for help and guidance. Frequently the words would be flowing out onto the paper faster than I could think; and I would reach a point where something would come out onto the paper that I had not consciously realized before. When that happened I would ponder it and think about the implications of what I had written. The compulsion subsided until a few days later when the whole experience would occur again, resulting in a deeper insight into my thoughts and feelings, and a deepening relationship with my Savior.

There was a season when I did little writing – the first few years after the move when I was almost eleven. Still, I believe the writing I had already done served me well during the years when I couldn’t bring myself to write and my life was reaching a point where it forked into a multi-pronged diversion. It was as if I were living 4 or 5 different lives simultaneously, each independent from the others. Looking back it seems apparent that the crisis of the move and the multiple challenges it brought made a major impact on the multiplicity.

I just want to start by tying up some loose ends from the last post. Much of the reason the move was so extremely painful to me was the connection in my mind between my dad’s promise that he would never move away and forget me or leave me behind and my parent’s choice to move and leave the foster girls behind, especially the first girl who had no other family than us. I don’t understand why I never blamed my parents for the choice to move away, but always blamed myself, even though I had no part in the decision at all and would not have made the same choice if I were given any say in the matter. I guess I found it more difficult or emotionally painful to hold my parents accountable than it was to own their decisions as my own.

Whatever the reason, I hated myself bitterly for abandoning those girls – something I was terrified would happen to me. I felt I was not worthy of the air I breathed. It was the era when air pollution was becoming a major concern, and I believed I was consuming a limited commodity that some baby could use who was far more worthy of it than I was.

The situation I described in school after the move only compounded my confusion and furthered my determination to end my own life. When I failed in my attempt, I was ashamed that I couldn’t even do that right. I didn’t tell anyone, and made a second attempt later that year. When that failed I concluded I was incapable and inadequate in everything I tried to do.

I need to back step a bit  to add in an important event that occurred when I was nine years old and before the move. An evangelist came to our church and did a series of revival meetings. During one of those meetings I went forward to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. (To be perfectly clear, it was Abigail who went forward that first time.) Even though that didn’t immediately resolve all my deep emotional pain or prevent the attempts to end my life, I do believe the fact that she had done that played a significant role in preserving my life. God had a plan for my life that He wouldn’t let me thwart in my agony and confusion. He cared deeply, even though I couldn’t sense it or know it at the time.

The move occurred during the summer months between sixth and seventh grades. I was feeling so horrible about leaving the foster girls behind that my parents thought it would be best if I were attending church camp when the day came for the girls to move in with their preschool teacher. For me the result was to compound my grief, for I was going to camp (an enjoyable event) instead of staying home to spend the last few days possible with my sisters. I have no doubt but which my parents would have made it clear that I had no choice in the matter had I attempted to stay home; but for whatever reason I didn’t hold my parent’s responsible for making any of the decisions forced upon us at the time. I took full blame and responsibility though I had no choice.

I cried almost constantly the whole time I was at camp. I’m talking big time sobbing almost every minute day and night. I absolutely hated what was happening and hated myself for it all. On Wednesday night, after the girls had moved to their new home, my parents came up to camp and offered to take me home, but what good would that be – the damage was already done. My agony only intensified. On Friday night the came made a big effort to comfort me. They bought one of those dogs that is made for people to write on and every camper and staff member wrote personal comments and condolences on it and gave it to me. I dearly appreciated it but drew little comfort from it. We moved the Sunday that camp let out, and I sobbed almost the whole way – an eight hour trip.

The new home was miserably hot and humid. It literally made us sick because we were not accustom to it at all. During the first three weeks living in our new home the temperature stayed above 100 degrees and the humidity remained above 100%. I had never heard of a “heat index” before then. The whole family ate, slept, and lived in the basement of the house during this time because the heat was more than we could endure.

Prior to this move I had encountered very few people of different ethnic or racial origins. In the new location the ratio was slightly more African-American than White, and there were a large number of Hispanics who were seasonal workers in the fields. It was a time of extreme tension between blacks and whites in the region, with racial riots prevalent in the schools. I had grown up believing God loved all people equally and wanted His people to do the same. Prejudice was a word I didn’t even know the meaning of until we moved. In fact, there were many slang words common among the people of the area we moved to that I didn’t understand at all. People spoke very fast and slurred their words together, making it very hard to understand what was being said even if there was no slang in the sentence. People thought we were retarded because we didn’t understand them. A strong majority of the students in the elementary school I attended (a k-8th grade school) carried a switchblade every day to school, and there were very few virgins among the 7th and 8th grade girls. The principal of the school was having an open affair with the 4th grade teacher who was married and had two children in attendance at the school. It was common for the older grade students to get drunk on most weekends. I thought we had moved to hell. The culture shock was overwhelming.

There is much more to write on this subject, but this is enough for starters.

We have already said our father was a missionary/minister (he never left the USA but was missionary to some groupings in the USA).

I was 7 years old when we moved the third time in our lifetime. I suppose that was the easiest of all the moves for us. We made friends in the neighborhood easily. I had a favorite tree I liked to climb for personal space. It had a place just above the telephone lines where the main branch extending from the tree broke into three separate branches, and I could sit there for hours, sometimes even take naps or read books, with no fear of falling. I called it the queen’s chair. We were in a little hamlet of sorts – too small to have a store of any kind but in a grouping of three churches and a cluster of houses. Farmland surrounded us all around. Parishioners even “paid” us with milk and eggs as a supplement to a very low salary.

While we lived there we took two young girls from the State Institution for Mentally Retarded Children in a foster care type arrangement. The first girl was thrown in a trash bin when she was three days old. She was two when she came to our home. She made no human sounds except to laugh and cry. We were told she would never talk. She had been one of 30 children in her room in the basement and the first time she ever saw the sky or grass was when she came to our house. She was ecstatic with excitement when she saw our cat on the sidewalk going up to our house. She spent a lot of time clinging to the center pedestal of our dining room table. I used to crawl in under there with her and hold her in my lap. We connected on a very deep level. Words can’t express how dearly we loved her. She did grow and mature in every way after arriving in our home. She said “uh oh” and “meow” just a month after her arrival.

The second girl came a year later from a very different situation. She had downs syndrome and she was dearly loved by her family of origin. It was only after years of coaxing from the family doctor that they agreed to surrender her to the state institution. The doctor said it was inevitable and the longer they postponed it, the harder it would be on everyone. No sooner was she institutionalized than she came to us in the foster program. Her family would come every Sunday to take her to McDonalds and be together as a family. I never understood why it had to happen at all; but though we loved her dearly, she never needed us like the first girl did.

When we moved to a different state about three years after the first girl came to our home, the institution told us to find good homes for them, but we were not permitted to take them with us. Devastation doesn’t even come close to describing what that did to me/us. We kept our goldfish but gave my sisters away – that’s how I saw it. I had always had nightmares about going to school one day and my family moving away and forgetting me & leaving me behind. My father came to my bed one time and asked me to tell him about the nightmare. After I did, he said they loved me and would never leave me behind or forget me. I had taken great comfort in his words at the time; but when we moved and left the two girls behind, it destroyed the fragile trust I had put in my father’s words. I ran away from home and tried to kill myself more than once during the first two years at the new location.