Accountability

I wanted to let you all know that I am feeling better. Still not great, but I am working on it. This post is going to jump alot because I have so much stuff swirling in my head that I need to get out before it drives me over the edge totally. If I ramble so much that something is not clear, just leave me a message or email me about it and I will try to clear it up later.

Last night one of my dearest friends and I had a long chat about motherhood and insecurities.

I realized that I was letting my fear of being a bad mother; keep me from enjoying myself as a good mother.

I have been letting all the crap from my past weigh me down, worrying about if I am a good mother or not, concerned with all that I am not doing, that it has made me shy away from my kids at a point when they really needed me to come closer to them.

That is what I am going to try to do. I am going to try to come closer to my kids instead of shying away. It will not be easy, as most of you already know, I tend to shy away when I go through the depressive state. Maybe that is normal, maybe not, but, this is a new of looking at things and I'm going to try it

I have spent alot of time reflecting on myself the past couple of weeks. I tend to do this whenever I get depressed but this time, I had alot of support from people I have known for a very long time, as well as some people I have met through my blog. I will not mention names, for they know who they are.

When I get depressed, I tend to think that the world is against me. Even the lady at the gas station is against me and it makes me almost impossible to death with. I am snappy and bitter and I tend to take everything said to me the wrong way. This has alienated a lot of good people in my life. I am so lucky to have a few friends who can see this pattern and get past it. To curb this, I normally shut down and lock everything inside of myself until I can't contain it anymore.

It erupts and heaven help the person who is in my path at that time. It is like a white hot fury that just spills out of me and man can I be hateful and nasty. I have struck Chris with my hands, I have destroyed things in our home, I have seen my children cry with fear.

Yes folks, I have issues. Serious ones. It would be easy for me to blame my mother, she is the one who lied to me and locked me away, she is the one who stood there and called me a liar because she couldn't face the facts of what her father had done. I could blame the system that I was placed into because it failed me, and man did it ever fail me, I could blame alot of people but that would all be a bunch of crap.

I recently spoke with my mother because my younger brother appeared at her home at 2am and dragged my father out of his bed by ranting and raving. What was he freaking out about? Well you see, the oldest brother in our family is a pervert, the one I won't let my children be alone with, and, well, he offered my younger brother three dollars to suck him off. FIFTEEN YEARS AGO! The younger brother said no and even by his own admission, that was the end of it. Now, I understand, that might have hurt him emotionally, but, to go over to my parents, walk in, and in a drunken rage, start spouting garbage about how they didn't protect him, how they should have know, yadda yadda yadda, at my dad (who, you might remember has a heart condition and is diabetic, oh, did I mention an insomniac who only sleeps about 4.5 hours a night) out of bed was just utterly infuriating.

So, anyway, I've digressed. You see, my mother called me to tell me this. I already knew because the older brother had also called (younger left my parents and showed up there banging in the door and screaming about how he would get a gun and kill him). So, I listened to my mother cry about what a crappy parent she was, how she wrecked all our lives, how her children hate her.

I really struggled through this portion of the conversation because I do believe my mother sucked at being a parent. I do think that the choices she made has left scars on us that will never go away no matter how hard we try.

I do not however, see my mother as responsible for my actions. I am a grown adult. Like her, I am capable of making my own decisions. I can choose to drink and use drugs and make life hell for my family, or I can choose to face my problems head on and deal with them. I don't need a weekly session with anyone, I don't need to take thirty thousand medications (one works just fine thank you very much) I don't need to blame others for my issues.

Like me my brother has chosen to get married and have a family. He has 4 children, the oldes of which is only recently turned 6. He has no job, and hasn't for about 4 years. His wife works her ass off to support them, but, he blows it just as quickly as she gets it. They have not paid my parents a dime in rent since they moved into the trailer next to my parents. The electric was shut off a few months back because they didn't pay the bill, and, if any of you reading this live in Idaho, you know how stupid this is, for the rest of you, Chris and I were paying 50 dollars a month during the hottest months when we ran our swamp cooler day and night. The bill reached 500 dollars and they cut it off. So, instead of paying it (his wife makes roughly 17 dollars an hour) they waited two months and she went down and had it put in her maiden name. The electric company then assumed that the old tenants moved out without leaving a forwarding address and have attached this 500 dollars to my parents bill. My brother and his wife both have made it very clear that they are not going to pay them a penny for it.

Now, I know that my parents sucked, but, as we have become adults, they do try to make things better. Besides, there is a fundamental difference between what happened to him and what happened to me. Let me see if I can make a clear graph of it.

HIM
1. Asked for sex
2. Death of sister
3. Placed in foster care for 6month
4. Blamed for nothing
5. Would never lie

ME
1. Raped
2. Death of sister, witness
3. In and out of places for 8years
4. Blamed for everything
5. Always lied

Now, as little as this list looks, these are some major differences in my opinion. He was ASKED for sex. Man, I'm a married woman, I get ASKED for sex all the time. I was raped and molested. Not just by my grandfather, but, my one brother, my foster parents, a group of boys in Denver, not to mention my ex husband on a semi regular basis.

Now, trust me, I am well aware of how the violent death of a sibling can impact you, but, imagine being a child waking up one day to find out that your oldest sister was dead. The man she loved killed her. Why?! I don't understand. Or, like me, you could find out that after beating her severely for several years, he finaly did the worst thing imaginable. Knowing that maybe, just maybe I could have done something because unlike the youngest sibling, I KNEW he was abusing her. I SAW him abusing her.

My younger brother could do no wrong. Ever. He was not punished as a child. I was horribly punished for things that the boys did because together they would blame me and of course two voices were better then one. Even now, instead of holding my brother responsible for his garbage, my mother is making exscuses for him. It's her fault, it's my fault, yes people, I did say it was my fault. How can that be you ask? Well so did I and the answer astonished me. Seems it is my fault that my brother is drinking himself stupid (I married an alchoholic in his formative years and took him in to live with me rather then allow him to go to Foster care) Why does he do crystal meth? Well, of course it is because I am a recovering coke addict. Why is he addicted to antipsychotic pills that were prescribed to his friend? Well, damn, don't you know, it's my fault because I was addicted to pain killers. Why is it he hasn't had a job in nearly four years? Why it was because Chris quit his job 6 weeks before we moved from Idaho. WAIT! Why did he quit school (both times) because >I< quit school (never mind that *I* did go back and get my GED on my own while he had to be nagged on every single day for months) Damn, I hadn't realized it, I have no idea how she can blame herself, everything is so obviously my fault.

He also is the epitomy of honesty. He would never cheat on his wife, go back to drugs, steal from her. No no, when he says he's clean it's the truth, he's not like me. How can I make up such things about him. How can I make up such horrible things about what was done to me as a child? Oh yeah, I remember her reason now, I had an overactive imagination. The bruises you say? Where did they come from? Oh, well, you know, I was a very delicate child, due to a blood disorder, the one that went away after I left home, I bruised at the slightest touch.

>stares<

Damn, no wonder I am so messed up. Hmm, blaming, yes, I blame them for what happened to me THEN. For not protecting me when it was there job, but guess what, now it is MY job to protect me. If I choose to surround myself with people who help me with that or not is up to me, but, in the end, it is up to me to protect myself. It is up to me to answer for the things that I do. To hold myself accountable. That is one of the reasons I write this. So that I can put down the things I do so that I can hold myself accountable for them. So I can go back and reflect and try to figure out where I went wrong so that I can avoid that from happening agian.

Damn, the world needs more people willing to be accountable. I wonder if it will ever really happen.