Coherent & not so coherent thoughts

I dream in color...or maybe it's not really dreaming but a level of consciousness somewhere between dreamland and the land of insomnia. I was dreaming about yarn....until the thoughts of someone more devious crept in and shattered my images of a beautiful array of color. I roll over, afraid to look at the clock, hoping its something close to a decent a.m. time like 5 or 6....but no, it's only 2:55 a.m. This is my life.....surviving on a few hours of sleep every night and wishing for the world that I knew how to sleep! Sleep is so elemental, so basic, even a baby can accomplish the simple act of allowing the body to repair and re-energize itself....what is the trick? Benedryl has become my best friend when I become numb from exhaustion. So....while I'm lying there, pretending that I did not wake up before 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning.....I begin to think about my crazy life....I never dreamt (no pun intended) that I would end up as a 49 year old, divorced, school teacher living in an extremely small town on the east coast!

I am the third child of seven children to a mother who probably should not have had children. As my mother likes to say, "I had my perfect boy, then I had my perfect girl, but then Vanessa was born and all hell broke loose!" Well, when I was younger I never quite understood what she meant other than the fact that I was a complete tomboy and resented anything girlish. I could out-ride any boy in my neighborhood on our bikes. I could ride stunts on my bikes that only sent the other boys home bleeding and bawling to their mommies. As an adult I began to understand what my mother meant. My mother is one of those rare people who should not have had children, but she had 7 children. And, she seemed to have children for a long period of time....after the first two children that were only one year and 11 days apart, she had the remainder of us anywhere from 2 years to 6 years apart......spending over a decade having children and then another couple of decades raising them is a very looonnnnggggg time for someone who really did not enjoy children!

So....my mother, naturally, blamed my father for all her (first 6) children. Every few years, she would get mad, pack up us kids, put us in the red VW bus and leave Kansas City, driving east, to a wonderland called St. Louis. We would end up in a hotel for weeks (she could never quite convince anyone to rent an apartment to a single lady with 6 children....remember, this was the 60's.). After a few weeks, my father would track us down, drive to St. Louis and get us kids and my mother would follow him home in the red VW bug. In the summer of 1970 when I was 11 years old, my mother did the same thing, packed up us kids, but instead of driving east, she drove west and promptly dumped us in a small town in Kansas called LeRoy to stay with her brother. (Don't get me wrong, I love my mother but why was she hell-bent on taking us kids if she didn't really like kids? Was this the thing women did in the 60's?) Anyway, we spent the summer in this small town with my uncle and his 4th or 5th, very obese, lazy wife and her 2 girls while my mother returned to Kansas City and moved in with her mother. It was a strange summer to say the least and in August I was listening to the radio as I cleaned the kitchen and I heard from the radio announcer that my father had been found murdered. In my own little kid way of thinking, at first I thought someone was playing a joke on me. I went outside to find my older brother and sister and told them what I had heard on the radio. My sister got mad and slapped in the face. My brother snuck into the house, took the radio and we plugged it into an outlet in the garage and began to listen to the radio news flash every 15 minutes for the next few hours. My life changed that day, forever.

Less than two weeks after my father was buried, my mother married her lover. An manic depressive, 30 something man who had never married before....imagine marrying a woman with 6 children? So began my new life. My abusive stepfather liked to move....he was a dreamer....the grass is always greener on the other side...of the state line. So, we moved, and moved and moved. My stepfather was not much on working a regular job and if it were not for my father's social security my mother was drawing on us kids, I believe he would have split years ago. My mother and stepfather ended up having a child together...so brings to total to 7 children.

We finally ended up in Norman, Oklahoma when I was in high school. This is where I began making poor choices in the fact that I dated a guy whom I should never have dated. Oh, don't get me wrong, he was so nice, and to me, good looking, but he would make the strangest comments and his behavior was often strange....but then again, who was I to question strange? Look at my strange life! When I was a junior in high school my stepfather made the announcement that they were moving to California. I began to panic. Every move took us one step closer to the level of poverty that makes it very hard to eat...especially when, as poor as we were, my stepfather was above accepting food stamps or welfare! He would find an excuse to quit his job (as an adult I now question whether he quit or was fired) and would come home with a grand plan to move to a new state. He would paint a beautiful picture of prosperity and promise us kids new bikes, new furniture and clothes (he would always sell our household possessions to finance these moves) and basically promise to whisk us away from poverty to a land of prosperity! Well, at the age of 17, after witnessing 8 of these moves, I had my doubts about anything wonderful happening in California. All I wanted was to finish high school and go to college (I had applied for a college scholarship). I wanted a better life than my parents had provided for us.....I wanted more than that, I wanted a normal life. When I told my boyfriend about the move, he said his parents were moving to St. Louis in the summer. He was a freshman in college and flunking out but he wanted to quit school and get married. I laughed and told him no way! Now, I may not be the brightest girl on the earth but he had sent up enough red flags to catch my attention and know that he was not someone I should be spending my life with. Did I love him? No, but I was in love with the fact that he (seemed) to come from such a normal family. I craved the idea of living a normal life. I also liked the idea that he was in college and getting an education (I was not so crazy about him dropping out of college as I had no wish to be married to a lazy bum like my stepfather).

After I turned him down flat and said no to marriage (I was only 17!), he went to my stepfather and asked him and he said yes. I told him no again, so he went to his father and they took us out to dinner one right and his parents tried to talk us into getting married. (What the hell?) My mother asked me a few days later if I was going to get married and I told her no and she told me that I should, that my stepfather didn't want me moving to CA with them. I told my mother that I could live with my older sister and her husband and she said NO! They didn't have the money! Well, I felt all alone in the world, didn't want to get married, didn't know if I could support myself, wasn't invited to move with my parents to CA....so, as a scared 17 year old without much confidence I finally agreed to marry. I knew, deep down inside that I was making a huge mistake but as a young girl I didn't know where else to turn and I was getting pretty used to making the best out of situations. So I married in April of my junior year but refused to drop out of school.

The next year I graduated from highschool and and went to work fulltime. I convinced my husband to go back to college and he promptly spent the next year skipping classes, dropping classes and basically sleeping through most of his school year while I worked a full time job at a office and worked at T. G. & Y an additonal 30 hours each week so we could survive. At this point I began to believe I could support myself and I was so tired of all the bullshit that came with being married to a maniuplative, overly jealous, controlling, lazy bum. I wanted out of the marriage but was scared to death. I made a huge misake by telling my mother in law that I wanted a divorce and they stepped in with support to make sure that I didn't leave their lazy son. It worked because I didn't leave and he changed to a 2 year college and finally got an associates degree in radiology. He also got a decent job finally. We had a baby boy five years after we married and at that point I knew deep down inside that I would just have to make the best of my life and I did. I got a better job and quit the second job, we bought a house (from his parents who charges us over $10,000 more than it was worth .....gotta love those inlaws!) and 7 years later we had another baby. Well, I had my normal life....as normal as it can be when you live with a controlling, abusive husband. I had a home, food, clothing and to the world we presented the perfect family. Thoughout the years I would beg my husband to go for counseling and he would say, "No, I'm not going to someone who is just going to tell me I'm crazy." Yeah....isn't that the idea? To get help? I knew at this point with two children to support I could NOT do it on my own...without an education I could not support myself and our children.

Eventually I got a better job and my job required occassional traveling. Well, try traveling when you are married to a control freak who is jealous of anyone (woman or man) talking to his wife, yet greedy enough for money to want me out in the working world. He made my life miserable to the point that I finally quit the job. He was happy, I was miserable. I stayed home for a few months and then the youngest son was about to start kindergarden. My older sister came to me and said she wanted to go to college. (My dream was always to go to college and I read everything I could get my hands on but it wasn't the same as actually going to college! I was totally jealous and she begged me to go with her.) I starting bringing up the idea with my husband and spinning a web of more money in the family....what he would be able to do with the money I could make if I had an education. It worked. He said I could attend college BUT on one condition that he got to choose my major. (What the f%&*$*G hell?) But, I agreed because I wanted to go to school so badly that I thought any education was better than none. I started in the fall and my sister dropped out at Christmas because of her controlling husband, but I continued. It took me three years and I finished with a degree in elementary education. Not my choice but remember, I'm the type of gal that will always make the most out of what I have. I promptly got a job and I felt....what? The beginning stages of confidence and looked at life in a different perspective? I began to realize how bizarre my life was. I realized that I wasn't as stupid as everyone in my life liked to tell me I was. I began to build confidence and this was not good. It's almost like it triggered something in my husband and he began to be more controlling, more abusive...meaner to the kids. A couple of years after I began teaching the local university offered a free masters degree to teachers through a federal grant. I approached my husband, telling him over and over how much more money it would bring into the family and he agreed I should apply. I continued to teach full time and went to school one night a week and during the summer. It took three years to complete the masters degree program. Life, at home, just got more strange. My older son, refused to go to college because his father was hellbent on choosing his field of study and instead joined the Marines.

I knew, as a mother, I had failed my children, I failed to protect them from their father.

I knew I had to leave.....but I was scared to death of the man. It was clear one night when he said that just because I had more education than him did not make me smarter than him! What the hell? Where did that come from? His insecurities were in high gear. I always felt, deep down inside, that he had girlfriends, but I could never prove it. No hard evidence. Well, he began to get more daring, not coming home until 10 or 12 at night, women calling the house and asking for him and he always swore it was work related. With his intensified controlling, abusive behavior it played hard on my confidence and self esteem as I slowly began to gain weight. I gained 70 pounds in 7 years. I was miserable. My children were miserable and I knew his behavior was more bizarre than ever.

I would wake up during the night and he would be roaming the house, going through things....looking for evidence that I was hiding something from him. I guess since he screwed women and stomped all over our marriage vows that he was looking for justification by trying to imagine that I was doing the same thing. I wasn't. I didn't have the confidence nor the desire. At one point I told my sister that I was accused of messing around so much that I had decided to find a man and sleep with him. She begged me not to, but I said NO, I am going to do this to see what I am missing! Well, about six months went by and she finally asked if I was having an affair. I had forgotten what I'd said, promptly burst into tears, and in a crying rage told her I didn't even know how to meet a man and sleep with him! The tears dissolved into uncontrollable laughter and we realized how naive we were in life and how miserable our lives had become. Shattered dreams, shattered confidence, shattered self-esteem make for sad individuals. It was embarrassing. So, to the outside world, we presented the most perfect families, the most perfect lives....it was disgusting that people were actually jealous of us....they had nothing to be jealous of but they didn't know what we kept kidden behind closed doors.

My husband's behavior became more bizarre and I was afraid to sleep for fear of him hurting me. In an arrogant moment he bragged about the cameras he hid all over the house and it suddenly became clear how he knew my every move. I had tried to save money to leave but he always knew where my stash was and how much money I had. He knew everything! I began to panic and at one point, I won't go into details, but one night I knew with such definite clarity that if I didn't leave he would kill me. At this point, I had been teaching for 7 years, the older son had joined the Marines to escape his father but had recently gotten out and returned home in the hopes of going to college. This is strange, but I felt hope in the fact that he might protect me from his father. Two weeks after that night, I went to my brothers in KC with my younger son and I began to make plans in earnest to leave. The husband's behavior had become so bizarre that when our older son returned home to go to school he refused to let him have a bedroom. We had a large 4 bedroom home and only two children. He made him sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor next to the pool table in the game room! It was a very, very strange time, a very scary time in our lives. He also began to build in the formal dining room to make a small, windowless room for the older son. A room that had a lock on the outside of the door....scary does not even describe his actions. It was so small with a tiny 3 ft. wide closet that at one point I measured the room and realized that a twin bed would not even fit into the room! We are talking completely, incoherent, bizarre, behavior here. When I told him that night that I had measured....a huge fight broke out he tried to cut my hands with his tape measure as he measured the bed and the room several times. When he realized it was 6" too short he grabbed a sledge hammer and began furiously swining at the 2 x 4 posts of the wall. I was scared to death and grabbed the younger son and got in my car and left for a few hours (that was scary enough...you didn't leave the house without his permission....so do I leave? ask permission and then leave? stay?....so you see how strange my life had become?)

Well, it was just a few days after this incident that I left for the visit with my brother in KC (with granted permission from the controlling asshole). My older son had not come with us and it scared me to death that he was there alone with his father. I had my son and his friends out looking for an apartment for us that I could afford.....nothing....except in the very poor parts of Oklahoma City. So.....my sister was moving back from KC (she was divorced) and she suggested that we share a house or apartment. I really didn't want to depend on anyone else, but in desperation I agreed. I returned from KC after a few days and spent the next 2 days in a teacher conference where I got a few friends to agree to show up and help me move while he was at work. I took money from a charge card to pay for the townhouse and utilities and the U-haul truck. On Wednesday, he left for work, we got the truck, my friends came and we loaded up the kids furniture and personal possessions. I took my clothes, my sewing machines, some of the appliances like the toaster and microwave, half of the food and we were gone. We went into hiding. I left the car, the cell phone and everything else. I just wanted OUT!

I was so scared I didn't stop shaking for two weeks. I knew, deep down inside, that if he found me, he would kill me. It was the scariest thing I'd ever done in my entire life. This is a man who would go into a blinding rage if you disagreed with him about the color of a shirt....can you even imagine the amount of rage over this type of defiance?

I phoned the police after a couple of days and they talked to me and asked me questions and they said he fit the profile of an abusive controller. They warned me to be careful, keep everything locked up and they watched my house for me constantly. I was so afraid of this man that I was afraid to go out into public. The police put me in contact with a women's shelter and I began going to counseling. I was so ashamed that my life had become such a mess. To the outside world and even my family they thought we had the perfect life....a husband with a good job, two children, a nice home in the suburbs....schoolteacher wife.....yeah right! Don't ever judge a book by it's cover because I had become an expert at presenting a perfect image to the world. So, when I went to counseling I was scared. Look at me! I was 45 years old, 70 pounds overweight, without a stick of furniture or a car to my name. I even slept on a sleeping bag in the floor! It was worse than the embarrassment of living in poverty as a child. But, a miracle happend the first time I went to group therapy, everyone went around the circle telling their circumstance and I began to cry. I could not believe that I wasn't the only one that found myself in a crazy, abusive situation controlled by a mean bastard of a bully. In all the years I stayed in that marriage, trying to make the best of my crazy life, I could never understand how a man could treat his own children so poorly. At counseling I began to understand the cycles of abuse and our situation was not uncommon. Then, I began to get angry....because it so hard to believe but once you finally break free of that type of situation and you begin to live a normal life you look back and realize how strange and bizarre your life actually was and you get angry at yourself for not having the strength and "guts" to get out sooner. You are so busy trying to survive that you don't take a step back to realize how crazy it really is and how you should RUN!

The women's resource center gave me the name of an attorney and without any money I began to file for divorce. The police felt like he was enough of a threat that they watched our home closely. He found out where I lived by following my sister home from work one day and the stalking began.

In the fall, I applied for a new position as an administrator and got the position which greatly improved my financial situation. It also built my confidence up. It took from July, when I filed for divorce and August when I was granted a legal separation with custody of the younger child until April 1st of the following year to get my divorce. He tried to get custody of the younger child so I would come back.....as he told him friends, "she'll come home if I get custody because she won't leave her children." He knew me well. Well, in the end, he didn't even get visitation...except at the descretion of the child. His son have never attempted to contact him to my knowledge. He tried other methods of getting me to return....you know....going to church to show the world what a good man is is, how he has changed his life. He also went to a psychiatrist for counseling to prove to me that he had changed. He was diagnosed as a paranoid psychopath (as the police and the psychiatrist would tell me later that this is your serial killer...the type of people that show now remorse for hurting others, we were nothing more to this man than posessions, we were not humans with rights, and these type of people would rather kill you than let you go). Well, from the day I walked out, I've never talked to this and this created part of his fury. In all his crazy letters to me, I finally stopped reading his whining...it was all about him and he did acknowledge that he hadn't been the best father or husband but not once did he apologize. Paranoid pschopath's have no empathy or remorse....no conscience.

The following year my principal encouraged me to apply for the asst. principal position and I was hired as an assistant principal. I only worked for one semester because my older son and his wife were moving to the east coast and my younger son wanted to move also, so, since I had no family ties to Norman, Oklahoma (my older sister had moved the year before to California to live near her son) I made the career and life changing decision to move to the east coast. I felt like moving would truly give me the space I needed to escape the stalker and start a new life in a new area, so I moved!

My life, in my mind, is divided into phases....before Dad died.....after Dad died.....after I got married.....and after the divorce (this is the best phase of my life!) I love the freedom that comes with being single, being able to leave the house without permission, not constantly living in fear, life is good and I can't complain!

I have always been creative...but now.....I find that my talents are flourishing. So, this blog will represent my life as a 49 year old single female and my pursuit of happiness!