Motherhood's Failings - Eve's Curse Upclose & Personal

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It's been such a long time since I've written of my girls. As time moves forward, it gets harder and harder to share them, and even harder to express the various morphologies of grieving. It's become a very lonely and isolated experience. And life had gotten increasingly challenging.

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First there's ill-health. That second late in life pregnancy did me no favors by way of physical strength, and to have it end in the grievous strain of yet another death has just wrecked havoc on my body--not to mention the mental/emotional issues. Fibromyalgia, diabetes, menopausal complications that have brought on incredible uterine, cervical and urinary problems--these are the things I struggle with in my daily life. Sadly, neither me or my doctor know where to go from here. We've adjusted medications without favorable outcome. We've tried new medications that proved detrimental. My fear is the reality of an untimely death.

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Second there's my grown son. He's chosen alcoholism as his lifestyle, and he's determined to ruin whatever potential he has for a happy & successful life. I have no idea how to help him--or myself for that matter, seeing as I'm the target of his hostility and verbal abuse. I'm doing my best to put things in order so as to put him on the curb, though that makes me feel so guilty and overcome with failure. I can actually see in my mind's eye, my son living under an overpass and taking his meals at a shelter. I've worried that prison might be in his future, or that I might have to also place him in the garden with his sisters.

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All I know is that I've got two kids that are dead and the third who's doing his best to join them. I'm consumed with all that I've done or not done that's contributed to their plights. Truly, I have failed at my most important task in life. I've fucked up the only job that truly matters in the world. I failed my daughters to death. And in spite of my life's endeavors to teach & raise up my son to follow in the ways of a godly man, he's instead chosen the way of Cain. I have failed to raise up ONE, why should God have allowed me to raise up more? I am consumed with the depths to which I have failed my children.

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So the last many months I have been detrimentally ill in both heart, mind and body. I don't talk about it much for fear of outside judgement--once burned twice shy, ya know. All it takes is a couple of harsh family members or misunderstanding strangers to insinuate that we got what we deserved, and thus the mental & physical illness will prevail. It's hard to keep pressing on toward the goal when you're forgotten at Christmas or birthdays; so so so very hard.

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I mean who is there that contemplates what the changing seasons do to me? I finally get through the season of one dead child and it's time to move into the season of yet another. My body is in rebellion as it moves through the barometric changes of early spring. My uterus remembers that it was getting ready for Anne's arrival. The winds and gusty sand storms revive flashbacks of a time when her layette was nearly done, and her presence was very real in our lives. And yet the physical confusion has impacted my very DNA.

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My body remembers those early months right after losing Abigail--winter 2004, when all was so very dark and devastated--how long my body milked and ached and yearned for her to come back to me. And so it was that in the winter months of 2005 there was the expectation of Anne's arrival. So there was incredible mourning for one and cautious excitement for the other.

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It's all so very numbing & mind boggling--like a deer frozen in the headlights as a train barrels down the canyon of motherhood. On those days when the weather is markedly like April my body goes into a state of havoc that's difficult to describe. The sense of loss is great; such astounding loss--not just for the heart & mind, but for the body as well. There's nothing quite like giving birth to death after a fullterm pregnancy. And then to traverse through yet another full term pregnancy so soon after.... well, let's just say that the dramatic day of Anne's birth will forever impact every aspect of my life.

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In veterans of war, professional refer to it as post traumatic stress disorder. I've not been to war, but I have been abandoned by my father as a young child--and thus know the resulting hardships of poverty and self-loathing. I have been beaten by my stepfather as a teen. I have struggled with infertility all my reproductive life. I buried my second born, losing most of what friends I had in the process. And so when the doctors told me that my third child would also inevitably meet with the graveyard, well... let's just say that life handed me a full course meal of post traumatic stress disorder. What had been merely side-dishes in PTSD prior to that, became a full-on regalia for a Queen.

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It's made a mess of every single thing in my life. In fact, I would change the ailment to just "traumatic stress disorder"---there's no "post" about it. For me, it's an every day, all the time sort of thing. It doesn't end. It just gets worse and worse.

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Oh sure, the girls are dead now, but there's still my first born who has to make sure that the trauma continues on every single day. It's like he's so stinkin' jealous of his sisters and the grief they've brought to us that he too has to add his share of anguish to the parenthood stew.

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It's terrible because for the most part, he was always such a good and happy boy. He chose Jesus in his early teens--all of his own volition. He wanted to get baptized but we made him wait until he was really sure. And when he finally did get baptized, it meant so much to him. He'd promised himself to be faithful to his purity and to his heart. I was so proud of his attitude and perspective. He wasn't a great student, but he was fairly attentive and always did his homework. He was mild-mannered and easy going. He made friends easily and was always the playground favorite. Other kids at band, BSF or conference seminars looked up to him, and other parents found him delightful & charming. He really was a wonderful, smart, witty, and compassionate person.

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And then the girls stirred up something in him that's just made him awful--mean, hateful, angry, lustful and lewd. He's turned his back on God and shakes his fist at Him as if God is to blame for all his woes. He turned twenty-one and took up excessive alcohol--that's when things really took a turn for the worst.

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I can't say it's all the girls' fault. There was the abandonment of family--grandparents that had blown off multitudes of birthdays & Christmases with expressions of marked disdain. The reality of human nature showed itself plainly; and thus he took up offenses, finding himself enraged by those who were supposed to care and provide support. He took up the drink to numb the rage not realizing that the drink only makes the rage more roaring. Prayerfully, the AA meetings will be the net that saves him from himself...

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So ultimately, life has sucked and counting what few blessings we have has become mandatory in order to save us from the all-consuming quicksand that seeks to destroy us. I teeter on the window ledge of how to rid myself of my son's toxic alcoholism without making it worse or ruining what's left of my relationship with him. It's a rock and a hard spot. It's lonely and extremely isolating. Few are they who haven't grown weary of hearing about it, and even fewer stick around or provide any real support.

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And thus, I don't write about it much anymore. I guess I write about it now because the weather is so very April, and my entire being is consumed with "traumatic stress disorder" - I drown my dismay in Blythe fashion dolls--trying to recapture a childhood that I never got to have. I long for another time--where & when, I don't know. All I know is that I want to be in a time & place whereby my children don't define my failures or successes. There isn't enough therapy or time travel in all the world to transport me to such a place....