Before the Marriage, There was the Well
In my last post, I shared how my marriage felt like a heavy stone dropped into the center of my life. But if I am going to be honest with you….and with myself….I have to admit that he was not the first stone. The ripples didn’t start at the altar; they started at the very beginning of my life.
I was Born into a Storm
My story began with parents who were drowning in their own cycles of alcoholism, infidelity, and abuse. I grew up in a house where the air was thick with things unsaid and “conflicting stories” that never quite added up. I was told as a newborn, I even spent a few days in a foster home; a tiny pawn already being moved by hands I didn’t know.
The Survival of a “Crabby Tabby”
My father and mother had split and my mother remarried; one of my only vivid memories of that time is of a step-father who called me “Crabby Tabby”. I remember the sick feeling of his favoritism, the sight of him walking through the hallway naked, and the deep, triggered layers of anger and anxiety that still live in my body today. I’ve chosen not to dig for every answer because well, some shadows are better left where they lie.
But the ripples didn’t stop with him. They lived in every one of my mother’s relationships; all of them physically abusive, all of them fueled by alcohol and drugs that she would later deny, even though I saw them with my own eyes.
Swimming While the Adults Drowned
When the adults are lost in the waves, the children have to learn how to swim. I grew up watching my older sister, only three years older, do the parenting. I was told stories of her carrying me to the police station because our mother was passed out, drunk, and couldn’t be woken. By the time I was in kindergarten, I had already lived two different lives….one with my mother, and eventually one with my father and step-mother.
Why the Board was Set
Look at the image I use for this blog; for the story of my journey. You see those first few chess pieces? They are cracked. They are sitting on ground that is desiccated and broken.
For years, I wondered why I stayed in a toxic marriage for nearly three decades. The truth is, I was already conditioned for it. I was born into survival mode. It’s no coincidence that I landed into the profession I did, but it wasn’t because I was trying to “wake up” the world around me. It was because I had spent a lifetime learning to read the smallest shifts in the atmosphere. When you grow up in the wake of trauma, you become a master of the background. I wasn’t the one making the noise; I was the one becoming invisible.
I was quiet, shy, and practiced the art of not being noticed. I learned to monitor the “vitals” of a room; the smell of alcohol, the tone of a voice, and the heavy silence of a passed out parent just so I could navigate around it without causing a ripple. My nursing heart was born out of that hyper-vigilance. I learned to anticipate needs and detect danger before it ever even spoke. I didn’t want to change the chaos; I just wanted to survive it.
The ripple effect is a cycle, but cycles can be broken. I am 46. I am a mother of five. I am a nurse. And I am finally realizing that while I was born into a storm I didn’t create, I am the one who decides when the water finally goes still.