How do you measure Improvement?

As much work as has been put into catching up and correcting the slow start,  we are still sitting on grades of "F" and "D".  Two teachers verbally confirmed to me that Alex would not fail their class so long as he came to classes and submitted work.  This isn't reflected in Aspen yet so it still looks like a fail.  Science has not put any grades in and two other classes have not put new grades in for over a week.  So I sit here...wondering where he stands.  When I was in the 7th grade, it was nothing like this.  Its'a very different world now in education.

Happy Monday everyone.  

I am looking at Alex's grades since two classes end this week and we are more than halfway through first semester.  I am also trying to complete my own report card.  How do I measure my own progress?

Progress as a mother

a wife

a worker

a mentor

How do you measure your giving and your support?  How do you measure up to your own expectations of the person you wanted to be?

Some friends of mine reached out to me this morning to help find an apartment since they sold their house.  I ended up on a search for available apartments and the 2nd house I came across was the house I lived in when I was 16 and 17 years old.  It STOPPED me in my tracks.  I was dumbfounded...barely awake because it was so early and I had not had much coffee yet.  My eyes could barely focus.  I began to scroll through the pictures and what I found was so disturbing.  The house was mostly unchanged from my childhood.  Until this exact minute in time, I had blocked out the feelings of the things that happened to me while I was living in that house for one short year of my life- thr trauma that erupted in this brief but pivotal juncture in my young life.  I felt that flood of awful emotion.  

It is a sad story but I am going to share it now because I feel I HAVE to.

If you are not ready to hear awful things that happened to me...do NOT read on.

That house was where my family moved to when we lost our home in Foster.  We ended up in a house on Sprague Avenue in Warwick for about 6 months but that house did not last.  That landlord caught on to who and what my parents were SO fast it would make your head spin.  We left behind many personal items in the transition from that house to the one on Harrison...which was the house I encountered today online.

My father was a truck-driver and back then he did long hauls.  This meant that he was regularly gone for a week to three weeks at a time.  We would get post cards and occasionally a call.  One day, dad would just show up at home.  Usually, when Dad arrived home, my mother was so FURIOUS with me over some thing that I had done during the course of those 3 weeks, that she would tell dad and he would spank me.  The spankings stopped by the time I was around 14.  But my mother's unpredictable nature kept us in fear most of the time, coupled with my father's belt or paddle, which he was not sparing with.  It was hard to feel happy to see dad upon his return because it always meant that we were going to be punished for something that had occurred within the past month...even though our young minds may have already forgotten the incident.  Mother had not forgotten.

One of the lowest points of my teen life was the year and a half that we lived on Harrison Avenue.  I had been torn from my home in Foster- my friends- my band- and my country life.  Now we had neighbors.  We shopped at supermarkets and there was traffic.  I had to walk to school.  But the worst thing was dad.  One day, before we had even left that house on Sprague Avenue, Dad left on a trip and he did not come back.  It wasn't like the other times that he left.  My mother was on the phone a lot, crying and complaining and asking people for help with money and food and all of these types of things.  She didn't say anything much that I can remember aside from derogatory things like "Your dad doesn't care if the electricity gets shut off or if you eat".  I didn't exactly know what that meant. I had always been more on my father's side than on mom's side so it was hard now with him gone and only her to hear from.

My mother had an addiction issue....one that no one knew about.  At least, I didn't KNOW for sure if anyone knew.  I tried to tell my two grandmothers, but I could never figure out how to tell them and I was baffled that they did not see it.  When I was much younger, mom and dad smoked pot...but now they had moved on from that to cocaine to crack.  My mother was a crack addict.  Four kids, husband gone, no money or job.  Addicted to crack.  This was where the train came off the rails.  While all of this was going on at home, I was struggling with the move to a new school.  I did not tell anyone that I played French Horn.  I was very shy in school and afraid that people would put me on the spot.  I kept my head down and stayed away from people.  I didn't want anyone to get too close and learn what my mother was.  My boyfriend from back in Foster was also losing control of his life at the same time.  I assumed he understood that as young as we were, and with my family taking me away, there was going to be no way for us to still see each other. But I was mistaken.

Everything turned ugly when my boyfriend showed up one day in a car that he borrowed from his family.  He had found a way to come and see me.  I was very upset by his showing up because the time and space that had passed (months at this point) had made me sure that ending this relationship was best.  I had hoped that he would just fade into the background but he did not do that.  He was so unstable due to the fact that his family too was taking them to move away to New York, that he came to find me.  My younger siblings happily greeted him and my mother was already high on her drugs that day so she sort of blankly stared at him and then walked away, back to her perch on the sofa where she sat for hours when she was high.  Did he know she was high?  Did he know what she was...a drug addict?  I never told him!  But did he know?  I could not tell at the time if he had premeditated this move, but he went to my mother and offered her money if she would let him stay at our house. She did not hesitate to take the $800 he gave her in exchange for staying through Christmas break and New Years.  It was close to Thanksgiving at the time.  He basically moved in and slept in our Front Living Room, which was mostly a home for boxes from the last house we lived in...boxes that we never unpacked.

This house was huge.  There were three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.  My mother slept downstairs and all of us kids were upstairs.  My boyfriend was given a place downstairs.  My boyfriend was a high school wrestler and very agile.  Each night, he would slowly and with great care and effort not to make a noise, make his way upstairs to my room.  His visits were UNWANTED by me and he knew this.  In fact, he knew that I did NOT want him in my house.  But because my mother had been bought for her precious drug money, and he was a slippery snake who could manipulate easily, and because my father was nowhere to be found... he managed to get away with this for more than a month of my life.  Each night he would force me to perform different sexual acts, reminding me to be silent or he would make my life even more unpleasant for me.  Would he tell someone about my mother?  Or would he call The Department of Children Youth and Families and they would take the kids away to separate Foster homes?  I didn't know but I was afraid that any of these things could be possible or worse- he may have meant to physically harm me.  He had it me before, sending me sailing across the gymnasium floor.

Each night would become more troubling then the one before.  The culmination of this would be my being bound and gagged while he forcefully performed anal sex on me.  

I never told a soul what was happening.  One day, he left.  

I felt relief that he was gone, and tried to have a normal school experience.  Some kids from my English class had finally gotten me to talk a bit about myself and learned of my musical experience.  They were kind and friendly.  They brought me to the music classroom and I joined the band where I quickly became a minor superstar.  The school I had transferred from had one of the most elite musical programs in the State and perhaps in the region.  So I really stood out in my new school.  I was well-liked.  I began to feel a little more ok.  Things were quieter at home.  Still no dad.  Also, we had no phone so I had not heard from the boyfriend.  Until one day.... he showed up at my school after Band Practice (which was immediately after school).  This time, his sister drove him down in the same car that he had come in before.  As I left the building, a few friends around me, all walking out, I saw him come charging across the parking lot screaming profanity at me and waving his arms combatively like he might actually try and strangle or hit me.  I may have been scared, but I remember feeling EMBARRASSED!  My new friends were all around me...even more so when they heard and saw this lunatic rushing in calling me a whore and a slut.  He was yelling and demanding to know which of these guys I was sleeping with!

Someone told the Band director, and as teachers came out to disband the fight, his sister had enough sense to pull him away.  She looked at me with a look that felt like pity.  I did not speak to him the entire time that he spewed his horrible insults.  But I did look at her and say, "Why did you bring him here?".  She just shook her head as if to say "no".  Perhaps she did not expect his behavior either.  My new friends just formed a circle around me, keeping me from his view until he left the parking lot.  After that, I was forced to start speaking with the school Psychologist on a regular basis.  But I never told them about my mother's drugs.  I also never saw that boyfriend again.  He left and never returned.  In addition to the school Psychologist, I had come to the attention of the School Guidance Department as being a troubled youth who might need additional support if I were to be eligible to get into college.

In the Spring, Dad returned.  He was gone for nearly a year.  One morning we just woke up and he was back.  We all stood there trying to decide if we hug him or be mad at him.  As the oldest child, I knew that the others were waiting for me to decide.  I chose mercy.  I ran to dad and hugged him.  My mother was visibly disgusted by my choice to forgive him for his long absence.  But I was just relieved...I felt safer knowing Dad was in the house.  Besides...for all I knew, and for all I had been told, Dad was away working to support our family all of this time.  I am still not sure to this day where dad was.  Had he left us?  Did he come back after he left, after changing his mind?  Was Dad in Jail?  This was a very likely possibility and one that my dad's criminal record ( I would not learn of for more than 2 decades) would substantiate.  But dad was back.  And we were all going to move on.

My father spoke of fresh starts that morning...of making it up to us and of changing behavior.  I would come to learn that my Dad meant that he had TOLD my mother that she and he were going to stop using.  She was NOT hearing that...she wanted to keep doing what she was doing.  So these two decided to stay together and try to make this family work even though Dad wasn't going to use drugs anymore but Mom still was.  Eventually we moved out of that house on Harrison.  Until today, I had forgotten this story.  But Today it all came flooding back like an awful dream...a sad truth.  A piece of me that I cannot deny or bury.  I analyze EVERYTHING that I say and do to and with my children.  I look at my actions and I ask myself if they were the right steps for my children's lives.  I hold myself accountable when I am less than what I feel they deserve.  THIS is what I learned from my own childhood.  I learned that I wanted to be there for my kids and to help them succeed.  I wanted to be fully engaged in their lives because my parents were not even a little engaged in ours.

So how do I measure my improvement...how do I measure it?  Each day that I wake up and actively overcome the darkness and pain that threatens to pull me backwards into the depths of my depression and ptsd, is a successful day.  Each time that I give to another person when it is hard for me to just get out of bed, is a success.  You would not know this unless I said it to you, but I have not showered in more than 4 days and I have not brushed my hair once in that time.  If I take the hair down from my "messy bun" it is little more than a tangle of unbrushed knots.  I STRUGGLE.  I struggle ALL the time, everyday...in many different ways.  So how can I measure improvement?  I have gotten my kids to take showers....to complete schoolwork.  They do not realize that my hair is unbrushed or that my back hurts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  They do know that I sometimes say "no" to a request or will say, "I just need a bit of rest or alone time".  They understand that I set boundaries so that I can feel as healthy as possible given these limitations.  LIVING with Depression is a struggle that only other Depressed people can understand.

My medications that I use daily keep me stable, but they are not mood elevators.  They only provide me with a baseline of Serotonin.  I do that for a reason.  I WANT it to be a little bit hard for me.  If it were NOT hard, I would just get high and laugh all day and life would be grand.  You know, like my mother did...

But I am not built that way.  I want to feel things.  I want to think about things.  I want to participate in life.  So this is what it takes for me to participate.  One of the most important and hard things that I learned during my hospitalization for ptsd/depression/ocd was that we need to expose ourselves, our inner selves.  We need to TALK about what happened to us, so we can heal from it.  I don't talk about these dark things very often.  Because sadly, this story of abuse that I just shared, was NOT the first one I lived through...and there were more after it too.  You see, victims are often re-victimized until they learn why they are so susceptible to re-victimization and abuse.  Once you can get to that place, you can break the pattern.  The earlier in life that you can break this pattern and heal, I believe you can recover.  However, sometimes you are changed by it and there are shadows with you, like mine, that never fully leave you.  I did not recover while I was young.  I persisted in this energy for decades, freeing myself at some point around 2012.

When I use the mile-marker for progress now, I use 2012 as my starting point.    How had I improved since realizing that I needed to take my life into my own hands and empower myself to heal?  That is my yardstick.  Hopefully you are treating yourself with as much love and kindness today as I am treating myself with today. Also...Don't worry, I will take a shower today.

~Namaste

Lilac