History - Part three

No, I'm not still there, I'm not living in the past. I rather just keep getting thrown there. Small incidents. Big incidents. Every day life. It's one of my bigger flaws, my memory. I remember so much. And it's hard to describe the events. I usually refer to them as not-so-nice-things or something. Every time I try tell someone some of those events I get the feeling it's sounding like scenes from a movie. The trailer where they put all the really good action in three minutes, from a not so good movie actually, so after you saw the trailer the movie is boring or you just skip watching it. Somehow telling specifics incidents doesn't seem to make people see how it was (and in a way still is).
I have to repeat myself here, everything you grow up with you consider normal. Since you have nothing to compare with. I was positive that every friend I visited got beaten up by their parents the moment I left the house. My mother always acted nice and friendly too whenever someone came over to play with me. Or rather, I really didn't think it could be different at other families. There was always the layer that my mother showed when someone visited us. And it always was double bad when we were alone again. Always had I overlooked something in my behavior, my actions that my mother had jotted down in that special part of her memory, for which I had to be punished. Which could literally be anything. The way I had answered one of her questions, the way I had argued with a friend or not argued, the way I had shown the faintest idea of being sad or unhappy, the way I had talked too loud or too soft. There was no way at all to avoid doing something wrong, something that was overlooked before could turn into something I had to be punished for.
One of my jobs was to weed the graveled path that we had at the front and one of the sides of the house. Which was tedious in itself, but my mother was very picky about how it had to be done. The weeds had to be removed with the roots so it took like hours to get the whole path clean. One of the weekly chores. One day one of my friends wanted to play with me while I was weeding and she insisted on helping me so we could play sooner. My mother exploded that evening. I should have made it clear to my friend that I was to do that alone.
I still have hopes my mother didn't realize that no matter what choice I made it was always a bad one. I always had to ponder which decision would make my mother the least mad at me. She got mad because she believed I had made my friend pity me for having to do that job, which would automatically ensure she'd help me, which course I wanted because I was lazy. She didn't consider that the alternative (after having told I could do alone and that it was okay and soon done and not needing any help, really) that the only way to make my friend not help was to tell her I would get punished if she did. Which I thought would have pissed my mother off more.

My mother was great at cornering me. She taught me to look at someone while at the same time not looking at someone. Since both got her freaking mad. I am very good at watching something that's just behind someone's head when it's talking to me. If I looked down she said I wasn't paying attention. If I looked at her eyes she said I was too bold. Both was good enough for a smack in the face. It took me eight years after I left their house to be able to sleep on something other than my back (only because I was pregnant and couldn't sleep on my back anymore with my huge belly). My mother used to sneak upstairs to check on me and when she couldn't see my face she never believed I was asleep (which meant I was probably doing something bad). So I'm also reallyreally good at pretending I'm asleep. I also get really paranoid when I'm in bed and not able to hear everything or not recognizing sounds. I dislike everything that makes me unable to hear what's coming, closed doors, constant sounds that might drown other sounds.
Which isn't all that bad though, I can hear when my tea-water is boiling, I know what's happening in my house from sounds alone. Most of it isn't really interfering with anything. Except on bad hairdays. I mean over the years some really odd things I did moved more and more to the back. I'm not going all frantic anymore when I break something or get stains in my clothes which can't be washed out. Except, well sometimes it just breaks through again. I've worked too long to avoid certain reactions from my mother to not automatically fall back sometimes. It's not the excessive scenes that made me, it's the constant being on the lookout.

History - Part two

I have been trying to find out the how and why since I can remember. I wanted to understand. Now I'm not so sure if there's anything to understand.
Looking back I can find lots arguments why things happened the way they happened, how everything went from bad to worse. I still don't really understand though. The reactions I get when I talk about stuff happening in the past are usually the same, 'well your mother was nuts', like it explains everything to them. Yet it doesn't explain anything to me.
There's a point in every parents life where they can hear their parents talking (well if they listen that is), they look at their kid, say the same deadly phrase they used to get from their parents and go scared (or well they should be! or rather I should be really). As most people I think I promised myself (and my unborn offspring course) that I would never ever be like my parents. Except mine was more like a solemn vow. And yet, I could hear my mother talking through me. The most scary part was that I also could see the thoughts my mother probably had. How kiddo was doing all things on purpose to annoy me. If hell exists, it must be something like that.
So there I was, having really stupid thoughts about kiddo and at the same time being thrown back in time and being there again. The feeling of fear mixed with confusion. No fecking clue what it all was about and why my mother was so angry with me again.

So I tried again. Well I tried drinking more and I still felt like I should hang myself because I was badbadbad. So I called them. I wanted to talk. I wanted to understand. She said I lied, that nothing I remembered ever happened. And besides that I was a bad child anyway. And that was kinda the end of it. I couldn't really stay sane and be a semi-normal mother while I still had to pretend nothing ever happened when I was a kid.
In a way I feel sad it's like this, that I won't get the answers I crave, the answers that would make me feel different (or so I believe). I believe that it would be so much easier if I could understand. If I could talk with my parents how things got to that really bad point. But during all those years I could never make them (or her rather) understand I didn't want to talk about blame or the bad things specifically, just the need to know things and maybe hear for once that I wasn't all that bad. Most of the years after kiddo was born everyone pretended we were all one big happy family. There was one huge area nobody dared enter, besides some remarks that it was nice that all was fine now (which I always translated as: See, it was you! We only did what we could with the best intentions.). The occasional yourememberwhens always seemed so fun and normal but they made me scream inside since there was nothing fun and normal back then.
The one time where I had been brushing my teeth for hours and hours till I finally had enough courage to go downstairs to ask if I could stop now, a room filled with guests and they all laughed when my mother said she had forgotten about me. Nobody thought it was a bit odd maybe that a child keeps brushing her teeth for hours? And now it's like a funny childhood story for them?
How could I keep up that charade and not go freaking insane? I couldn't. I honestly tried. Mostly so I could believe we could have a normal relation. That we now were all grownups and should be able to be mature about the past. So yes, I ended it all. I know I will always have questions and I know if I kept on seeing them sooner or later I would try to understand again. Over and over hitting my head on that brick wall being my mother or the guilt or the shame or whatever reason she doesn't want it all dug up again.

Memory is a weird thing. But I know I didn't make it all up. I know I know, I know she knows, she knows I know she knows. So I'm alone with them. My sister says I shouldn't keep dwelling in the past, we are living now, things are fine. My brother has a loyalty-conflict and is torn between me and our mother and I can't help him with it. He thinks I should forgive, that the mother from my past isn't the same as the mother in the now. But it's not the point and I can't make him see that.
I am my past and I want to change the future that is connected to that past. I am a sore, whiny, self-pitying, frustrated bitch if I don't try my hardest to keep remembering that I don't have to be like that. And I remember. And I try to not let it influence me too much. Since I'm still there.

History

Since I can't sleep, maybe it's about time I write it all down (who knows if it's constructive somehow). I tried so often and always ended up with weird half-stories, losing myself on details, scared of forgetting the important things (but what's important and what does it matter I forgot them? (not like I have forgotten anything)). I've tried the factual neutral approach, the how I felt during all the years approach, the start somewhere random, the start at the end and at the beginning. So many little failed stories of my life. Maybe I somehow really didn't want to have it all written out. I don't know. I could just be a lazy bastard too. So, another restart of this. And again, no clue where to begin. The short chronological facts then?

1972 born
1974 adopted
1980 my memory works
1983 grandfather dies, things go from bad to worse
1986 psychiatric hospital
1989 kicked out of hospital
Since then pretending I'm normal enough and trying to stay on the sane side.

Before 1980 I have two memories I can call my own (not the memories that exist because people tell you things happened and are integrated in some false memory that are true from then on).
My mother is riding a bicycle bringing me somewhere (to kindergarten?), we're getting past a plowed field with snow on it, I can remember the black earth and the snow, making a sort of black and white striped pattern and between the road and the field a pile of roof tiles (also covered a bit with snow).
The second is a visit from the whole class (or I think it was the whole class) to our teacher who just gave birth and me standing at a big (it was bigger than me (so maybe not that big *giggles*)) stone that was being used as a nameplate or something.
The only reason (I can figure out at least) why I remember these things is the feeling of oddness. From then on there's nothing odd anymore, just fear.

I think memories are always connected to something unusual. Something out of the normal feelings. After all these years so many things have slipped my mind (thank heavens!), all that's left are the real ups and downs.

I was eight (or so I think, looking back) and it was bad. Every day I did something (anything, everything) wrong and had to be punished for that. My mother had no way of distinguishing between intentional and unintentional wrongs. She was so positive that everything I did wrong I did on purpose and eventually ended up with believing I not only did that on purpose but also to hurt her. My memories are filled with sentences she kept telling me, mostly about what I did to her and how bad I was. I didn't know I believed it all till I thought the same things when my daughter got close to being eight. Or rather, I really thought and hoped maybe that words are just words and you can just forget them if they aren't true. For the past six years I have been fighting memories. Fighting to keep seeing the world through my own eyes and not through my mothers. Knowing something is untrue doesn't mean you also believe it's untrue.
When I was thirteen I believed I stopped caring, but all I did was giving up trying to make her love me. I stopped believing there was anything I could do to get her to like me. Which led to me being sent away since she couldn't handle me anymore. And she was right to do so. There's no fun in punishing someone that doesn't seem to be affected in any way. She didn't understand (nor will she ever I think) that it was inevitable. Five years living in constant fear, of never knowing what will upset someone, always being alert for the tiniest sign of an explosion, I just couldn't handle it anymore. What will be, will be. If I'm sure I will be punished no matter what I do, what's the use of me trying to be good?
The first night in the hospital I went reading a book in bed (yes, on purpose, since it was a forbidden act) and all I got was someone telling me to go to sleep. Nobody trashing my room, yanking me out of bed, hitting me, pulling me downstairs to stand for hours till I could answer questions the way my mother wanted them answered. So I went to sleep that night, I didn't even wait for everyone to be asleep.
When you're a kid, everything that happens is normal. And why talk about normal things? That I didn't like the way I was treated didn't mean I didn't deserve it or that it wasn't normal.

[to be continued...] <- I so hated that on television.

So tired

Yet so not able to sleep. I sit here, pondering, musing, cursing and crying. So tired. I lie in bed, wide awake. No way I can fall asleep, unless I stay awake long enough my body takes over. And then my mind is still racing and punishes me with odd dreams.

Do you hear voices, they ask me. Do you see things that aren't there?
No. I just have my mind and that's more than enough thank you. I know the difference between the reality I live in and the reality that is my life.