nixtress's Diaryland Diary

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Words won't describe.

It's frustrating, sometimes, this need of mine to be a "people pleaser".
It's a weakness of mine that I've fought most of my adult life, with some wins and some losses.
There are many things that I keep hidden inside myself because I'm afraid that people won't like/love me if they know those parts of me, how much blackness I've held inside me...
some of the things that I haven't detailed in this diary have been part of that.
No different than a lot of people, there are things that have occurred in my life that I'm deeply ashamed of, things that I'm not proud of and things that I STILL haven't forgiven myself for and don't know if I ever will. That's a battle that I don't know if I'll ever win.
These are also things that have taught me HUGE lessons and errors that I haven't repeated so I guess they've served a purpose, in that regard.
I know some of this "need to please" is a result of my upbringing. I HAD to be a people pleaser growing up because that's the position my family put me in. That's how I knew I existed in our family.
Throwing that aside entering into adulthood wasn't easy.
I nearly typed that I hate it when people I care about are upset with me...that's true but to be completely honest, I don't like the idea of ANYONE thinking badly of me. It bothers the side of me that is such a perfectionist, the part that craves approval and wants more than anything for someone to be proud of me and love me.
I don't like that side of myself. I don't like it at all. I hate being at the mercy of my own feelings of insecurity/inferiority/neediness.
I've decided that I'm going to open up in this diary of mine. I'm going to reclaim it as mine and that may or may not change the opinions of the people who have read all of this. I'll say that it's not easy and I don't do this lightly. I feel like I should apologize.
I think it's something I've needed to do, though. I think that's part of why I stopped writing: I felt like I wasn't being completely honest. Not with myself and not with the people I've become close to via this site. How close, though, can you really be to someone when you don't really know them at all?
SO.
On with the show.
***
My ex-husband was able to steal away custody of my oldest son because I went down the rabbit hole, so to speak. I had a miscarriage, my stepfather (the man who'd been more a father to me than my bio-dad) died and I split with my ex, all in the span of 5 months.
I wasn't in a good space at the BEGINNING of all that, having suffered from what I now know was post partum depression. Afterwards...well.
I was living in a small Ohio town, my then-husband worked third shift, I had a new baby and knew no one beyond my MIL and husband in that town. I'd cut myself off from all of my friends when we got married (easy to do when you're 18 yrs old and all your friends are NOT getting married and having babies). I was completely isolated and trying to live a life that I'd only seen on Leave It To Beaver---certainly nothing I'd had a blueprint for in my life.
We split, I lost a baby and a father and I began a downward spiral.
The day we split up, I left our house with my son Brandon and a duffel full of clothes. That's all he allowed me to walk away with.
I moved in with my SIL (she and my brother had split but not yet divorced), if you can call it that. My ex and I hammered out a tentative agreement for split custody between ourselves minus attorneys---I kept Bran for two weeks, then he did.
I slept on my SIL's living room floor and during the weeks I had Brandon, he slept in a playpen. I had no car, no job...just me and my son.
I also had a bad habit of calling chatlines. NOT 900 number/sex lines. Stupid chat lines, sort of like chat rooms on the 'Net but instead on the phone. Chatlines that cost an arm and a leg because they were based in Utah, of all places. Salt Lake City.
Let me digress for a minute:
My then-husband began working third shift while I was pregnant with Bran. The majority of the time, he slept most of the day away, waking long enough to perk up a little and to eat before work before then heading out the door. Mornings he'd stop at his pal's house and shoot the breeze before coming home. Once Brandon was born, he'd make time to spend an hour or so with him before leaving for work at night but otherwise, it was me and Brandon by ourselves. The days were very long and the nights were longer. Not only was I dealing with some post partum depression but I was lonely, isolated, tired, missing my husband/best friend, stressed, dealing with a new baby, failing miserably at breastfeeding, desperately wanting someone to talk to... Looking back, I can't say that I handled it well at all. I picked a number out of the back of US Weekly (yep, they still advertise those numbers to this day) and called, not having a clue what to expect but so bored and tired of being on my own and desperate for some kind of adult human contact that I was reaching for ANY sort of contact that I could.
That quickly became something of an addiction for me. I formed friendships (of a sort) with the people I spoke with and spoke with them often. However, that ran my long distance up like nobody's business and eventually my then-husband found out and it became a point of contention for him.
In hindsight, I see that desperate-for-contact girl and feel really sorry for her. In hindsight, I wonder how he couldn't see me too? How did he miss how terribly sad I was or how completely lost I felt? How was I so unable to voice that to anyone around me?
I moved in with SIL, reeling from the events that I've described, with a nasty and expensive habit. No one else seemed to notice how miserable I was or how much I was floundering. I felt like I was drowning.
I was so fucked in the head. I made so many bad choices at that point in my life. I found a job working third shift at a gas station/convenient store. My SIL finally asked me to move out, and I stayed for varying amounts of time with people I worked with, at least during my times of visitation with my son. When he was with his dad, I slept in my crappy little Chevette I'd managed to muster the money to buy.
I used customers' credit card numbers to make long distance phone calls to that chat line. I lost my job. I was finally arrested. Having only ever been with my ex, I managed to find several "men" willing to allow me to practice some promiscuity out on them.
I stole a check from my mother and forged her signature and then cashed it at a place where they knew both of us and knew it was forged (not a desperate cry there, right??). I was arrested again. My ex initiated formal custody proceedings after hiring an attorney. I didn't have the money for that so naive girl that I was, I trusted HIS attorney when he said that I should sign the documents, that "residential parent" meant only that my ex was responsible for covering our son with insurance. What'd I know? I certainly didn't have anyone to ask. I trusted my ex because he was the only person I'd EVER really trusted.
By the time we went in front of the judge, I'd accumulated a rap sheet that involved felony convictions, had moved somewhere around 20 times in a little over a year and was actually on house arrest. I was not a good mom. I was not even a good person, I don't think.
I was a mess.
I don't think I need to state that he won his custodial suit. He was named the residential parent and we were granted joint custody. That meant nothing to me, once it was explained in court that for all intents and purposes, he had custody. As residential parent, Brandon lived with him. And as residential parent, I had visitation.
I think that's what completely broke me. By the time I finished punishing myself and the world around me, my life was a dark place to be.
One night in August of '97 I made a phone call from the County Jail to my aunt Bert. I had gotten kicked out of the house where I was serving my house arrest, thus (technically) violating the terms of my house arrest. My mother was refusing to take my two younger sons and if someone from my family didn't claim them by that evening, Children's Services was going to take custody. Trev was just over a year old and Ryan was only a month old.
My little boys sat with a stranger, while I sat in a jail cell, begging my aunt to take them. When she agreed and after I'd relayed all the necessary info to her, I hung up the phone and completely broke down.
That was just over ten years ago.
Ten years. Writing this all out has slammed me again. I've stopped so many times because I can't see the screen for the tears and because I need a break, need to breathe. I'm so grateful to be able to say that I hardly recognize the person I was then. I don't think grateful covers it.
My aunt's act of kindness to my sons saved them and saved me.
My aunt picked my sons up that night and took them into her house. My aunt, who's children were raised up and adults, took in two babies and became a new parent all over again. She arranged with the probation department for me to start my house arrest over, at my grandparent's home while she kept temporary custody of my boys. At this point, my ex was not allowing me to see Bran at all. In some ways, I can't say I blame him. He was trying to do what was best for our son. It affected Brandon in ways that I still see and that I still blame myself for now.
I went through some pretty intensive therapy (thank God), finished up my house arrest, completed my community service and began paying off my fines/restitution. During all of that, Bert brought the boys nearly every day to see me. My grandparents...I can't even begin to describe how much I will always owe them for being there for me, when my own mother wouldn't. Nothing, ever, will repay my Aunt Bert for what she did.
I don't think I'd be alive if she hadn't stepped in the way she did.
God only knows what would have become of my boys.
I wasn't a good person. I did things that I'm so ashamed to admit now. I have a past that someday, I'm going to have to explain to my children and have already had to, in bits and pieces, with Brandon.
My actions, my choices, helped me lose one of the best things ever in my life, for years. It's been a long, hard road back. Seven years without my son living with me. Seven years of seeing him only on weekend and a few hours midweek. Seven years of knowing that I. Did. This. Seven years of watching someone else play mother to my son. Seven years of knowing that it's all my own fault.
Since that night when my aunt brought my sons into her home, I've cleaned up everything. No more chat lines ever, no more criminal behavior (unless you count my speeding ticket), no more separations from my boys. I've maintained a stable residence, I've kept a job, I've stayed out of trouble. I've rebuilt myself, rebuilt my life. I've been through more counseling than most people go through in a lifetime.
Looking at me, meeting me, knowing me you'd never know...other than my family, no one around me knows any of this.
That doesn't mean I've forgotten. It doesn't mean I've let myself off the hook for it all. It doesn't mean that I've even come close to forgiving myself for any of it. My aunt reminds me that I'm not the sum of all my faults alone, that who I am is not based completely on my screw ups. Some days I can believe that and others, not so much.
I'd like to say that I don't know how I let myself get to that place but I do. I needed something so badly and in the absence of that, I self-destructed and nearly managed to take my sons with me.
I'll never go there again. Not even close. It was a huge lesson, a painful one, a life altering one.
My need to please others...I married young, because I thought it was what was expected of me. Walking down the aisle, I knew it wasn't the right thing. It was what others around me SAID was right. It's what made my then-husband happy. I figured I'd get used to it. Once that detonated, once my life fell to pieces, I had no one to turn to, no one to pick up those pieces, and I completely fell apart.
I had no one else to please but myself and when you don't really have a self other than the messed up version left over from a dysfunctional childhood...well. You don't really know what happiness is or even how to be happy.
I've learned more in the years since. I think I know who I am, now. At least, as much as I'm able. I'm ready to be happy. Happiness is acceptance. And I need to not only take responsibility for past mistakes but also accept that I'm not that person anymore, haven't been for a long time. The person I need to accept and gain the approval of...is me.
This has all been incredibly hard to put out there. I'm exhausted. I started at 11:24pm (per Dland) and it's now 1:11am.
I know that for some of those who may read this (now or in the future) it's going to color your opinions of the Me you thought/think you knew/know. Questions are acceptable but recriminations aren't. I've done enough of that for everyone and anyone.
It's time to be 100% honest and time to start putting away some of the baggage I have consciously and subconsciously been carrying around.
Happy New Start.
N.

11:24 p.m. - 2007-10-29

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