The challenge this week is to “revisit a chapter in your life's story that has become heavy baggage”, and then “rewrite the story from the perspective of your present self”. For more details see
here.
Problem Child
I was always told that I was a rebellious child. I think of a rebellious child as one whose sole purpose in adolescence is to get back at her parents, a cry for attention, yet I don’t remember ever thinking, “hmm, my dad wouldn’t approve of this; I think I’ll do it just to piss him off.” I was angry with him, yes, but I was also afraid of him. He was very controlling and I felt smothered by him. In my mind, I was not looking to get my parent’s attention. As far as I was concerned, I already had too much. I just wanted them to leave me alone. The last thing I wanted to do was something that would draw more attention. So, for as long as I can remember, I was a quiet, withdrawn child, afraid to be noticed. Quietly rebellious I suppose, because I do recall not trusting my parents, and becoming curious about things I knew they wouldn’t approve of.
My curiosity led to drug use. There’s a story of events that led up to it, that I’ve been writing about, but it’s too long to post here. The short version is that I decided my parents didn’t have my best interest at heart, so I questioned everything. In my opinion, my dad was more concerned about what the neighbors thought, and social status. I felt like he regretted his decision to have children, because we had turned out to be so spoiled rotten, but felt he had to keep up the appearances of a devoted father. He could use all the stuff he bought us as leverage to get us to do what he wanted. Everything had strings attached, and nothing I could do was ever good enough. I hated him.
One summer night, right before my 15th birthday, I went out with my boyfriend, Kenny. He was selling Quaaludes, so we stopped by his friend’s apartment to see if he could sell any. There were a lot of people there getting high. We had just walked into a back bedroom to smoke a joint, when the police raided the place. Kenny threw the Quaaludes under the bed. I knew that would be the first place they’d look. The officer told us that he wanted everybody in the living room while they searched the room. I asked if I could use the restroom, and surprisingly, he let me. When I came out, the room was empty, so I grabbed the Quaaludes and stuffed them down my pants. The police weren’t able to find anything in their search, so they let everybody go except me. I was underage, so they called my parents. The officer talked with my parents a for a while when they arrived to pick me up, telling them about this awful crowd I was hanging around with. In an attempt to scare me, he talked about a youth detention program that was designed to teach kids like me about what prison life was like, and hopefully scare us into straightening up our acts. My dad said, “I think that’s what Lori needs.” The officer looked at me and said, “ what do you think, young lady?” Disgusted with my dad, I replied, “fine with me, I’m not wanted around here.” The officer didn’t know what to say. He looked at my dad, and my embarrassed father said sheepishly, “we’ll take her home.”
I had become manipulative, just like my father. I knew exactly what I was doing when I said that. The words flowed out of my mouth instantly without hesitation. If I was going to some detention center, I was going to get that last little dig in before I went, to humiliate my dad. I really believed what I was saying, but that wasn’t why I said it. I wasn’t looking for pity. I was angry.
The next day, we were supposed to be getting ready for camping on the Guadalupe River. My mom was a mail carrier, and the heat that summer was affecting her heart. She had a series of tachycardia attacks, and we had to take her to the hospital. In the hospital, she had an allergic reaction to the medication that they use to stop the attacks, and it nearly killed her. She recovered and was able to come home that night, so my parents decided that we would still leave in the morning to go camping. It was up to me to get everything packed, because she needed to rest.
I was very upset by the events that afternoon. The thought of losing my mother terrified me, and to make matters worse, I was having similar problems with my heart. I couldn’t say anything, though, because I knew it was from the speed I was doing. I had started doing crystal methamphetamine when I was 13, and quickly discovered that it was very effective in muting the voices of worthlessness. By this time in my life, though, I had been doing so much of it that it started to affect my physically. I didn’t handle stress any better than my mom.
I was feeling overwhelmed, so when I had the camper packed, I asked my dad if I could go for a walk. I just wanted to alleviate some of the stress. He became angry, and probably thought I wanted to go get stoned with friends. We got into an argument, and he accused me of thinking only about myself.
“It’s all your fault, your mother is sick! You did this to her by causing her to worry about you!… Getting calls from the police in the middle of the night! You spoiled brat!”
I stormed out into the backyard, and started kicking my soccer ball against the garage to vent my anger. He followed me out, I think to tell me to go to my room. That’s when I exploded. My one act where I purposely tried to piss my dad off, my defiant rebellion was to call him a fucking bastard. I could hardly believe the words came out of my mouth. Before the reality of this rebellious act set in, I received a blow to the jaw, and saw stars. I knew I deserved that, but felt no remorse. Yes, there was part of me that felt guilty, because I believed my dad when he said that my mother’s illness was my fault, but most of me was angry at him.
My anger raged with no way to vent, like an overheating engine, it was just a matter of time before I froze up. The “block” cracked about a month later after getting strung out on speed. Again, it’s too long to go into detail here, but basically I attempted suicide, and nearly succeeded. I didn’t know what being “strung out” was, and thought I was too weak and worthless to function like normal people. I was hospitalize for the next four months in an adolescent psychiatric unit.
The most important things I learned while I was there, were in family counseling. Things like parents are only human, and make mistakes. My parents were raised by alcoholics. My mother’s mother was abusive. My dad’s mother died of liver failure when he was 19. They didn’t have good examples to go by. They just knew what they didn‘t want to do. Their parents didn’t have much to do with them, and they decided that their children would never have to endure the same. Over bearing and over protective probably seemed preferable parenting methods when compared to the absentee parents that they grew up with.
My dad had always been against therapy in the past, yet they drove 40 minutes down town every Wednesday night after work for our counseling sessions. They had to face things about themselves, that they would have rather not had to face. Other kids parents usually came for the first session or two and then quit. My parents didn’t quit, because, as I finally started to realize, they truly loved me. One day, my dad said to me, “I feel badly for you, Lori, because you are having to learn things at the age of 15, that I’m just now learning at 45.” They were afraid to bring me home. Afraid that they would screw me up again. They felt like failures as parents. I felt sorry for them, and I finally understood what they had been trying to do for me.
It was not the end of my battle with drug addiction or depression, though. I was never treated for a drug addiction while I was there, because I still naively thought that you couldn’t get addicted to speed, so I didn’t really talk about it. I believed as the doctors told me, that I had a chemical imbalance due to genetics. They based that on my family history, and said my mother suffered from depression, as well. What I did get from my four month stay there were the tools I would need to help me with my future battles, and a clear picture of my parents love.
When I looked back at this time in my life and started writing about it, I was surprised by the anger I had back then. I had always thought of myself as a depressed little girl, not angry. I had forgotten about the anger, because I thought those were bad feelings, and l kept them pushed down. The discoveries in the hospital made dealing with that anger even more difficult, because after all, my parents didn’t deserve my anger, they were doing the best they could. Then after leaving the hospital, I was left to raise myself, because my parents were too afraid of “screwing things up again”. A little voice in my head took over the duty of keeping me in line by repeating all the things I heard my dad say growing up, “Stupid!” “Spoiled brat!” I dismissed it as the “chemical imbalance” the doctors told me about. Eventually, I didn’t hear it any more. I would just have unexplained bouts of depression that seem to appear randomly.
Now I’m supposed to write a happy ending to this story. My attempts to become more in tune to my inner voice have exposed me to the insecure feelings created by the misguided voice. I have learned that I need to be retraining it by allowing the feelings to be, not pushing them down anymore, and then focusing on my positive attributes. Easier said than done. When I can catch myself in this form of self abuse, it’s like touching a flame. My immediate reaction is to push it down. Then I stop and think, “ok, why am I thinking this way?” It’s difficult to find an answer, because I’m not really doing anything wrong at the time. I usually find, though, that it happens when I’m doing something I’m unsure about. Then after being able to recognize it’s my insecurity that triggered it, many times I become overwhelmed by it, and can’t think of anything positive. This all takes place in a matter of seconds. If I’m around people when it happens, it gets pushed down and dealt with later.
Add to the mix, the well meaning family members who say judgmentally hurtful things, because they don‘t understand my depression. They believe that saying these things will help me to “snap out of it”. Immediately, the misguided voice chimes in with them, “you’re lazy, wallowing in self pity!” Instead of getting angry with them, I get angry with myself, because after all, they just want what’s best for me, and don’t know any better. They just want things to be the way it used to be when I was able to take care of everything. So do I, but instead of retraining the voice, I keep reinforcing it’s habitual behavior.
That’s what this picture below is illustrating. I did it over a year ago originally for Illustration Friday
here. I’ve reworked it a bit, but sadly, it still fits today.
I believe that when I am successful at stopping this pattern of self abuse, I will be able to overcome my depression. The affirmation that I will be able to say then is, “I had the insight and courage to recognize the root of my depression, and the strength and determination to overcome it.” Below will be the new illustration for this story.
“Focus on the good. Do not let the learned behavioral patterns from my childhood overwhelm me.”
