What's love got to do with it??

I was going through some papers the other day and I found a card my estranged youngest daughter made for my birthday when she was little and I wonder when exactly her love turned to hate.  I mean, I think she used to love me but now she could care less how much my heart hurts.  I see pictures of family gatherings where I am not welcome and I am lonely and alienated over words on a page knowing that I can't un-ring the bell nor do I want to. I wrote about the pain of an abusive relationship.  Pain inflicted by family members is the same no matter the cause.  I had been rejected and told that I was no longer needed by this child of mine.  For two days I sat in disbelief and finally I poured my angst out in a poem meant to describe the pain of being rejected by someone you love because, abuse is very much a rejection of who you are, how you look, what you say, and what you believe..  Here is the poem I wrote:

ABUSE MAY STOP – BUT IT NEVER ENDS

Abuse is dispensed in many fashions

Vile words hurled with no compassion

Physical wounds that swell and bruise

And emotional wounds that hurt and confuse

Punishments meted out for failure to recognize

The rules that he spent countless hours to sermonize

While physical wounds were plain to see

The mental wounds were hidden inside me

My fear, pain, hurt and shame

Are penalties I paid for losing the game

Rewards were few and far between

Public facades provided freedoms rarely seen

Family visits were clouded with fear

What if I say something wrong that he can hear?

Litanies about how false my parent’s love would be…

Why else would they offer him money to marry me?

Hours on end I was told how ugly, fat and stupid I’d been

Couldn’t I see how fortunate I was that he took me in?

Why, no one could ever love someone as pathetic as me

Then came the ultimate betrayal as he professed his love to me

To me though, not for me, but for my only friend you see

Even now those years are past after I found a way to flee

Although, the feelings of shame and sorrow are never far away

It can hit at any second, any hour, or any day

Because I have a dark place deep inside of me

Where I hide the feelings that I cannot bear to see

A word or a phrase can instantly send me back to that shame

And I retreat from human contact and wonder if I’ll ever win the game

I’m remarried now to a man who has shown me what real love means.

His job was really rough to prove he was a man on whom I could lean

But even he is helpless when my flashbacks cripple me

Am I really all that different than the creature I used to be?

Then, just as if it happened only yesterday

I begin at the beginning and try again to find my way

Kathy Wilson

October, 2012

Is it so hard to believe that there was more than one person victimized in this family? I was a rotten mother.  I tell them that and I own that but what's so bad about telling why I was a bad mother?  Am I unable to tell them why because they don't care?  Do they think that my revelation of my pain somehow diminishes theirs?  Even a murderer is allowed to plead their case. I'm not the bad guy here.  I'm the one who is damaged by their hate.  Knowing that my only value to them was what I could do for them that day. Things that I did out of love for them - only to have them spit that love back in my face without once giving me the chance to defend my actions.  That's not what love means to me but that's the love they learned from their father. His mantra is don't ask what you can do for your family but ask what your family can do for you. When your family ceases being able to serve your needs then you need to get rid of them!

For me......Love is love through sickness and health, rich or poor, ugly or beauty, fat or thin, damaged or pristine...These children may think they love but they don't.  They only love when that love works to their advantage.  If either of these daughters read this and feel this indictment is unjust then prove it.  I damn near killed myself because I thought that if I saw someone who could give me that magic pill that would help me be a better me, then maybe I could prove what I would do to earn their love. Instead that pill drove me close to Kidney Failure.  As I sit here crying over all that I've lost I've come to the realization that I shouldn't have to earn their love...Love is not a commodity to be traded like stocks, bonds, or derivatives.. It's either there or it isn't.  I love all three of my daughters equally, even the two who decided I was unworthy of their love.  I feel sorry for them because they will never know the true depth of my love.  They won't see how true marital happiness (Like that I share with my second husband Mike). It makes me sad that they will never know the depths of my love for them.  They are missing out on the lessons I can give about life in general and my mantra which is that life's mission is to knock you down in the dirt and when you get up it knocks you down again.  So the measure of your life is not about how many times you get knocked down...It's measured by the number of times you get up and dust yourself off and move on.  This is my way of saying that my oldest and my youngest daughters may cut me out of their lives and to them I say...Look at me!  I'm getting up and dusting myself off, and I'm Moving On!!