This post is part of the "Weight and See" series and will be archived with those posts. Part of any effort to make the much needed lifesaving lifestyle changes is addressing the emotional issues that impact not only mental health, but physical health as well. Part of my way of dealing with these issues is to write about them and then focus on changing how I react to the emotional stress and trauma that has led me to emotionally eat myself to near-fatal morbid obesity.
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When digging into my past and trying to sort out my feelings I often read through the journals I've kept over the years. I've been keeping personal journals since roughly 1980. Some have survived whilst others have either been lost or destroyed. I do still have in my possession the journals I kept during the last year I was married to M. Throughout this post I'll intersperse entries from that journal.
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In the late spring of 1995 after finishing physical therapy (something which my former in-laws took for me having an affair - they'd state they would see me drive off and assume I was driving off to meet a clandestine lover, when in fact I drove no more than 500 yards to the little strip mall where my PT office was located! I'd never once given anyone cause to believe I was having an affair, yet when I started to lose weight, work hard at physical therapy and change my appearance on the outside, the accusations would fly!), I went back to work at the airline. I enjoyed my job but more than anything, it was an excuse to get out of the house and away from M. I was still crumbling emotionally and being around M and often times the kids was like being overwhelmed with things I could no longer deal with.
From my journal in May of 1995.
I didn't wake up this morning before M got home from work. It was the usual. He stripped and got into bed and immediately wanted physical attention and when I turned him down he got upset. He yelled and that woke up Zach and then Zach woke up the M&Ms. Yay! My day is already off to a roaring start. I'm pretty sure when I strip the bed this weekend I'll find the usual stash of balled up socks on M's side of the bed. The socks that he uses when I won't give in. I can't bring myself to touch them so I get the tongs out of the drawer in the kitchen and just throw them away. Gross.
I feel like I always have a million bees buzzing around me, stinging me. The kids climb on me all day long and it's almost too much. I don't seem to be able to function in a way that I see other moms functioning. Michelle lost her husband only a short time ago and she was pregnant with Kels but she seems to be a perfect mom to her. Why can't I have it together like she does? I envy her ability to be so carefree with Kels. If I were that carefree with the M&M's or Zach I'm pretty sure something bad would happen to one of them. I feel like I always have to be on lookout for the bad things. If I'm not constantly on guard, I know that in that moment of looking away, one of the kids will get hurt or worse. Maybe this feeling like bees are stinging me all the time is because I can't ever relax around the kids. Or anyone else either. And I know that M's folks and his sisters are always watching and waiting for me to fail. Too bad they can't see the million little failures each day.
I can't believe Aunt Meta has been gone for almost two months. I hate that she didn't know who she was by the time she died and even more, I hate that I didn't get to say goodbye and because we never have any money, I couldn't go to her funeral. Bill says she's in a better place. Sure hope she's up there watching over my little guy. M asked me if Aunt Meta left me anything. That sure didn't take long.
Not too much more to write. I have to get ahold of the phone company. We just had the phone turned back on but something is wrong with the line in part of the house. Just remembered it's time for Zach's 2 year old birthday check up. He hates getting shots at the doctor. He's already 2. That went by fast. Shit. I just heard a bowl hit the floor and now the M&M's are yelling at each other.
I didn't get around to calling the phone company for another few days and that single phone call would be the catalyst for ...well I'm not sure for what. I used to think that was the kicker for my nervous breakdown, but I think that everything that happened leading up to that phone call was already well within the sphere of the monster nervous breakdown I was having.
The day that I finally got around to calling the telephone company had been a very ugly one. M and I had been in a particularly vicious argument that I thought was over but one that he decided to revisit once I finally managed to get a customer service rep on the line. No sooner had I given my name, home address and started to describe the issues we were having than did M start yelling at me. In between asking the customer service rep to please hold on and asking him to repeat almost everything he was saying to me, I was in tears. It took me the better part of thirty minutes to try and explain to the representative on the other end of the line that the phone lines were only working in part of the house.
That single phone call set off a series of events that would hasten the end of my marriage to M and allow me some space to pull myself together and figure out if I was going to survive whatever was wrong with me, or if it would consume me to the point of never being able to feel comfortable in my own skin. That's honestly what it felt like. I wasn't comfortable in my own body or mind and I wanted to make the pain go away because that's all I ever felt.
A few days after that phone call there was a soft knock at our front door. I opened it and there stood two women I'd never seen before. One was holding a large white woven basket of fruit and the other gave me a pamphlet for a local support group for women in troubled relationships. I told them that they must have the wrong person and tried to hand the basket back and push the pamphlet towards them but they both smiled at me, winked at the M&Ms and Zach who were gathered around my legs asking for an orange or an apple from the basket, and then the taller of the two women squeezed my hand around the yellow pamphlet then turned and left.
I stood there for a few minutes in a stupor and wasn't sure what to do. Zach was tugging at my pants and practically begging for a banana so I turned and walked into the kitchen and placed the basket on the counter. I pulled out the bananas and peeled one for Zach, cored an apple for Matt then peeled an orange for Meg. Once the kids were settled with their fruit I looked through the basket for a note or something that would explain where it came from. I pulled every piece of fruit out of that basket and there wasn't anything there that would explain where the basket came from, or who it came from. There was nothing aside from the yellow pamphlet from the support group. I placed all the fruit back in the basket, set it onto the counter and sat down at the table with the kids and stared out the window. I'd call the number on the pamphlet later and inquire if anyone there sent the basket.
A few days after the basket arrived the phone rang and it was the telephone company letting me know they were scheduling a service tech for a visit to see if they could determine what the problem was. After I jotted down the date and time of the service call there was a long pause on the other end of the line. The gentleman cleared his throat and said,
"Mrs. F., when you initially phoned for service I was the representative who handled your call and I might be out of line but I was genuinely concerned by the sounds of what was going on in the background and I sent some friends who have a local support group, out to see you, well because it just sounded like maybe you could use a friend to talk to. We're normally directed, in circumstances like that, to turn the call over to a supervisor but I didn't get the chance to do that before you hung up. "
Hearing this man's words, a complete stranger, made me tear up. I cleared my throat and told him everything was fine and it was just a stressful day. I didn't think to ask if he'd sent the fruit basket as well, I was far too ashamed that someone I didn't know was pitying me and all I wanted to do was get off the phone. I thanked him and then hung up.
Later that night, I wrote in my journal,
"Holy crap! Some guy from the phone company heard me get a balling out by M and he must have thought M was pounding on me or something cause he sent some people from some kind of support group here with some fruit and a paper about the group. M is going to lose his shit when he sees the basket. I'm going to toss the piece of paper because he'll get upset all over again and pissing him off isn't worth it. The fruit really is nice and kind of like the kind of fruit basket gifts you see in expensive stores. The M&M's and Zach couldn't wait to dig into it.
I have no idea where I'm going to tell M the fruit is from. It makes me tired to just think about it. Maybe I'll call Michelle and see what she thinks. Or maybe not. Whenever I call her she always asks if I can come over for tea or to bring the kids to play with Kels. I dread asking M if I can go and it's just easier to give her an excuse. But the truth is, I enjoy going to her house and just being around someone who feels broken inside like I do. The thing with Michelle is though, that she said that having Kels helped heal the hole inside that was left when Dave died. She says it's still there but having Kels is like having a little piece of him with her all the time. How come I didn't feel that way when I had Zach? I mean, it's not like I had him to replace Joshy. We didn't even want another kid. I'm not mad that I had him, but it didn't seal up that bleeding hole in my heart. It didn't do anything except make me feel like I have another child and that ups the ante that something bad could happen again.
I look at Michelle and she seems normal in a way that I won't ever be. I don't feel like I am ever going to be happy again. It's been almost five years since Joshy went to sleep forever and I still miss him and ache just as bad as I did on the day he died. I hurt so bad sometimes. It's always there. When Michelle smiles, it's a real smile. When I smile? It's usually because someone is pointing a camera at me and then it's a fake smile. I think maybe I might have actually forgotten how to make the muscles work in my face, or in my heart, that make me able to have a real smile."
I didn't have many friends while I was married to M. Frankly, I wasn't allowed to have any. We had zero social life unless it involved his family, and the only other woman I was remotely close to was a single mother, Michelle, who's Air Force husband had been killed when a bird flew into the windscreen of his plane, killing him instantly. M was always suspicious of my friendship with her and on the very rare occasions when Michelle and I would get together, M would be moody, and accuse me of spending too much time away from him and the kids. All of that backlash for an hour outside of the house. Michelle and I met when she was pregnant with her daughter and I was pregnant with Zach. I think she sensed, over the two years we'd known one another, that all was not well at home and I needed a friend - someone to talk to who, while she hadn't lost a child, had lost a husband and we shared a similar bond of loss, pain, and grief.
I never really opened up to Michelle about how stressful life was at home, or about how ambivalent I was towards everything in my life, my lack of any emotional feeling from the scalp down, or how anxious I was becoming. However, I did phone her and tell her about the strange basket and told her how humiliated I was. I downplayed the fight that M and I had going on while I was on the original call with the telephone company. She gently chided me for feeling so much shame over someone else's generosity and compassion and suggested that maybe I might want to go to one of the support meetings that the pamphlet talked about. I told her, "Yeah right, that will never happen." and she dropped the subject. I mentioned something about sending a thank you letter to whoever the person at the phone company was, that I'd spoken to earlier. Michelle said she thought that was a good idea.
I called the phone company and it only took a few minutes to get the name of the customer service rep who had handled my initial call and who then called back to schedule the service visit. I took out a box of Thank You cards from my nightstand and sat down one night after M left for work and pressed pen to paper in order to express my gratitude for the fruit basket and my appreciation for his compassion. I mailed the Thank You card the next day.
I hesitate to write the next part of this story because there is a lot that can be misconstrued about what happened next, much that can be assumed or alleged. Hell, there was a lot that was alleged and I was accused of doing things that it would never have crossed my mind to do. However, because I want to put this all out there, so to speak, and because I believe in being honest, I'm going to try and chronicle my friendship with this person in a way that will genuinely impart the true spirit of that friendship and cast away any suspicions that it was anything more than that.
About a week after I sent the Thank You card, I received a letter in the mail with a return address in Colorado and the name over the address was "Mitch." I opened the letter and discovered it was from the man who was the customer service representative with the telephone company. It was little more than a cheerful note to say hello and to ask if we were alright and if the problems with our telephone line were resolved? He told me that the fruit basket was the idea of the women who brought it. He went on to say that he was still genuinely concerned about my family and that he hoped I'd take advantage of the support group. He wrote that he had a family member in a troubled relationship and through a support group that she went to, she was able to get help for herself and she was able to save her marriage. I sort of laughed when I read that because I knew that there wasn't going to be any sort of saving grace for my marriage and it was probably a matter of only a few years before I was trying to raise three kids on welfare, by myself. Or not. Maybe I'd slowly dissolve into a puddle of nothingness and all the pain and discomfort would fade away.
Mitch closed his letter by thanking me for the card and then giving me his return address and said that I was welcome to write to him any time I wanted to but that he'd understand if I felt it was inappropriate. He wanted me to understand that his intentions were clearly out of a desire to be helpful and not to interfere. I folded the white piece of paper with the solid black block handwriting back into it's envelope and wondered if I should throw it away or hang onto it? Deep inside I was touched that a total stranger would reach out to a woman he didn't know and show her that kind of concern. I was also a little wary. Were people really that nice simply because they were concerned? I put the letter in my purse and didn't give it another thought until I was at work the following Monday.
While rifling through my purse, looking for loose change during my lunch-break, my hand grazed the envelope with the letter. I took it out of my purse and looked read it again, and then once more. I opened my desk drawer, pulled out a pen and a note pad and scribbled a couple of sentences on the paper, basically thanking Mitch for the Thank You note for my Thank You card. I told him that our problem with the phone line had been resolved and that I was grateful to have working telephones throughout the entire house. I scribbled my name and shoved the piece of paper into an envelope and then placed a stamp on it and dropped it into the pile of outgoing mail without giving it a second thought. And that's what started a back and forth ping pong match of humorous letters thanking one another for the previous thank you note.
Occasionally there would be post cards from Colorado with beautiful photographs of the scenic mountain ranges including Pike's Peak. Other times an envelope would come with nothing more than a cut out of a Dear Abby column from the local newspaper, or maybe pieces from the comic strips or even a silly recipe for Venison Stew that made me gag.
Mitch was an avid hunter, skier, and member of one of the ski lodge rescue groups that would go out when someone was injured on the slopes or if they needed to send out a search and rescue team in the event of an avalanche. One of his letters, he recounted the rescue of a little girl who had been seriously injured whilst skiing on a run that was far too advanced for her. As a result, she ended up flying into a tree which caused a serious head injury. After reading that letter, when I wrote back, I finally opened up about losing my son. I didn't go into much detail, but I mentioned Joshua's death. I told him that her parents must have been beside themselves with fear and worry and that I'd keep her in my prayers. I closed that letter by asking him to be sure and let me know how she was doing if he got the chance to write back. I never assumed he'd always write back but was glad to see the letters when they'd arrive.
I was sitting at home reading a book to Zach one afternoon when the phone rang. I was surprised to hear,
"Hello, is this Audrey? This is Mitch. How are you?"
I was a little taken aback to get a phone call from him and told him that my post man would get suspicious if the letters from Colorado stopped coming all of a sudden. Mitch laughed and apologized for the phone call and said that he was phoning to tell me that the little girl who had been seriously injured was going to pull through with very little to hopefully no residual brain damage as a result of the accident. I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath when I exhaled loudly. I also hadn't realized that there were tears streaming down my face.
I was truly happy that she would be OK but there was a part of me that was bitter and resentful that my own child wasn't blessed with the same outcome. Before I knew it, I was standing there heaving with sobs, uttering things into the phone that were unintelligible while Mitch was at a loss for words. I vaguely recall hearing him apologize over and over for upsetting me and that if he'd known it would be so painful, he never would have phoned. He apologized again and then I told him I had to go. I hung up and flung myself across my bed where I cried and howled until Zach toddled in and touched my leg. I jumped because in my sorrow I had completely forgotten he was there. Zach crawled up onto the bed and said, "Mommy sad, so sad" and took his hand and wiped it under my nose to wipe away all the snot, then he took his other hand and with his little tiny fingertip, followed a salty tear as it made it's way down my cheek.
I looked at Zach and in that small space of time I felt something close off inside me. I couldn't show any emotion or weakness because it would open up the floodgates and I couldn't do that. Feeling anything at all wasn't something I wanted to do because I knew that pain would envelope me and make me weak. Being weak wasn't allowed. If I was weak, I wouldn't always be on my guard. If I wasn't always on my guard then something would happen while I wasn't paying attention. Grieving for Joshua took my attention away from my kids and while I wasn't really emotionally interacting with them or embracing their childhood, I was watching them. At some point, I'd convinced myself that I was absolutely positive something bad was going to happen and it was only a matter of time. I was bound and determined to put my pain and hurt back into it's box and not allow it to make me weak again.
About a week later a letter from Mitch arrived. He was obviously shaken by what transpired when he'd phone me. He spent most of the letter apologizing for upsetting me. He wrote that he thought a bit of good news would brighten my day but that he didn't think about the fact that I'd lost a child and how the news might affect me. I felt bad that he had apologized so many times and was just beside himself for doing what was simply a nice thing. I sat down to write back and apologized for my outburst. I said that it boiled down to the fact that I was jealous but he shouldn't feel bad for trying to do something nice.
Over the course of the next month, we'd each write once a week and during this time, things at home between M and I were tense. I did mention to him that the customer service representative who had been on the line when I originally called for service, had called back to see if I was OK. I told M that I hoped he'd never go off on me like that again, or at least wait until I was off the phone. That was a mistake and opened up a world of anger on his part. I suppose it was stupid of me to say anything in the first place. Probably even dumber to keep up this friendship with Mitch, but it would be a friendship that would ultimately save my life.
The letters between Mitch and I continued and one day while sitting at home while M was outside in the shed smoking and sorting his precious baseball cards, the phone rang. It was Mitch. He had been given almost a side and a half of venison and buffalo and asked me if our family would like some of the meat, as well as some preserves that his mother had been canning. He and his daughter had already filled their own freezer with as much of the fresh meat as possible and had literally cases of his mother's fruit preserves coming out of their ears. I wasn't sure how to answer. I'd never mentioned our dire financial issues to him, but I'm sure, having access to our phone records, he'd seen that there were times when our phone had been shut off for non-payment. Mitch offered to have the meat packed in dry ice and shipped overnight and the preserves would come in a separate shipment.
I thought about it for a minute and then asked Mitch to hold on while I ran out and asked M if he wanted some meat and preserves. I have to be honest and admit that I'd never had venison or buffalo before and was a little nervous about eating something that I assumed would be really gamey. I didn't even have the chance to ask M about the meat because he came into the house and started yelling and screaming at me about something. It was yet another argument that Mitch was privy to and one in which I was helpless to stop. I hung up the phone without even saying goodbye. I collapsed into a chair and tuned everything out. It took M several attempts to get my attention and then it was only to tell me that he was going to the store to get more Pepsi and cigarettes and he'd be back in a little while.
While he was gone, I pulled my journal out from under the bed and wrote...
"I just want to disappear. Dissolve into nothingness. I can't do anything right. Maybe if I were to get hit by a car I'd become paralyzed and then I really wouldn't feel anything. Or maybe I'd slip into a coma and just fade into a non-existent existence. Anything has to be better than this walking, waking numbness and hell. The kids deserve better than this and maybe M would shut the fuck up and be happy. I can see the hatred in his eyes when he looks at me. I can almost smell the loathing coming off of him in waves. His eyes stare daggers of blame, blame that I already hold against myself, deep into me. It's my fault his boy is gone."
I wish I could just be a person no one ever knew had ever had kids or had lost a child, or that it was my fault that he died. But I think the only place that would be is a "dead place." Because that's really the only place that I wouldn't feel all of those feelings of self-loathing."
A few days later Michelle came over to drop off some cookies she'd made and I talked to her about Mitch's letters and showed her some of them. I told her I wasn't sure if it was alright that I was writing back. Michelle was finally clued in to how bad things were at home. She told me that she'd always felt things between M and I were bad but it wasn't until she talked to our neighbors, who went to the same church that she did, that she found out things were bad and only getting worse. She knew the police had been to the house and she also knew that our fights could be heard the next block over. Michelle was genuinely concerned that M would misconstrue the nature of my friendship with Mitch and that things would go from bad to worse. When she left I sat down to think about things. I thought about telling Mitch that maybe it was better if we didn't write anymore and he should probably never ever call the house again. However I'd come to really enjoy getting those letters, whether it was silly cut-outs from the local paper, a pretty post card, or a handwritten joke that was more corny than funny. I'd even share the "Family Circus" comics that he'd send, with the kids who seemed to appreciate them even more than I did.
My job at the airline was going well. I was now running some of the training classes that cabin crews were required to take before stepping foot onto the aircraft and then administering tests afterward. I wasn't making much money but I felt useful. I was sitting at my desk running the most recent batch of tests through a scanner that would auto-correct them when the phone at my desk rang. It was Mitch.
"Audrey, listen, I just want you to hear me out. I'm sorry for phoning you at home. Seems like I'm always apologizing for that. Here's the thing. That phone call really scared me and left me with a bad feeling in my gut. I didn't like hearing the way you were being hollered at and reckon that sort of thing can't be good. I've talked to my mom and my priest and I'm just going to put this out there and you can do with it what you will. My mom has a nice house in the Springs and it has separate guest quarters. Now if you ever need a place to go, a safe place, you can even bring your kids, you can go there. It's safe and clean and quiet and my mom would love to have you. I want you to know that there's nothing spooky or underhanded about this, it's out of a fear for your health and most of all, it sounds like you could use a break before things break you. There now. It's all out. There are no strings attached. There's nothing we want in return. Spend some time and think about it."
With that, he said goodbye and hung up.
It would be a long time before Mitch would share with me that there was something in my voice that sounded like I was at the very end of my rope the day he phoned with the offer to share the game meat with us. He assumed that M had a short fuse and was probably dealing with his own grief issues, but he also knew that my mental state was fragile and I was barely hanging on at that point.
I went home and laid everything out on the table for M. He made it absolutely clear that I wasn't taking the kids to Colorado. I felt pretty caged in at that point. I couldn't just up and leave and move back to southern California and in with my parents. They were still raising three small children and I couldn't expect them to take me and my own three small children, in. I had no other friends or family in Washington state and aside from Michelle, my only other close friend, Bobbie, who was marginally nearby, lived in Idaho. Although she was sort of close, she had three small children of her own at home and I wasn't about to barge in on her family. So I told M that I was taking a break to try and regain what was left of my sanity and going to Colorado that summer for a few weeks. I didn't know for how long. I told him I was going to leave in a little over a month and if I thought I'd be gone for longer than the duration of the summer, I'd want the kids down there with me. Hell would freeze over before he'd let that happen.
I took advantage of highly discounted airfare through the airline and spent a little over $35 for a one-way ticket from Seattle to Denver, Colorado.
The night before I left for Colorado I spent at Michelle's house. M brought the kids over early in the morning before we left for the airport and let them say goodbye to me. All three were crying and it only cemented in my mind that all I was good at was hurting them. I'd hurt them if I stayed and didn't try to sort myself out because I wasn't "present" in a way that was meaningful, and I was hurting them by leaving. There was no right choice. No one else noticed that I was slowly and painfully coming apart at the seams. I wasn't sure what Colorado held for me, but I was hopeful that whatever was there, would halt the rapid descent into the dead place that I was sure I was going.
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After reading Part III I'm sure you can tell why I was hesitant to share this. Over the years much has been assumed about the nature of my friendship with Mitch. That's all it was though. There are a very few people that know that when M and I split up that I left the state of Washington and went to Colorado. Of those people, some staunchly believe that this was a completely immature and inappropriate move on my part to those that knew it was a much needed break. I wasn't sure what Colorado would hold for me, I just wanted a break from the walls that were closing in on me.
Part IV will be up Monday morning. I want to break up the heaviness of these posts by writing about some lighter things as well...like a visit from The Tooth Faerie!
