After being driven from Wanda’s home by her children under the mistaken belief that their mother was in imminent danger from me or likely to be found hanging dead in the guest room some bright sunny morn, I landed with a thump in the damp basement store room of my sister Sharon’s. I was, in the words of my ex-husband and father of my children, ‘Looney-tunes.”

I was not looney in the same way he had meant it though. Life was now a matter of going through the motions and acting as if. But had it not always been that? Only to a degree. I had learned to live with the real me tucked away like Christmas wrap waiting for the next season while the other me, the public me stammered and struggled through whatever life threw at me as best a half person can. Now I had only the whole me rejected and feared and reviled by my family of origin, well, those that mattered anyway, the rest of us were either willing traitors to the family “honor” or duped by me. So there I lie, chucked out like the leftovers to the compost pile.

They used to have meetings, you know. And after the 2009 reunion Rosie wanted to go as a gang and throw my things out on the front lawn. Sheila made the ridiculous statement that Bi-Polar people claim incest as an unwritten rule. It is unclear whether this all took place at the memorial for Valerie when she died, but Carl was still there and he had come for the reunion that year. I was to be gotten rid of. Period. It was also reported that several of the boys (men) discussed how awful it would be if people found out the truth. Yes, there at Valerie’s memorial service and three of them had molested and/or terrorized Valerie as a teenager and possibly younger. I have memories of Valerie exiting Carl’s room and the door latch clicking behind her. Like a good little girl I tucked that memory away too and never spoke of it.

It was just a week after the reunion and the big meeting over what to do with little Janeen that the lady from Social Services came to investigate whether I was abusing Wanda. It was Joyce who called and Joyce had been vicious to me since the reunion in 2007. In fact, she had blamed me for Val’s death. So they were going the legal route coupled with a campaign to rouse Wanda’s children to action.

Wanda and I traveled the length and breadth of Albion to try to get legal help of our own to stop the family from further harassments. We went to social services, the police, the family court and found no relief. The woman from social services practically told me to my face she believed Joyce. She had no time for me.

Anyway, there I was lying on a cold air mattress in my new basement storage room abode wide-eyed and stark raving shocked. Back at Wanda’s my things were being handled and gone through and put in storage. It only just occurred to me, I was lucky they did not just toss everything for the junkman, but Wanda would not have let them go that far. We were friends by then, not just family, but the enemies at the gate would not allow it. And they had wielded their power well.

It was a hard existence. Sharon was good to me, but it was clearly a far-right house with Fox News blaring all through the evenings because Joe was hard of hearing and would not get a hearing aid. And he was abusive to Sharon and Sharon excused him and went on being abused by an overbearing narcissist of a husband who believed the sun rose and set on his ass alone. And he used the N-word liberally and I cringed liberally. One evening I accidentally insulted him. We were watching Fox news and Sarah Palin came on. Joe said, “There is our next president!” Without thinking I blurted, “Palin? She’s an idiot!” I was genuinely shocked at anyone thinking Sarah Palin had brains enough to get in out of the rain. From then on Joe was unbearable.

I was there for two months and still pining for NC and my children and not having a clue how to proceed. The thought of a winter cooped up with Joe was too much, and I had promised one of my grandchildren I would not be away so long this time. I told Sharon I had to go. In my unreality I saw myself getting to Carolina and finding a way to get back on my feet. Sharon signed over the little canvas covered camper to me and off I went. With the camper in tow and all my things it seemed to me if I could get far enough south to camp through the winter I would be ok. But I had no plan, only to see my children and grandchildren again.

I was a little out of my mind, I suppose I had always been with never a secure foundation physically or mentally, and my emotions had too long overpowered any reasoning. I got to my daughter’s house and exhausted to the bone and when she said “You live here now.” I just accepted it as fact. It had not been part of my plan, but then there was nothing solid about my plan to begin with. One could say that I had no plan.

I am saying straight out that none of my children can be blamed in any way for what happened next. In fact, much of what transpired over the next year and a half there is no need to go into. No matter what was wrong with me from childhood on, I was the instrument of much pain and heartache for my children from an early age. I did the best I could with what I had to do with, but those are just words to comfort me in the dark of night when the past looms in the shadows of my mind. It could be no real comfort to my children. They were the victims of repeat abandonment, yes, I accept my responsibility, even into adulthood I came and went and came and went until they could take no more. It does not matter why. Even I could not understand the why of it all and I was the one doing it. Still today I am blindsided by the cruelty of some of my actions and I inwardly cringe at things I remember saying and doing.

I was the victim of my childhood and whatever happened to make my parents the people they were. Just as clearly, my children were the victims of my behaviors, my inability to cope and to form close bonds, and repeat abandonment which for me were unbearable so I cannot fathom what they felt every time, and there were so many times.

Yet I will not take responsibility for other peoples actions and cruelty. They have a father and step-mother who did a good job discrediting me, as though I needed help to do that. And people lying every which way about my character and trying to say I had a lovely childhood and nobody knows why she is the way she is and isn’t it a shame, she had so many opportunities. Also, according to eye-witnesses, they grew up in a loveless home that I while thinking they would be better off with anyone but me, abandoned them to.

But there I was, my mind and heart once again beaten to a pulp and landing on my children’s doorstep hoping for what? Kindness? They did their best. Forgiveness? I had made no apology and there was enough unfinished business between us you could fill Yankee stadium and sift through it till doomsday and not resolve anything. In the early days at my daughter’s house I hoped for nothing more than she had offered, a bed to sleep in and a roof over my head. I was too shaky to move beyond that. I pitched in and helped as best I could, but if they had expectations of me, they would be sadly disappointed.

It was all bound to go wrong and it did. Nothing was talked about, nothing resolved, again with the eye-rolls whenever I said anything. I had nothing worth saying. My children had a mother they could not trust or believe. they had been told from childhood that everything their father did wrong was because I was crazy. My first book was “looney-tunes” and the only thing wrong in my childhood was being poor. And unknown to me at the time at least one person from my enemies in the north had spread vicious and untrue things about me to at least to one of my children. I could not fight what I did not know, and how would I fight? I had zero credibility. I was a liar and a user, lazy and cruel, selfish and crazy.

Again, I do not lay blame at any child’s door. I ended up living in my car again and with no money to buy my thyroid medicine and no way to put my mind and life back together and now the with weight of the total rejection of my daughters I sank further into despair.

In a normal person’s mind the solution would seem an easy one, get a job and get back on your feet and make something of your life. But survival was still every day a priority and thinking and planning did not happen, just getting to tomorrow, and then the next tomorrow was all I could manage. My one daughter had helped set up a stall at a flea market for me to work, but try as I did, very little sold. I had a hard time putting gas in the tank to drive to a safe place to sleep at night let alone to buy food. Twice I was chased out of places I parked by the police and one night some teenagers banged on the window of my car and frightened the hell out of me. One day I had just one dollar and change to put in the gas tank and the lady in the store told me she had set it at $5.00 and I thanked her and vowed to pay her back one day, but that day never came.

After the third stay in mental wards in the space of 5 months I called Sharon and asked if I could come back there to stay and get on my feet. I did not know what else to do. I knew as I was, I would wither away and die. Yes I had tried to get a food handout, but I did not know I had to go back to Union County to be eligible, but the flea market stall was in Gaston County and I was failing fast. Sharon asked Joe and then she and Ardys came to rescue me.

For six months I lived in the basement storage room. By day I acted as if, before Joe came home from work I retreated to my room and played Lord of the Rings on a constant loop till I was sleepy. That was life for six months, Lord of the Rings to drown out the voices in my head and all the memories I could not bear, Fox News, and acting as if life were normal somehow.

I was in therapy. I was so certain they would admit me to a mental ward I packed a bag. But they said they don’t do that so quickly if they can help it. After a few months they signed a paper saying I was permanently disabled, they gave me a case worker to help me through the application for disability and getting my own apartment.

When I did get my own place I mostly sat. New York State had bought me my first furniture and I sat with the remote for a couple of years just surviving each day until bedtime and getting up and doing it all over again. They bought me a perfectly wonderful bed but for five years I only used it once, I slept on the couch downstairs where I felt safer.

I did not expect to see my daughters again, ever. I had to live with that, but in my sleep there was no way to control what my mind presented to me. I had nightmares where Fred and I were still together and the children were still my little children and there was still time to make it all come out OK. I would awake in horror to find it all a trick of my mind. Sometimes in my sleep I would reach out to touch one or the other of my children only to have the image dissolve into wakefulness. Then I would eventually fall asleep only to recreate the family in my dreams. Again, survival was all I had. Night after horrific night and day after mind numbing day.

People say stop blaming the parents. But are we to blame the children? It is complicated, but in the end I know that I was the instrument, willing or not, for the disfunction we all have had to live through. True, I did not do it all single handedly and I was the victim of my own screwed up mind and sometimes I did things with good intentions. But I also did things that may be unforgivable. They are certainly unforgettable.

Only by owning my own part in destroying the relationship with my children could I survive to actually find joy in life again. Facing myself, after a lifetime of trying to escape me, has been the most freeing thing I could have done.

Perhaps blame is not what we need. Perhaps communication and truth. But what is the truth and who can we trust? I cannot say I have never lied. I can say I do not lie now about who I am or what I have been.

As to Wanda, we patched things up pretty quickly in the fall of 2009. I felt violated by the thought of people going through my things and moving my life into storage, and I told her so in an emotional moment, but in my heart I knew it was not up to Wanda. We shared many, many fun times after that and I love her so much. As for Joyce, Wanda refused to speak to her for years after the horror she caused us, and I shed no tear for her passing.

There is much to tell and much to sort out. Science has brought me a small relief in the knowledge of the brain and trauma effects on the brains of young children. It is enough knowledge to at least be able to forgive myself for being me.

DBT, Dialectical Behavior Training, has also improved my outlook. I see how I can train my brain and reign in my emotions to a major degree. It is a therapy of the opposites of acceptance and change. I do realize I have had no major tests of my newfound skills, but so far I see definite changes in my reactions to life’s ups and downs. I no longer need to medicate myself because my shoelace broke and it is the last straw in a day with too many straws. I wish me well. My journey is ongoing.