Feeling Sad---Son is Homeless

[Feeling Sad]

You are right, Copa. I am feeling something similar to what I have felt a lot of my life. Trying to act like I am fine...everything is fine. While, right under the surface, I am screaming. Except now it is, "My own son tried to kill me. My own son was arguing with his voices about not wanting to kill me. What were his voices telling him when he said, 'Uh, uh...okay...I understand...?' Will he still try to kill me? Will I ever see him again? Is he okay? Could I have handled it differently??? How could this have EVER happened?"

I have to act completely 'normal'. No one can know except my best friend. I am a teacher. There is too large a stigma attached to paranoid schizophrenia and a strong impression of violence in schools committed by the mentally ill.

I knew two of the five police officers that day from the drug and bullying programs at the schools. I told them to, please, don't tell anyone at the district. They told me that it was none of their business.

I have had more than one therapist ask me if my son knows which school I work at. I said no, but he could find out very easily on line.

It is so very hard to carry on each day, be on top of my game, work with challenging students, and smile as if I was wonderful. All the while, I am just on the verge of totally falling apart. My heart is breaking.

I have been doing exactly the same thing for over 50 years. Only, now it is much, much worse. It is my son. My loving, handsome, intelligent, protective son. He tried to kill me. He didn't want to hurt me. He needs me. He is like a child. He is out of touch with reality.

Last night was an extremely rough night. I was laughing before going to bed picturing the image of sultry Cedar outside in the sun. See ladies, purely innocent. But, I still had a truly horrible night. My youngest son will be home tomorrow. One more night.

I might just stay up all night. I do not want to fall asleep...

I have a question for you, Copa. Do you feel the safest in your bed because when you are asleep, you can forget all of your traumatizing memories? Or do you like your bed awake or asleep?

I have not liked to go to sleep since my ordeals of terror began.

When did your other fears begin?

It is amazing that even while joking around, we were able to touch the very depths of our despair.

I am not as funny tonight because I am scared...to go to sleep. I am jumpy right now, even while watching Patrick Swayze, my favorite. I am trying, fellow warriors. I just feel so very sad and scared. The worst part...is that I am afraid of my own wonderful son. Yes, it is his illness, but all the same, I am afraid of MY OWN SON!!! It is truly Hell on Earth.

All the while...I have to keep on smiling.

 

[Copabanana]

I have had more than one therapist ask me if my son knows which school I work at. I said no, but he could find out very easily on line.

There is no reason to think that you son would do this.

I have read abstracts of a few studies: It is not the paranoid schizophrenia responsible for violence, it is the use of drugs, alcohol, proximity to weapons, and environmental factors.

Your son had no weapons in your home, I am assuming. You would have found them. The likelihood of his getting a weapon, now, seems less if he had no weapons before and showed no interest in them.

You have not mentioned his using drugs or alcohol.

He is unlikely to seek out a dangerous or threatening environment.

One academic article refers to violence by paranoid schizophrenics as a "rare event" mainly fueled by other risk factors (see above.) Another article said at most 5 to 10 percent of total violent acts were committed by the severely mentally ill...and those were committed not because of the illness but because of the weapons, alcohol, drugs or environment. Also, a great predictor of violence is past violence. That you have mentioned here, your son has not been violent.

Another article said this: severe mental illness is not in itself a predictor of violence.

Then there is the issue of personality or character. Your son is a kind and gentle man. He loves you. He is still him. We have to believe that just as before he wants to control himself. We have to believe that all of his personality other than the psychosis, carries weight. It always did before.

The risk is to the mother, I think, when she and the psychotic adult child live together, because I think, she does not act to protect herself, and has put herself in harms way.

You stopped this dynamic.

I might just stay up all night. I do not want to fall asleep...

Feeling, I do not know what this will accomplish, except to make you feel very tired and sad. Would it not be better to try to sleep?

I have a question for you, Copa. Do you feel the safest in your bed because when you are asleep, you can forget all of your traumatizing memories? Or do you like your bed awake or asleep?

I like my bed awake and asleep. I like being asleep when I am in agony to forget. But I like my bed when I am vulnerable too. Lately, I almost always want to be in bed. I am believing now that I will never get better.

When did your other fears begin?

All of my other fears began in my fifties, after I went to live in South America.

Sometimes I think they began as a means to punish myself for doing such an audacious and wonderful thing for myself.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

I

All the while...I have to keep on smiling.

Oh Feeling I am so sorry you have had such
a rough time. You have been so brave. A protection prayer for you and Copa, please God envelope my warrior sisters in your loving arms, cover them, and keep watch over them allowing them to sleep peacefully. Please Lord grant us peace of mind as the dawn breaks. Let us bravely face each challenge presented. Please forgive us, mistakes we have made. Thank you Lord for your blessings. All glory be to you Lord. Amen

 

[Feeling Sad]

I do not think my son would ever do something at my school. It is just the reason why no coworkers can know about my situation at all. I had no weapons in my house, just cooking knives.

The police found a large Butcher knife, box cutter, and a hammer in his room. These things could be innocent or to protect himself from perceived spies or rapists. He would speak a few times of rapists. I used to wonder if he was ever raped or if it was a delusion.

He actually, sadly fits all of the criteria to have followed his command hallucinations to kill me. In fact a psychiatrist and all of the therapists said that he could have killed me without even realizing until afterwards. No psychiatrist can ever accurately predict if it will ever happen. I was blessed to hear him arguing with his voices. I have heard about 7 actual local cases from therapists, support groups, and the paper.

There was a risk. One would never know. But, I had to keep my youngest son safe. Both safe from being hurt and his constant worrying about my safety.

My ill son has command hallucinations with strong associated delusions about me. He views his voices as powerful and friendly. He was begging and crying for them to come back and not leave him. They are familiar. He hears them loudly and often. They is more than one voice. He has no father in the home. He lives with his mother. He is financially dependent on me. He has no other friends and no outside activities. He thinks that he owns the house and all of his problems are my fault. The biggest piece is that he has never gone to therapy, has never been on medication, and is a male aged 25-40.

All of these criteria makes it more likely that he would comply with his voices' commands. I am not trying to demonize him. He had complied with them by smashing things as he talked to voices, stabbing my kitchen counters and cabinets, smearing tooth paste and food all over, cutting cords, and, probably, the jagged bottle incident.

Lastly, he drinks. I never realized how much until towards the end. That expodentially increases the liklihood of compliance. Yes, he loved me, but who would ever had thought that he would hold a jagged bottle to my throat?

I cannot qualify my fears. It is as if all of the past 50 years is coming to the surface. I cannot stop it.

But, I am more sad than scared, at least, during the day. When I sleep, I wake up petrified. If I stay up tonight, I can't be as afraid. Dumb, though. I am exhausted.

I think your fears, actual fears of real life occurrences are being attached to other things. These things are now being perceived as scary by you. You cannot protect your son, so your are finding other scary things to have control over. You can have control over these other scary things by avoiding them altogether.

Hence, the staying in bed where you feel safe.

I was a Psychology Major before being Special Education...aren't you impressed? Just a thought.

 

[Copabanana]

Feeling, I edited my prior post and put some more thoughts. Look again, please.

 

[Feeling Sad]

Thank you both Copa and Leafy. Wonderful prayer. I feel better always 'talking' with you guys, my fellow warriors.

Leafy, how are you?

 

[Copabanana]

Feeling, how much do you think he was drinking?

What I wrote was not to tell you he could not have hurt you. It was to help you not to be afraid.

You did the only thing you could. He had to leave. There was no other option that a person could have responsibly made.

I was writing about violence to you now.

You are right. I would never, ever tell co-workers. Even if they are kind and your friends, I would not tell them.

I got scared of driving before there were real issues with my son. I was going back and forth to South America and using rental cars which I did not have confidence in. Eventually I had no confidence in myself.

The serious issues with my son began after he went on antiviral medication for his liver which was in 2009 when I met M. I think that was a double whammy for my son.

I am impressed with your diagnostic acumen, nonetheless.

I was already seriously freeway/highway phobic by the beginning of 2007. My son did not start being really problematic until after then.

My mother was afraid of freeways too. But she never drove freeways even living in LA 40 years or so.

COPA

 

[Feeling Sad]

Copa. I completely disagree with you when you said that you do not think you will ever get better.

You WILL get better...When you are ready and little by little at your own pace.

Yes, you are 100% correct. I have removed myself out of the dynamic. That is a very important point. When I am afraid, I sometimes forget... Thank you for reminding me.

I started to be petrified of being a passenger in a car and of my driving at night since my brain surgery. It is directly related to frontal lobe trauma. But, I am improving very slowly because I have worked on it...baby steps my dear comrade.

 

[Feeling Sad]

I grew up near LA...crazy drivers.

I do not want to bring up a bad point, but you had mentioned being serially abused. Could that be surfacing?

Also, sometimes, as one gets a little bit older, fears like your start to occur.

My mother did not like to drive at night. My friends' moms did not like driving in the hills. I got to spend the night a lot of times because of this. I lived at the very top in Sherman Oaks right below Mulholland with a view from Northridge to Burbank.

Quick side note, my mother's father died in 1927. He owned land up and down the coast. He even owned over a square mile of redwoods up North. His best friend was Luther Burbank the founder of Burbank. They used to travel across the US together and lecture. That is how my grandmother met him. They used to joke that Luther was going to develop a cherries and cream tree and my grandfather was going to invent an almond, caramel, and chocolate tree. He had a company making candy bars like today's Turtles right before he died.

I could have been a candy heiress! Sad....

 

[Feeling Sad]

It always self-corrects...sexually, not serially.

He was drinking a lot of beer and wine. A few bottles a week. He did not appear drunk. He was self- medicating. He also took benadryl to sleep. He would eat at midnight and stay up late and sleep in very late. He did not work for the last 9 years. My younger son, the techie, made the computer turn off at midnight.

 

[Feeling Sad]

Good night, Copa. I do not want to keep you up late.

Thank you, as always.

 

[Copabanana]

A few bottles of beer and wine a week is not that much.

When I went to the Ophthamalogist he says that night vision really falls off with age. That people over 60 need 15x the light that a young person does to see at night.

I am afraid to drive at night, too. I think I could do it in cities because of the street lights but not on country roads like where I live.

If we were able to go back east to a big city with great transportation the driving would not be an issue. When I was in Rio or Buenos Aires I did not miss driving. You could get anywhere on public transit or a taxi.

But I live where there is nothing to do. We are stranded.

That is very interesting about your grandfather and Luther Burbank. Was your father's family well-connected? I guess in old fashioned terminology I am asking if your mother married "well?" Is that rude to ask? I am always curious about people's stories.

I hope you decide to sleep. Goodnight, Feeling. I am glad your son is coming home tomorrow. Be rested for him.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

I do not want to bring up a bad point, but you had mentioned being serially abused. Could that be surfacing?

That surfaced before I adopted my son, after I found out my father had died.

Of course it is plausible that there are still those feelings, but I am not conscious of them.

My father did a lot of traveling too. He was a merchant marine after my parents divorced. He went all over Asia. Actually, he did not have a car from the time he was about 44 or so. He lived in a big city with great public transportation. He died at 61 or 62. I forget. I do not remember him telling me that he was fearful driving, but I doubt if he would have.

Actually the only person in my family of origin without any driving issues is my sister who lived in LA almost all her adult life. My grandmother never drove. My grandfather was a horrible driver. Accident after accident. My mother was fearful and my father.

I was a supremely confident driver until I became frightened. I drove everywhere. I miss it. I love driving, actually. I am not neutral about it. I love it. I used to love speed, and maneuvering a sporty car. I got more than one speeding ticket on a freeway. I drove over 100 miles an hour on occasion. I stopped that when I adopted my son and I got a ticket on the freeway for going 85. My therapist at the time asked me, What were you thinking speeding with your baby in the car? I took that very seriously. I never ever sped again. Very, very strange

Being afraid of driving freeways came about when I was being the most fearless in my whole life. Traveling all over Latin America with my son and going to live in cities and countries where I knew nobody. If I had to guess, it would be related to that. Not driving much and then when I was driving, driving cars I did not know or feel confident driving.

And then, there is age. I think it must have started when I was 56 or so. I think that is a common age of onset for anxieties and phobias in women. I read that recently somewhere.

Around the time I went to the race car driver school I got a driving teacher. It did not help. When I first met M we would drive on the freeway to try to help me get over it. We stopped.

I have not driven on the freeway for I would guess 6 years.

Sometimes I think again about trying, but not seriously.

Goodnight.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

The risk is to the mother, I think, when she and the psychotic adult child live together, because I think, she does not act to protect herself, and has put herself in harms way.

You stopped this dynamic.

Excellent point.

In addition, Feeling, your son will now have the opportunity to assess reality against a more stringent moral code than that which exists in the family home.

This will be helpful to him.

There was a time when our daughter was homeless.

That is how I can speak to these issues.

I know the pain of it is unspeakable.

Elie Wiesel wrote something like that once, did you know, Feeling? Something to the effect that attempting to describe a lived experience in words profanes its sacred horror.

Last night was an extremely rough night. I was laughing before going to bed picturing the image of sultry Cedar outside in the sun. See ladies, purely innocent. But, I still had a truly horrible night. My youngest son will be home tomorrow. One more night.

Then I must apologize to you. I took offense. I did not understand.

I am often awake in the night. If I am able, I will post in to you Feeling, tonight.

For you, I will be sultry Cedar.

:O)

I think that for me, that conversation awakened issues having to do with my mother ~ and with everything in my life, really. I felt I had posted inappropriately, and that you were making fun of me. Almost, it was that same awful question: "Who do you think you are, Cedar."

I kept seeing that flashing neon sign. "Girls! Girls! Girls!"

I kept seeing those apple pies, and the fraudulence of having created who I am from who I was brought up to believe myself to be.

There was a feeling of old hurt to all of it, and of pretense.

In the work we have done here in the Family of Origin threads, exploration of those feelings surrounding my mother's contemptuous dismissal or devaluation have enabled exploration and resolution of core issues. It happens in layers; I had thought most of it resolved.

I was not sure whether to post this to you, Feeling. I do not wish to offend, and am not certain enough of you yet to know whether I am piling offense on offense, here.

I think not. I think you will understand exactly, and be happy for me.

Our psyches are amazing things.

In reality, everything about this experience has been a gift.

How extraordinary that this should be so.

I am grateful, but I can hardly believe it, at the same time.

That is how it is with healing, isn't it.

"How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal, but by degrees?"

That is Shakespeare, of course. As long as I am looking up quotes this morning, I will find the exact quote from Elie Wiesel for you, too:

Okay. I cannot find the original quote.

You are right. I would never, ever tell co-workers. Even if they are kind and your friends, I would not tell them.

I agree.

We are anonymous, here.

This allows a kind of nakedness, a sincerity, through which we can touch, and heal.

Even if I have to be naked in the courtyard of a bordello with a flashing neon sign that says, "Girls! Girls! Girls!"

roar

In my thinking about this imagery now, there is my mother in the courtyard, too. Laughing in that nasty, contemptuous way. Oh, for heaven's sake she is with my sister.

And I am not.

This is like, core issue stuff, Feeling and Leafy and Copa. And Serenity, whenever you come back and I hope you do.

Yay.

And I keep trying to display those freshly baked pies; I know beautiful music. I know how sweet life and connection can be, whatever we once believed.

And they laugh. And they are together; and there is the ring of crystal as they toast one another and those at their table. And I am naked and alone and exposed.

And the ground is muddy, from my bathwater because there is no grass, here.

There is no sweet, growing thing here, but only the sun, so hot.

And the neon sign flashes and buzzes.

And I learn that I cherish every inch of my flesh, there in that courtyard, alone. And I see for myself that the pie ~ not only the apple, but the lemon meringue and the blueberry, too ~ are so beautifully nourishing and loving and so generous a gift.

And I see their disparagement, their contempt and even, the nature of their celebration, a representation of the shunning behaviors that enable my family of origin to unite against in order to join at all, in a different way.

But it still sucks pretty much, to know it.

When I went to find that exact Wiesel quote about sacred and profane things, I read through many Wiesel quotes. It was horrifying and strengthening and painful and triumphant, to read and read those quotes. In one of them Elie Wiesel notes that Hitler was the one person who fulfilled every promise he made, to the Jewish people.

“I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

Horrifying, isn't it.

That fits in here, somewhere, in this healing of mine.

I just don't know whether to post this. I will decide to trust you and myself to understand, then. And Leafy. Copa will understand. She will understand more than I do about what is happening in this portion of my healing. She will know the words to describe it.

And then, we all will know, too.

Cedar

I still keep worrying that I will have offended, gone too far, told too much.

We will see whether there is courage enough in me to post these naked, ugly pictures of self.

"Let me win. If I cannot win, let me be brave." That is from one of the Kennedy's. The one who runs Special Olympics.

There is a story of a samurai warrior who had committed some offense. He leaped into the community cesspool and stayed there, resolute. Day after day, night after night. One night, beneath a full moon, a lotus flower, rooted in the filth at the bottom, opened.

The samurai climbed out.

Cedar

Thom Hartman is on Book TV this morning, everyone. Describing Jeffersonian morality and altruism and banking and economics and where we have been and how we got where we are.

A book referenced: Screwed, by Thom Hartman.

He seems very knowledgeable. An interesting conversation.

If you miss it, the program can be accessed online.

In Denmark, so this speaker asserts, college tuition is free and each student receives a $200 monthly stipend.

An interesting discussion.

Now, the issue is the lock down of dissent.

Now, a favorable comparison of Bernie Sanders to Eisenhower.

I am going to be reading alot of Thom Hartman, next.

He has a radio show, someone just said.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Okay. Now, he is discussing PTSD.

And how to resolve it.

In essence, through integrating traumatic memories through changing where they are stored in the brain.

Walking Your Blues Away, Thom Hartman

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

I kept seeing those apple pies, and the fraudulence of having created who I am from who I was brought up to believe myself to be.

We, all of us, begin our adult lives as if programmed by what has come before. I have posted about that before. It is not my own thought. I read it in a book by the Russian psychologist Ouspensky. He said we are all like machines until we are about 30. Only then does there exist the possibility of becoming oneself. And then, only in a community of trusted others. Because see, we cannot even know ourselves fully except through interacting with and the feedback of other people.

So we have the possibility only of developing consciousness. And we start with the culture and the famililial experience with which we were stuck. That is what constitutes us initially.

That is why it so important Feeling when you talk about the Cotillions and the Charm School. With your reality of a sister who tried to kill you and parents who willed you to be silent.

Or Cedar, mocked and excluded *because that was the currency of the land in which she was bred...chose to define of herself as better than that. Courageously choosing for a life bringing people together and feeding them, loving and caring for them...in defiance of the reality which she knew.

I do not know what I did, except survive.

It was not fraudulence, Cedar, it was defiance. It was somehow choosing to define yourself beautifully and deciding by fiat that you would have in your life what is true and real and fine. And make yourself so. And you did. You rose above filth, Cedar, just as I did when I chose to walk those tiers among killers and rapists and ordinary thugs. And chose to see them as good and valuable and worthy. And what was I doing, it seems: A similar thing as you, Cedar. I defined and redefined myself as good and safe and of value, in defiance of an early life that told me the opposite. I repeatedly put myself to the test. Over and over again.

Why? It could only have been because I believed at heart I must have been none of those things. Dirty, of no value, not worthy of protection, a sacrificial lamb.

So, Cedar, it looks like I was doing the same thing as you:

And I keep trying to display those freshly baked pies; I know beautiful music. I know how sweet life and connection can be, whatever we once believed.

Over and over again, using myself and body to represent good and value and kindness and service. To counteract a lie.

Risking ridicule and hatred *by staff, and exclusion, I did. Like you.

And they laugh. And they are together; and there is the ring of crystal as they toast one another and those at their table. And I am naked and alone and exposed.

And that is a repetition.

Mocked. Excluded. Diminished. Only worthy when somebody else is made unworthy.

That must be what draws me to those who have been excluded and marginalized. Deemed unworthy. Over and over again it is me.

There are many people who come out of their families with mindsets to live according to the lowest common denominator. We know them. I think my father must have been one. They feel "as if" somebody by domination, hatred, exclusion and control. Weisel spoke of them:

“I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”

And Cedar, too:

And I see their disparagement, their contempt and even, the nature of their celebration, a representation of the shunning behaviors that enable my family of origin to unite against in order to join at all, in a different way.

The only antidote to this, really, is joining together, by becoming something different, together, or sustaining together our difference, like we Jews did. Whether it is in family, or a community or friendship.

I did not learn that until I was old. I did not believe there was a place for me with other people. Where I would ever be safe. I think that is why I had to run from country to country to chase fantasies. Being an outsider gave me a sense of safety. They did not know me there. I could be whoever I wanted. I could pretend that I belonged.

I still keep worrying that I will have offended, gone too far, told too much.

This is how true self-definition grows, I believe. We start with convention. With Emily Post. We were raised to know the rules. To follow them.

If we are brave we risk to tell the truth, and to be told the truth by others. That is how we become conscious, to know who we are, and to risk being more. There is no other way.

Cedar, I think you were right. It is a spiral. There is no other way. We do not enter a state as "healed." I think we are always healing, if we are lucky and very brave. It is an evolution of consciousness, and by coincidence that I think is the title of Ouspensky's book. I had not remembered the title.

There is a story of a samurai warrior who had committed some offense. He leaped into the community cesspool and stayed there, resolute. Day after day, night after night. One night, beneath a full moon, a lotus flower, rooted in the filth at the bottom, opened.

The samurai climbed out.

Every time I love this story. I do not think I understand it, but I love it.

I am going to be reading alot of Thom Hartman, next.

Cedar, I think he is the man who is on the democrat radio station. I used to love that station. I listened when I went to work, terrified driving

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution
by P. D. Ouspensky
Here is the real title of the book.

 

[Feeling Sad]

I understand.

Cedar, I loved the mental image you painted about Copa's referrence to a house of ill repute. I greatly enjoyed it. When I am scared, I find that I feel better by joking. I noticed, after I had sent my 2 last posts, that I talked about it using your name...not saying like Cedar's imagined bodello. I wanted to apolize, and I tried to put a funny twist on it. Again, jokes are better than screams...

I grew up in very prim and proper Sherman Oaks.

I had to take a bite out of a big bar of Ivory Soap once for telling my mother to shut-up. She had told us before when all 4 of us were in the back of the station wagon arguing on the way home after all of our piano lessons. She would always say, "Pardon my French". I would think to myself...but that isn't French...

So when I noticed that it read wrong, I felt badly and then realized that it was sort of amusing. I never meant anything wrong. I do not know your past childhood.

I think all of us grew up feeling that we were lacking in some way and not good enough.

My eldest sister, the late onset schizophrenic sister, was the first born and spoiled rotten. She had 24 drawers to my 10, double bed to my twin, and in addition...a big headboard, a blue phone, and a matching blue chair to sit in while on her phone, while I had none. More importantly she had 4 WALLS to her room, unlike my 3 and a foldable wall that I shared with my violent schizophrenic sister. She lied to my mother and received horrible grades in school.

My second sister, was the one who became schizophrenic when she was 13 and I was 11.

The baby, my brother was 2 years younger than me. He had heart surgery as a child and had asthma and allergies. He also was spoiled.

I became, by choice, the good girl. I received excellent grades, was gifted, had good friends, told the truth, and did volunteer work from 4th grade on. But instead of being appreciated... I was invisible. I guess I did not want my parents to have more grief, so I was going to be good.

If one of us did something bad, i.e. always my eldest sister, and 'they' would not confess, we all got sent to our rooms "to think about it". Well, my 15 minutes turned into 30, and then 45. I walked out of my room and calmly said, "Why should I have to go to my room to think about it, if I did not do it?" My eldest sister, the perpetrator, the other hand, would be out in 15 minutes playing with her doll.

My father, a genius, would ask me, "What happened?" when I received a 98% on a test.

My mother graded everything...even people's looks. Even at my very, very best when I was young and, I thought, cute...I only always rated just a B+. My good friends, Melanie and Tina both, she had told me, were A's. Yes, Melanie was stunning with beautiful skin...but, I thought in my child's mind, I am just as attractive as Tina. She has freckles and glasses...AND I WAS HER OWN DAUGHTER!!!

My eldest sister, by the way, went away to college in Hawaii and San Diego, where I had to live at home and went locally. When she became a born again Christian, she and my brother started to sport Bibles and went to Pat Boone's house in Encino for weekly Bible studies.

Now, I was a strong Christian, but I, unlike them, did not carry around a Bible or say, "Praise the Lord"every other minute.

My eldest sister would write our relatives stating that the Lord wanted her to do His will in Europe and they would send hundreds of dollars to her. Then...Hawaii. Then ... a car. You have the picture. Gag me! She was able to receive free money, but even more importantly, be seen as a wonderful Christian doing the Lord's work. Yeah...right!

I even overheard my mother once talking to my eldest sister because she had done something wrong. My mother actually said, "I could believe this of _____, but never of you. Me??? The perfect child that did nothing ever wrong???

My middle son told me recently about what my mother had told him when he was just 17. He is now 32 and my mother passed away in 2001. I had become pregnant before marriage. Being the good girl that I was, even though he was showing signs of being violent and wanted me to have an abortion, I got married 2 weeks before I delivered. After I got a divorce, 12 horrible years later, she still never told our relatives. I divorced in 1994, and I still receive cards in his name. I had failed her again. Also, he was Japanese, not Caucasian, not college-educated, and from a poor area. Fail...fail...fail.

I never told my children, or anyone. I never wanted my ill son to feel badly or feel that I had married his violent father because of him.

Well, she told my innocent 17 year old son, my middle son, "You want to go to Heaven, right? You do not want to be like your mother and have premarital sex, do you? Your mother will not go to Heaven. You want to go to Heaven, don't you?"

My son hates organized religion now. He said, "Mom, why would I want to believe in a Heaven, that your OWN MOTHER doesn't think you are good enough to get in?"

Mind you my first husband was the first guy that I had ever dated, the first guy that I had ever kissed, and the first guy that I had ever been with in the 'Biblical' sense...I thought that old bromide was perfect here!

Well, that hurt much worse that always receiving just a B+ in my looks....i.e. never 'quite' good enough. If someone asked me the very worst thing that my mother could have sad to truly hurt me, that would be it.

My 60 year old brother is still a virgin. Even though he stole $200,000 and cost the estate $100,000 in legal fees....he still thinks that he, and not your truly, is going to Heaven. Yes, he lied to all of us, and stole money repeatedly, bought himself a new car after my mom died, and hid my father's VISA in a private P.O. Box and maxed it out. But, he goes to 8 different Churches, people think that he is just wondeful, and he sings songs about Jesus on the piano or guitar. Amen.

My sweet eldest sister threatened to sue me when my father died. I had talked my mother OUT OF keeping her out of the will. Earlier, she had tried to sue my mother for the full value of a gifted future inheritance house. She could not wait until my mother died. But, she was to receive 10% per year. She sued us and, because of my brother, she gained 100's of thousands.

I know how it feels to not be good enough. I got teased because of my schizophrenic sister and began to stutter. All I did was help others and be good...but never quite 'good' enough...

 

[Copabanana]

Hi Feeling,

Did your son get home OK?

Take care.

 

[Feeling Sad]

Yes. Copa. He did. Thank you.

Here is wishing a peaceful nights sleep to all. Take care.