Feelings And Other Things

I cannot put links to this kit as Patsy is away and I am not sure which stores this kit is in. But tomorrow I will add the links in a update. The name of this kit is Autumn Crisp. It was one of the very first kits she ever made and one of my favorites. And this is huge... Yesterday the page that I posted was also made from Autumn Crisp. I just had it in the wrong folder...

 Hi,
 I think that I have my comments fixed. It took me a long time reading the help sections, then asking questions, filling out a ticket for support but I actually think that I have it fixed. Gosh I hope so.

 Well the title of this blog is Feelings And Other Things. I guess that I should give a little background but regardless I am not even sure where to begin. Or even if I should begin at all but I do know that if I can write or journal about the things that bother me, it does help so I will try to at least word it all to where it makes sense. If possible that is.

 Ever since I was a little girl I have always worn my feelings on my sleeves. I was very timid growing up. No matter what happened I was always to blame. It just was a part of my life. 
 I grew up thinking that every action that caused a problem, somehow I was to blame for it.

 One of my earliest memories was when I was about 5 years old and my dad was working in New Mexico and he sent for my mom and my sisters and I to move to New Mexico.
 We went by train and it was the first long trip that I remember. If you know me then you also know that my parents were alcoholics. It was hard because I didn't understand. 
 I have never resolved my feelings over alcoholism. Oh my brain knows but sometimes my heart still doesn't understand the things that families, not just mine have endured growing up where alcohol was a normal living environment. In fact if beer cans and wine bottles didn't litter the tables, the floors, over flowed from the garbage can then something wasn't right. 
 That is just the way that it was. It was normal for our house to look like a bar at closing time. 

 Anyway back to my story. We caught a train and headed west. For me it was a big adventure. My sister Linda was around 3 and Susie was just an infant. In fact I am not even sure that she was born yet. If she was then she was just a tiny thing.
 On this train we had long bench seats and there was a dining car. I don't recall all of the details but I was able to sit by the window and I became very dizzy as the trees whizzed by. My mother made me stay there because she was talking to some men and another woman. Before long the booze started flowing. 
 Now I am not kidding when I say that my mom could not hold her liquor. 2 beers and she was tipsy, 3 and she was well on her way to drunk. And that trip was a very long one. Especially for kids who couldn't do much but sit and look out of a window. 
 I don't know how long it took us to reach our destination but I asked my older sister once and she said it was about 2 or 3 days because of layovers and stops to let others on and off so that is about right.
 We had a sleeper car and at some point my mother put Linda and I in it. She put me on the top and my sister Linda and my mother had the bottom. The thing was Linda wouldn't stay in her bunk. She kept leaving and my mom was too busy having a drinking party with her new found friends. 
 Now tell me, what in the world was a 5 year old going to do with a toddler? I was responsible for her. It was my fault she cried. It was my fault that she wouldn't go to sleep and it was my fault that some drunken man decided to lay down with us and get us to sleep.
 My mother didn't seem to have a problem with that and if she knew what he had done and I am sure that she knew when she sobered up then she would have blamed herself and not a 5 year old. 
 I am not trying to bash my mother. She and I made our peace a long time ago but this is just me reliving these memories because that was the beginning of my becoming even more withdrawn and timid as a child. 
 My mother was a wonderful woman, especially when she stopped drinking. It was then that we hashed out a lot of our demons I guess. The resentment on my end, especially when I became a mother. 
 I swore my kids would not grow up in an alcoholic home environment. That is not to say that I didn't on occasion have a glass of wine or a cold beer on a hot day or a Margarita with dinner. I did. But....
 Our bills were paid, there was food to eat, my kids didn't have to wonder if I would be passed out in the front yard or have the police bringing your mom or dad home because they were to drunk to get home on their own. 

 That train ride that should have been a great trip was a nightmare and the older that I get the more I am remembering things and I have been trying to block them but they keep coming. These memories that I try to shut away. 
 Sometimes I wonder if they are even real. Am I just thinking that I remember these things? Or did they really happen like my mind keeps re-playing? 

 I tried to protect my sisters from the various men that were invited into our lives. Horrible sick and twisted men. I couldn't protect Linda when one man and his wife abused her. 
 Oh Lord, I remember when her memories came to haunt her. It was horrible for both of us but even tho I had my own horror stories hers was even more horrible. I have always felt in my heart that I was to blame for what had happened to her. I know that I wasn't but I cannot convince myself sometimes. 
 Don't you just hate the "What If's?"
 What If I hadn't been so afraid to open my mouth and tell somebody what I knew? 
 Truth was I was so afraid I would be blamed and whipped again for something that was my fault that I stayed silent. I kept to myself and I kept my mouth shut and I stayed as far away from people as I could. 

 I grew up that way. I went to school, I came home and I went to my room and I stayed there until I had to do chores and what ever I had to do then I went back to my room. 
 I did this until I was about 12 maybe 13. I started coming out of my shell around that time because my dad and brother were working on DFW Airport and life just took on a different phase. 
 I rebelled naturally but in a very quiet way. I didn't get caught up in drugs or sex or partying or things like that. I rebelled by doing other things that I knew my parents would not have approved of if they had known, like sneaking out but really the fun of sneaking out isn't all that bad when I could just walk out the front door stepping over which ever drunk parent happened to be in the floor. 
 I am not writing this to have anyone feel sorry for me. There are people who had it a hell of a lot worse than I did. No I am writing this just to get it out of my system because I found myself in the same damn spot today. 
 Not the drinking, but the feeling that somehow when something happens it is my fault and I know different but at the same time I some how feel that I am that 5 year old girl again on a train trying to take care of a little toddler and it is my fault that she and I was molested by some drunk man at the age of 3 and 5 and  I didn't know how to keep her safe or myself safe and somehow it was my fault.

 I remember when my ex husband and I were married I was going stir crazy in the house. It was a long and bitter cold winter but I had been cooped up with 2 kids and I needed to get out and grocery shop and several other things and I couldn't get my husband to watch the kids so I could go and I was tired of hearing him say he would go with me but never get up from the couch long enough to help me grocery shop and so I decided to take the kids and go myself.
 On the way out the door he said "You really don't need to go into town. Just go to the little store and we will grocery shop later." I remember I said "Your later never comes. I am tired of waiting on you."
 Well my car broke down with me pregnant and 2 small kids sitting on the side of the road. 
 He helped me blame myself. If I had listened to him he would have been with me and I wouldn't have been sitting on the side of the road with two kids and if I had just stayed home the car wouldn't have broken down on me and so on and so on.... so I felt guilty. It was my fault. All my fault...
 It took me a while to realize that it didn't matter if I had stayed home or decided to go grocery shopping, the car would have broke down anyway. It wasn't my fault. Things happen. That is a part of life. Life happens and sometimes it is cars that break down with a pregnant woman and 2 kids and a trunk loaded down with groceries.... 

 Lee Majors had a t.v. show called The Fall Guy and I used to watch it and say to myself that instead of being a Fall Guy, I was a Fault Girl. 
 I am not kidding. I had a very bad Fault Complex. I truly believed that a lot of my actions resulted in things being my fault. If I had done this and not done that... Well you know what I am saying.

 Anyway that brings me to today... Yesterday actually since it is almost 2 in the morning. 
 A few weeks ago the boys and I cleaned the house really good and Nathan put our microwave up on the top of the bar. I didn't want it up there because I am short. Nathan is 6 feet tall. Jonathan is not far behind him. I am 5 feet tall and my arms are short. 
 Anyway it is hard for me to reach it and cook anything, let alone clean it. So today I was cleaning the kitchen and I really needed to clean the inside of the microwave. 
 I asked Nathan to come and move it back to where it was so I could clean it and on top of the microwave I have a set of little bowls with lids on them. They are really cute. 
 Karyn was working and I was cleaning and I had my hands in the dish water and Karyn came thru on her way to the bathroom, Nathan was moving the microwave and I said... "Stop, get the bowls off of the top so they don't fall and break." 
 Nathan got pissed.... He looked at Karyn and said... "I am so sick of her doing this. She acts like I am incapable of moving a damn microwave. She is always doing this. Talking to me and Jonathan like we are children."
 I said "Hey just wait a minute. I didn't do anything but ask you to get the bowls off of the microwave."
 Well I am not going to go into word for word but a huge argument resulted in that one sentence I spoke and I was blamed for every damn thing from that moment going all the way back to when he was a baby.
 No matter what I said he twisted my words. 
 I think what really got it going was when I said "I just didn't want my bowls broken." To which he replied... and hatefully I might add... "My bowls you mean."
 I looked at him and tossed my dish towel back into the sink and said... "Your bowls? Funny I recall you giving me those bowls to me at Ridge Point our first Christmas I moved here."
 He said "No, John and Kate gave me those at our Christmas party and you took them."
 By this time Karyn is telling him to calm down because I am very upset and starting to get emotional. She is like "Mom let it go" and Nathan said... "It's her fault, she started this."
 I started or tried to start walking away but he said something else and I said something else and I was crying by this time and I said... "Did you or did you not bring me a box wrapped in Christmas paper and handed it to me and said I hope that you like this?"
 "I don't remember."
 "Well I do but I tell you what... When I walk out of this damn place I guarantee you one damn thing, those blankety blank ^***^^^%#%^& bowls will stay here. You couldn't pay me enough to take them with me when I go."

 "See your acting like a child over some stupid bowls."
 I never responded. I just came to my room and shut my door. He came to my room and barged right on in. I told him to get out and leave me alone. Oh he wanted to talk. Too bad. Go talk to somebody else. I made him leave and I locked my door. He just yelled thru the door but I didn't respond to him so he finally left.
 I only unlocked the door when Karyn knocked and asked to come in. She tried to talk to me but I was to upset and just told her to leave me alone for awhile. 

 This has been going on for months now. It seems that it is always my fault about something and I am not going back there. It isn't my fault that I asked him to be careful and take the damn bowls off the microwave so they wouldn't slide off. Sheeeesh… 

 I was raised.... for all my parents faults they did raise us kids with manners. I was raised to greet people when they come in the door. "Hello, how was your day?"
 What may I ask you is wrong with that? I taught my kids to greet people at the door as well but they have forgotten all of their manners. Except Karyn and Matthew.
 The boys say... "Don't ask about my day. We had a shitty day and you just want to remind us of it. Every time you ask us how your day is then we start thinking about it all over again. Then you want to know why we are in a bad mood. Your fault for bringing it up."
 So I don't ask them about their day. And Jonathan is the same way. He said "When you ask me about my day then I have to stop and explain to you why I had a bad day and you don't understand my job enough to completely get it so I have to take the time to break it down and relive it to explain it to you."
 I say.... If I ask how your day was all you have to do is say... It was long, it was fine, it was ok... I am not asking you for a half hour detailed description. Shit. I am just using my manners in greeting you. Damn it all. 

 It is like I am walking on egg shells around these two. I am so sad that they have started acting so hateful to me. And not just to me but to Karyn too. They are just plain rude and I did NOT raise them this way. 

 Karyn told Nathan... "You need to apologize to mom. She didn't raise you to speak to her like that." Then those two started scrapping. Karyn told him straight up that she would be helping me pack up some of my stuff this weekend when she got off work because it was obvious to her that he and Jonathan just continued to  disrespect me and she wasn't going to have it.
 She told me, Mom we will figure out the living arrangements at my place some how until my lease is up but you can't keep living like this.

 I am pretty much use to it by now. I just stay to myself when they are home or as much as I can. 
 They don't help me do a darn thing around here. I cook and clean and today I asked Nathan before he had a melt down over some bowls that will be left here for damn sure to unload the dishwasher so I could get some dishes done. It was after 4:00 this afternoon before he finally did it. Only because Jonathan came in and said "Mom asked you to unload the dishwasher yesterday" so he got up and unloaded it but I could have cared less if the damn dishes were done or not. As a matter of fact I never finished the dishes. They are still sitting in the sink. 

 Anyway I feel better since I have gotten this off my mind. I think that now I can go to sleep and rest. Gosh I hope so.... 
 I know that this is long winded and it is not a happy post but I really needed to get it all out. Thanks for listening to my rant... and it is over... Good night... BB