This is going to be a blog with triggers, my life experiences and really have NOTHING to do with metal concerts or the chair. Lots of talk about abuse, where I came from and who I came to be through this. This isn't really intended for anyone, but I'm tired of being god damn silent and stewing over my thoughts.
I think hurting people you love is bound to happen, as much as we don't mean to, or don't want it to. Honestly, it's inevitable, isn't it? I don't really think that's so bad, personally.I think that when you hurt someone on purpose that you're cruel, heartless and mean. I think my main example of this would be my mother. I've been debating posting this, and as of late it's been weighing heavy on my mind. I need to release this energy to the universe so I can properly move on and away from these incidents.
When you're young, you really don't pick up on strange behaviour, do you? I mean, it just seems normal to you. Just as my families rampant alcoholism seemed normal to me. Watching people in my family fight physically was an every weekend event and having to run away and hide and try not to listen to it was to. I escaped the best way I could.. I read books, practically lived at my grandparents house (and if my grandparents would have had Internet access, trust me I would have!) and learnt to channel what I felt at home into stories and make up my own life, one far away from the terror I felt at home. I loved my grandmother, who practically raised me while my mother was at work and drinking.. But everything was okay because she was and still is a "functioning alcoholic." She goes to work every day and works hard but then comes home and drowns herself in beer. She turns into a vile human being when she drinks and would constantly yell, stomp around or abuse us.
I think the first time I picked up that my mother wasn't really normal was when I was old enough to be at my best friends house, around the age of seven or so. We would all eat dinner together at her house, and then her parents would not get so black out drunk that they would leave the kids to their own devices. See, that's what would happen at my house. I became very self sufficient and very fast and went with the flow of things. That's when they found out I had a brain tumor and to my knowledge my mom didn't drink during that, though seeing as my memory of that time period is fuzzy at the best of times, I couldn't say for sure. I thought everything was going to turn around and we were going to be a normal family again. I'm sure it was stressful on her, losing my dad just a few years prior and then having your youngest daughter being diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. Through the surgeries and everything, I never gave up until I was actually slipping away but something brought me back. Music brought me back, but that's a different story.
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| My grandmother and I. Please ignore how geeky I look. |
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When a miracle happened to me and they managed to get the entire tumor out, it was like everything went back after I returned from rehabilitation. I had lost my right side, having somewhere in the realm of three or four strokes from the surgeries and how invasive they were, but I was alive. I had to relearn how to walk, had to learn how to use my left hand because my right was my dominant prior but couldn't be anymore. When I returned home, it all went back to the way it was. Of course it did, I was so stupid to think it wouldn't. My grandfather died that year and my grandmother started to get Alzheimers and the day that he died, she had a stroke. I started skipping school in Grade 7 and 8 to spend time with her, because I ultimately knew that her time was coming soon.
My mother, of course, saw this as rebellion and put me in home schooling in Grade 9 so I was free to come and go as I pleased, as long as my tutors and I met up every week. I spent as much time with her as I could, but as her health dwindled, I knew I was going to lose the most important person to my life. My Disney watching, always kind and caring but stern grandmother. I loved her to death, and she was my mom. When she was diagnosed with bowel cancer and put into a man made coma because she couldn't eat, I was sitting there reading "The Hobbit" while my mother and my aunt were smoking downstairs. My grandmother started to stir but she had an oxygen mask on and my usual chatty grandmother said something to me but I couldn't understand her. She slipped back asleep peacefully after a moment and as tears spilt down my cheeks and I sat there trembling my mom came in. While I hysterically explained to her what happened, she told me I was full of shit and sent me home.
It came just as quick as it went and grandma was gone. No more tea parties, talking about life... No more of her leaning over in her arm chair and asking, "So, what's new? Oh please tell me there's something, darling!" No more understanding hugs, or watching Disney movies until 3 in the morning.. No more Scottish accent to sing me to sleep... No more grandma.. In retrospect, I acted way too strong while the shock settled. I went through the motions, going to grandmother's funeral and giving a speech, all while trying not to cry. At the funeral, a fight broke up between my family, as per usual. I stole a bottle of vodka and drank it all that night.
To say I was not in a good place after that was an understatement. I drank, I smoked lots of weed, I cut myself up pretty bad and did some really stupid shit like hanging out in parks and public places late at night. I didn't know what I wanted to accomplish. Maybe that someone would come and take me away? One day, I broke down in tears to my mother about this and how I missed my grandmother. Her response? "You should have died with her, because anyone who would throw their life away deserves to die, besides that you were a disgrace to your grandmother, especially with how useless you've become."... Typing those words was really had, even now, the pain sears through me at something that happened almost ten years ago. That night, I tried to hang myself for the first time and only time. I turned my stereo on and got ready to do it, but the beam broke, thank the gods!
The abuse really started after I hit high school and it was damn near constant. I would get home from school, clean up and get smashed in the face with beer cans and called worthless, fat, a stupid cunt, a horrible excuse for a daughter and a whore. That was my life through high school, and still is to a degree.
When I was seventeen, I met Daniel. He was the beacon of light my life needed. He moved to Edmonton and we lived in my mothers basement. She pushed him into school and he is just finishing that up right now. When he proposed to me, she rushed the wedding and paid for it. I should have seen the signs, in reality. I was just so caught up in the moment that I couldn't see what was going on. We're still living here. It's turbulent at times.. most times.. all the time. But it allows me to have someone watch me while Dan's away at school, since I live in the basement and don't use my chair indoors and I'm ever so coordinated.
When I turned twenty one, I had gone to a movie with my friend, husband and we were just getting into it when we get a call from my friend who was at my house. My mom had fallen, she was bleeding from the mouth and she wasn't responding. We rushed home, and got there. We tried to get her attention, but she was absolutely out cold.. Not knowing whether she was internally bleeding, I called my sister and 991. When my sister got there, she was furious with my mother. My mother had woken up and told us both that she would blame us and say we pushed her. When the paramedics got there, they escorted me out of the building, and my sister too because my mother was uttering death threats at both of us, saying she was going to slit our throats and evict me and we were horrible children. It got so bad that the paramedics called the cops and told me not to return into the house. Daniel went in, grabbed bags and we took our dogs to my sisters and stayed there until early morning..
We had to go home the next day. He was in school, and so was I. My mother ended up having to get four stitches in her lip and remembered nothing.. But because she doesn't remember it, we can't and we shouldn't be mad at her, either.. Apparently.
She screams at me, calls me vile names and it does get physical some times. I don't usually respond when it does, just back into a corner and try not to hit her back, mostly because I'm not a confrontational person.
Just a few days ago, I was trying to make dinner and she told me that I was getting so fat she couldn't "find my chin from my forehead" because I was a fat blob and I was worthless. When I snapped at her that all I wanted was her to leave me alone, she made some quip about me and my sister both being useless and not standing on our own two feet.
Tonight, she told me to go downstairs because no one wants to hear from "Your fat useless mouth".
In the past she's told me that the only reason I need the wheelchair is I'm fat and lazy and still doesn't even accept that I'm in the chair. "Can't you just walk? You're really inconveniencing me.. The chair is so stupid, you can't even walk? How fat are you?!"
If I ever come across to anyone as meek, unsure of myself and shy.. and it really goes beyond that to I second guess myself at everything, whenever anyone is drinking around me I can only handle so much of it, to irrational fears of being abandoned. I have to listen to music when I'm stressed, or write because I can't vent it any other way. My relationships with family and friends suffer. I have a huge problem with talking to new people and usually won't unless they speak to me first. I have anxiety about the stupidest things.. All these things, they stem from the way I was raised.
The joys of living with an abusive alcoholic. That feels so much better to get out. I'm going to go watch Peter Pan now and try to forget and sleep. Sorry for the jumbled mess of thoughts.
Oh, and if you have gone through or are going through similar experiences and want to talk about it, you should email me at
missbaileydawn@gmail.com because I'm always up to talk about this. It's time the silence stopped.
Bailey Dawn.
