*Age 31 – Journal June 10 1983
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June 10, 1983 Friday
Been calling Leo but no answer.
I’m over at Marcene’s again. Still scared about sleeping in the trailer. Having him there tomorrow night should help at least “break it in.”
(Just pared down a candle to get to the wick to light it as I’m out of matches)
I don’t like these physical symptoms and side affects from withdrawing from these meds.
June 12, 1983 Sunday
Leo and the girls came up yesterday and left this evening – except for Ramona. She’s spending the week here with me. Already tonight I’ve enjoyed her being her. I’ve been very afraid of being here alone. Still am, but Marcene needs a break.
Mom wrote Ramona some stories and wants Ramona to write her one. Ramona’s been writing stories from the time she could write her first word. They’ve been really neat.
Leo and I planted flowers in the beds we made yesterday. I’m going to enjoy them, and the land people seemed really pleased to have us take an interest in the yard here. Even planted some veggies. It’s thundering and lightning out. I’ve never liked summer storms – especially when I’m alone in them. It does help having Ramona here. I’m going to try not to think about being alone here next week and live my 24 hours at a time.
12:25 AM – The rain is much louder in a trailer house. Hitting on metal. I don’t like the lightning. I am scared.
June 13, 1983 Monday
Steve [therapist] says there’s two of me – one hurting small child and one alcoholic with all the defenses.
He also says they’re gong to take me to the level of terror that I don’t want to go. He figures that this place I’m living is safe. Any other time we’d be dealing with normal probabilities – he doesn’t lock his doors – said to take reasonable precautions.
He had me ask my HP for help making it through the day. He felt I needed to do that. I did that last night during the storm.
June 14, 1983 Tuesday
Just got to Marcene’s after group. Went to make appointment for next week and found out Steve’s on vacation next week. I feel something – anger, hurt, rejection that he didn’t tell me he wouldn’t be around. I’m sure I’ll do fine with the other therapists while he’ll be gone, but I would have liked to have been told.
At the end of group I mentioned that I was concerned about the $35 per hour it cost to be in group. I wanted to leave tonight. Steve mentioned yesterday he thought I needed to work or I’d leave. R. mentioned tonight at end of group that he and D. had been wondering if I’d be around. When I talked and worked I saw the two me’s – one wants to get out, the other doesn’t want anything to do with this process. I talked of the incident of the shampoo and spending then night in the car with my head under the steering wheel. I hurt then, and I hurt now. I’ve never connected the present me to that me that grew up hurting. I saw tonight that maybe a connection can be made.
[2009 note: Now I know from the inside of me that connecting my memories of abuse like some kind of connect-the-dots picture isn’t possible. These dissociated experiences exist separately from one another in my brain-mind although they do exist with all their related emotions within my body.]
Got the phone today 751-5925. Felt guilty about not looking for jobs today.
June 15, 1983 7:42 PM
Spent the day and last night at Marcene’s. Talked until 3 AM and up at 9, but am really tried. Ramona’s already sleeping here on the loveseat with me.
Marcene looks at it like I have my sobriety since last night I took the pills, which would be new private date of June 7, 1983. She says it’s real likely the pills have saved my life and I needed them. She says we know what we need. Like my home here. I have it serene and comfortable, the way I need it to be.
I decided to go to a meeting tonight – on 3rd Tradition. This is, I think, the first time I’ve been to two meetings in one day.
Feeling light-headed again. I’m sure there’s something out in my neck. Hope to see Whittenberg {chiropractor} on the 25th.
Ramona’s still sleeping. Feeling lonely. It’s 9:34. Will take a bath and try to sleep – maybe read for awhile.
I felt ugly and awkward. Skinny, bony, awkward. Mother hated my bony chest/neck – the blood vessels under the skin. I was blamed for having a bony chest. It was wrong.
Just had some sort of a De Ja Vue in the bedroom – scary, black, don’t even want to know what it is.
Generalizing internal blackness? Something to do with a group of men, maybe four, barging in.
Thoughts of Marlin come every once in a while. Like he gives me courage when I’m with him. I don’t have the same need to be distant from him that I do with Leo.
I’m reading the book “Sybil.” Pretty scary stuff in there I haven’t reached yet. Instead of having multiple personalities in myself, I wonder if I use other people in a similar way.
Marlin’s well defended – (I think) and able to ignore his pain. Part of me is afraid as I change up here that I’ll lose him – my relationship to him. I don’t know why I’m not aware of these feelings in my relationship with him.
I like having Ramona here. Having someone to care for. She is my daughter. It’s OK to care for her. She’ll miss me, I think, more when she goes home. I know I’ll miss her. I’m thinking of having her stay next week. It changes things having her here. Fills my days in a different way.
[2009 note: I didn’t understand then about my insecure attachment disorder, and that my self was organized and oriented around being a mother. Having my caregiver system activated helped to deactivate my insecure attachment system so that I didn’t have to feel the pain of it so much.]
HP take care of me, us. I need you close to me and I need to know You’re close to me and love me and give me strength and take care of me.
June 17, 1983 Friday
Personally, I’d probably fiend it boring to read someone else’s journal. I find comfort in knowing everything I put in here is confidential – to me only, as it were. Not being a trusting person makes it hard to be myself when someone else will read what I write.
[2009 note: Here I am, 26 years later choosing to publish my own private thoughts, hopefully so something good can come out of what I have experienced as a severely abused psychotic Borderline’s daughter as I have tried to discover what the 18 years of trauma did to me and how I can live better in spite of these changes. I also had no idea as I wrote these 1983 words about story, about human’s interest in and appreciation of story. “Inability to tell a coherent life story” is one of the hallmarks of an insecure attachment disorder. Not only could I not tell a coherent life story, I don’t think I had any idea what one was.]
For my own sake, I’ll try. I could separate what I see as relevant and what isn’t – censorship issues. Like I have no idea where the money’s gong to come from to pay the rent here on the first. The reader can do the editing as well as I – so be it – I’ll adjust.
In reading “Sybil” I see connections with her father and mine. “Crime” of omission rather than commission. I find myself again thinking of asking my father for money to help me do this work for myself now. I mentioned this to Leo’s mom and she said that if I want to break the bond with my parents it’s probably not a good idea to take money from him. Since I left home he’s never helped me financially. I see that he had a part in my getting “sick” – perhaps it is also his responsibility to help me get well.
I’ve never talked or written to him about my childhood. I think he has his head in the sand where it’s always been. If he didn’t care then, why do I think he’d care now. Perhaps he’s inhuman. Made of concrete. I’ve always known my recover depends on me.
If I wrote Dad or Mom (I can’t write to Dad without Mom reading the letter even though they’re separated), it could start some kind of torrent. Reminds me of the volumous, horrible letters I had from both of them when I was pregnant with Kay. They were both hateful. “Your mother was still a virgin at 23 when she married me. What’s wrong with you that you couldn’t wait to be married?”
And my mother’s first question when she found out I was pregnant: “Was the father black?”
Sharon [therapist] asked me today what I’ve been dong – “chatting?” Was she asking about therapy-group time or “regular” time?
Diania and the girls are here. Actually, I’m here with Jaimie, Heather, Mary and Ramona trying to get all in bed.
Just finished “Sybil.” A fortunate end – Sybil was most fortunate to find Dr. Wilbur. I wonder how the rest of us handle our unconscious and how much must go on there and how do I become “integrated?”
I think I view the trauma of my childhood something like I would the ocean. The waves continually come into shore – sometimes meekly and mildly, sometimes thunderously. Over the span of year upon year it becomes easy to view the expanse of ocean as one whole – no longer noticing or paying attention to the separate waves – or incidents. I have tuned out the “incidents.”
In Sybil’s case the multiple selves remembered what Sybil could not. There’s no one to remember mine but me.
[2009 note: I would add a whole other dimension to this thought today, 26 years later. “There’s no one to remember mine but me.” And, unlike Sybil, I cannot remember any more than the same set of incidents I have always remembered because my mother beat me for those ones over and over and over again until I left home at 18. Perhaps mine is an excellent memory ability in reverse: I DON’T remember – because I can’t. It’s like amnesia, I suppose, except the memories are all stored in my body.]
[I was reading I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can by Barbara Gordon and drew a parallel and made a comment]
Pages 287-288:
When I was in treatment in Fergus Falls in 1980 and first confronted my mother about her treatment of me she was angry. She saw no reason for me to dig up the past. I am no longer communicating to her about what I am doing. She got her way. The mother of my story will not come to me as did the one in Barbara’s. I want to come to the end of my story without having to work through the middle.
(I discovered a leak in my gas tank tonight and the gas pouring into the sand. I plugged the hole with gum and hope it holds until tomorrow – then hope a simple patching kit will seal it up. I cannot afford more.) nor can I live without my car.
I wish I could call my father – if I have one.
My mother made me not feel. If I ever let Linda come out she would be punished. My arms hang limp at my sides, and my face can show no expression. I am a faceless being fit only for my mother’s wrath …made to believe if I were not in her life, then she would have a happy, peaceful one.
I had no privacy, except for the hours I could steal to read, or watch the ants in the big log at the curve of the homestead road. I liked watching the ants. Theirs was a silent world.
It seems strange to me that I can’t find my report cards. I remember riding home on the school bus with the same knot of fear in my stomach that I had sitting on the stool when I was six [and got my coat cuffs dirty]. My report cards always got me into trouble.
Something is howling tonight. Coyote, dog – wolf seems unlikely. My neighbors in the trailer court thinks it’s a bear that rummages through the garbage at night. One of my worst fears is of bears.
My father turned 57 on May 20th. I did not acknowledge that event. Father’s Day is Sunday. My father always sided with Mom. He’s the one who told me in the end that he could no longer have me living under his roof – that I was more trouble than the rest of the kids put together – that I was the cause of all the problems between he and Mom. A week later I was in boot camp.
Dad was a traitor to me. Mom always said he had no back bone. It hurt me to see Mom being so cruel to Dad. He and I were often in the “same boat.” She humiliated him. Sharon told me that after I left home one night he almost killed her. [2009 note: Put his hands around her throat and nearly strangled her.]
June 18, 1983 Saturday
Been emptying ice cream buckets of gas into larger containers today – should have plugged the leak and haven’t. One more to try when the tank is empty. My whole yard would blow up if someone dropped a match.
I am going to be lonely when Ramona goes home. Maybe I’ll even cry. I use people to take my loneliness away.
The neighbors I’ve met here remind me of myself and Pat – the chance we never had – to be husband and wife – mother and father. If nothing else, the insanity of alcoholism and addiction took that away from us.
I think I used to be able to feel pain – I did when Pat went away. I expected if I hurt enough he would come back. Isn’t that what made him marry me in the first place?
I came out of boot camp a changed person. Nothing in my life was ever the same. Except when Grandma died and I saw mom, and again in Tucson when I saw her.
I could never trust my mother. She was always at war with me.
I’d like to know about hypnotherapy7. Probably looking for a sure cure. I don’t really think there is a “cure” for me. Sometimes I do think I made the whole thing up about my childhood. Making mountains out of mole hills – It’s hard to know when I can’t remember.
I’d almost like to go back and live a day with my mother.
I remember from when she came here to visit me the summer of 1980. One time I saw that look in my mother’s eye. When she gets that look I freeze inside – I get scared of her. It isn’t always there anymore. It was something like living with two people. There was a monster inside of her. I think most of the time when I was a child that monster would be there for me – sometimes for my Dad – very rarely for any of the other children. I’ve never seen that monster in anyone else. But I think I wait for it. If I brought it out in her I may bring it out in others. I wait for it to come. I don’t trust people.
And I don’t understand how my sickness relates to my feelings. My father never showed any feelings. My mother had them all. They were scary to me. I wasn’t around normal, healthy people hardly at all. My Dad used his mind, and he wasn’t a monster to me. Whenever Mom went away and we were left home with Dad, things were peaceful. I was left alone. Sometimes I had peace before I had to start worrying about Mom coming back.
I liked using drugs. I didn’t have to feel. I could be like my Dad. Right now I don’t know if I’m feeling and don’t know it, or if I’m not feeling at all.
[2009 note: This was the first time in my life I had tried to ‘get a handle’ on the reality of the abuse of my childhood.]
When I was 12 grandma tested me [2009 note: She gave me one of her career-interest tests] and said I could be a surgeon. Mother thought that was hilarious and was cruel to me about it. When I had a pen pal from Japan, she cut me down and said that girl didn’t even live here and had better English and penmanship than I did.
I remember sitting on a bed in the Jamesway folding piles of clothes – diapers. I must have been 10. The other kids were outside playing.
I got in trouble when I didn’t wear an apron in the kitchen, or rubbed on the metal around the kitchen counter when I did dishes so there was a grey line across my stomach; or hit the dishes on the faucet as I took them from sink to rinse; or didn’t clean the oven right, or the door jams, or the floors, or vac with the nap of the carpet. I did everything too slow – she was angry with me a lot when I did the dishes not perfect. I remember having to write thousands of sentences. [2009 notes: She had a hundred steps to doing the dishes that all had to be done every time in perfect order. I had to write the list over and over and over again.]
I had to do everything perfectly and I couldn’t. I didn’t sit up straight enough. My butt wiggled when I walked, my feet were too flat and I wore out my shoes, I was too skinny, too dirty – my elbows were always dry. I had to gold clothes perfectly and iron them perfectly. Everything else was more important than I was. I did a lot of cooking as I got older. I always made the beds, did the dishes and made the lunches. The others never had to help.
I did run away once. It was cold and rainy. I took a blanket, my hairbrush and my bible. I didn’t know where to go, so I wandered around in the woods. There were no neighbors and 15 miles to town. I went back home. I lied. I told them I’d seen a bear and her cubs by the creek. I told Mom I read something in the bible that made me come back. I don’t know what it was I told her I read. She’d sent John walking to find me. She thought it was good that my reading the bible made me come back. I could never be anything but absolutely humble around my mom. I always felt and knew she was watching me. I’m glad she’s not dead now because I’m sure I’d know she was with me, haunting me all the time.
Mom always said I was immature – “will you ever grow up?” – said I had a baby face. I think part of the reason she slapped my face so much was because she didn’t like it – “Get out of my sight. I can’t stand the sight of you.”
Sometimes I think that the only reason my childhood bothers me is that I am overly sensitive. Maybe someone else it wouldn’t have bothered at all. [2009 note: Boy, I was sure grasping for a fantasy here!]
Sometimes she’d hit me and my nose would bleed. She’d grab me by the hair and yank me around. She’d grab my arms, and her finger nails would cut me and leave marks. I know I used to have bruises a lot – she like to use belts, I suppose with buckles. Sometimes I even had bruises on my calves.
Mom told me I was bad for telling people things that should be kept in our family. I wonder what I told to whom. I never told anyone anything about what happened to me – evidently I haven’t even told myself.
According to Nathaniel Branden in The Disowned Self, page 46, a child’s parent-dependent needs include, “but are not limited to the following: the need to be cared for and protected physically; to be touched, held and caressed; to be respected, loved, treated as a value; to receive interest, understanding and concern; to love and admire; to be free to explore one’s environment and move toward increasing physical and mental mastery; to express oneself physically, emotionally and intellectually and receive an appropriate response; to be dealt with reasonably, justly and intelligibly.”
Page 50 he says “No pain was so destructive as the pain one refuses to face – and no suffering so enduring as the suffering one refuses to acknowledge.”
Page 59. – “The repression of an emotion extends to the event that evoked it – derepression of painful childhood emotions often triggers a release of repressed memories.”
“The defenses which protect repressed childhood traumas are generally the most formidable and difficult to dissolve.” Page 59
Right now – I want something in my mouth all the time. A cigarette, gum, food – popcorn – drinking something, too. I’m eating granola and drinking water – just finished popcorn. Bought carrots today so I can chew on them. Also bought a can of tobacco, cheaper as low on money. Haven’t smoked rolled cigarettes for years. Quite when I went to treatment so wouldn’t think about rolling joints.
June 19, 1983 Sunday 11 AM
Well, here I am alone again. Diania and Gaylin and girls left at 10:30 AM. They’re going to meet Leo at 4-Corners and leave Ramona off so she can fish with them. I want to fish, too. I feel left out.
I ju7st put the goop on my gas tank – can’t go anywhere. Don’t have anywhere to go, anyway. Marcene’s leaving town for a few days. I’ll have to sleep alone here. It’s cloudy and a bit windy. I hope it doesn’t storm tonight. Want to get the house picked up. Need to do my workout.
I have the whole week ahead of me, like so many miles of track. Who I am, and who I want to be, running parallel – where do they meet? I chose to put myself here – I’m not part of an ordinary day in Glyndon. My mind wanders all over the place and goes where I don’t want it to. I make people into magic – like Marlin – But I don’t really want them, and if I want to be alone, then here I am.
The creek’s running in the ravine over there. The river also moans a soft moan down there across the valley’s floor. I can hear the wind moving across the mountainside. When it gets here, it will also turn the poplar leaves from green to silver as it passes. I can hear the birds. They let me know I’m alive. Otherwise I can’t move. I can’t go anyplace or do anything. Except wait. I wait a log, if that’s what it is. There’s marvelous patterns in this plywood by my bed. There’s mouths in the wood where they stamped out the knots and replaced them with wood. How many days have I spent here in bed? I’m not sick. I’m in prison. Every day I’m in prison. They give you a bed in prison. The others are out moving around, talking, playing. I can’t really hear them but I know they’re there.
In trouble. Linda’s always in trouble. You can be in trouble and someone who cares might come to help you. I was in trouble because I was bad. No one ever helped me, or even asked me how it was. I belonged to my mother and she could do anything to me that she wanted to.
One time she held my hand and burned my finger by holding it on the pilot light on the stove because I had forgotten to turn off a burner. At least she didn’t put my hand in the burner. My finger still hurt a lot.
One time at the log house [I was about 9] I drew a picture of a woman. I liked it. I was proud of it. I walked through the dining room into the kitchen to show her and she told me it was ugly. I felt hurt. I never drew again until last winter when I was 30.
I think one time she made me get in the dog house.
She spanked me a lot with my panties down. I wonder if others were around – especially my brother or my Dad.
Linda has been hurt. I don’t know what that word means.
One time in the high school locker room at high school I tried not to show my back when I took a shower and dressed because I had bruises on my back and on my legs.
One time when I was little my mother made me ride in the car on the floor of the back seat all curled up because I was a dog. I was on the floor behind Dad. She’d turn around in her seat and beat on me. There was nothing I could do. [I was 7.]
At the log house I used to have a fantasy that some men would kidnap me and tie me up and keep me in the back of a big truck. My parents would be worried because they loved me and they’d come to get me and be nice to me. They never did.
I used to lie in bed and pretend I was dying and people would be around me and cared and didn’t want me to die. I could give myself warm feelings by thinking like this. In the 8th grade when I was in school I would limp and pretend I had an injury so I thought people would look at me and feel sympathy.
When I was a junior I used to wear my loose-knit yellow sweater to school so that Clark who sat behind me would notice me. You could see through the knit. I’d put it on in the morning when mother was sleeping as we only had one car then and dad drove us out to Eagle River. One time she saw me wearing it and got angry.
June 20,1983 Monday (after midnight)
It’s been a long day. Appointment with Karen but was late – slept very well last night and didn’t wake up on time. Took car to Champlin and had it timed – lost 15 gallons of gas into the ground but hope I have hole patched for good.
May have a job peeling logs for someone building a log house. Also maybe yard work. Need money and need to trust HP for it.
Bought a card today with 23rd Psalm on it. I’d forgotten how much I loved that as a child. My grandma gave me a card once with an olive leaf on it from the Mount of Olives. I still have the card but not the leaf. I used to think it was very special to have that leaf. I looked at it a lot and thought about how far away it came from, where Jesus used to walk.
Someone told me tonight that I’ll be in trouble at Pine Tree meetings if I continue to mention past using that is not alcohol. I am defensive. I don’t like people mad at me. I don’t like making “mistakes.” Never in 2 ½ years of attending AA have I had that said. Seems narrow and unnecessary to me; but I am not “the group.” I’ve sensed an undercurrent of bickering among people and groups here I haven’t had to deal with in the past. Getting to see that side of the program, I guess – principles, not personalities. I’m taking it in stride. Probably when I’m an “old timer” I won’t be that rigid. Hope not, anyway.
Not a word about my session with Karen today. Left my mom covered up with dirt when I was 6 as I can go back and change things, maybe. I hope I make “progress.”
June 23, 1983 Thursday
Haven’t had much to say here lately. Peeled logs yesterday. Haven’t been paid yet – maybe $2 per hour. Not too impressive.
Going to Glyndon tomorrow AM. I miss the girls, but scared about being at home. It’s been almost four months since I’ve been gone. A long time. I’ll probably be back here Tuesday. It’s almost like I’m gong to my “other life.”
Debbie gets married Saturday. Probably too many people and too much excitement for me. I used to use [pot] in those situations.
Had one-to-one with Kathy. Talked about my anger at people who want to take care of me. And conflict as I do have needs. Kathy described some victim patterns.
A lot of work done in group tonight. I was quiet. Almost already “gone” to Glyndon. Was avoiding self and watching others.
Need to work on my dad and grandma. Smoking two packs a day and can’t afford it.
June 24, 1983 Friday.
Got to Glyndon at 11 AM. There’s no job here for me. I’m disappointed and angry. Been weeding flower beds and garden. Can’t find wire cutters so can’t stake flowers. I don’t like this damn flat land. I hate it. I wish we could have an auction and sell all the shit in this house. I don’t want to be here. There isn’t even any damn soap to do laundry here.
[2009 note: This was one ‘version’ of Linda writing here who can’t imagine returning to Glyndon. The ‘gone from home’ version of Linda lived 130 miles away and went to treatment. Yet by the 27th, I can’t imagine a Linda that wants to leave Glyndon. This version was organized and oriented around being a mother of children in the home, living in this house in this town, etc.]
I feel like I’m one of the walking wounded – feelings that don’t even belong to the here and now.
9 PM – Spent three hours with Leo talking in town. Went over to see Alice but they had friends and I left. Stopped to see Mary D. – not home, left note. Also to Barb H. Now at church for NA meeting. Marlin and others here as cars are here, scared to go in.
Went in the building – they’re having a steering committee meeting. Decided I didn’t want to stay hid in the bathroom for an hour, or go into the room – especially since Marlin’s in there. Second narrow escape for the evening without being seen. Didn’t want to be seen at Alice’s either. I feel like a ghost slipping around. I know steering committee meetings are open to us all – but I’m scared. I don’t want to intrude. Take risks Linda – act in spite of your fear, not because of it – you can grow – quit running and avoiding. OK, HP here goes.
June 27, 1983 Monday
Just finished reading Medicine Woman by Lynn V. Andrews.
I’d like a few more days down here. Arranged to get an oil pump put in the Ford and can get it tomorrow. Other places couldn’t get it in ‘til Thursday. I don’t know when I’ll be down here again.
Went to the folk’s for supper and to see Superman III with the girls. Wasn’t as good as others, but kind of good.
1:30 AM – Went up and at least made a dent in Ramona’s room – went through old school papers –
I’m not writing even to myself in here knowing someone else is going to read it. [2009 note: Must have been expected to bring the journal to therapy.]
As a woman I have little enough power that I know of – giving away my words is like giving away part of my power.
I have a lot of resistance to just picking up and going back to Bemidji tomorrow and yet I know I have to. I don’t have time to waste waiting in town tomorrow while he finishes the car. Maybe by 10 AM when Diania makes it in it’ll be ready.
[2009 note: This ‘version’ of Linda doesn’t want to leave, unlike the June 24th Linda who didn’t want to return ‘home’,]
Want to read Medicine Woman again when I’m clearer.
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I guess I did “give my words away” after this entry. There is nothing written in here for July that would cover the bulk of the treatment time span. Maybe I started a different journal for therapy, but I see no sign of it here. Maybe the treatment center kept it. The next entry in this journal is mid August 1983 and will be included in the blog next section
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Stop the Storm 