My Washing Machine Broke and I Cried

I know that seems kind of extreme.  I think it’s been the month…maybe its the lack of sunshine….maybe it just been 50 different things going wrong in a short period of time.  I usually handle things relatively well but, here I sit, tears streaming down my face because my washing machine broke.  The drier was already broken.  Well, it dried the clothes but, it took a while because the heating element burned out.  It did dry them though.

I think this whole thing started the week before I went to court to get full custody of my daughter.  My anxiety was through the roof a full week prior…peaked when the guy who was so broke walked into court with a Lawyer telling lies right to my face.  I mean do or say anything to me but DON’T ever tell me something about myself that isn’t true.  The real truth was revealed thanks to my excellent record keeping but, to hear the Father of your two children say those things just so he could save a buck…..it took the wind out of me.  It felt like I was seeing the evidence of how little he cared about them presented in front of me.  I honestly don’t care what he or anyone has to say about me.  It was that he was motivated to say these things to save himself money.  That hurt me more than anything.  He used to be a good father.  Now, neither of my kids will even talk to him.  I feel their pain physically.  It drained me to know that he cared so little about them.

So, I need a new washer and dryer and my kids are sad.  I have a male friend (the one who sent me the confusing poem) who simply adores me and would do anything for me but, there’s always a fucking ‘but’, isn’t there.  He pursued a relationship and then pulled out the “I am not ready”, rug out from under me.  I see him and everything is great ,and then I leave and who know what’s really going on.

Now, I am stuck going to a black tie event with him on Saturday and the only good think I can think of about it is that I will have a designated driver and a decent meal…..the rest I don’t even want to think about.   I don’t understand it.  If I am not into someone I don’t go out with them nevermind buy them things and bring them places.  I just tell them that I am not into them in a kind way.  With this guy its mixed messages central.  I feel bad every time I see him because I think it’s going to change…it feels like it has changes and then I go home and realize nothing has changed.

I am going to see a house tomorrow so we might be moving in two weeks.  Yes, I said two weeks.  I have nothing packed.  Luckily, I keep throwing things away that I don’t use so it won’t be that awful but, it’s over-the-top stressful to move in the best circumstances.

`With all this going on, the last thing I need right now is to get all dressed up and go out Saturday night.  It’s too late to cancel…I made a promise.  I’m just afraid the wine will get to me and I will start crying on the way home.  I know this is the last time I will see him.  He doesn’t know that.

I think I’m just going to tell him I’m crying because my washer and dryer are both broken.  Then I will tell him I can’t see him anymore between wiping my eye makeup all over my face and blowing my nose.  Knowing him, I will have a new washer and dryer delivered the next day because he is genuinely a kind (but, horribly confused) person but, I know I need to end things for good.  I feel like a Yoyo.  I would never do that to someone so, why is he doing it to me?  I keep telling him that something is wrong but I won’t tell him what.  He keeps telling me he is here for me….drawing me in deeper, only to give me the already heard, ‘I am not ready for more’, speech.  Last time he started, I interrupted him and basically said all the things he was going to say.  That’s how many times I’ve heard it.  I’m bored with it now.

I just have to keep thinking that in a month all of this will be over.  New house.  No “boyfriend”.  My children’s Father will crawl back into his hole.  I will get a new washer and dryer and my life will be back to normal.  I will be blissfully alone.  My life devoid of men.  Apparently, having one around breaks my concentration so when something minor like an appliance breaks it throws me overboard.  If I’m alone, all I have to do is figure out how I’m going to solve my latest problem.  I am better alone More centered.

I was talking to an old friend today.  I asked her if her husband would be going to the event with her Saturday night and the floodgates broke.  She started telling me that she is horribly unhappy and how emotionally abusive this man, who she once loved, is.  He told her that no one will ever love her.  What kind of thing is that to say to the Mother of your children.  I’m sort of glad he isn’t going because I would have made a comment or two to him.  I asked her why she stays and she says she it to afraid to raise her kids on her own.

That got me thinking.  I do cry over things like appliances but, I don’t have to live with someone who emotionally abuses me…so, maybe my life isn’t so bad.  Now, I just have to get rid of Mr Indecisive and maybe a broken washer won’t make me cry.  I am positive if he were not in my life I would be reacting in a more appropriate manner.  He just serves as a reminder to me of what I don’t have in my life…..someone to call to talk about the broken washer and help me figure out what were going to do next.

Sometimes the people in your life who are not supposed to make you feel alone, end up doing just that.

The Agony of Ignorance

Ten Years ago,  I had just gone through a nasty divorce and was severely depressed.  My Stepmother was going through two cancer surgeries with brutal chemotherapy and my Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer at exactly that same time.  I felt stupid going to them for support during my divorce while they were fighting for their lives.  I was alone in my fear.  After trying many different antidepressants and finding no relief, I complained to my MD that I was experiencing physical pain and she gave me percocet.  Physical pain is a symptom of depression.  I found that the percocet took the edge off.  My next visit she asked me how it was working and I told her it helped a little so, she gave me oxycontin.  Oxycontin is the time release form of oxycodone.  It can last from 8 to 12 hours in your body for pain relief and is a great drug for cancer sufferers….not depressed people.  If my depressed mind were thinking correctly I would have recognized this.  My depressed mind just wanted to feel better.  When depressed, a persons mind is not thinking normally…it is very obvious to me now, that mine was not.

After a while of this, I asked her to stop giving it to me and she never even mentioned getting help for my depression.  I was ok for 3 months and began diverting.  I am a Nurse and diverting means taking narcotics from work.  I never took anything that was meant for a patient.  I did not divert much and got caught almost right away.  My Boss called me at home and told me that I was being investigated by the hospital and the police for diverting narcotics.  I dropped the phone and curled up into a ball and cried.  I was so alone and felt that to the core of my being.  Finding yourself in the fetal position, knowing that your body went there automatically as a response to such deep emotional pain that your mind shuts off is something I never want to experience again.

My union rep told me the best thing to do was go in and fess up to what I had done…..so, I did.  I was secretly recorded and the hospital lawyer told me the police would be in contact with me to have me arrested.  I was devastated.  They acted like they were going to help me but, were only tricking me into confessing so they could destroy what little there was left of me.  I went home that night and sat in my garage with my car running and a full tank of gas.  I knew carbon monoxide was the easiest way to die. You just fall asleep.  The only thing that made me turn off the car was that I knew my kids would be the ones to find me.

I was working at UCONN Medical Center in Farmington, Connecticut.  I sought out treatment and the insurance would only cover one visit with an addiction counselor once a week even though my counselor TRIPLED the amount I used in order to get me into treatment.  The DPH treated me like I was a common criminal and was intent on making my life as much of a living hell as they could.  I could not afford a lawyer for that case or the pending criminal arrest.  Somehow I was steered toward UCONN Law School where they provided free criminal representation provided by the students with the Head of the Criminal Law Department overseeing them.  Luckily for me, he took a special interest in my case.  The investigator for the CT DPH was angry at UCONN for arresting their nurses because they felt it put patients further at risk because a Nurse would be less likely to try and get help if she or he feared arrest.  I was required to provide her with a statement and she advised me to have my lawyer make the statement for me so that it would be considered hearsay.  She knew the state Police were waiting for my statement so they could use it to arrest me.  She called me a week later and told me not to tell anyone she called and that I was NOT going to be arrested because of lack of evidence thanks to her.

During that time, at the lowest point in my life, I also managed to write a letter to the President of UCONN Medical Center asking for a meeting with various state agencies, the CT Nurses Association, the DPH (they all agreed to attend)and a threat to go public in regards to how a Hospital that was doing research on addiction was treating it’s Nurses this way. It was because of me that UCONN stopped arresting it’s impaired Nurses.  I am the type of person that can make things happen when I believe in myself.

I was then put on a 4 year probation by DPH that required weekly random chain of command urines and weekly counseling…for FOUR years!  I was mistreated by my employer and any misstep, my fault or not, was reported to the DPH and I was harassed and degraded on a routine basis.  If I had the sniffles

co-workers would snicker and whisper about how I must be snorting cocaine.  I have not ever used or even seen illegal drug,  My consent order (probation order) was, and still is, online for anyone who looks up my license to see.  Anyone who googled me was brought to that page.  It was humiliating.  My kids were young at the time.  I never used any drugs around them or when they were in my care.  I planned to tell them all about what I had gone through when they were grown and better able to understand it.

One day, during a hand off of the kids with my volatile ex husband he, as usual flew into a fit of rage.  He ended this fit of rage by screaming, “You are nothing but a piece of shit drug addict.”  This was after me not using any drugs for over a year.  My kids were standing right there…..six and nine years old.  I was stunned.  I later found out, that his wife had looked up my license at a party and the entire group of people at the party laughed and ridiculed me.  I shook the shock I felt out of  body and looked over at my children’s beautiful faces and saw such confusion.  I got my bearings and ushered them into the car and was forced to have a conversation with them that I didn’t feel any child should have to hear.  Their father had forced my hand so, I made the best of it, telling them everything, and they were amazing.  They both knew how distraught I was even though I did my best to hide it.  The kindness and love they offered me was probably not the outcome their father was expecting.

I could not live my life without this haunting me.  Nine years later it still haunts me.  If I applied for a job, I would never even get a call because they look up your license.  I actually, have been applying for jobs for years now compiling a list of all the jobs I don’t even get a call for.  My resume is amazing and I am a very experienced and knowledgeable Nurse. Before this happened, I got a call for an interview for virtually every single job I applied for.   On a personal level, my dating life suffered.  I would meet someone and hit it off and everything would go well until they learned my last name and googled me.  They would then never contact me again.  I was not even given the opportunity to explain what had happened.  I lost friends.  People avoided me as if I had murdered someone.  Eventually, my computer savy son made me invisible to search engines (I didn’t ask how).  I love that kid.

I have suffered from, at times,  debilitating anxiety and depression since then.  I was diagnosed with PTSD a few years ago related to that experience.  I still work as a Nurse but, occasionally  take leaves of absence because of my anxiety/depression.  I am forever changed because of this experience.  It was only recently by the director of a substance abuse clinic that I was told that I was NEVER an addict.  I was an abuser.  I never went through withdrawal.  I have no desire to use any type of narcotics.  I have never recovered financially.

They mandated me, at the time, to go to Narcotics anonymous and the other addicts couldn’t understand why I was there.  They all told me I wasn’t an addict.  They told me I got the death penalty for jaywalking.

Now, I know some of you may be reading this thinking I got what I deserved.  I am acutely aware of how negatively people with substance abuse issues or even histories of them are viewed.  I see it every day at work, in the media, in personal conversations with people who do not know my history.

My profession tried to destroy me.  My ex husband tried to destroy me.  All for something that is now considered to be a disease by the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association.

I was not destroyed…just knocked off kilter for a while.

So, if you get anything from this, educate yourself.  It has been proven that the outcomes for overcoming drug or alcohol abuse are greatly improved by treating the addict with kindness.  This whole movement of abusing them further, humiliating, degrading, punishment, and imprisoning them is not working.  That is painfully obvious.  When you are in a room speaking unkindly of people suffering from addiction, remember, I might be in that room standing there silently listening to you assassinating my character without you even knowing you are doing it.

The few people who were kind to me got me through this.  I am now at the point in my life where I don’t care who knows.  It is a part of my distant past that has made me who I am.  It has taught me more about compassion that anything in my life ever has.  I feel lucky for that.

Thank you for giving me courage Michael Lawrence Langan, MD

http://disruptedphysician.com/

Happy New Year’s Eve!!!! (from my couch…at home…lol)

Being able to frequent NYC basically anytime I want, due to close proximity,  Makes me wonder why on earth ANYONE would go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve!!!!

Be safe everyone!!!!!

My Choice to Remain Single After my Divorce

In the ten years since my divorce became final I have dated occasionally but, nothing serious.  My Ex-Husband, on the other hand, remarried 4 months after our divorce.  I will never forget the Sunday evening my son came home after a weekend visit and announced to me that his Daddy got married.  He then went on to explain that the Friday evening his Dad picked him and his sister up they got in the car with their father’s girlfriend and her young daughter and his Dad would not tell him where they were going.  They ended up at a Town Hall and at that time my son didn’t even know it was a Town Hall.  He told me they walked in, his Father still not telling him what they were doing there.  My son then told me that as the “ceremony”, proceeded he began to understand what was going on.  He began to understand that his Dad was getting married.  He told me he just stood there with tears in his eyes and shook.  I will never understand why his Father and his new Bride thought it was a good idea not to explain what was going on that day.  I will never understand how they thought it would be a delightful surprise for my 9-year-old son and his 6-year-old sister to stand and watch their Daddy get married 4 months after our divorce was final.

My children both came home that Sunday night and cried in my arms.  If I had known about the pending marriage I would have lovingly prepared them for it.  We would have talked about it in a positive manner and my son would not have stood there shaking and crying.  I have no idea how my six-year-old Daughter’s young mind processed the event and that scares me even worse than my son’s expression of crying, shaking and then eventually coming home and speaking to me about it.

This was the beginning of the damage to my children courtesy of their Father and his new Bride.  His new Bride has never acknowledged me respectfully.  We have never had a conversation.  She turns the other way when she sees me.  This has gone on the tens years that she has known my children.  She routinely spoke disrespectfully of me to my children.  I was routinely the subject of ridicule between her and my children’s father as they encouraged my confused children to join in.  My son came home after each visit detailing the things she had said about me and what a terrible Mother she thought I was.  At some point, the object of her inexplicable wrath turned toward my children.

Suddenly, my children would come home crying after each visit, clinging to me for hours as we lay on my bed together, me comforting them.  They were accused of stealing money, food, candy and many other things during each visit and that perplexed me to no end because these were two children who had never done such things in my home or anyone else’s home that I knew of.  Eventually, my children went to their Father’s home on the court appointed visits and locked themselves in their rooms in order to avoid they stepmother’s rage and their own Fathers refusal to stand up to her and protect them.  I begged my Ex-Husband to put an end to the abuse of his children on a daily basis.  I put my Children into counseling.  My Ex-Husband refused to participate in their counseling sessions.  The court system does little to recognize the lasting effects of emotional abuse so, I had little I could do except love them and try to help them understand something that even I had a difficult time understanding.  The pain my children were feeling was felt ten-fold by me.

My home became their sanctuary.  It became a safe place where they were not being accused of doing things that they didn’t even do.  They spent all their time with me.  They never even went into their rooms, nevermind locking themselves in their rooms, other than at night to sleep.  I spent every moment I could with them.  I loved them with every bit of my heart.

It was during all of this, that I came to the conclusion that my home would be their safe place.  The place where they were free to wander around without being verbally attacked.  The place where they could go into the refrigerator to get a drink without being chastised.  It was the three of us living in a loving, respectful home.  We were a family.  Eventually, as my children got older , they perfected the art of making excuses to not go to their Father’s home.  They have now not spent the night there for over 7 years.  They have little contact with their Father.  He lives two miles away.  I have spent the last seven years begging and pleading with him to spend more time with them to no avail.  My children basically don’t have a Father.  I have taken on the role of Mother and Father for them.  We have a loving, healthy family of three.  My children love and respect one another immensely.  I have never once had to break up a sibling brawl.   We talk and talk and talk about everything.  I will do anything in my power to make their dreams come true.

I could not have done all of this had I been out there searching for Mr Right.  I could not risk finding a Man who was one person before I married him and then became another.  I could not ignore the very real fear my children felt about losing me to someone as they had lost their Father.

I do not know if my sacrifice will help or harm them.  I do recognize that having them witness a healthy relationship would have benefited them greatly.  I did the best I could.  I am still doing the best I can.

My Peace

When the stress of raising my kids on my own gets to me, I often forget where to go to find my Peace.

I need to stop forgetting.

OMG, I Told the Lady Working at my Bank to Burn in Hell

Christmas is a time of cheer.  A time of  family, love and giving.

For me it’s a time of unadulterated stress.  The stress of trying to make my kids happy while searching for new ways to manage to buy gifts for them and balance my money in order to have food in the house, a house that is heated, not having the electricity shut off and not getting an eviction notice.  That is where my mind is.  My face and general demeanor suggest that I am cheerful, happy and in the spirit of Christmas.  I have become a master of disguise but, the disguise is fragile and can crack at anytime.

Last week my direct deposit did not get deposited into my bank account.  It was some sort of system error that was resolved but, not before several overdraft charges had accumulated.  If you are a single Mother you might be familiar with overdraft charges….most single Mom’s I know are.  The banks love single Mom’s.  So, I went into the bank and spoke to this nice woman who happily refunded me all the charges and told me to come back the next day to get one last overdraft charge removed.  I walked out relieved that I had another $210 in my bank account.

The next day I went back and a different woman was working at my bank.  I explained the situation to her and how I was told to return for that one last charge to be removed.  She wasn’t as nice as the previous employee and proceeded to tell me that she wasn’t so sure I should have been refunded for some of the charges.  I explained to her that her coworker and I had gone through everything and that what I was refunded was correct.  She frowned at me.  That judgmental frown.  My defenses went up.  I mumbled something about how her bank loves to take advantage of single Mothers.  She looked at me with a glimmer of glee in her eyes and said, “Well, if you didn’t spend more money than you have you wouldn’t have this problem”.  It was on.

I asked her if she was a single Mother raising two teenagers on her own.  The smugness left her face and she remained silent.  I asked her again.  Still silent.  I then told her it must be wonderful to have a second income, what a relief it must be to have someone to rely on.  Silence.  I told her that I hoped if she ever fell on hard times that she would not meet someone such as herself.  Silence.  I got up, tears threatening to fall from my eyes and turned to leave.  My heart hurting.  All the fear, stress, and worry bubbling up to the surface of my mind and settling in my chest making my heart feel like it weighed 300 pounds.  I started to walk away.  I turned and looked at her.  Her smugness had returned to her face. I calmly, quietly told her to burn in hell and walked out of the bank.

I walked to my car.  Got in and cried my eyes out hating myself for what I had just done. Hating myself for letting her get to me like that,  Hating myself for not being that woman who handles herself appropriately.  Wishing I could love Christmas and feel at peace just one time during a Christmas season.

I dried my eyes and drove off to finish my errands.  I saw a Police Officer sitting at the side of the road and pulled up to his car.  He rolled down his window with the look of wonder as to why I was pulling up next to him.  I went into my glove box and pulled out a $5 gift card for Dunkin Donuts from the stack of them I keep in my car each year during the Christmas season for just this reason.  I reached out and handed it to him and thanked him for the service that he does.  He looked surprised and then smiled.  I could see the gratitude in his eyes.  He thanked me and reached out and shook my hand and introduced himself.  The warmth of his hand in mine for that brief second meant more to me than he will ever know.

His hand in mine reminded me of who I really am because, that one comment from that woman who works at my bank made me forget.

Still Standing

With all of the past looming in the background and the future remaining uncertain…I’m still standing and I honestly have no idea how.

The “right now” that I am in, is cluttered with the things I have done, the things I have not done, and the things I still have to do.  I beat myself up constantly even though I know that for all I’ve been through, things are not so bad.  I feel battered and beaten yet, somehow I get up each day and keep going.  The fuel that keeps me going is love.  My Children.  My 18 year old son and my 15 year old daughter.  Both honors students set on bright futures.  Both knowing that they have a Mother who would walk through fire for them.  Both with a strong sense of right and wrong. Both loving, sweet, intelligent and thoughtful.

In all the chaos that has almost constantly streamed through my mind in the past 10 years, I must have done something right.