Help....

Asking for help is a privilege not a right. Many people would have nowhere to turn if they needed assistance making asking for it in the first place pretty pointless.  It is a life rattling experience when you realize that asking for help won't do you any good.  Ask all you want, but help won't come.  When this realization hit me for the first time, it hit hard.  I began to see the consequences of finally saying no to a family that had always heard yes.  All the support you thought you had in life disappears and you are left with the realization that nobody loves you unconditionally; nobody will be there to pick you up when you fall down.

A few months into my stay in Chile, my dad returned home.  His job in St. Louis hadn't worked out as he had planned and when he was denied every credit card that he had applied for, he had no other option than to return home.  Of course, my mom took him back forgiving everything he had done hoping that this time he had changed.  This left me as the only one who had betrayed him.  According to him, I had turned my back on him when he walked out on us.  Even though he had only written me once that year, it was my fault for not reaching out and trying to communicate with him while he was in Missouri.  My dad can take back any small token of love he had given so fast that you are left wondering if you had imagined receiving it in the first place.  I worked so hard to earn his approval and as it vanished behind his stoic discontent, it left nothing but a cold hollow wake on my heart.

Four months into my stay in Chile, my health began to diminish.  I believe that one's physical well being is directly related to one's mental well being, and my mental unrest was beginning to catch up to me.  As I became more settled in Chile, the thoughts of my past started to creep up to haunt me, and my health took a turn for the worse.  It began as a slight cold that slowly progressed into pneumonia.  Fatigue consumed me and prevented me from partaking in any of my daily activities.  I had to abandon my mountaineering club, my private lessons and teaching.  I was in and out of Chilean clinics getting inhalers, antibiotics and cough syrups, but nothing was helping.  The intense pollution and unheated buildings worsened my condition, but I believe my aching heart was the true culprit.

This went on for a month before I could not take another day.  I had to get help.  By this point, I had been unable to work for over two weeks which stopped my income, and most of my savings had been spent on doctor's visits and medications.  My ticket home was not for another six months and it was a nonrefundable unchangeable ticket.  My only option was to buy a new one which would cost $900.  At this point, I only had about $100 to my name.  When I called my mom for help, she told me that my dad had come home and that he would not allow her to help me get home.  He refused to help me because I had betrayed him; I had taken my mom's side when he left.  My mom made no argument and hung up on me not wanting to disobey her husband.

I got a credit card and put my whole ticket on it.  As I was flying home $1,000 in debt, fighting off my progressing pneumonia, I realized that I was completely alone.  Nobody was looking out for my best interest.  My mom, who I had supported as she rebuilt her life three different times after my dad had shattered it, refused to help me because my dad had asked her not to.        

From the Past

Every time that I moved somewhere new, I traveled with the hope of finding a place that would heal me.  Without admitting it to myself, I was hoping that moving would be the solution to the empty hole left in my heart.   Maybe my love for this amazing place would overtake my longing for the love of my family and leave me feeling whole.  I traveled through endless towns looking for this perfect place, found some pretty breath taking locations, but never mended the broken pieces of my heart. 

Moving was the greatest distraction to my unsolvable dilemmas.  I would find myself in a foreign land by myself trying to navigate my new home, finding a place to live, making connections, developing friendships, joining clubs, delving into new and exciting hobbies, and trying to learn a new language.  There was not a lot of time to remember the life I had left behind.  I became an expert at reestablishing myself.  There was no culture I could not mold myself to fit into, but while I was trying to mold into each of these new cultures, I was ignoring the one person that needed me the most.  Erin as the child who had lost her family.  I was forgetting the real reason I had fled to these far off locations burying myself under all the new identities I was taking on.

As I became more proficient at adjusting to each new location, it became harder to forget the past I was running from.  I would become established too quickly leaving me the time to start thinking again.  Thinking about the problems I had left behind, my mom who I had abandoned in that empty house with alcohol as her only comfort, my brother who was now going through a painful divorce and my dad who I had not heard from in over three months.  These truths began to catch up to me faster than I could run and the running was beginning to drain away my life.  I never found that amazing place that would magically heal my broken heart.  Healing had nothing to do with my physical location.

In a few months, I had become settled in Santiago, living with a girl from Colombia, teaching English at a community college, spending every weekend in the mountains with a local mountaineering club and learning Spanish simply by spending all of my time immersed in the language.  I told myself that this could be the place, I could stay here forever and permanently leave my past behind.  But three months into my life in Santiago, the signs of my unsettled soul began to emerge.        

The Power of Flight

Defense mechanisms save us from a detrimental situation before we are capable of dealing with it in a more permanent manner.  There is nothing wrong with using a defense mechanism to immediately remove yourself from a harmful situation as long as you realize that it will not be a permanent fix.  My defense mechanism has always been to run away.  Whether I was running away to a different life that I invented within myself, or running to the other side of the world, I was running from a reality that I was incapable of dealing with.  Fleeing from my reality was not the solution to the problem, but it did remove me from the whirlwind of confusion before I sunk too far in to crawl back out.

Two months after my mom and I returned home from Montana, I moved to Santiago Chile.  This was the first time that I was capable of recognizing why I was moving thousands of miles away.  The previous times that I had embarked on an extravagant adventure, I had masked my true motivation with a drive to discover the world when my one true desire was to have a home where I felt safe and loved.  When I left home this time, I knew that I was running away from my family and would no longer have a home to return to.  This made going out into the world that much more daunting, because I was beginning to face it alone.

In the last two months that I was with my mom, her drinking never improved.  There was nothing I could say or do to discourage her from using alcohol as a quick release from her deteriorating life.  My concern only forced her deeper into hiding.  Watching her destroy herself one drink at a time stole my soul and replaced it with an empty pit.  My love wasn't good enough.  The only person she wanted was the one person who had brought her to this point in the first place.  Her only fix was her only ruin.  She defended Rich with her life, saying that Betty just wasn't good enough for him; he needed someone who was capable of living up to his standards.  These faulty standards could be adjusted to make anyone look unworthy of love.  My family was killing me from the inside out, stealing the good in me and turning it sour.  The only way that I was going to survive was to run away.

As my mom watched me walk through the security gate at D.I.A., tears streamed down her sorrowful face.  I knew that this was the end of my life with a family.  I would remain in contact with my mom for one more year, but this was the moment that I realized my family did more harm to me than good.  Fleeing was the only way I could protect myself from their endless cycle of self destruction.

A Lonesome Path

A Lonesome Path

 

a Passion to Live

a Mind to Lead

a Heart to Give

a Path to Guide

a Hand to Lift 

and a Dream to Believe

what more is there?

a Dream as clear and vast as the sky

a Mind as set as earth's first stone

a Heart as pure as mountain lakes

a Hand that supports steady and strong

a chosen Path through life's unknown

must it be followed alone?

 

  

 The statement "people never change" is more realistic than one would hope.  As much as you pray, wish and believe that a person can change, it rarely happens.  Change takes an incredible amount of unrelenting effort.  It requires taking a deep hard look inside, seeing a side of yourself that you can identify and confront, then taking on the tenuous challenge of changing it.  It takes acknowledging this side daily and challenging it face to face.  Some days the old habit will win, some days you will not even be able to step outside of yourself long enough to see it, but on the good days, when you consciously fight the old habit into submission, you make a gradual step towards lasting change.  Most people find it easier to continue with a harmful habit than go through the arduous steps of change.  Most people never change.

I was a believer in change.  I thought that if I loved hard enough and fought hard enough, eventually, my mom would let go of her dysfunctional marriage and return to the life of the living.  I also believed that my brother would finally reach a point so low that he would have no option but return to the surface and breath the air of hope.  My beliefs only left me alone and disappointed.  Every time the realization struck that nothing had changed, another piece of my heart would turn to ash and blow away.  It took far too many times for me to finally give in and admit defeat.  I am incapable of changing my family.  I am incapable of making them love me the way I need to be loved.

During our trip to Montana, my mom's drinking hit an all time high. She was drinking box wine from a pint glass and could polish off an entire box in a night.  I could answer a question she had already asked three times only to have her ask it again two minutes later.  By seven o-clock, she was an incoherent bumbling heap of booze.  There was no conversing with her in a decent fashion.  Looking into her glassy eyes, I saw nothing but the sullen traces of a her perfect life floating away with each sip of alcohol.  She continually excused Rich's behavior, coming up with reasons why Betty had deserved everything he had done to her.  Betty just needed to be stronger and more reliable then Rich wouldn't be forced to treat her this way.  Nothing was ever the man's fault.   Betty, Rich and I sat down with my mom the night before Christmas and asked her about her drinking.  Her happy flighty attitude immediately turned black.
"My drinking is no concern of yours.  I am doing just fine, don't tell me how to live my life."  Her words stung and made us all feel guilty for even breaching the subject.

As we were leaving Montana, Rich took me aside and told me that it was my responsibility to look after my mom.
"Make sure she doesn't drink too much.  Look after her.  Keep her on track."  He ordered.
"I can't.  When I question her drinking, she gets angry with me and tells me to mind my own business."
"How hard can it be?  You have had it so easy in life, all you have to do now is look after her for a little while and control her drinking.  She's done so much for you, can't you do this one thing for her?"  The guilt I felt was unbearable.  This woman gave me life, and I couldn't even drag her off the dark path of alcoholism. I must be a terrible daughter.

Melting the Mask

By the time we got to Montana, Betty as the beautiful, confident, talented girl I had known was gone.  There was no longer an individual person behind her sorrowful eyes.  She had become a bi-product of Rich's abuse.  She was engulfed by who he told her she was; worthless, pitiful, lying, lazy, lost, hopeless, betraying, sad wife.  Being told all of these things over and over you start to believe them.  You disappear behind them.  Rich had gotten to the point where he would lock Betty in the house.  He would search through the garbage and call her a lying cheating whore if she had used a shaver.  He would stop by her work several times a day to make sure she was still there.  He would take her paychecks immediately after she had received them and give her a small allowance for "spending money."  Everything that went wrong was her fault.  If he forgot cigarettes, she became a useless horrible person for not remembering them herself.  He told her over and over that if she got pregnant he would use a skewer to poke it out of her.  He was "only joking."  They owned a Pit-bull Rottweiler mix and by now it had killed two dogs and put several into the animal hospital.  Betty said that Rich was horribly cruel to the dog.  I never got details.  How could this person be my brother?

I remember one day in particular.  We were driving up to a trail-head to go snowmobiling.  Rich had rigged up an old trailer to his Saab.  It was rickety, rusty and lacked all integrity.  We wove our way over the snow coated roads skidding slightly with the each slip of the trailer.  I was trying to make light conversation and mentioned that my ex-boyfriend, who Rich had only met once, had gone heli-skiing.
"Why do you always have to bring him up."  Rich growled.  I never talked about him.
"I don't, but he was a big part of my life, so naturally he comes up in some of my conversations.""
"He was a worthless, bad excuse for a man and you have no right to talk about him in front of me.  Why do you always have to entice me.  You know I don't like him."  Rich's face was turning red with rage as he went on and on about how Jim had been an awful person and that I was weak and useless for liking him.  It was as though me bringing him up had ruined Rich's whole life.
"Jim was a good person and you have no right to react this way because I mentioned him in a conversation."
"NO,NO, NO. Stop. Stop right now.  You are an idiot.  You have no idea what you are talking about.  Don't mention him around me.  How hard can that be?"  Rich exploded, screaming through the car and ramming his fist into the dash board.  My mom turned around and looked me straight in the eyes ordering,
"Erin stop making your brother angry, just stop."
This is how I had grown up thinking that it was my fault when my dad and brother would scream at me until I had no dignity left for stating an opinion different from their own.  If I spilled a glass of milk, my dad would slam his fist on the table and holler at me until I felt like I was the worst person in the world.  I got slapped and sat in the corner for an hour for asking the furniture man why he had so many buggers. When I was trying to get Rich to stop messing up my doll house, he turned around and punched me so hard that I couldn't stand up for ten minutes.  Somehow it was always my fault for provoking them.
"Erin don't make your dad mad."
"Erin stop provoking your brother."
"Erin why did that bother you so much?"  I grew up thinking that it was my fault that my brother hit me and my dad battered me with his words until I was afraid to say anything but what he wanted to hear.  I got really good at figuring out exactly what they wanted to hear and saying it at all times.
     
At the trail-head, while we were unloading the snowmobiles from the lopsided trailer, Rich realized that he had forgotten the cigarettes.  He screamed out in rage and slammed his foot into the car door turning his hateful glare on Betty.
 "Where are the cigarettes!"
"I don't know I thought they were in the top of the backpack."
"I give you one simple thing to do, remember the cigarettes and you forget them.  You are completely incapable.  why can't you remember one thing that I tell you?"  He had never mentioned cigarettes at the house.  He  stared down at her with a disdainful glare, as her eyes filled with tears and her voice diminished into a whisper.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."
"Ya well I'm starting to not believe you."

After riding in the forest for a couple hours, we made it back to the car where we would load the snowmobiles onto the decrepit trailer.  In order to get the snowmobiles onto the trailer, we had to lift the back end up so that it was at a 45 degree angle.  There was no device for holding the trailer bed in place once it was tilted upward, so Rich placed a block of wood under it.  We made a little ramp of snow in front of the trailer to help the runners jump over the rim of the bed.  Rich made his first attempt at pulling one of the heavy machines onto the trailer.  He had to get a bit of speed to make it up the 45 degree trailer bed.  As he pulled towards the trailer, the front runners nicked the rim of the bed.  The abrupt shock knocked out the block of wood and sent the trailer banging back into its horizontal position.  Rich got very silent as he sat on the snowmobile.  He never liked it when things didn't work out as planned.  The cloud of anger started to build around him and seep out towards us.
"You are going to have to hold the trailer in place." Rich snarled.
Betty and I took our positions behind the trailer holding it up trying hard not to remember the violent jolt that had previously knocked it down.  Rich revved towards the trailer and the front runners rammed into the bed sending a bone rattling impact up Betty's and my arms.  Betty and I dropped the back of the trailer tipping the snowmobile off the end as it rose back to its horizontal position.
"What the hell are you doing!  I told you to hold it in place damn it.  You are so useless.  Get back over there and don't let go this time."
Betty and I slunk back to our positions too afraid to disobey.  The snowmobile came roaring at us again and the same thing happened this time slamming Betty's hand into the metal railing and drawing blood.
"God Damn It!!!" Rich hollers.
"I'm not doing that again.  It hurt me."  Betty peeps.
"Well somebody has to.  It's the only way.  Stop being such a wimp and just do it."
"I'll do it."  My mom chimes in.  She stands in Betty's place while my brother slams into the trailer two more times before actually getting the snowmobiles up.  I walked away with a baseball sized bruise on my hip from the trailer slamming into me.  Rich wouldn't look at Betty the rest of the evening for disobeying him.  My mom never complained.

Betty only stayed with Rich a few more months after we left.  She said her turning point is when she had a snowmobile accident and ran the snowmobile into a tree.  As she was laying on the ground in shock, Rich ran right past her to the snowmobile grumbling about how she better not have damaged the machine.  At this moment, she realized that he valued an old piece of machinery over her well being.  When she got out of the hospital with a sprained wrist and severe bone bruising, Rich scolded her telling her she was never allowed to touch a snowmobile again due to her incompetence.  A month later she went to a friend's house after work and never went home. 
"

The Clearing

I have spent a lot time sharing the negative side of my story.  I would like to take a moment to share where I am now, and how this journey has molded me through soul searching into someone who is determined to build a life filled with meaning and love.  Like I said before, nobody is exempt from pain and loss.  It is how we either work with that pain or let it work against us that determines the outcome.  I have put a lot of effort into working with my pain to uncover its hidden blessings and turn my experiences into tools for self discovery.

My journey has currently brought me to Buena Vista, Colorado where I have been blessed with the peace and tranquility necessary to sit down with my pain and work through it.  My deck looks out on the snow capped Collegiate Peaks that loom over the tiny mountain town reminding us all just how small we are.  Everyday, I spend at least one hour alone with nature.  Mother nature is reassuring, guiding and inspiring.  In her, is a system that has worked in harmony for millenniums.  Life comes and goes always changing but never ceasing.  Everything works together as smaller pieces of a well balanced whole.  She reminds me that my role in life is not as an isolated individual but as a minor character in a play that will embrace my presence in the now, but that existed before me and will continue after me.  This thought reassures me with the perspective that my troubles, though seeming large in my reality, are but small droplets of water in the ocean that is life.

This town has also blessed me with loving friendships.  My friends here have reminded me what it's like to care.  They are beautiful people who support me through every bump that appears in my road small or large.  We share our dreams, fears and loves giving advise when needed, but mostly just providing an attentive ear.  Our differences are embraced and our individual strengths are cherished.  These girls are the reason I survive my day to day life.  Seeing them is like taking a breath of fresh mountain air.

My work as a teacher at the Link School brings me endless joy everyday.  When I don't get to see the kids, my mood noticeably deteriorates.  Each student has something wonderful to offer not only to my class but to the world.  Their curiosity and innocence are rejuvenating.  They make me laugh at least twenty times a day.  Sharing my love of language with them is a gift that brightens my life.  The school itself provides a safe haven for me, encouraging me to explore my creativity and use the knowledge that I have gained through travel.  At school, I feel the closest to being part of a family that I ever have.

Everyday I become one step closer to shedding the darkness of my past.  This blog is the first time I have released my story from the closet it has been looming in.  Before this moment, I have not known who to share it with.  I didn't believe that anyone cared enough to listen.  My family's drama outweighed my own needs and my voice went unheard.  Writing about my past is releasing the things that haunt me to the ears of anyone who cares enough to listen.  In following my story, you are helping me along my path of healing.  Thanks for listening.             

A Different Perspective

You could never argue with my dad or Rich without ending up feeling like you were a terrible person and had gotten everything wrong.  They have a way of spinning, twirling and reinventing words until you begin doubting yourself about something you had been undeniably certain.  Living with them made me doubt every thought or belief that I had.  Even my emotions became fabrications that were contrived to fit into their twisted realities.  It was difficult to get out of this cycle of doubt, because I had been taught not to believe myself.  How could I fight for myself when I didn't even believe my own side of the argument.  I had completely lost my voice, and that's exactly how they wanted me, voiceless.

It is still hard for me to accept the person that my brother has become.  When I look at him, I see the child that he was when I used to crawl into his bed on nights that my parents' fighting could be heard on all three levels of our house.  He has a face that screams innocence.  I know that he had taken the brunt of my dad's anger when we were children.  Rich took out his frustrations on me, because I had been able to maintain a semblance of happiness throughout our childhood.  He would hit me and my dad would come down and hit him.  Getting beat up by an older brother was not nearly as scarring as getting hit by your father.  I could stomach Rich's treatment because on some level I felt that I should suffer a little for him taking on my dad.  Rich always said that he had protected me from truths so ugly that they would have darkened my soul.  I believe him.  My heart aches thinking about the things he has endured.

I am still unaware of Rich's true life story.  There are so many pieces missing between him and I.  The worst things were always left unsaid, safely guarded secrets that kept all of us from seeing a terrifying truth.  As I kept myself busy and out of harms way doing an exchange year in Switzerland at 16, my brother was in and out of rehab, hospitals, jail and prison.  He couldn't face life sober.  I still don't know why he was sent to the Canyon City prison.  By the time I got home, he had made a plea bargain to do 6 months of rehab instead of completing his full term in prison.  I imagine it was drug related.  A few hand written letters arrived at my host families house in Switzerland.  They carried the voice of a scared and confused boy lost in a world that had beaten him down until there was only a scant trace of the innocent child he had been.  Sometimes his anger would seep off the pages as he described how he would murder the people that had hurt him or me and sometimes his words were sweet and loving promising me the chance of a healthy relationship with the healed person he was becoming.  None of those promises were ever realized.

Just like my dad Rich would give the false hope of recovery.  I would open my heart excited to rebuild a relationship and finally make up for lost time.  It would only last a couple of months before his inner demons got the best of him.  It would start slowly with a few temper tantrums or skewed perspectives and then it would diminish into him drinking and using.  His personality declined as his drug use increased until there was finally nothing left of the brother I had been getting to know.  I lost my family over and over throughout my life and somehow never gave up hope when they would make their promises of change.  My heart lost a little piece of itself each time.  I don't know if I will ever be able to glue the pieces back together.

Despite everything, I still love Rich.  I love him for who he once was before life handed him an abusive father and mother that couldn't stick up for herself much less her children.  He loves me too in the rare moments that he is able to step back into his reality without mind altering substances or haunting memories.  I could no longer cling to these sparse moments of sanity, I had to realize that the person he had become was no longer the loving brother that I saw on the rare occasion.  He had become somebody else, he had let his demons win.  Saying goodbye to his evil side was a relief, but letting go of that brother that got sweet bliss from taking apart appliances and rebuilding them and jumping off the deck into piles of snow and sledding down our favorite sled hill in our favorite forest canceled out any relief and broke my heart.

The Distance

Escape.  A lasting escape from an entangling web takes planning, diligent work and great conviction.  You can not escape with a wavering heart and expect it to last.  There may be times that you are able to flee a situation and avoid its immediate consequences, but eventually, you will find yourself returning to its grasp.  In order to make a lasting change, the escape must be done with deliberate care.  I was a master at fleeing, but to make my great escape, I would need much more strength than I currently possessed.  

Despite her evening indulgence in alcohol, my mom was able to maintain a solid face around the community.  She played the part of dedicated wife, tying up the loose ends left by a husband who was starting a new life somewhere else.  On the surface, she appeared to be doing well for herself.  She started a tutoring business that helped her pay the bills and feel needed guiding lost teens through their struggles in high school.  Meanwhile, her internal life was falling apart.  She was on the verge of claiming bankruptcy, unable to pay the mortgage, business loans and car loans with a bank account that had been drained by a delusional husband.  She was selling off whatever pieces of her life she could sacrifice; furniture, cars, televisions, computers, old office supplies.  She had to turn to her friends to loan her money so that she didn't get her life repossessed by the banks.  Her sobs could be heard all through the house as she wept for the image of her life that was slowly pealing off the walls.

I began tutoring with her.  We were building the business together, slowly adding clients in every high school subject.  It made her happy to have me as a partner.  She loved the idea of building something with her daughter.  While we were at work, we seemed like the ideal mother daughter duo complimenting each others skills perfectly.  At home, I was struggling to keep my head above water.  I was getting tired of comforting her.  I was tired of watching her drink.  I was tired of carrying her happiness on my shoulders.  I was looking for a way out. 

For Christmas, we went to Montana where Rich and Betty had been living.  They had recently moved from a little cabin up a deserted mountain valley to a house in the town of Whitefish. Betty was still with Rich and despite my previous encounter with them, I actually thought that maybe things were starting to improve in their marriage.  Maybe, Montana had been just what they needed.  It still shocks me how easily I can forget the harsh truth and put back up my optimistic blinders.  It didn't take long for the truth to reveal itself.