SPRINGBACK

After last week's blog I got quite a lot of feed back about Dennis giving the dog the boys and I loved away and my not saying or doing anything about it.  In the course of my stories there have been a lot of questions as to why I stayed in the marriage  - probably as many questions that through the years I asked myself.  Maybe it is time for a little history or perhaps a backstory that you did not catch before. Most of this I did not realize at the time.

I remember taking a physiology class in college that talked about how much we learn watching the behavior of our own parents growing up. I did not pay any attention to it at the time as I saw no relevancy in how it was connected to me in anyway. Couldn't see the forest for the trees as I looked at everything I learned growing up as perfectly normal.  I think my Mother even told me one time that all families behaved in the same way. Hopefully not everyone learned the "patterned behavior" I did.

Mother was the boss around our house and what she said was the rule of law.  I can't say I had an unhappy childhood in that I learned way before I started school how to behave.  Mother must have wanted a "girlie" girl as she always tried to make me look like Shirley Temple with the curls and the frilly dresses. I was, however, the tomboy of tomboys and arrived home with the hems torn out of my dresses and constant skinned knees from playing baseball in grade school.  She put me in classical piano lessons when I wanted to play rock and roll and dance lessons thinking I would be a ballerina but I only loved to tap dance. I went along with all of it because that was what a child did.

The only real problem was that I never stopped being that child. A child from the aspect that I did what I was supposed to do and never argued or tried to stand my ground on what I wanted to do. On the rare occasion that I did go against Mother's wishes or rules I knew what the consequences would be. Unlike getting a spanking for something I was told how stupid I was, how just because other girls got to do this or that I could not which was then followed by days or weeks of her not talking to me.  With the verbal abuse and silent treatment I guess I felt that I was such a bad human being that I wasn't even worth talking to. That set up the "yes, Mother" pattern, the child-like behavior of always agreeing with her even when I began to think she was a little nuts.  She was my Mother and I wanted her to love me at all costs.

Interesting how this pattern of behavior carries on and how you learn to cope and survive.  I guess there was something about Dennis when we were dating that felt comfortable until the day we got married.  I think that was the first time I heard "God dammit, Donna" when I accidentally sat on his sunglasses which were laying in my seat in the car. By the time the miserable honeymoon was over I ended up in the emergency room physically ill from the realizing I had indeed just married my Mother in terms of behavior. But like the child I had learned to be around my Mother I knew how to handle Dennis.  If I could just be good, do everything right, be the best wife in the world everything would be perfect.

So, here I was many years later still in the same situation, still trying to make life perfect for someone who is without a doubt the unhappiest person in the world.  For God's sake how could anyone be jealous of a pet!  But I had become the most optimistic person in the entire world and did not know what to do other than to carry on.  I had been told many times I was too stupid to be able to make enough money so I could pick out the house we lived in and incapable of taking care of the boys in the right manner.  Even though I knew better there was a lot of fear that maybe Mother and Dennis were right.

Being perfect took a lot of energy.  Dinner was always on the table at the precise moment he walked in the door, the lawn was mowed by 5:00 on Friday afternoon, the house was usually immaculate, the wash and ironing caught up and I could throw pretty nice dinner parties for people he worked with.  I managed to get to go back to college because he looked at it as me being able to make extra money for race cars but he was not happy with the thought that I might make more money than he did.  Actually I was probably trying to be perfect so other people liked me when I really just needed to believe Dennis and Mother liked or loved me.

Was I a miserably unhappy person?  No and I have actually told people I was the happiest person I knew.  The only person who can make you happy is yourself. In my few seconds of maybe being a little not-so-happy I looked around and found something new to do or to learn. I taught myself to sew when I was eleven so I could have clothes to wear I liked although I am glad I have no pictures of me in them as some of the first attempts were probably pretty bad.  Mother did not want to spend money on Prom dresses so I made my own and by that time they were pretty stunning.  I participated in every organization in school as well as speech, debate and musical theater.

Having brothers I learned car talk and how to take them apart and put them back together. I had to be careful and play sort of dumb after marrying Dennis and having race cars but there were many times when I could have told him why the car didn't run well.  Somehow that would not have gone over well. Out of necessity I learned how to paint, wallpaper, make drapes and home decor and upholster just because we could not at times afford to pay someone else to do it.  I could write a play, make costumes for Halloween the night before, put on jogging shoes and run three miles with Mother during her visits and never run another inch until her next visit.  The list of more silly things I learned to do goes on and on but it was the way I could tell myself that I really was okay.

All of the above relevations did not occur to me until many years later.  I can remember my brother, Paul, telling me he could be a brain surgeon if he had a book.  At the time I thought he was just teasing me but years later I realized that he was behaving much in the same way I was.  Like me he was always learning something new, changed careers a lot and was excellent at all of them. Not sure how that worked out for him but I could see the similarity in how we both behaved. 

Three or four decades of constant put-downs and mental abusive do not go away easily if ever.  But somewhere through the years I decided I had amazing Springback. This tree, meaning me, was not going to crash to the ground no matter how hard the wind blew or how hard anyone tried to put me down.

Life is actually filled with a lot of fun and fantastic things as long as you don'y live with the attitude of "oh, whoa is me".  Although it is difficult to laugh at things in the moment you can certainly feel great if you can realize how much there is in life to laugh about.  That was another good survival trick.