Extreme Makeover: Chapter 4---Started December 7, 2011

Mom said she had tried to “walk off” her labor pains during the night of December 22^nd of 1949. In those days you stayed in the hospital after having a baby, they didn’t kick you out the very next day.

She told me she didn’t want to ruin John’s 3^rd Christmas. I don’t know how many times she actually told me that. It could have been just once, but it stuck with me and my interpretation, or the beliefs I gleaned from it changed throughout my lifetime. I think it depends on where I was in my life when my mother FIRST told me that as to how I absorbed it and what I felt it meant. At various times throughout my life, however, I interpreted it to mean that she didn’t really want me to come; that my arrival was an inconvenience and that I very clearly took a backseat to my older brother. I remember thinking at some point “He was three!! You mean you couldn’t have delayed a three year old’s Christmas by a few days and bring him a Christmas present of a baby sister? He would never have known his Christmas had been delayed by the birth of his sister.” Lucky for me, it was pretty clear that my brother really liked having a baby sister (at least until I became a really BIG, royal pain in his butt)!!

Anyway, I guess I was determined to come into the world ‘cause she wasn’t able to walk off those labor pains and I was born around seven in the morning on December 23^rd. People have asked me my whole life if I felt cheated because my birthday was so close to Christmas. I have to say honestly, that I never did. I either got MORE presents in two days than most people, or more EXPENSIVE combination presents. Mom also made pretty strong efforts to make sure my birthday was celebrated separately from Christmas, and most years she succeeded.

When I was 8 or 9 months old I was separated from Mom and Dad overnight because I had Roseola (a form of German measles, I think), and a temperature of 106. In those days they wouldn’t let parents stay overnight with their sick babies. This event would likely not have left a huge impact on me (and maybe it really didn’t) had not other events followed later in my childhood. Mom DID frequently tell the story of when they came to get me the next day. I apparently saw them through the window of the nursery and she said my brow furrowed into a deep frown and began to turn red. I looked at them as if to say “How could you do this to me?” began to scream and turned away from them burying my face in the mattress. She reported that she turned to my dad and said something to the effect of “Oh my God, Jack, remember that look on her face!!” I often questioned how much impact such an event could possibly have had on an 8 or 9 month old baby until I held my niece Katherine in my arms when she was about that age. She had so much personality and a well defined temperament already and I realized that leaving her overnight at a hospital, sick with a high fever, would, indeed, cause a response!! A sense of abandonment, perhaps that an infant’s mind could not express except to cry and give her parents that “look.” Still, it appeared that I recuperated quickly and went back to being a pretty happy baby. Mom often said that I was her easiest birth, but that I’d made up for it ever since!! Seems that “look” was just a forewarning of more to come.

Mom also told me (and I’m sure this was said MORE than once), that I was the only one of her children born so fat that I had creases in my thighs. Someone recently tried to tell me that the statement was just one of those things I had heard and so I became convinced I had always been fat. The photos bear out the truth of it, though. I WAS always fat. I never thinned out. I never outgrew my baby fat. After babyhood and the toddler stage, Mom always had to buy my clothes from the “chubby” section. By the time I was 6 or 7 it was already hard for her to just buy clothes for me and bring them home. I perceived this problem as a significant frustration for her, and actually going shopping WITH her was usually NOT a fun and pleasant experience. I translated her frustration into the belief that she thought I was a pain in the ass. I felt to blame for Mom’s frustration. I was unable to become a Brownie or a Girl Scout because Mom couldn’t afford to buy new uniforms and she couldn’t find anyone chubby enough to provide hand-me-downs. So, I was chubby…a word considered to be nicer than “fat.”

I have a “sense,” just a glimmer of a “feeling”, even though my dad was already gone, that I was a pretty content and happy child until age 6 when Mom married my stepfather. Sometime before the marriage, I recall Mom asking the three of us what we would think if she married Don, a man she had apparently been dating off and on. My initial response in my head was “NO WAY.” What did I know at six other than my gut response? Then John spoke and said “whatever makes you happy, Mom.” Seems like that was John’s life, trying to give or do whatever made Mom happy. I, on the other hand, had not even considered Mom’s happiness and didn’t even KNOW why my true, initial response had been negative. That day was the first time I REMEMBER feeling ashamed of myself. It was because I hadn’t considered Mom’s happiness at all. So, after John spoke, I felt terrible and just parroted his words to my mother saying, “yeah, Ma, whatever makes you happy.”

She married him on her birthday in November of 1956 and I turned seven in December. I remember knowing by Christmas of that year that things were not really good in our house. I can’t tell you what specifically made me know or feel that, but I know that it was pretty evident (at least to me) that something was awry. By the following April or May when preparing for my First Communion I have specific memories of wanting to kill my stepfather and of hating my mother for bringing him into our house. I remember studying the things we had to memorize about first communion and to prepare for our first confession before we had the first communion. I remember kneeling on a portable kneeler in our dining room posing for my first communion pictures in my fancy white dress and my veil with my prayer book in hand, pretending to be holy and that I was looking forward to the event.

By this time I had told my protestant neighbor that she wasn’t going to go to heaven. When she objected very strongly I began to think about it. It made no sense. Patty was a good girl. She didn’t talk back to her mother, didn’t hate her mother or dad, didn’t want to kill anybody. It didn’t make sense that she would not go to heaven just because she wasn’t Catholic.

I began to doubt what I was being taught and most certainly did not believe that the little round wafer we were soon to receive was actually the body of Christ. I did not know the word hypocrite then, but that’s how I felt. In my mind, based on my childish understanding, my soul had to be VERY black and filled with mortal sin. Hating one’s mother had to be a mortal sin. Wanting to kill one’s stepfather had to be a mortal sin. Not believing that the wafer was the body of Christ had to be the worst of those sins and I didn’t feel I could tell ANYONE anything about all those feelings, least of all confess them in a confessional. So, when first confession time came I continued to hide my true feelings and confessed to “venial” sins of lying to my mother, stealing change from her purse, talking back to my teacher and other similar things. I was given my penance and said the prayers dutifully, hoping that somehow my soul might be cleared, but knowing there was no way that was going to happen. Thus began the pattern of hiding my true feelings from everyone. I went through the charade of first confession and first communion, received the gifts, endured the party and all the attention, all the while feeling like a “big fat lie.” The cement of bad feelings about myself began to cure and dry in place.

Subsequently, other dynamics of my childhood built more and more cement around that belief that I was bad and unforgivable and I began to believe that God did not love me. I already believed that my mother loved me less than my brother and now I began to believe that there was no way God could love a person like me. I remember when I learned the word hypocrite how often I accused my brother of being one when all the while I knew it was I who was the hypocrite. I attended mass and took communion 6 days a week throughout my grammar school years always feeling like a hypocrite.

I began to act out my anger and hostility and my relationship with my mother deteriorated very quickly into a seriously combative one. Soon it was I who had to keep my mouth shut in our house, not my unreasonable and violent stepfather. I became angrier and angrier as I felt one insult after the other was being piled on top of all that cement that was already pretty thick. Every year Mom had to go see the teacher because my behavior in school was unacceptable. I was mouthy, talked a lot, talked back to my teachers and was combative with other students (in later grammar school years).

I remained “chubby” until 7^th grade when I had an emergency appendectomy. My stepfather never believed I was sick, even after the appendix was removed and the doctor said it had been as big as a softball. When I came home after surgery in Spring of my 7^th grade year, I began to gain weight. I only remember that because I gained it so quickly that the incision spread open in the center and took a very long time to heal. I think I may have weighed about 150 before the surgery. By graduation from 8^th grade a year or so later, I weighed 210 pounds and my weight was a huge bone of contention between me and my mother.

I think Mom had started in on my weight when I was around nine telling me that I needed to lose weight before I started my periods or I might have to battle my weight my whole life. She told me boys wouldn’t like me because I was fat; harped on me to stop running over my shoes…to walk on the insides of my feet; watched everything I ate; told me what I could and couldn’t eat; put me on diets with her; tried everything she could to control what I ate. Thus, I began to “sneak” food and steal change from her purse to buy candy on the way home from school. These habits had kept my weight in the “chunky” clothes and made it impossible for me to wear hand-me-downs which Mom complained about each time she had to buy me new clothes. Most of this stuff resulted in a lot of rebellion on my part and Mom and I fought a lot over those years. It was when I was in 8^th grade that she divorced my stepfather. I even got in a fight with a classmate because she had made a smart-aleck remark about my “parents being divorced.”

I would hear Mom defending herself to my Aunt Joie over the phone telling her that she couldn’t control what I ate and defending other things that she did with us kids. We were forbidden to tell Aunt Joie bad things that we had done and Mom was reluctant to share the bad reports of my behavior at school as well.

By this time fighting with Mom and then going off to sob in my room had become regular household fare. John would often come to comfort me even though he didn’t fully understand my behavior, what I was so angry about or why I couldn’t just shut my mouth. He’s the only other one who remembered what life had been like prior to mom’s second marriage. I spent many nights crying to my father’s picture asking Him why he left me. I cried to God many of those nights too, asking him why he took my dad away. I yelled at God a lot too for taking my dad, ‘cause life would have been so different if he hadn’t and mom would never have married my stepfather. Many nights I begged God to tell me what I had done that was SO bad that he didn’t love me. I couldn’t fathom why I deserved to be so unhappy, fat and not acceptable to my mother and my Aunt Joie. Why was I such a disappointment to them? Why didn’t God love me. I couldn’t figure that out. Later I convinced myself that God was just damned MEAN and I stayed mad at him for many, many years.

I wasn’t mad at God just for myself. I was mad at him for how he allowed so many bad things to happen. We used to get these little red Mission magazines that showed pitiful pictures of starving African children, covered in dirt, with runny noses, skinny as rails with distended bellies from starvation. If God was so good, how could he allow such things to happen to these poor little children? The booklets were designed to encourage people to send their money to support the missions which were trying to help these children. If you contributed a certain amount of money each year you could support a “pagan baby.” That’s what they called them, “pagan babies.” They were pagans, because they didn’t know our God and Jesus. Those magazines only made me hate God all the more. How could they teach me that God was merciful when these things were happening every day to these poor "pagan babies?"

We were fairly poor growing up and I rarely had any money to contribute to the pagan babies. The nuns would make a big fuss over anyone who had so generously supported a pagan baby. I was never able to do that. Once my outlook had become negative (God didn’t love me, Mom didn’t love me, my fat was going to prevent others from loving me and I was an unforgivable sinner and surely would burn in hell), what I saw and heard most was everything that supported those beliefs and caused them to grow stronger and stronger. I often wished I would just DIE. I wished that to stop suffering, but also out of revenge, wanting to punish my mother for my pain.

Don was an alcoholic who had been raised by alcoholics. I have no idea if they were abusive, but I know his mother signed for him to go into the service prior to the age of 18. He was handsome, muscular, physically powerful and had at least one tattoo on an upper arm…maybe on both, I can’t remember. He was clean-shaven, never swore to my memory, LOVED Jackie Gleason, taught me how to parallel park, took us fishing in a little row boat and was totally volatile and unpredictable in terms of his temper. We walked on eggshells whenever he was home whether he was sober or drunk, but especially when he was drinking. He had little tolerance for kids’ antics and tended to discipline violently and in anger. He never beat UP my mother or any of us kids and I recall only one beating with a belt that he gave me on the backs of my legs and butt that resulted in wide welts and bruises going across my legs. He never punched anyone, there were no black eyes (except when he kicked a door in not knowing my Mom was behind it and it knocked her out and cut open her eyebrow). He didn’t call names or berate any of us either. He could just "go off” at the slightest provocation and throw a plate at Mom, or a coffee table, pancakes and batter all over the kitchen, that sort of thing. Regardless, it was darned scary and whenever something began to blow I would scoop up my little sister and run her out of the house so she didn’t have to witness it.

I know very well that my upbringing was way better than some and worse than others. I have since gained perspective on how much worse it COULD have been, but I suffered nearly every day, had little joy in life, was miserable most of the time and my death wish became more and more prominent as I grew older.

After I graduated grade school, I immediately moved to Aunt Joie’s. I lived with her and Uncle Mike from June of 1963 through April or so of 1964, most of my Freshman year in high school. John was a senior at the all boys’ school and I was at one of the three all girls’ Catholic schools all the way out in the South end. We lived in what was called “the Old North End.” At the time we were growing up it was still pretty safe, but it was one of the poor areas of town. We played outside a LOT. We rode our bikes (my brothers rode their brand new skinny-tired racer bikes) and I rode my cousin’s 26 year old fat-tired bike. I roller skated a lot and I DID get shoe skates for skating in a rink. I was a size 8 ½ or 9 at the time, but Mom bought me 10s so I wouldn’t outgrow them. The were big and clunky, but I was able to skate in them and she DID take me to the rink fairly often and I didn’t have to rent the skates.

Anyway, at 210 pounds I moved to Aunt Joie’s. She lived in a small suburb on a one-block dead end street and there was a girl next door named Janet with whom I became friends. I could escape Aunt Joie’s rigidness by going over to Janet's house or going outside to fool around and hang out. Aunt Joie was a teacher and a good one. She encouraged me in school, helped me with homework (but never by doing it FOR me), had my breakfast set out for me every day with my little thyroid pill ready for me to take, had my lunch packed or gave me just enough money to buy lunch and pay for the bus to get to and from school. Since I was the only child there she was able to monitor the quantities of food in the house and cheating on my diet was pretty difficult.

When we lived on the dead-end street, though she had a basement and she stored the family’s famous Lebanese date cookies in old cookie tins with wax paper in between each layer. She had a lot of them down there that particular year and I remember going down fairly often, removing one date cookie and rearranging the others so the missing cookie would not be noticed. Over a period of time, however, the diminished quantity of cookies was caught as the deficit had become pretty obvious. Regardless of the cheating I did manage to sneak in, I lost 60 pounds going from 210 to 140 pounds. When I started high school I had already lost some of that 60 pounds and got measured for my school uniform when I’d probably lost about half of it. Arrival of my uniform was very late and it was almost Christmas by the time it came. It was very big on me. We took the seam in once. Then again, and finally when I’d gotten to 140, a third time. Luckily, we did NOT cut off any of the excess fabric. So, when I started high school I was more of an average size than I had ever been and was relatively slim.

John was a senior and I went to some basketball games when he was the pep band leader. Some of his classmates noticed me and one asked him who that pretty girl was up in the stands. John was very proud. We double dated to the homecoming at his school because I had asked a family friend who was a junior to take a girlfriend of mine to the homecoming (she had asked me a favor to see if I could get a date for her to the homecoming). When I asked Greg if he would take her, he talked to his mother and she suggested instead that he take ME. My girlfriend was pretty miffed and jealous. I remember dancing with Greg while John was dancing with his girlfriend Janet. They were looking our way and laughing. I thought John was making fun of me dancing. Turns out he was laughing in delight because Janet had said something nice about how pretty I was. Greg was a total gentleman (of course…he was a family friend and we were doubling with my brother).

Sometime before deep winter came my Aunt and Uncle moved off of the dead-end street and onto a busy 4 lane street with no sidewalks into a nice ranch home with no basement. I lost my friend from the dead-end street, it was winter and harder to get outside and away from Aunt Joie and there were no kids my age close by. Tensions rose between the two of us and one time we had a huge fight because I felt she had misrepresented something that had taken place to my mom. I felt she had lied to mom. I sobbed for so long that I think I became a bit dehydrated or something because I had “the shivers.” I was not prone to “shivers” or getting “chilled.” They gave me a shot of brandy to warm me up.

The period of time we lived on the dead end street were some of the happiest months of my childhood. While Aunt Joie had pretty rigid ideas, I was the only child there, I had her full attention. She taught me about taking care of myself in a way that Mom hadn’t had time to do. I had terribly callused heels that would crack all the way down into live skin and hurt like mad. She put Vaseline on my feet every night and put socks on my feet before bed. She healed up those cracks and I had no more calluses. She stood behind me once as I was looking in the mirror at myself wearing a new sweater after the weight loss. She took delight in the pride I felt in how pretty I looked in that red sweater.

However, all good things must end, I guess. I missed my siblings a lot even though we saw each other as often as possible, and the tensions with me and Aunt Joie worsened until the time they gave me the brandy. After that episode, my Uncle tried to insist that I had to go home because he couldn't stand to see his wife be hurt by me. Aunt Joie tried to fight him on it, but feeling that I was no longer really wanted and missing my siblings, I insisted on moving back home in April or so of my freshman year, 1964. I was 14.

I immediately met a boy who lived across the alley who later became my “boyfriend” even though nobody knew it. That was all happening at the beginning of my Sophomore year. My first kiss had not been with Paul. It was with a guy named Tom. I really liked Tom and during that Summer between my Freshman and Sophomore years I was caught kissing Tom in between the houses across the alley. The end result of that was that I was forbidden to see Tom OR Paul ever again. It was Summer and both Tom and Paul laid in the grass in the yard next door and listened to the whole tirade my mother laid on me and knew they were now forbidden. Apparently Tom was intimidated by all that, but Paul was not.

Paul used to sneak into the yard next door to my open bedroom window and we would talk. Then, one day my sister and I were out riding our bikes. She was about 6. At the end of the block was a parking lot that we often rode around in. I was just about there and saw Paul cutting diagonally across the parking lot. MaryJo, who knew I was not supposed to associate with Paul, looked up and said “AHA, I caught you.” Just then her tire got stuck in a rut next to the sidewalk and she fell. Paul took off running to her and got to her first. I had to stop my bike and turn around to get to her. By the time I got there, Paul had determined that MaryJo’s leg was broken and somehow knew that we should let the leg dangle as we carried her home. We made a “seat by holding our crossed hands in an “x” formation (his idea too) and carried her home. Mom and I went to the hospital with MaryJo and Paul stayed with Joe. John was away in seminary.

In any case, when we got back with MaryJo in a cast up to her hip (or at least mid thigh), Paul was still there with Joe and thus regained the right to be around me. That’s when he became my “boyfriend” and we fooled around the fall of my sophomore year. I would leave for the early bus and instead stop at his house. His mother had already left for work, so we were able to kiss and neck until the very last bus that would get us to school on time. The kissing and touching was strictly experimental, never went past the clothes and had pretty much zero affect on me erotically. I was a VERY late bloomer when it came to sexual knowledge. I had already begun to gain weight back and remember the winter of my sophomore year when I had just turned fifteen or was about to turn fifteen, having to go sledding with Paul in a skirt because I had no pants that fit.  I wound up falling off of the sled and getting undies packed with snow.  I was mortified. Shortly thereafter, Paul found a blond, blue eyed, thin girl at his co-ed school and broke up with me. My first and last high school boyfriend had come and gone already only to return during my freshman year in college and provide me with a pretty negative sexual encounter.

Extreme Makeover: Chapter 3---December 7, 2011

I have puzzled before beginning this chapter and the last as to how and where to start. This one is going to explain my current relationship with “God.” I put God in quotes because it is the word that is easiest to use to describe the spiritual energies I have experienced now and throughout my lifetime.

I don’t HAVE a concept of God as a TANGIBLE entity (though I have in the past). I use the word to encompass all that I would imagine God to be (if there actually IS such an entity). Perhaps other terms would apply, like “the force,” “the universe,” “cosmic energy,” etc. I suppose the real question is whether God as an entity exists. The truth is, you got me!!

I think I might believe that a God exists, but at this stage I’m not sure if it is GOD that I have been experiencing throughout my lifetime or what. What I DO know is that there is energy; energy that each of us thrusts out or emanates into the world. I think I believe that this energy exists separate from each of us as human beings but also exists IN us. I DO believe that we are one with the universe (or God, or the “cosmic energy” of the world). For simplicity’s sake I will use the term “God” to describe the energy that has influenced me my entire life.

Currently, I think of God as far bigger than any of us can imagine…an energy of goodness and light that goes beyond human imagination. For convenience I will make this energy a tangible male entity whom I shall call “God.” I just can’t think of any other way to talk about it without putting it into human terms, terms that the human mind can embrace. I offer my apologies to all the women who resent the characterization of God as male. It’s just for convenience and ease in writing about this topic. Of course, I am not writing this to avoid offending anyone, I’m just writing to write and put my thoughts down on paper. If anyone reads it and gains anything at all from it, then that’s a bonus.

To me, God is much larger than any of the religions I know about, have been taught or of which I have heard (and I admit wholly that I am not highly educated religiously). Still, I don’t believe that any of the religions have it all right. I truly believe it is beyond human comprehension to get it all right while we are still limited by our human bodies and brains. I know that I don’t have it all right either, of course, but we each have to live by our own conscience. I cannot in all good conscience tell you that I believe Jesus is the son of God. I can’t tell you that I believe he is NOT either. I just don’t know.

It looks like this is going to be a very short chapter. I can’t expound much more on where I stand with all this. I just wanted potential readers to know that I am not a religious person. I want readers to know what is in my mind when I use the term “God.” For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say that at this point, when I say “God” I mean all of the forces for goodness that I feel are present in our universe. I am blessed and fortunate that these forces are present in my life and that they have enhanced its quality and growth over the years. So now, maybe I should just commence to telling my story.

Extreme Makeover: Chapter 2---December 6, 2011

It’s 2:30 a.m. and I am unable to sleep. I took a late nap (after 6 p.m.), which explains PART of why I can’t sleep. A second part is thinking. I am unable to stop thinking about the problems of others, how I can help them and how to continue with this writing.

Lying there in bed I decided that Chapter 2 had to begin with some clarification of the end of Chapter 1:

“I have no idea EXACTLY what that means other than knowing that love is the ROOT of me. It flows through me. Love is what I have to pass on to others. Love needs and demands that I be its conduit. Love wants me, my body, my mind, my soul and my spirit to carry it and give it freely. Love wants me to GLOW with its healing power so that everywhere I go I shed its light all around me. And, what or who is God but love?

At this point I only know these few other things:

• MY God has had a LOT to do with these last 123 days and all of my life prior.
• I never gave up trying to be a better, happier, more loving person and I never will.
• I have gifts that I believe came from God that are meant to be shared.
• My best days are still in front of me and my best achievements await me.
• I am grateful EVERY day for so very much.
• I LOVE and I am ‘living proof’ that healing and change CAN be achieved.
• There is much more of my story to tell”

Today I have to say there IS, indeed, much more of my story to tell. I suspect you will get most of the life story in bits and pieces as I continue to write and that it will be far from chronological. However, I think I can work in most of the important things as I talk about how I got to this place.

You need to know that I have not realized everything expressed at the end of Chapter 1 only in the last 127 days (now 127, not 123). To be fair, there are years and years of therapy; wisdom of many people I have had the privilege to know; years of reading both novels and self-help books; 12 years of faithful attendance at 12-step meetings; research on the web; “therapy” sessions with friends over cups of tea and coffee; movies that have taught me, inspired me and/or touched me deeply; years of experience with pain and illness and even more years of a wholly negative outlook on life; my mother’s fall resulting in a brain bleed and the effect that had on our relationship and more that have helped bring me to this place too.

The last 127 days have provided the “gel,” more or less, that has pulled all of it together. They have also achieved the removal of bandaids applied to deep wounds that were never going to heal no matter how much I “talked” about them. Removal of the bandaids, a washing of the wounds to clear out the festering infection of resentment, anger, flawed and FALSE thinking and more is what has taken place in the last 127 days. Uncovering it all, flushing it out, HEALING the wounds that were keeping me from seeing my future as hopeful.

The paragraph about love is something I’ve known for a while, though I’ve never quite expressed it in this way. Sometime or another in the last decade of my life I asked myself for the bazillionth time what purpose I served on this earth. Why was I here? Why was I given this life, put on this earth? What was I supposed to achieve? I had asked myself this question so many times in my life and had never come up with a definitive answer that seemed like “enough.”

I wish I could tell you exactly what year it was that I gave up trying to define my purpose beyond “to love.” Loving was all that I knew I COULD do fairly consistently. I finally concluded that teaching, being an example, supporting others….were just incidental things I could do SOME of the time. Loving was something that I could do ANY time and ALL that I could do in many circumstances. So I finally let go of my youthful hopes that I could change the world. I used to fantasize about being able to stop war, hatred, cruelty, crime, all that was evil in the world. Finally I accepted that what I had to give was love and I could give it only to my own circle of influence which was the only and most effective way I had of spreading the love. I began then, to try to be as loving, understanding and compassionate as I could with all of my associates, family, co-workers, friends, customers. I didn’t always succeed, of course, but I slowly became a more and more loving person.

My mother and I had always had a difficult relationship. I was what I call a “contrary” child. I did everything I could to be contrary to my mother’s wishes, especially after around age 7. I understand that before that I was already pretty headstrong and perhaps contrary already, but around age 7 when I began to doubt what I was being taught at school about God, religion and Jesus, things began to go more and more sour for me. It was not just the religious doubt, of course, but Mom had married my stepfather when I was six and my sister was born when I was seven. I liked having my sister, but my stepfather was not a happy addition to our home life and I became pretty angry with my mother for subjecting us to him. The longer she stayed with him (7 years or so), the angrier and more contrary I became. My father had passed away when I was 2 (a few months from being 3) of leukemia. I have no real memory of my father and wouldn’t even know what he looked like were it not for pictures. Mom was 29, John (my older brother) was 6, I was 2 and my younger brother Joe was 6 months old.

When Mom fell at age 86, hit her head and developed a brain bleed that profoundly affected her “executive functioning” and her short-term memory, things changed between us almost immediately. It was as if all the years of angst between us just fell away. Her face lit up whenever she saw me which was something I felt I’d never had with her. In my mind, at least, her face lit up for my older brother and for my sister, but not for me. I don’t remember if I felt it didn’t light up for my younger brother Joe either, but I have always considered the two of us the “black sheep” of the family. We’re the ones who got into mischief and later into more serious trouble. John and MaryJo (my baby sister) were the “good” kids.

Anyway, I was the only one of the four of us who wasn’t working, so I had the privilege of being able to spend a lot of time with my debilitated mother watching her face light up every time I showed up. In lucid moments, even she remarked about how glad she was that we were getting along better. I answered once with “Yeah, Ma…it took 60 years and for you to lose your mind, but it IS nice.” She laughed and we laughed together about that. In fact, we laughed together about a lot of stuff. She made another reference to the change in our relationship just a few weeks before she passed away, so even she was aware of the difference.

John, my older brother noticed the change in me pretty much right away, though he may not have mentioned it until after Mom had passed away. He asked me what accounted for the difference and I told him how profoundly satisfying it was for me to have had that period of time with Mom and how it had lifted something from me. I think that time was God’s gift both to me and to my mother. I think that Joe’s opportunity to spend more time with Mom while she lived in his house and then to care for her when she was in the nursing home was God’s gift to him and my mother too.

The years and years of therapy (at least HALF of my entire adult life) prepared me for the experience of “reprocessing” my traumas. Any resistance I might have had to it had been broken down by years and years of struggling to get real and be honest about my feelings with a number of therapists over the years. In my twenties I had to get drunk in order to cry and there’s no way I would have admitted to being “fear driven,” for example. That’s just ONE of the things I had become adept at hiding both from myself and from the world. It took all those years of therapy to uncover and face all that stuff so that I could finally achieve HEALING in the last 127 days.

It was in Alanon meetings that I learned so much that prepared me for this phase of healing therapy. I learned perspective (that my life wasn’t the very WORST it could have been); acceptance of life on LIFE’S terms (not mine); that I had an EXTREMELY negative outlook; that I was indeed ungrateful (as Mom had always claimed); to accept and reconcile myself with “the God of my understanding;” numerous helpful slogans like “easy does it” and “one day at a time;” that pearls of wisdom often came from unlikely sources (people I may have judged as uneducated or having nothing to offer me); many, many more lessons that prepared me for these last 127 days. My Alanon sponsor for all those years was a huge influence in my growth during that time.

So many friends over the years have sat with me over meals, coffee or tea, or just chatting in their living rooms listening to my stories and woes, providing new perspectives or just validating my feelings and thoughts, that I wouldn’t even attempt to list them all as I know I would forget somebody. Let it suffice to say that most of them already know who they are and when they read this paragraph will know I am speaking of them and the time we spent together. They too, have prepared me for the wondrous place I am in now. There are too many movies and books to list as well, that have also contributed to this wonderful, mysterious, hopeful and unknown future that I now feel I may have before me.

The years of experience with pain and illness, both my own and that of others, has prepared me in other ways to embrace the continuation of a life that holds hope of being healthier physically, emotionally, spiritually….in every way. The pain and illness of others has helped me keep my own in perspective. My own suffering has caused me to be grateful for the times and the parts of me that feel good. Ah yes….gratitude…. initially learned in Alanon meetings has grown and grown over the years as I have slowly purged more and more of the negativity out of my outlook on life. Today, I am grateful EVERY day for so many things I can’t list them here either, but I’m thinking that as this writing grows, you will learn more and more about the things for which I am so very grateful.

So, Chapter 2 is dedicated to acknowledging the power of all that came before these last 127 days, the details of which may unfold as I continue to write. Welcome to my life, past, present and a hopeful future.

Extreme Makeover: Chapter 1---December 1, 2011

As of this date, I have been a living creature for 18,838 days. This chapter and some beyond it will be my attempt to describe the most phenomenal 123 days of those 18,838. That is, the LAST 123 days.

One hundred and twenty-three days ago I met with a licensed professional counselor to see if a therapeutic modality known as EMDR ( Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) or ABS (Alternating Bilateral Stimulation) might be a useful therapeutic model for someone like me.

I was anxious about needing to make the decision to have gastric bypass surgery to combat the life-long curse of obesity. At age 61 I had/have numerous co-morbidities and my physical capacity to function was greatly diminished, deeply affecting my quality of life. I was spending hundreds of dollars per month on medications for diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, high cholesterol, irritable bowel and other incidental stuff in between; was short of breath at the slightest exertion; could barely put on my own socks; had to recuperate after walking from the house to the car before I could buckle up and drive off; couldn’t walk in the grocery store (and still can’t) because of hip, lower back and foot problems. In short I was a mess and speeding toward an early grave. My mother’s warning early in my life that I was “digging my grave with my teeth” had become a reality and the taste of the dirt was very unpleasant.

I was both afraid and ashamed. I was afraid of the unknown; of the ramifications of the surgery; of people knowing that because I had no “willpower” I had to resort to surgery (the EASY way out…hah…little do they know); of no longer being able to use food for comfort or anything else but needed nutrition, for that matter; of the pain of the surgery itself and of learning a whole new body inside.

I was ashamed that I had not been able to “fix” the problem in spite of a lifetime of dieting; hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on years and years of therapy; purchasing and reading every self-help book imaginable; 12-step programs; numerous diet plans including daily shots, 700 calorie diets, the grapefruit diet, Weight Watchers, 1200 calorie diets, Nutrisystem, The Atkins Plan, The Pritiken Plan, just counting calories….you name it. How could it be that I had not yet been able to beat this problem? If I wasn’t outwardly, physically hanging my head with my tail between my legs, I most certainly was doing so inside and was beaten by it, feeling very much like I had done all this to myself. The blame, as much as I fought it and tried not to think of it, was horrendous and constantly looming in the background waiting to openly pounce each time the scale went upward (or anything else went wrong).

In 2008 I had lung cancer. That was my fault too because I smoked for 41 years and still struggle with that addiction. How much worse could a person be than to continually cause morbid obesity and sickness, and give themselves cancer? What on earth was wrong with me that all those years of efforts had not been able to fix? I didn’t understand. Why were others able to recover, yet, no matter what I had done I only got worse? Was I “constitutionally incapable” of recovery? Parts of me believed that might be true, but a tiny part of me held onto the HOPE that I was not. I could not have been BORN constitutionally incapable and I would not CHOOSE to be so, would I? Some people seemed to think so…that I would CHOOSE this life of obesity and pain; that I was just compulsive and stubbornly refused to “fix” it; food and nicotine were my drugs of choice. None of them actually said it anymore because when they did it caused a huge scene with me. I either responded with rage or with tears and they liked neither, so they just stopped saying such things. They bit their tongues about the smoking, they watched me overeat and bit their tongues. Some people never judged me, but many others did. Throughout my lifetime doctors had blamed me not only for the obesity, but also blamed IT for nearly every other medical malady that struck me. I sprained my ankles frequently because of it, didn’t have periods because of it, got sick more often because of it, etc., etc. I have since learned how much brain washing bullshit I was fed most of my life and will tell you more about that later. None of the pain of all that blame remains with me today.

I had met Jon (ultimately my counselor and “spiritual director”) by taking a young relative to him for EMDR therapy, and liked him immediately. My relative shared little with me about the process of her therapy after each session, but I began to see significant results. Much less anxiety, taking less anxiety medication and showing a courage, bravery and maturity that surprised me from a twenty-year old. It takes courage to face oneself; to relive one’s traumas; confront one’s “demons.” I watched her bravely walk into these sessions to try to free herself from the traumas of her youth that were holding her in a pattern of anxiety, depression and failure to thrive, and I was impressed with the results. Hadn’t I been brave all of these years in therapy trying my best to learn to smile and thrive?

Each time I took her there, saw her progress and saw Jon, I liked him more and more. I began to wonder if he and/or this process could help me. One day in July of this year I mentioned to him that I might want to consult with him to see if this “modality” could be useful for someone like me. He agreed to meet with me and on August 1, 2011, 123 days ago, I met with Jon, for my own therapeutic purposes, for the first time.

By that time I had come to some sense of the theory behind this form of therapy. The long and short and INCOMPLETE explanation is that alternating bilateral stimulation by way of vibrating “paddles”, in guided meditational-type sessions during which one “reprocesses” past traumas and other things, creates “neuropathways” from one side of the brain to the other which promotes or even ACHIEVES healing of those traumas. Healing of the traumas frees the person to thrive, become whole and the fully functional person they were meant to be.

Why, might you ask, have I placed certain words in quotation marks in the description above. Maybe you won’t ask, but I will tell you anyway. It’s because it all sounded THEORETICALLY INTERESTING, but I had little faith that I would ever really be able to change. Serious doubts that I COULD really heal plagued me every week, every step, every session…even to the point of thinking sometimes that it was just silliness, but some pretty miraculous achievements began to happen. Even I could not deny that changes were taking place that were marvelous, mysterious and very new to me.

I kept telling Jon that the “jury was still out” regarding the effectiveness of this therapy. Finally he asked me during one session BEFORE my surgery what it would look like if the therapy was working. I told him I didn’t know, but I would let him know when I saw it. I had a partial answer for him the very next week. I showed him my hands. My nails had white tips on them. I wasn’t picking, tearing them or tearing, picking or biting at my cuticles. Then I told him about the two dozen cookies that had been in my house since the day before I’d seen him the previous week. In times past, the two dozen cookies would have been gone in two to three days being consumed 3 to 6 in a single sitting. There were still four cookies left after a full week. I passed them and saw them numerous times a day. It’s not like they were out of sight somewhere. Clearly, my relationship with food had changed somehow and this therapy was the only thing I had done differently. I was NOT making an effort to lose weight or NOT to eat the cookies. It just happened.

Throughout these last 123 days Jon had encouraged me to journal…to write about the experience of them. I did not write. I did not write one single word in all of this time.

Last evening Jon asked me why I had “resisted” writing about it, especially since writing appears to be one of my very important and useful ways of expressing myself. I didn’t have an answer for him. He gave me a “homework” assignment….”write”…”write it down.” I agreed. So, here I am at 1:00 a.m. on December 2^nd, 2011 doing just that with my brand new fountain pen purchased just last week. I purchased it last week knowing that I loved using a fountain pen and that I did not have one with which I was pleased enough to start writing again. Interesting timing.

I know now, at least part of the answer to Jon’s question. Putting something in writing gives it credence. It puts me officially on record as having SAID it. People, including oneself may FORGET words they SAY, but if it is WRITTEN, there is no more denying it or forgetting it. So, if I WRITE it, it becomes real, tangible and undeniably true to me.

I had not had a cigarette since Thanksgiving Day (another of my struggles…addiction to smoking). Six days without a cigarette. I thought sure it had been closer to ten days, but no….only six. Coming home from seeing Jon, I was halfway into the carport when I convinced myself that I had to have cigarettes to write this. I drove to the carryout, got them and by now have smoked FOUR already!

Anyway, back to putting credence to the phenomenal changes which have taken place in the last 123 days. Why wouldn’t I WANT to believe the wonderful healing, growing and changing that’s been going on? Because I’ve always walked in fear of that “other shoe” dropping. You know, the one that lots of us are just waiting to drop on our heads, knock us down, knock us OUT, down for the count. Just when we think we are really doing well, BOOM…there’s that other shoe dropping again, all is lost and we’re back to square one! What would the other shoe be? It would be any form of backsliding; failing once again; old issues rearing their ugly heads once again; beginning to pick or chew my nails and cuticles again; my relationship with food reverting back to my old patterns; depression coming back with a vengeance. None of that has happened. Perfect example of all or nothing, black and white, NEGATIVE thinking, I’d say. Well, so much for that excuse.

What HAS happened over the last 123 days…or rather…what I have DONE (with a lot of help and grace) IS REAL. It IS incredible. It IS nothing short of miraculous. I AM indeed HEALED of many old and stale hurts. I continue to heal.

I had gastric bypass surgery on October 5, 2011…57 days ago. I was very well prepared for it and ready. I am doing very well, though still healing in many respects. I have lost significant weight but I refuse to know and get wrapped up in the actual numbers. I am feeling better each week, but the surgery and the weight loss are only a RESULT of the changes in me internally…not the reverse. The changes are NOT a result of the surgery and the weight loss. It bothers me to think that some people will believe these changes are BECAUSE of the surgery. I can’t think of a single reason why that should bother me, but it does.

At the same time the gastric bypass was done, my very “gummed up” gall bladder was removed, a hiatal hernia was repaired, my esophagus was dilated and 50-year-old adhesions from my appendectomy were “cleaned up.” I joke that the surgeon gave me an “Extreme Makover…INTERNAL EDITION.” Indeed that is what he did, but the true internal makeover…the one that goes beyond the physical began weeks before the surgery (and in truth, years and years before the surgery).

By September, both Jon and my soon-to-be surgeon had told me that my overall deplorable condition was NOT MY FAULT. No one, and I mean not ONE single soul had ever said those words to me. I didn’t believe either one of them, or so I thought. Deep down, however, I knew that there was a part of me that never believed that I was to blame for my obesity and/or any other problems I had. I remembered being blamed and shamed for being fat and then my fat being blamed for all the other problems I had. I remembered from a very young age trying desperately to hang on to the belief that it…ALL of it….NONE of it was my fault and knowing in my heart that it wasn’t.

Logically, I concluded it was not productive to believe it was my fault. Logically I convinced myself that laying blame was not necessary. During my “healing sessions” (for lack of a better term) with Jon, my body, my heart and my soul let go of that blame and shame along with a lot of other very damaging beliefs.

I know now that I will not only be OKAY for the rest of my life, but I will thrive and grow and GIVE more and more each day that I live.

I have no idea EXACTLY what that means other than knowing that love is the ROOT of me. It flows through me. Love is what I have to pass on to others. Love needs and demands that I be its conduit. Love wants me, my body, my mind, my soul and my spirit to carry it and give it freely. Love wants me to GLOW with its healing power so that everywhere I go I shed its light all around me. And, what or who is God but love?

At this point I only know these few other things:

• MY God has had a LOT to do with these last 123 days and all of my life prior.
• I never gave up trying to be a better, happier, more loving person and I never will.
• I have gifts that I believe came from God that are meant to be shared.
• My best days are still in front of me and my best achievements await me.
• I am grateful EVERY day for so very much.
• I LOVE and I am living proof that healing and change CAN be achieved.
• There is much more of my story to tell