Third Mental Break

Life can build up slowly to a load roar. What were once soft murmurs of life’s day-to-day struggles can become a deafening roar without you ever remembering the volume increasing.

It seemed one day that my ears burst with the noise of my life. The constant struggle with this thing or that thing became a heavy burden that crumpled my mind. It was done; time to shut down; not really wanting death, but the release of sleep would be just fine. A long, deep sleep, with the promise of better on the other side. A week might be enough, maybe two would be better.

A phone call ending in sobbing tears, and an admission that made my soul scream and my heart feel like it was being ripped from its position in my chest. I let the words I had been feeling – for what I realized was probably months – fly from my mouth. “I want Brian, Ella and Bre to leave. And I don’t want to want that!”

My mom swept down with the aid of a friend and I was taken to the local hospital. I handed over my phone, my purse, and my responsibilities to the promise in her voice that it would all be taken care of. I had to take care of me if I were to remain to even see the pieces of what would be left after this.

This would be my first time in a mental health facility. And I must say, it was not what I expected. The people were nice, but firm. My first 24-48 hours was probably like most peoples’. I was lost, I was weepy, I took Ativan for the first time in my life. I reorganized their entire pile of mixed up puzzle pieces, broken crayons, and coloring sheets. I was started on a sleep aid and I did need it there, as it was never dark, and I shared a room with 5 other girls and their bathroom schedules.

It was day 3 when I could start to think about the pieces of my life. What pieces would I be able to pick up where I had left them and what pieces needed to be left on the ground? I made 10-minute phone calls, attempting to unstress and adjust to medication, while trusting others to put my puzzle together from 3 hours away.

My household turned into an upheaval of stress, fights, and arguments. You see, Tanya had gone away. That person that never said “No” and ran around fixing the sinking ship was gone. The ship was sinking, and the passengers noticed that they were actually in a hurricane. It didn’t help that the 1st mate was telling everyone that the caption had abandoned ship. No one would believe her because Captains do not abandon ship.

When my time was up at the mental health facility, I still refused to come home. I had made some hard, but firm decisions and new I would crumble if I went back home straight away. That the soft murmurs would pull me back down into their rhythm and I wouldn’t notice the roaring again until it was to late. I escaped to my sister’s house, where I remained for about 2 weeks.

Things are still not were they should be, even 2 months after my release. I am still ridden with guilt that I will probably never get over. While I only “abandoned” my birth children for a little while, they have now seen that I am a fragile shell that can be lost. My stepchildren, (I cringe to even call them that. I working so hard throughout the years to make no difference in my heart between birth and non-birth children) have seen that I was incapable of giving them the time, energy and bits of myself I so badly wanted to give them. I failed them, and for Ella that is two mothers failed. She needed me not to fail.

I have a new job. I tried to choose one without death.

I have a new lover, a partner, an old love that was easily rekindled into the burning flame that was there years ago. I feel in love and scared out of my mind at the thought. I chose Brain because being in love is not always a good thing. I was never “in love” with Brain. You lose control in love. You lose yourself in love. You lose who you were and become someone new and sometimes that person is not who you thought you were. In love is terrifying and joyful and passionate, and I am lost.

Take two, Restart

My life has taken an unexpected turn. You know, as life seems to do from time to time. When I started this blog my intent was to post once or twice a week. That never happened. It was also going to allow me to writing in short burst about my past. This was / is going to later be compiled into a book about my upbringing, abuse and survival.

This will be my second attempt at blogging and I feel I have a lot to write about that has happened in my present. This will take me away from my past, though it is all connected, sense my past has made me.

Education

I didn’t go to kindergarten until I was 6 years old. Mom decided that the she didn’t want me going all alone on a long bus ride. So, she waited until Wren was 5 and we started kindergarten together. Because of all our moving we ended up going to several different schools. I don’t remember how many. Wren had to repeat kindergarten, so I still ended up a grade ahead of her. I remember thinking it all a waste that I started a year late when we ended up in separate grades anyway. I wanted to do well in school. I was just as much a people pleaser as I am today. I remember crying when a girl wrote me on the board for talking when the teacher was out of the room. If I didn’t make an A on a test, I would get very upset with myself. I kept A’s on my report card. I was completely devastated on the rare occasion I would fail a test.

As part of Crawford’s grooming, shaping and isolating us, I was taken out of school after graduating 5th grade. I guess the fear that we would tell someone what was happening to us at home was too great a risk to continue. We were to be home-schooled. I cried uncontrollably the last day of 5th grade. I would never see any of my friends again, but it was going to be better, he said. We could keep our own hours and study on the things that were important. I was put in charge of filling out the forms that we sent in to the Board of Education. I remember trying to come up with things we were doing at home that could count for subjects.

Issaqueena taught us Art because she was going to Brenau University studying art.  I only remember a hand-full of lessons.

We learned to type on a computer without looking. We would type “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” over and over. I can type without looking, all my fingers on the correct keys. This skill serves me well in my writing career. My kids look at me in awe.

As we worked to clear the Honey House property, we learned how to clip down brush, stack limbs, and drag it to a bon fire. Only Crawford could use the chainsaw, and we weren’t supposed to come too close. We learned to build a fence with 6’ pine logs soaked in kerosene, a staple gun, a post-hole digger, and a role of fencing.

I can stack firewood with the best of them and I know everything there is to know about starting a fire with cardboard and kindling (smaller yard sticks we picked up). I patiently stoke and coax a fire into life long after others would have given up or poured an accelerant on it.

We were put hard at work destroying our country accent. Everything time we used incorrect grammar or miss pronounced a word it was pointed out to us by Crawford. We would have to repeat the correct word back to him and restart our sentence. That is why people have a hard time believing I am from North East Georgia sometimes.

I was eventually put in charge of our banking account. I ran QuickBooks to keep track of all our expenditures. We learned to press a button on the recorder attached to the phone every time we answered it. Just in case it was important for later. I answered “Thank you for calling Atlantis, this is Tanya speaking.  How may I help you?” We must take a message. Crawford and Mom were never available to come to the phone.

Debt collectors can be very cruel. Especially when you sound like a 13-year-old.  Some would demand we put our parents on the phone. That was not an option. It didn’t matter how nasty they got. They didn’t understand that the option was worse than they could ever be to us. I don’t answer the phone now. If your number is not in my phone there is 0% chance me answering you. If you number is in my phone. That brings your odds up to 25%. If you are a distant relative, you just got to 50%. My personal close family, the odds are pretty good. I don’t make phone calls to people I don’t know. If my kids need a doctor’s appointment, I am driving to the office. If a child’s Mom is not willing to text me, then my kid is not coming to your house.

I learned a lot about sex. I learned how to give a man with foreskin a blowjob. A skill I have yet had to use anywhere else.

We got old enough eventually to not have to pretend we were being home schooled. I didn’t have to fill our papers anymore. School was never mentioned.

When I was 17 my stepsister Issaqueena volunteered at the Habersham County Adult Learning Center. I went with her one time and it was mentioned to me that I could study there for my G.E.D. For whatever reason, Crawford agreed. I studied there on the days she volunteered and took practice tests. On September 10th, 1999 I took and passed my G.E.D. test.

Nothing to Worry About

I said something in a meeting yesterday at work. I felt it was true when I said it, but the way I said it didn’t come out right. It sounded as if I was taking credit for others work. It sounded as if I do all this stuff by myself. It sounded as if I didn’t appreciate them. It sounded as if I was being a martyr.

I said something to effect of: I would go in to orientation and say “Hey, I’m Tanya and I’m the runner of this things. I do all this stuff.” I new it wasn’t coming out right as I said it. I looked down refusing to make eye contact knowing the statement as it stumbled out of my mouth would offend. I kept trying to restart the sentence, but only made it worse. One of the members of the board spoke up immediately saying that if I was tired of doing it all myself, they would be happy to take over. I pointed out that I do the meeting minutes because no one else wants to and she agreed that she would not or could not do the meeting minutes. That gave me a chance to laugh and point out my earlier statement had some truth. I concluded by saying that I did know I didn’t do it all myself. I believe I repeated the statement twice.

I thought about it throughout the rest of the meeting. About how I could have said it better, about who I could have offended that didn’t speak up, about if anyone was mad at me, and would I hear about it later. There is nothing I can do to change what happened. There is no way to fix the past.

It didn’t stop there. I also thought about it while I was feeding a resident. I thought about it while I was driving home. I thought about it while I was eating dinner. I thought about it while I was bathing. I thought about it when I laid down to go to sleep. I thought about it when I woke up this morning. I thought about it now, while I am writing this, trying to make sure I write it well. I will probably think about it on and off all day.

The reasonable part of my brain is telling me that everyone in that meeting probably doesn’t even remember what I said, or how I said it. They have forgotten it and moved on with their days. It really wasn’t that important, and no one’s self worth is dependent on my judgement of them.

Unsteady from the start

In this blog I am going to talk about my abuse and how it affects my life now, but I want everyone to understand that how I am now is not shaped by only the abuse I suffered at the hand of Crawford. My young life was filled with ups and downs. I sometimes wonder if my earlier childhood or my emotional instabilities helped Crawford single me out as someone more easily victimized.

I was born to two 17-year old’s and while I don’t remember anything from that time period my mother has told me stories. Everything was not happy and stable. My father was jealous of the attention I received over him. He spent money at the video arcade, even if that meant us doing without. He pinched me when I sang. He didn’t care whether my mother was in the mood for sex or not.

My memories start around the age of 4. I knew who my biological father was, but Mom was remarried to another man. We called him Daddy Scott. I remember some of the arguments Scott and Mom would have. There was a lot of shoe throwing from my Mom and one time a threat of self-harm from Scott that was burned into my young memory. There are also dozens of good memories from that time. Watching Dr. Who, my little brother being born, playing games with other children, washing dishes, my first kiss, tying my own shoes, learning how to whistle and more.

I received my first kiss when I was 5 years old from another 5-year-old. It was a French kiss. We were hiding in a closet in my bedroom. We were laying down facing each other. We started smooching and then he stuck his tongue in my mouth. I asked him what he was doing. His response was, “Counting your teeth”. I look back and think now that someone must have been doing that to him; or else how would he have known?

I had discovered the joy of my own body parts by this time, and I remember masturbating a lot.

Mom and Scott’s relationship eventually broke apart and there was another divorce. I don’t know all the details or remember them. Scott got custody of my little brother, and Mom got my sister and myself. We went to live in a trailer behind my maternal grandfather’s house.

I have a lot of memories from that trailer even though we only lived there a short time. Mom started dating a woman. I don’t remember having any questions about it. I simply accepted like any child whose head has not been filled with preconceived notions about what society says should and should not be.

That woman was my first role model, and I wanted to be just like her. She taught me how to do hand stands. We dressed in jeans and t-shirts. I learned cart wheels. I tried to learn how to pee standing up, but that didn’t work out so well.

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I remember a little bit about the time I had my first mental breakdown. (Mental breakdown is a term I am using to describe a period of intense mental and emotional distress. I was unable to properly function in my day to day life.)

I’m unsure as to my exact age. We were kicked out of the trailer and my sister and I went to stay with my paternal Grandparents. I’m going to guess that I was around 8 years old. I remember crying uncontrollably and for seemingly no reason. I cried in school a lot. My teacher would tell me to go wash my face.

My mother has since told me that she took me to see the therapist she was seeing.  He told her that I needed to be back with her. My mother quit the tech school she had started so to better herself, got a job and got a government apartment so we could all go live together again.

Mom dated a woman when we lived in the government apartment. She had seizures, though some of them were faked. A man came into our apartment one day. A stranger and started beating the crap out of my mother’s partner. I still don’t know why, or who he was. I remember him storming in through the front door, hitting her with it as it swung open. If she hadn’t gotten to the bat we had in the pantry, he might have killed her. I ran to the neighbors yelling for them to call the police that a man was beating her up in our apartment.

Mom dated a man when we lived in the government apartment. He had a beautiful Doberman Pincer. We weren’t allowed to have pets, so I was supper excited when he brought him over. He was physically abusive to my Mom and to the dog. I watched him slam them both up against the wall at different times. I remember holding my mother around her chest as she screamed and cried hysterically, drool falling from her mouth. I know she wanted to speak to me, but nothing came out but screaming. I told her it was going to be okay. We were locked in the bathroom of our apartment. He proposed to her and put himself on our government apartment lease. He wouldn’t leave. It ended up that, while Mom never married him, she did have to get a divorce since Common Law Marriage was in affect at that time.

During our time in the apartment I “went with” a new boy every other week or so. I also got my first girl crush. I thought she was the sexiest thing ever. She lived in the apartment complex. There was another kid, a boy, that lived at the apartments complex. I switch back and forth “going with them,” like a yo-yo. I was their first kiss and yes, it was French kisses. We would hide anywhere we could for as long as we could.  Kissing was and still is my favorite thing to do. Toe curling, soft, moist, intimate, pleasure. I believe that if I had known how to go about having sex at that time, I would have gone all the way at 10 years old hiding in a fan fort in the back bedroom with either one of them. I had confidence, and I new I looked all that in my jeans and t-shirts.

Then came Crawford and my second mental breakdown.

Sister, Brother, Sister

Sister

My little sister, Wren, was born July 26th, 1983. I was 18 months old. There is not a time in my memories when she was not there. There are many pictures taken of us running around together. There are some embarrassing pictures with our cloth diapers falling off.

We were mistaken for twins all the time. I would grow an inch taller, but Wren would quickly catch up with me and is, in fact, taller than me now. We were usually dressed alike for special occasions and pictures. People even ask us now.

Brother

My little brother, Logan, was born June 7th, 1987. I was 5 years old. I wanted Mom to have a boy, but Wren wanted a baby girl. I was so excited, and I took my role as the oldest quite seriously. In my 5-year-old memory I took on a lot of responsibility. I remember changing diapers and rocking Logan to sleep all the time.

Sister

Crawford’s only child was a daughter named Issaqueena. She was born June 11th, 1973. The first time I meet her was when she came to babysit us. We still lived in the government apartments at that time so I must have been 9 or just turned 10. We ran out to greet her as she walked up from the parking lot. She was holding something in her arms, books maybe. The first thing I remember thinking was that she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The second thing I remember was that my country accent was so thick she couldn’t understand a single word that I was saying.

 

The Fairy Tale

My mother meet Crawford Thomas Sparks when I was about 10 years old. He was a well-dressed, well spoken, older gentleman. He seemed pleasant and helpful. He was there to help my mother with the business aspect of a gay support group she was running.

He started hanging out more and wiggling his way into our life.  He would babysit us when Mom went out. We found out quickly you did as you were told, or you got a spanking when he was on watch. This was a vast change considering Mom let us get away with pretty much anything.

I’m not sure when friendship changed over to relationship. Soon there was talk about marriage and moving out of our government apartment to live with him in the Honey House.

The house got its nick name because Crawford had many honeybee hives on the property. He collected their honey and packaged it in bottles labeled Issaqueena Honey. As far as I know no business was ever had from the honey. We ate it ourselves over time. The bees were sold not to long after we moved there.

The Honey House was a little run down, but he promised to fix it up. It was going to be castle like. Each girl would have their own tower where the top floor reached the tree tops. We would live there forever bringing our spouses home instead of moving out to live with them. Our family would blend together into the ideal family and be together forever.

My mother and Crawford were married April 15th, 1992 in the forest on the Honey House property under a dogwood tree. The only others in attendance was Logan, my little brother; Wren, my little sister; Issaqueena, Crawford’s only child and 9 years my senior, and a preacher. We all dressed up with flowers in our hair. The wedding vows were changed upon Mom and Crawford’s behest to not say “Until death due us part”, but instead to say “forever”.

Introduction

I wanted to do a small introduction of myself before I dive into the “hot and heavy”. My goal will be to write a new post every week. I will try to do more.

My name is Tanya. I was born January 19th, 1982. I am currently 37 years old. I work a 40+ hour job as a C.N.A. (Certified Nursing Assistant) in a local Skilled Nursing Facility. I am a mother of four children, some I birthed and some I didn’t.

I’ve always loved reading. My favorite books are horror, fantasy and science fiction. Some of my favorite authors include Clive Barker, Stephen King, Ann McCaffery, J.K. Rowling, Isaac Asimov, J.R.R Tolkien, Ann Rice, Douglas Adams, Stephanie Meyer, Cassandra Clare, Robert Jordan, David Eddings, Terry Brooks and many others I can’t remember.

During my time in the Honey House reading was my way to escape into another world. I didn’t have to think about my life if I was joining Frodo’s fellowship or learning about Asimov’s three laws of robotics. I still love reading. Sometimes it used for an escape and sometimes for pure pleasure.

I spend a lot of time watching movies and TV shows. My favorite genre is horror. I love Doctor Who, The Walking Dead and The Magicians. Most other shows I binge watch on Netflix.

I am an Agnostic. That means I believe that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond. I claim neither faith nor disbelief.

I am a Liberal. To me that means supporting civil rights, democracy, gender equality, racial equality, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. I believe people should be free to do what they want and be who they are if they aren’t harming anyone.

It took me years and years to finally gain a sliver of self confidence in myself. I can proudly say that I am a pretty cool human being.