Anniversary…..

Today is our 15th wedding anniversary. The cell phone has been set to stun or silent. I am not sure which, only hubby knows this.

He thinks it will be a quiet day. I am thinking she wouldn’t want to pass up a day to make digs at him for not being a man and standing up to me. He should get rid of me. Oh well……

The day after is her birthday. Did I know this at the time? No.

I am going to spend the day trying not to think about her and attempt to not jump when his phone rings. Knowing him, he will keep it on silent or off so as not to ruin the day.

I will have to let you know how it goes…….

I apologize…….

I had to take a break from this subject for a while.  This has brought so many feelings, many conflicting, that I needed to step away.  I do feel this will be good for me but it is turning out to be more difficult than I thought.

I am working on a continuation of THE story and it should be up in the next day or two……..It has made for some interesting conversations between my husband and I.  It has been very cathartic for us.

That being said……I need to get back to work.

Running Away……

A comment that was left on the previous post is leading me to write this particular post.

It is quite simple for us to pack up and leave. It is a necessity for the mental and emotional well being of all involved. The boys fear her as do I and my daughter no longer considers her a grandmother. She has no feelings regarding her accept those of ambivalence. She feels that it would not matter if her grandmother were to be placed on the appropriate medication and in counseling. It would not make any difference to the level of hatred that she feels towards me.

We have always told the children that it is a mental illness and they must remember that and try to remember the good times with their grandmother. Upon talking with them, they have no fond memories of her. Not her specifically. They only have memories of being taken to the beach and playing with there grandfather. Building drip castles in the sand. Being read stories by their grandfather. Visiting with various family members who would also come down for the summer. These people and the activities are what make up their memories of their visits with their grandparents. What they remember of their grandmother are not fond memories. Sadly, my husband has the same view of his maternal grandmother.

Their memories consist of being told what a b*tch their mother is and a liar and that she was pregnant before they were married. Being told to be quiet by my FIL when she would start in on her vile diatribe, she would inform him that the children need to know what sort of mother they have.

We had assumed she was not in a manic phase when they had the kids for visits in the summer and would go through periods of debriefing them when they came home. It was then we realized the emotional damage that was being done to the kids not to mention the verbal abuse that was being carried out. Our daughter would not want to tell us everything because she knew it hurt me to hear what was being said. What she didn’t understand was that it didn’t hurt me per se but that it hurt me to think of a grandmother that would be so cruel in spouting such garbage to the children.

Our daughter took on the role of trying to keep her grandmother happy. She thought that by doing so would possibly keep some of her grandmother’s hatred towards me at bay. She was around 8 years old at the time. When we realized what role she was attempting we explained at length that she was not responsible for making her grandmother nor her parents happy. No one can be responsible for another’s happiness. True happiness must come from inside a person. She was only responsible for her own happiness and that of being a child. She was slowly taking on the same coping skills my husband had learned as a child. That of blocking it out and forgetting.

My husband still did not see the damage that was being done to the kids. He felt that by us “explaining away” his mother’s behavior we would be able to counter any side effects of this type of abuse. We were still in the appeasing and placating role in regard to his parents. This caused many a discussion between he and I. It wasn’t until our daughter had to be put in counseling that he realized the damage that was being done. That still did not break us from the cycle we were finding ourselves drawn into constantly.

There were periods of time where he would refuse to allow his mother access to the kids. I will admit that those were the better times for us as a married couple but it wouldn’t last long. I must take some of the blame in regard to the breaking of his resolve. Having no family to speak of it bothered me seeing he and his parents at odds with each other. I would encourage him to at least make a phone call.

I never truly grasped the complexity of bi-polar and I am not clear as to exactly when I fully began to understand the depth and severity of it in my MIL. I would have many an argument with my husband over the horrid things his mother would say to me, about me to others and his (what I perceived) unwillingness to defend me. He would always tell me that there was no possible way he could approach his parents with what was being said because one cannot argue with a crazy women. As a wife I took that as meaning I had no value and worth to my husband. Many of the things his mother had said to others inevitably got back to us. It was very painful for me to sit and watch him not address the issues.

I started to withdraw from my husband and any persons connected to him or his family. Family members. Friends. I assumed that his family surely must have felt the same way about me that his mother and father felt. I was angry and felt unjustly accused of having done things I had not done. Comments and actions misconstrued, taken totally our of context. I cut myself off from any one remotely connected with him or his parents.

There were several times that it had become so difficult that I had packed the kids clothes and mine and was leaving him. I couldn’t take the verbal abuse. I had heard so much of what a bad person, bad mother, bad wife etc. that I was beginning to believe and doubt myself. That is why my husband does not allow me to listen to any of the messages she leaves on his cell phone. I will cajole and harass him at times to allow me to at least hear one or two….especially if I find myself feeling sorry for them. It is some perverse sense of reasoning that I need to be reminded of how vile she can be. Listening to the attacks on my person have no weight anymore but I confess to wanting to see her disappear when I hear the things being said about the children.

We would periodically go to counseling. Some things helped. Our Pastor told my husband that his responsibility was not to his parents. He was to “leave and cleave” to his wife. Our family unit consisted of husband, wife and children. He told my husband that even with the wonderful relationship he has with his own adult children that any involvement he may have with his grandchildren is a privilege not a right. Just because they are his parents does not mean they have earned the right to have access to his children if that access goes counter to the way we were raising our children. His mother found fault with the church we attended. She found fault with the Christian School we had the children enrolled in. She found fault with the fact that my daughter and I only wore dresses or culottes. She would make remarks to our daughter that culottes won’t keep her from getting pregnant. This being said to a 10 year old.

He realized that he did not owe his parents constant access to the kids. He still did not see what this was doing to us as a couple. That did not come about until last summer.

Leaving the house when she is town? Not difficult at all……..It is better than the alternative of us hiding in the downstairs, fearful that they might actually see or hear us. Which happened…..But that is another story.

Part III

How did his parents take the news? Not well. Accusations of entrapment started flying along with accusations of me only trapping him into marriage so that I could get my husbands money. Hello….he had no money. He was still in college. If I had wanted to marry someone for their money I had a chance. My husband eventually met the guy. When I told him what family he was connected to and how wealthy he was in his own right I think my husband was surprised. If I had wanted to marry for money….I wouldn’t have married someone that I would have to wait for his parents to die to collect…..anyway. Sorry about that little rabbit trail….but this is harder than I thought. Back to his parents……

They even verified with a family Dr the possibility of becoming pregnant while on antibiotics. They eventually had me investigated. They wanted to know how he knew for sure it was his baby. “You know I probably slept around…more than likely it wasn’t his baby. He didn’t have to marry me. They would help him take the child from me after it was born.”

Now do you understand why I told you about our dating experience. Anyone who was around us, our friends, my roommates and our co-workers (those who knew we were dating) knew that was just the biggest bunch of malarky. Everyone knew how quiet and reserved I was. My own sister thought I was gay because I wouldn’t date. Well, of course I wouldn’t date any of the guys she hung around with….they were rough guys to me. I was a Christian and I was going to wait for God to bring me the right man and I wasn’t going to have sex until after I got married. How the mighty fall. Now you might understand the comment on my shame. That was how I felt.

Once his parents realized we were going to go through with getting married, came the wedding plans. I was very bitter over this for a long time and blamed my husband. HIS parents decided where the wedding was going to be. They wanted to make sure their son had the wedding HE deserved. This was supposed to be my wedding, our wedding, and I always thought the bride got to pick where she was to be married. My husband used all the arguments he could come up with to convince me that it would be easier for everyone because his family had all the houses at the beach. It would give everyone some where to stay. I was given a piece of paper with a list of dates that the houses were open. That was how we chose our wedding day. It wasn’t until after the invitations were printed that I found out the day after our wedding was also his mother’s birthday. I cannot begin to tell you what a mistake that one was…..needless to say…most of our anniversaries were ruined.

The date was set, the church arranged….the catering was taken care of. The only thing I had to do was show up and provide the flowers. I wasn’t happy about this but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. My husband was placating his parents over what I wanted and that was pretty much the end of that.

We ordered the invitations. When they came in my mother had come into town. I called my husband and asked if it would be too inconvenient for us to come by and have a peak at the invitations. I was told that would be okay. My mother and I went to visit my in-laws. This was the first time my mother had met his parents. It was a mistake. We shouldn’t have gone over but we were told it was okay. His father was somewhat pleasant but his mother…..if she had super powers I would have been dead that day. I was looked at with hatred. We didn’t stay long. My mother excused herself and went out to the car to wait for me. I apologized for coming by on short notice and thanked them for allowing us to stop by. I was treated like we had just committed some major social faux pas. As my MIL is constantly telling us….I am trailer park white trash and a few other things I won’t repeat.

I got into the car and looked at my mother. I was stunned to find her crying. She looked at me and said that my MIL hated me and begged me not to marry my husband. She said that women would make my life pure hell. She wasn’t too far off the mark. I could tell that day that I was not liked. I still didn’t understand.

There have been times over the past 15 years that I wished I had listened to my mother and ran. But I didn’t. I am not sure if I could sit here, knowing what I now know, and say that I would have gone through with the marriage. I would like to think that I would have still married my husband and had the three children we have but our marriage has had more downs than ups when it has come to dealing with his parents. Besides that, what ifs are a pointless endeavor and a waste of time and energy. We stuck it out and made it work and have managed to raise three fairly emotionally healthy children. It’s a difficult pill to swallow when you realize that you are unable to be defended and to constantly feel as if you have no worth or value to your spouse. I guess I will never know what exactly I would have done seeing as how chances like that don’t come around…..ever.

I told my husband what my mother had said……I told him that maybe we should wait. Give his parents a little more time to get to know me. That ended up in us arguing. It wasn’t a pretty argument and he wasn’t very nice about the whole thing. I told him that I didn’t mean that we not get married just maybe wait until after the baby was born. He looked at me pointedly and asked me, “what made me think I would get to keep the baby after it was born.” If I thought he was going to be a weekend dad I was wrong. I gave him back his ring that night. I was devastated. I knew his parents didn’t like me, his mother hated me but I also knew who they were. I was afraid of the power I perceived them as having and knowing that I was basically alone in this world with no family to really turn to and no where to go for help if needed that I didn’t stand a chance of wining any kind of court battle against his family. That was the first time my husband saw me cry.

I didn’t understand and neither did my husband. He didn’t realize that he was always giving in because it was easier than upsetting the “crazy lady”. Everyone did everything to keep her happy. It was the only way to survive being around her. When she was in a manic phase and wasn’t the center of attention it was unbearable. It was like watching a petulant, spoiled rotten three year old pitching a tantrum. It was her way or no way. I think I am the only person that could say hello and it come back that I was rude and disrespectful.

Through out our marriage we went to counseling with our Pastor. I did most of it, occasionally my husband was brought in to the counseling. Our pastor would give advice and I would sit there and tell him over and over that he just didn’t understand. He had to actually hear her to truly understand what we were dealing with. After a summer of being in the dog house again we gave him a copy of some taped messages. I won’t tell you everything he said but he apologized and said I was right. He had no clue how bad she was or how bad the situation was until he heard those messages. He said he needed to talk with my husband but that is another story.

I am amazed at how angry all of this makes me feel even after all of these years. It probably isn’t helping that I just found out my MIL will be in town for the next few days. She is frightening and my two sons do not want to be anywhere near the house while she is visiting. My daughter doesn’t want to be around her but also doesn’t want to leave the house. No one can guarantee that she won’t show up on at our front door. I can only say that unless you could here her messages; you just don’t understand. For those who have heard them….I have news. Those are now considered the nice messages compared to the ones she is leaving now.

If we stay, it would go something like this. We would have to keep the curtains closed, the doors all locked, the kids would have to stay inside and we would hide out in one of the rooms. We would be stressed. I would be stressed and that stress isn’t good for any of us but especially me because the last thing I want to do is take that stress out on the kids. They don’t need it and they don’t deserve it. So tomorrow I am running away (with the kids)….You have no idea how that makes me feel that I am being cowardly in not facing this women down and allowing her to run me from home.

Our life, my life as his wife, has been so much easier now that he has recognized that he had developed his own sense of surviving his mother by using the coping skills he created as a child. That being his ability to completely zone her out anytime she opened her mouth to speak and the habit of appeasing her to keep everyone happy. There was nothing I could do to help him see what was being done to us, even threatening to leave on three separate occasions. He had to see it for himself. It broke his heart and was a very humbling experience to see my husband sit there and cry. I have always loved him…..and couldn’t understand why he couldn’t see what was being done to us and to the children. Children who grow up with a bi-polar parent like my MIL (refuses medication and refuses to acknowledge her illness) grow up being verbally abused and put down quite a bit. Some even go through physical abuse. My husband has pretty much blocked out most of his childhood. It is so difficult for them to see they have made themselves responsible for keeping one person happy, placated and appeased just to avoid any type of conflict, knowing that if they don’t just give in everyone’s life will be hell.

The one point our Pastor was able to help him understand was that his family did not consist of his parents. His immediate family, the family he was responsible for protecting, caring and owed any allegiance to was not his mother but his wife and children. The whole leave and cleave idea. It doesn’t mean he turns his back on his parents. It just means that his wife and children come first.

That’s enough for now……Quite frankly I am not even sure if any thing here will be helpful or more confusing. I have some packing to do……..

Part II

My husband is a very unique man. I don’t think there are many out there like him. He is pretty special.

He knew from what he had learned about my past that I was going to be a slow date. We dated for over a year before we held hands. One night on the way back from visiting my adopted parents, he reached over and grabbed my hand. He looked at me grinning and asked if I minded. I was just glad the car was dark because I could feel myself blushing 20 shades of red. The first time he kissed me, which was really me kissing him, was after we had all ready been going out for 2 years. I told you I was a slow date. We had gone out to dinner; it was in December. I wanted to thank him and waited for him to walk down the stairs a few steps. There is a foot and about three inches difference in our height. I asked him to stop and gave him a hug thanking him for dinner and proceeded to kiss him on the cheek. At least that was where I was aiming. I missed the mark because HE turned his head. I was so embarrassed!! I missed his cheek and hit his lips. I pulled back quickly and of course he wasn’t a gentlemen because he commented on how red my face was. He then looked at me and said, “We can do better than that…” The next year rolls around which makes it 1993. I was in a bad car accident. I had been sick for two months with some type of pneumonia. I was put on antibiotics. I think you can figure out what happened next.

It was March 29, 1993. One of those landmark days when your whole life takes another twist and turn. I was still sick. My doctor’s decided to run a full panel of blood work. They were trying to figure out what was wrong. I had gone back to my apartment to go to bed. I was hoping to at least get some sleep before he got off from work. The doctor’s office called. The conversation went like this.

“Miss. M? This is Dr. *** office. We have the results of your lab work.”

“Okay”

“Your blood work came back positive.”

“Oh. Positive for what?” I asked. I didn’t know everything the Dr. was checking for.

“Your pregnant.” The nurse was very cheerful when she gave me that little piece of news.

“I’m sorry, but you must be mistaken. I am on the pill.” I was so sure and insistent that I wasn’t pregnant I was not ready to accept this piece of news.

“Yes, mam. You are pregnant,” replied the nurse.

“I know that I can’t be so your test has to be wrong.” I was that naive.

“Well, Miss M. I don’t know what to tell you but you are pregnant.”

“I’m sorry but you will have to do that test again, because there is no way I am pregnant!”

“Fine! How long would it take you to get back to the Dr’s office?”

“I can be there in 10 minutes!” Considering that I lived 25 minutes from the Dr’s office…..making it there in 10 minutes was breaking a speed record for this area.

I made it. I was there in 10 minutes. I walked into the lab and they did the blood work again. This time it had been ordered stat. I was to hang around for an hour then call the nurse back for the results.

I went to the mall.

My hour was up and strolled back into the complex. They have phones for you to use to dial directly to the department you needed. I waited on line until the nurse could pull up the results.

“Miss M.? Your results are definitely positive. You are pregnant.” I didn’t say anything for what seemed like minutes but I know it was only for a few seconds. My throat was getting tight; I was working to hold back the tears. I asked the nurse what I needed to do next. She was very apologetic and said I needed to go back to the lab and have all of my prenatal blood work done. I went back into the lab and the techs are congratulating me. That was enough. The tears started to roll down my cheeks. The more I cried the happier they were for me.

I walked out to the car and sat there for almost two hours. I couldn’t drive I was crying so hard. You would have thought I was an 18 year old who had just found out she was expecting rather than a 28 year old. I was scared. I was ashamed.

Why, do you ask am I wasting all my time with these stories? I wanted to give you an idea of who we are. How our life together started out. We loved each other but it was inferred. Neither one of us was really ready to use the words. We were both afraid I guess. He is the type of man who demonstrates his love through his actions. Words have always been meaningless to him because of all the words his mother used. You could say whatever but your actions would always prove otherwise.

He took the news of the pregnancy much better than I did. He also understood why I felt ashamed and why I was scared. He did ask the typical male question….”How did this happen?” He then clarified what he was asking knowing that I had been taking the pill. Antibiotics. Our daughter is an antibiotic baby.

He just looked at me and said Okay. He then informed that we would be getting marries. I was a little surprised because he had never actually mentioned marriage to me. He just assumed that I knew he had planned on marrying me. This just moved his plans up by a year.

I told him that I had given the Dr’s permission to discuss my medical history to verify everything and that he could go to the Dr’s appointment with me. They needed his history also.

The next step was informing his parents. Again, we are not dealing with an 18 year old here. We were 28 and 24 at the time. I didn’t know he was 4 years younger than me until after we had been going out for almost a year.

To say that his parents didn’t take it well would be putting it mildly. He told me that his mom didn’t like me….but I thought she would eventually like me once she really got to know me. I could not have been more wrong in that assumption.

Introduction to Us……Part I

The initial entries are an introduction to who we are and our earlier life. I felt it was important to share this so that you, the reader, could get an inside look into us. You may find the beginning boring but believe me….It gets interesting. You will see how naive I was and how we both fell into the pattern of appeasement and placating. Bare with me if you will………

My husband and I actually met at work. We both worked in a computer room, he worked second shift while I worked third shift. It all started by us developing a friendship. He would occasionally stay after and just chat with me. We became very good friends. I could honestly say that he became my best friend. I was starting to develop stronger feelings for him and apparently he was feeling the same way about me. We were both pretty shy I guess, so neither really “officially” mentioned the word dating. My roommates would sit and laugh at us.

He would come to our apartment and we would sit and watch Star Trek. We both enjoy Sci-Fi and of course that included being a closet Trekkie I suppose. He would sit on one end of the couch and I on the other. I remember one time we were eating popcorn and my hand accidentally touched his in the bowl. It startled me so that I jerked my hand out of the bowl throwing popcorn everywhere. He laughed at me. We had become such good friends that I had shared with him certain events that had taken place in my childhood.

I came from a very abusive background. I had been beaten pretty badly by my stepmother and sexually abused by another family member from the age of 3 to 13. My husband was only the second person I had really ever dated. Here I am at the tender age of 28. He never really talked much about his mother. He did talk about his father. When he did mention her he would just say she was nuts.

Fast forward to the first time I met his parents. We had become good friends and been dating for almost a year and a half. Mind you I was nervous, I knew who his parents were by now. I was intimidated. The day I was invited over his mom had a physical therapy appointment at one of the local bases. It was about a 40 minute drive to the base, an hour appointment and a 40 minute drive back to their house.

I don’t think I said two words the whole time in the car. She talked the entire time and talked fast. She told me about the adoptions of their two sons, loosing their first baby, the many miscarriages that she had, about her husband’s military career and my husbands time in college. The only thought I had at the time was “what in the world is this women on.” She was apparently in a manic high phase which I didn’t know about yet. I was tolerated at first because they didn’t really feel that my husband was serious about me. It was okay for him to be friends and we were co-workers so there had to be some level of involvement. I didn’t see the true her until we decided to get married.

Introduction

Hello, I am the wife of the author of My Bipolar Mother. My husband and I have discussed me adding an occasional post to his blog concerning my point of view through out our marriage. We decided that it would be best to make it a separate blog but linked together.

Many questions and comments have been left at my husband’s blog by people who are relieved to fiind out that they are not alone in dealing with bi-polar family members. This blog will be from my standpoint. As a wife who has had to live with a husband who at first was blind to the impact his mother was not only having on our marriage but more importantly, the impact this whole situation has had on our three children.

Much of the beginnings will be a history of our early marriage and how after nearly 15 years , we’ve been able to stay together and manage to grow healthy, well balanced children. It has not been an easy 15 years.

Through the anonymity of the blog I will be able to be more open and honest with some of the many situations that we have faced. Some are very uncomfortable to face….but I feel that to truly be of any help to others who are in marriages dealing with bi-polar I will need to be candid.

Just one note…..as my husband said….if you think you know me….don’t mention my name. I have total control over any content including comments that are left. Anonymous comments are welcome.

It is my wish that as I journal the past 15 years, that it will help me to rid myself of all the bad feelings and emotional baggage this situation created. A marriage can survive and grow and be healthy but it can be a long journey. I am proud to say that we have a strong marriage and that instead of this separating us, which it almost did, it has drawn us closer together.

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