It's nice having a little time to myself.

John and the girls are off in Wisconsin Dells this week for the yearly Feast of Tabernacles event. Since I'm in my 4th week of school, I stayed behind and to be honest, I find it to be a nice 8 day vacation from the normal life of heavy responsibilities as a parent. That may sound mean but as an introvert, it's the recharging I desperately need and it gives me time to take care of myself, something I don't always have time to do when I'm taking care of three other people (yes, sometimes the husband needs as much care as the two girls!).

Today was a good example of this. For the last two years I have had an IUD. I do not want anymore children but going to a Catholic hospital does not make it easy to have a tubal done, especially when the one doctor who is able to at the other hospital has concerns about my size. An IUD was a good second choice and seemed to work fine until my period decided to go MIA for a week. There had been a report following the car accident we had over a year and a half ago that said my IUD was malpositioned (I had a CT done following the accident due to abdominal pain and other things). I brought it up with the OB who had me go in for an ultrasound which found the IUD not being where it was supposed to be.

So it came out and I had another one put in because at my age (along with a family history of blood clotting issues), I'm running out of options for birth control and I have no desire to just rely on the old "pull and prey" method. That's how I got Isabelle (my husband likes to call it the "meant to be" method). And while I'm quite happy with my second born, I fully feel that two is enough and I'm in nowhere near the physical or mental shape for another child, especially now that both girls are in school and I'm in school as well. While the procedure was pretty straightforward, I have been experiencing a little pain and cramping and it was nice to just be able to come home and rest and not have to worry about taking care of anyone else. It can be kind of tiring sometimes to constantly be on duty. And while I love my girls and miss them very much, I won't deny that it's nice to have a little time to myself to regroup and recharge.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Finally summer ended and the girls started school September 1. John is grudgingly accepting it but there were definitely some bumps along the way. The school open house was the end of August and he was horrified to discover that Isabelle's teacher had visible tattoos. There was a picnic at a local park for parents and students new to the school and in K and first grades. Natalie, Isabelle, and I all found people to talk to. John just sat off on his own. Then later, he complained about the teacher's tattoos again because she was also at the picnic. The girls are going to a small charter school. It takes up one hallway in the building of another elementary school. And so far, they love it. There have been some challenges, yes. Mainly, those have consisted of all three of us getting used to the early mornings but their first week of school went off without too many issues which made it easy to be ready for my first week of school which started a week later.

However, there is still a lot of difficulties with John as he continues to be unhappy with the choices I am making in trying to make my life (in DBT terms), "a life worth living". He's unhappy with these choices because they go against HIS personal belief system in what a woman with a husband and children should be doing. I say HIS personal belief system because not everyone in his church does the same thing. There are women in his church who are married with kids and work and have their children in public school. But he expects me to stay at home, homeschool, and take care of everything in the household so that he can sleep as he needs to and go to work (and do extra things HE wants to do like go to school and sell Usbourne books).

I am becoming more than frustrated with him about this. It hurts that he says this and feels this way about me. More and more I find myself wondering what he ever saw in me in the first place that led him to wanting to marry me. I have even asked him that and he won't even give me an answer. I am not unfamiliar with this kind of a marriage. I saw this with my own parents. My father was extremely (and still is) conservative who felt that women should stay at home and have children and not have other people raise them. He wasn't against sending us to school (thank goodness because neither one of them could have homeschooled) but he always put down my mother's pursuit for her degree, calling it just a hobby. They seemed like two very opposite people and I know us kids always wondered why they even stayed together.

Because I see our marriage mirroring my parents' more and more, I'm trying to work as hard as I can to be in a place where I don't have to rely on my husband (or really ANYONE) anymore. I'm in school; I'm working my way to a degree in a field I should be able to get a job in. I'm working with DVR. Next step is for me to get my driver's license. I know having that will make many things easier and will lessen that dependency even more. Because I know there will be a point where we will reach a fork in the road and one of us will go one way and the other will simply choose not to follow. In the meantime, I just have to keep taking it day by day and focus on the goal.

Tired...

I've become so tired of being criticized for every little thing. I'm tired of struggling alone with my mental illness and that struggle NEVER being recognized. If it was cancer I had, I would have all kinds of support. But it's not. My illness is in my head (literally) and just as I was invalidated growing up (which did nothing but WORSEN the mental illness to begin with), I'm constantly invalidated now. Others can become angry, act out, do irrational things and not get called out on it. I do it and I'm crazy, my therapy isn't working, I will NEVER be anything but an angry person prone to violence. I'm SO tired of it. I'm SO tired of the lack of support, of fighting ON MY OWN all the time. The pain is real. It may be inside and people can't see it but there are times it is deep and dark and completely and utterly overwhelming. And all I want to do is run away. I want to withdraw and hide and do everything possible to numb the pain because really, that's all I have. I only have myself to get through it because everyone else just stands there in judgement and tells me I have no right to feel that way.

I'm so tired of having to take care of everyone else when there is no one there to take care of me.

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...just what is that exactly?

"I want the truth!"
"You can't handle the truth!"
Anyone who is at least somewhat familiar with dramatic 1990 movies should recognize these lines from A Few Good Men. I happened to catch it on PBS last night and watched it though I also own the movie, having recently acquired it at a rummage sale about a month ago. It's an interesting movie to watch, the characters trying to get to the core truth of a murder that happened on a military base. At first glance, it seemed like an open and shut deal but the reality was far different and getting to the truth underneath it all would be more difficult.

It was that way, I think, with Irvin's murder 12 years ago. The question that was always asked was "why?" It was asked of my sister, asked of me. The question was asked at each of my parents' trials and we never got that answer, not really. And that has probably been the most difficult thing about the whole event, I think. We never got the truth of what was really behind the events of that day.

After my mother went to prison, I established communication with her. There was this period where she would tell me how it wasn't planned. It was her defense the whole time both during the trial and after. They didn't plan it. If they had planned it, surely they would have done a better job than just appearing at my apartment and shooting him in front of witnesses (very comforting Mom). I finally had to really sit down and write her a letter and tell her point blank that I did not believe her; I would never believe her and if she continued to talk about how the whole thing wasn't planned, I would stop talking to her because it didn't matter to me if they had planned it or not. The results were still the same. A man was dead and I saw my father kill him. The next time she called, she apologized and told me she would never bring it up again and to this day, she hasn't.

Having been in the dialectical behavior therapy program for about two and a half years now, I have come to slowly radically accept the fact that 1. I will never find out the truth and 2. there may very well be no more to it than a case of severe dis-regulation. In other words, this may likely have been no more than a crime of passion, a snap of the mental senses, a severe lapse of judgement leading to an event that affected many lives and ended one.

I don't think it was quite that simple though. There were things leading up to the event to suggest that it would lead to it. And like an inevitable train wreck, all I could do was stand there and watch; I couldn't do anything to stop it. I couldn't do anything to stop it. I warned Irvin my mother was making threats. I called the police the night before, trying to get my apartment keys because my mother was acting crazy. My sister, Irvin, and I were even trying to figure out how to get my mother put into the psychiatric unit. And in the end, all I could do was stand there, frozen, and watch my father shoot my brother-in-law from across my living room.

Can I handle the truth? Is there even any now after 12 years that my parents would even remember? Time messes with our heads, changes memories, puts in justifications and excuses that were not there previously. Is there a truth to be found anymore? It is extremely likely I will never know the why behind it all; I will never know what they were thinking in the hours and minutes before and even after Irvin was killed. And to be honest, I don't know if I really want to know.

My sister still tries to seek it out but from the other side. She has learned things about her first husband that may supposedly justify my parents' actions. What does that even matter? What does it change? He's still dead. My parents are still in prison and they will DIE in prison. I will get a phone call someday informing of me their death and that will be the end. And that day will come far sooner than I will be ready for it.

The carousel never stops turning. Whether I know the truth or not, I must go on and live my life because it is the only life I have to live. What happened, they did. They had the power to stop it and they chose not to. And THAT is the truth.

Thoughts on an article I read with another anniversary looming near...

I follow a number of pages on Facebook, one being for the American Humanist Association. An article came up today, titled Should Humanists Oppose Life Sentences Without Parole? You can read it here: http://thehumanist.com/commentary/should-humanists-oppose-life-sentences-without-parole
June 28th will be the 12 year anniversary of the murder of my younger sister's first husband, a murder committed by my father, instigated by my mother. I was a witness to that murder, front row seats, if you will. It was in my apartment and he died in my room after my father kicked my bedroom door open and shot him two more times following the first shot. During 2004, I testified at both of their separate trials. I waited for the jury to come back (with an almost hung jury for my dad's trial) I was there for both of their sentencings and read an impact statement at my dad's sentencing. Both were found guilty and both were sentenced to life without parole. The other option would have been to possibly eligible for parole in 20 years. My parents were 58 at the time of their sentencing so 20 years would have been nearly the rest of their lives anyway but as neither one showed remorse for killing my brother-in-law, they received the maximum sentence.

They've been incarcerated nearly 12 years; 10-11 years in prison itself. While I oppose the death penalty, I can't go so far as to oppose life sentences without parole. I definitely think that there are some people who should never be able to get out and victims/families of victims should not have to worry about these kinds of people getting out and wreaking havoc all over again. As for my parents, that's a hard one. Too many things happened where they did not have to be held accountable for their actions. Granted, both of my parents struggled with mental illnesses but at the same time, they got minimum amount of help for it. They often placed the blame on the rest of us and made us kids look like we were the crazy ones while making themselves look completely and totally normal. People fell for it too and because of that, they rarely suffered any consequences for their actions. Due to that, I feel, their behavior escalated. They became more and more disregulated and age, I'm sure, didn't help. It took them killing someone before something was finally done. And so they are where they are and will be for the rest of their lives and I feel that for them, that's for the best. I don't hate them and I have more or less forgiven them (at least in the sense that I am able to move on with my life and have at least kind of a relationship with them--on my terms) but I have no doubt that they are where they need to be. I would maybe consider a situation where their only other option was to be sent to a hospice, having reached a point of age or mental/physical deterioration where all they could do would be the live comfortably until they died. And so I see some points for the article but ultimately, I simply don't agree with opposing life in prison without parole as I think it is needed, if for no other reason than to provide peace of mind for the victims/families of the victims and not force them to be re-victimized through a parole hearing.

It's been a bit of a rough transition.

I never did really like summer vacation. I needed school. In school, I knew I was intelligent and it was validated on a daily basis. At home, I often felt like I wasn't good enough, no matter what I did. When I was in the early elementary grades, summers weren't too bad. We had a ten acre farm and I would run around and play or read. The summer after our house burned down kind of sucked because there was four of us in a ten foot pop up camper but we spent a lot of time at the lake (just our luck that our house burned down just prior to one of the hottest summers on record) and when my mom really got sick of the heat, we stayed in a hotel. Having a really good imagination back then, I kept myself pretty well occupied. As I got older though and after my dad moved back in with us, summers kind of sucked. Eventually I did get better at signing myself up for things and keeping busy but I was always happy when the school year rolled around again and I could get away.

That hasn't changed much. I really enjoyed being in school this year. For the first time in a really long time, I was able to use my intelligence again and really succeed. I made friends, had things to talk about that didn't involve the bathroom habits of my children, and learned new things. I was happy and felt I had a purpose again. I've been out of school for almost a month now and I'm about to go insane. I'm trying to get Natalie ready for school next fall so I'm really pushing the homeschooling with her. It's still a fight a lot of days. Granted, it's not quite so bad as it's been in the past but she'll still try to delay and she will take forever to do anything. I constantly feel like I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I need to work with her on her writing. I'm REALLY concerned about her writing but I don't even know where to start.

John is the one who wanted them homeschooled. John is the one who has had SOME experience in teaching. But he won't help. It's MY JOB. I'm the MOM. I'm the one who is supposed to be staying at home and doing all the things a stay at home mom is expected to do. He points out constantly how I'm failing that and I am. I SUCK at housekeeping. I never was that great at it because no one in my family was good at it. I try; I really do try but I can't do it all and I don't get any help.

And so that old depression is coming back and my need to escape is returning. John and I are constantly fighting and yesterday, I just gave up and tuned out. I took two Xanax and basically called it a day. I just wanted to be numb. I felt so overwhelmed by the feelings of unhappiness and failure that I had trouble breathing. And I felt so alone.

I still have three months before I go back to school. School ended early this spring but starts late this fall. The girls will start school before I do. But in the meantime, I get to hear how much of a failure I am as a mother because I'm not doing my motherly duty staying home and homeschooling my kids.

My first school year is over and done; just two more to go.

I'm happy to say that both this semester and last, I have done rather well on the grade front. Last semester ended with grades of A,A,AB, and B. This semester I didn't do as well but still good grades: A,AB,AB, and B. I'll say it was because I had four classes specific to my major instead of two of them being general education classes like I had the first semester. So, that being all done and signed up for classes this fall, I now wait. It's going to be a long four months. I'm actually thinking of looking for a job to give myself something to do because I'm already feeling restless and a little depressed having to be home all the time.

John is back in school which means next to no sleep for him as he spends hours up hours writing papers for his online classes. He usually ends up with a paper to do a week and they can take up quite a bit of his time. He started up again before I finished the semester so things have kind of gone to heck in the last few weeks household wise. It's frustrating because there never really is any communication, just sort of this situation where things aren't done and haven't been done and now that I'm finished with school, I'm expected to suddenly have everything clean and put away. Uh, ok. Along with that, I'm still expected to do all of the homeschooling. Actually, these expectations didn't end while I was in school and due to that, I'm accused of failing my duties as a mother on a fairly regular basis.

One thing that has really had to change was the homeschooling situation. My oldest does not want to do schoolwork at all. And from the beginning, she has fought me and that hasn't changed. Along with that, it was expected that I would be the one to homeschool even though I'm not the one who is gung ho on it in the first place. I see the benefits. I see where it may even be necessary. However, for all of the responsibility to be dropped on me when I have little to no experience (compared to my husband who has subbed and has taught overseas) with very little to no help at all in research, curriculum selection, etc just has not been fair. Yes, he works. And yes now he's back in school (for a Master's degree in education of all things!). But he should still bear some responsibility for it when he's the one who wanted it to begin with. When I went back to school, my time and ability to deal with a child who did not want to do her schoolwork dropped. Her father has not taken over the homeschool. She has been taught very little this year so far. Her sister turns five in July and the thought of trying to homeschool two children and go to school myself was not something that seemed possible to do anymore. And so both girls will be going to school next fall. They are going to a charter school, a school for technology and arts. I've heard good things about it and I think it will be a good transition for my oldest. In the meantime, I'll have the summer to get her ready now that I'm done with classes for the next four months.

Naturally my husband is not happy about this. This is one of the reasons these days why he will throw my whole failing as a mother thing at me. I'm giving up. I'm not trying harder. What I don't get is how he's pushing for me to be the one to school them when we do not whatsoever agree on religion or on subjects such as evolution. There is no way I would ever teach them from a religious framework. And anything scientific I would teach with no connection to religion at all. And it may not seem like much when you first think about it but questions come up pretty quick if you try to look much beyond the first writing civilizations. Not to mention, I am an atheist. He is not. He believes that the Bible is word for word true. I definitely do not. I see Christianity in all its flavors as nothing more than a myth, no different than Greek mythology. So to even have ME be the one to homeschool them would potentially expose both of my children to ideas that are outside of the belief system he wants them to learn. And he's worried about them going to public school?!

There will be more of this to come, I'm sure and I'll just have to keep on keeping on and not let it get to me or derail me. I have every intention of finishing school and getting a career. Being back in school has given me a purpose for each day I hadn't had in a long time. And each family is different but I know for me, I really do not enjoy depending on my husband financially. I need more; I need something to challenge me mentally and being a stay at home just wasn't doing it. If that makes me a failure as a mother, so be it. But I'd like to think that being a happy mother rather than a miserable one is important too.

My husband may not see the changes (or if he does, he sees them as a negative thing), but others do and have been impressed with how far I've come. That at least makes it a little easier for me when the "failure as a mom" comments get thrown my way.

Made it through the first semester.

Technically, trimester but since the program I have changed to does not do trimesters, I'm back to just having semesters. However, I'll be in school three years instead of two. Ah well. I will have an Associate's degree though as well as a technical diploma and hopefully, a better chance to find a decent job.

In the meantime, I'm on a three week winter break which has been a little rough so far. Twelve hours after I emailed my final paper, the oven element went out (in a bright flash of light too which was kind of interesting) leaving me unable to bake for several days. And baking was something I was looking forward to really focusing on too. To add to that, John's been rather grumpy about me doing any celebrating of the holiday (as he tends to be every single freaking year since he went back to church in 2004).

I celebrate the holiday. I have since childhood well before I even understood the reason why people celebrate. I have Christmas memory upon Christmas memory, good ones and bad ones. It was a tradition faithfully kept year after year even if it was next to financially impossible, even if the time around it was utterly craptastic (or even the whole year was--1988 being a really good example). It was the one constant in an otherwise, rather chaotic and dysfunctional life, a bright spot to look forward to (even if that wasn't really the case). During the years I was a practicing Catholic, there was even more meaning to it which added its own bit of magic.

Since meeting John in 1999, Christmas has become sort of a dance in figuring out how to celebrate it in a way that still give it meaning to me but also didn't offend him. Some years that was easier than others. Since 2003, it became even more difficult because the very glue that held my family together, my mother, was no longer with us due to being incarcerated for her part in my brother in law's murder. That year, I had planned for a wedding to take place on the 27th of December, a wedding date I had to change just to get my husband to be home (I bumped the date to my birthday, 11 weeks earlier).

With my older daughter's birthday just two days after Christmas in 2005, I really had to become more aware of what parts of the holiday were more important to me and what parts I could do without. There was even some years I tried to give up the holiday altogether but that became way too depressing for me. In the end, I more or less have an idea as to the traditions I want to uphold and hang onto but even that at times can be too much for a person whose religious beliefs sees Christmas as a reason to be thrown into the Lake of Fire.

Still, as part of my mental health treatment, I have worked to become more aware of my beliefs and my values and to go along with them even when it doesn't exactly please others. Yes, he has a right to his beliefs and his feelings on the holiday but that doesn't mean I'm to give up the things that are important to me. Trying to get him to understand that isn't easy though. So, this time of year gets a little rough. Wish it wasn't that way, makes it hard to want to stay in a marriage when I have to fight just to celebrate the holidays that are important to me while I'm pretty tolerant towards his holy days. Time will tell I guess where this all will lead. All I can do for now is focus on what I need to do and do it.

Growing pains...

At least, they certainly feel that way. It's been a bit of a rough adjustment with me going back to school and I wish I could say that John has been supportive but he hasn't really. He won't admit it but I think he feels threatened. I'm not at home to do as much as I used to. I'm either in school or working on homework. There's a lot of homework which is to be expected for college classes. These are not easy classes either. Well, my writing and math class so far have been pretty easy but my networking class, not so much. There's a ton of information to read and remember and the reading is all done online. Since the internet bill wasn't paid before John and the girls left for the Feast, I was without internet at home the entire time he was gone. That, along with the fact that he went to begin with, taking his entire last paycheck and failing to pay any bills at all; missing my birthday and wedding anniversary during that week and not even really calling me because he forgot the charger, left me feeling just a smidge resentful along with hurt, angry, and even a little depressed.

Fortunately, my 34th birthday wasn't a total washout. My sister and I saw my mom the day before and then took a trip down to Chicago to visit family we hadn't seen in over 20 years. That was nice. We did some shopping, went out to eat, had yummy desserts, looked at old pictures from years ago. It was a good time.

But right now, I wonder what the future holds for my marriage. I wonder if we're going to make it through this transition. I'm working on a degree in a field that has a lot of potential for me after nine years of not really do much at all other than being home with the kids. While I don't regret having that time with my girls, it's a big change for me and for all of us. The dynamics are slowly changing. The way things have been isn't working. It never really did but it took me a long time to challenge that. I felt that being home was necessary, that being home no matter the cost was the most important thing. But really, the costs are getting to be too high. There's simply not enough income coming in and I didn't see that changing anytime soon. If anything, it had gotten worse. All I was seeing was a never ending repeat of the same problems over and over again and enough was enough.

So, I'm growing and changing and developing my own goals which means I'm no longer just going along with what John wants. At least, that's not the only option out there. And I don't know if our goals line up anymore (or really if they ever did in the first place). There are times they definitely don't seem to, especially in as far as our religious beliefs and in our priorities for ourselves and our family. I struggle with communicating with him. Nothing seems to come out right and I end up yelling just to get him to listen (he doesn't really but I'm so frustrated by then, I don't really care). There's never any time for us to just talk and more and more it just seems like we're living separate lives.

We're married and we're living together but there really isn't all that much closeness. While he doesn't see anything wrong with this (so long as he's able to do what he wants to do ultimately), I'm not happy with where our relationship is at. And while I've been working on myself and on being happy and content without relying on him to make me happy, I can't help but see more and more of a deficit to our relationship. He feels more like a third child than a husband and yet he more or less makes all of the decisions without even talking to me. It just doesn't feel like much of a marriage.

But I'm keeping on and working on what I need to work on because what else can I do? It all takes time and it takes me being able to be independent. In a sense, it's almost like going through the teen and young adult years again only instead of leaving my parents to live on my own, I may end up leaving my husband.

About halfway through my first trimester...

...at SCHOOL I mean! Definitely not having another baby! The program I'm in follows the trimester schedule and week 7 starts tomorrow. It's been challenging in some ways and not so much in others which, for a first trimester, is probably a good thing. I have two classes that are specifically geared toward my program and two classes that are for general education requirements. Those two are most definitely my easy classes even though one is math which surprises me as math isn't always my strong subject. Then I have a computer class that goes heavily into the inner workings of a computer. That's been going pretty well too. The challenging class is the one that's VERY specific for my degree. It's my networking class. I'm doing decently in it, probably around a B but there's a lot of information to remember and it's been going fast which doesn't give me a lot of time to really hammer the information in my head. I'm hoping that as times goes on, it will stick more. Either that or I may have to make a change in majors...

Balancing everything has been quite the challenge too. John is still working overnights but I have two days where I have classes at 8am. One of them follows his overnight shift. He's done at seven and class is at 8. This hasn't always worked so I've hired my brother's fiancee to watch the girls in the morning so that I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm going to get to class on time. This became necessary after John forgot I had class one morning. At least, that's what he said. Hard to know sometimes if it was really that (though he is rather absentminded) or if it's more his way of trying to gain control of the situation. Hard to say. He can't complain too much right now. It's my financial aid that helped us get rent caught up so he could attend the feast that's a requirement for his religion that starts this week. He had set aside money for it but then spent it and has taken his most recent check to use for the trip. That wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't been able to pay the rent. Or, he would have gone anyway and then we would have run the risk of being evicted but hey, at least his god would be satisfied by the great sacrifice he made.

I might be a tad bitter about this feast thing. Doesn't help that he'll be gone on what will be not only my birthday but also our 11 year wedding anniversary. But it's not the first time his holy days has taken precedence over our relationship even though we wouldn't have even been married if he hadn't forgone his religious beliefs for some time in the first place. Fortunately, my younger sister has come to the rescue and we have a number of plans for next weekend. Which is good because otherwise, my 34th birthday would have been kind of sucky.