Looking at the Impact....continued

My Dad was an accountant. He hid out at work. Or in front of the TV.  He was a quiet man to begin with, and today I know that the problems at home had to be overwhelming for him. However, I used to think that he thought that he was the only one being abused. I sure didn’t understand that. My Mother couldn’t have been accused of being the mother of the year. She either avoided us by sitting on the couch and smoking as she stared into the distance. (That was how I viewed it at the time.) Or she was angry and called us names. Every once in a while I got a glimpse of the old Mom. She was the Mom who was wonderfully inventive and would chase us around the house while we screamed with laughter. (She loved to play “Tiger”.) That Mom was a treasure. She was loving and supportive of her children. She was imaginative and creative, and viewed play as an activity to be shared between a parent and child. But then the switch would be flipped. And she would be sitting on the couch smoking…

Her anger got progressively worse. So did her self-care. Those episodes on the couch? They grew longer and happened more frequently. NOW, I understand how all of that was a symptom of her illness. I have been told that she might have been in a catatonic state. That explains those hours spent peering into space. And doesn't it sound inviting? Not to me! In any case, it wasn’t really my Mom. And as I have been saying, nothing was done. I don’t think anyone knew what to do. Even our family doctor ignored the situation. When I was grown, he told me that he was relieved that I survived. I was kind of surprised that he had given any thought to it!  At the time, I remember wishing that he had reached out to me when I was a child. But, I truly get it.  He never knew what to do when I was a child. Is it any surprise that I would set out to deal with such illness as an adult?  It wasn’t a shock to me. I felt almost destined to be doing it. If I couldn’t change things as an 8 year old, then I would make efforts to do so as the adult Judy. Trust me, it made for an interesting life.