It’s been 6 below w windchill of -14—baby, it’s cold outside. I’m still rough sleeping, my dreams consist of remembering the new white guilts I bought for my single place after separating from my husband. I had moved upstairs of our 2-family, 20yr home thinking I could live in the apartment upstairs. He was living at his Aunts house we had also worked on and our names were going to b put on it as we assumed ownership. She had promised all those years of our marriage in exchange for taking care of her. She was not n easy person to care for, but as she looked at Assisted Living places we were told it would take 5yrs to have her sign off on it if they needed the assets for her care. They knew this all along, but gave me no such consideration for my assets once they took them all away telling me I had to go to Social Services that I was homeless!
Every place I went to live and we had numerous places we had bought was the same, each financial scam sending me into repeated waves of shock! The rental business we worked on I was told was all his. 20yrs of my life was brutally taken from me. I had so many dark nights of the soul I asked God to repeatedly let me die. I watched everything I had worked on over 20yrs b violently torn apart and either destroyed or all given to him.
Some nights I sobbed so bad I thought I would die from hyper-ventilating, other times I could barely walk, became so winded I felt as if I would pass out and generally felt like I would die most days. The complete reversal of who I was, what I had worked for and what I had was completely replaced w such n alien version I couldn’t incorporate the new reality without feeling I would pass out.
Accusations of being a whore, mentally ill, or needing to go to a homeless shelter were so shocking there were times I couldn’t breath well. My breathing erratic, scary at times; my heart racing, pounding. I would have to sleep for long periods w nightmares and crying that sent waves of spasms through my system. Name-calling from people I could have endured. Abuse I suffered as a child helped me let those things go, but this was the courts and police making these accusations. It became surreal. I never had mental health problems and in spite of a horrible childhood I thought I had overcome so much of it so well. I had no idea the deception all around me, but I had always felt the presence of a dark cloud. Why didn’t anything ever workout?
My 10 degree mummy sleeping bag that I loved was hanging in there, but nights of 6 below he was having a hard time keeping me warm and I was chilled to the bone. I say “he,” because the sleeping bag was like a big, warm, bear hug. I felt safe and cocooned. I had days of anxiety though when it was so cold to b out more than 10min. It is so bitter I have to get quickly back in. Keeping a mental focus is hard, but years of meditation and Yoga help. Being wrapped up like that for days is difficult, human beings aren’t meant to b confined like that—it can test ur mental health. Times I would finally go in some place to get warm and feel anxious, nervous—jumpy.
Being confined does that to you. It takes focus not to let the fear and anxiety take over, but sometimes it does. I think of the horror of Solitary Confinement that I also believe like others is torture. It wrecks ur sanity after awhile n there’s nothing you can do. I’ve been ok so far, but it takes all I have some days and even then I fail and succumb to negative thoughts. I can only imagine people like Kalief Browser that spent years in Solitary Confinement for something he didn’t even do—a stolen backpack.
His story really bothered me when I first started following the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). Being confined like that is torture. I feel the same and my confinement isn’t nearly as bad as his, but it doesn’t take long to notice changes in ur well being from being confined. It changes a person. It changed me when arrested for some broken Christmas lights after finding out my entire 20yr marriage was a lie and roofied by another woman involved in scheming me w my ex. I was locked up for 4 months accused falsely of also resisting arrest then the lawyer lied about my release n I got another 4 months in a psych ward being told I made up being Sexually assaulted, the Domestic abuse of my marriage, and the fact I was a professional w a career. The goal was to paint me as a “crazy whore,” which my ex-husband had all planned so he could use me and steal all the assets I worked 50/50 w him on to have.
I would also toss and turn trying to come up w yet another plan to move forward, but all my attempts were being destroyed as my ex said they would. “You’ll have no way out this time,” he sneered before he had me arrested. I had no idea of the hatred he now displayed. How could I have not known? I suppose I knew, but wanting my marriage to work made so many excuses. I was so isolated he was all I had. I would eventually find out the isolation was all part of the abuse.
Today I know, the signs were always there. The abuse started shortly after we married; after the love-bombing and being such a nice guy. I just never knew the hatred went so deep. I know today that hatred that deep is often not for the person it’s taken out on. I know it’s easy to say he was the one w mental health issues, but I had also put up w so much. I see today I was the scapegoat for all his rage. Rage that only he can address, but for me it starts with our mothers. Mine was horribly abusive and so was his. My MIL treated me like a servant from the start, but I thought it due to her being elderly and blind. I never thought her political views infused her distain or her believing I was just her servant. I had no idea about White Supremacy and the lies to cover it all up made me sick when I found out what everyone else had already known.
How could I b Married so long n not know these people I loved harbored such hatred for others n me? Others they considered less than; maids, waiters, servants—slaves! The thought still makes me feel I can’t get through this, but today I know I survived it. I have come out of the woods into the clearing—literally and figuratively, as I check out the woods where I rough sleep. The metaphor of being lost in the dark so long and finally a clearing; some light, the sun!
I think of “Into the Wild,” I felt so bad when Christopher McCandleness missed the river and died. He was so close to finding water; his way out—safety, but it was not to b. He died from starvation. In the movie he was so close to the body of water he sought water from, but had turned one way when the water was so close the other. It was n awful ending, but his journey was one I admired and taken as a journey we often take metaphorically. We’re so close and yet things don’t work out. I had numerous times been on that journey and this time thought things would finally b ok. I had worked so hard and was looking forward to finally enjoying some of my hard work, but it was not meant to b.
Trauma came in waves after what seemed to b a Kundalini experience along w a Sexual assault that opened the flood gates to old blockages I thought were long over; the ChildAbuse abuse I had no idea I would have to revisit. I reserved judgement about “Kundalini,” having experienced the snake like coil of energy that spiraled up my back lightening up numerous currents in my body before exploding out the top of my head. The euphoria, bliss and ecstasy so all encompassing only the poets can do the experience justice, but it seemed too wild to b true. I needed more proof.
The first week of extreme Winter cold was hard. I had to revisit childhood memories of my mother screaming for me to “GET OUT!” her rages were constant, terrifying, and left me traumatized in ways only now I can release and understand; especially in Winter. Buried deep in my psyche the trauma of never believing I could survive!
Why I always insisted n bought a cord of wood every Winter even though we also had other heat sources at our Lakehouse. Why I loved oil-lamps and collected old ones, why I loved having survival items n yet never felt safe. My ex husband was not one to b protective, I did most things myself or went without; he was just like my mother. I never felt I could survive. I had no idea all my accomplishments, achievements, and success belied a deep seated belief in not surviving, put there so long ago. I read about my “base chakra,” n so much made sense.
After I was fist Sexually Assaulted I would lie in bed weeks at a time unable to move. I had flatulence that seemed unending. It was air that rippled through my intestines like a bull dozer. It didn’t smell as much as it was like some powerful wind tunnel that had opened my constricted bowels. I had struggled w Irritable bowl since a child after the constant ganging-up n abuse at dinner w my 1/2 siblings n my mother—I was always the outsider. Dinner was often traumatic, leaving me to cry in my room w stomach pains. When I went away to college, I loved to eat alone; calm, peaceful, learning at college how to eat mindfully; overcoming my eating disorder, but I had no idea the blockages there. Irritable bowel so bad in my marriage, I often had to lie down after I ate, the pain so bad. It was all gone. I went to the bathroom constantly thinking it’s true about waste building up in ur intestines. I felt they were finally working right. It seemed funny, but true. The blockage releasing. My stomach swelled, seemed inflamed n I thought it from this n not just the poor diet I was forced to eat after being made homeless.
I came out of the woods stronger. I felt renewed, centered—alive! feeling I had survived something larger than the cold Winter woods. I thought I would die, but I didn’t, at times feeling I had died; something was dying. I had survived my abusive childhood, I had survived my abusive marriage, and only now did I finally know I was a survivor deep in my soul! I thought of women that setup n re-experience a traumatic Rape as therapy or those that deliberately handle a phobia to snakes by being around them. I felt the same, I was never told I could survive. I was never told anything. There were no compliments, no motherly advice—no support. There were just put-downs and accusations of so much I never did. I tried to b a good girl, good daughter, but always failed. I had been a child terrified of not surviving and had endured n abusive marriage in the same way I did my childhood—by being quiet n taking it w only occasional bouts of pleading for it to stop; the beatings, name-calling, the put downs. My ex never hit me, but the control was ungodly, the endless things I did to please him, which were always dismissed in the same way I tried to please my mother. The endless ways I was not good enough, but expected to give them everything.
I never knew I harbored such a deep belief from so long ago. I’ve read the base Chakra deals w this sense of safety in the world—belonging. I never felt like I belonged, safe or welcomed. I was never welcomed n told as far back as I could remember to leave, go away, never come back. I was not wanted n had ruined my mother’s life, she said. I carried this terror w me all the time. I was constantly nervous of being kicked out n lately have been. My worse fears come alive. The new energy pulsing through my body was ripping through my life in ways I at first didn’t understand. It was brutal, demoralizing, humiliating. My ex repeatedly had me arrested as his rages became so terrifying I thought I would die in the same way when I was a girl.
I had survived my childhood n now could finally accept my success. I had never talked about all the abuse. Everyone believes Mothers love their children. It was so humiliating my mother didn’t love me. I spent years keeping it so private I had forgotten how painful it all was until trying to get assets in my divorce after she admitted to sleeping w my ex husband. They both schemed to leave me w nothing, “to walk the streets,” they both told me. I was just a whore, a Prostitute—someone they just used! It was devastating beyond words. The love I sought my whole life finally having to admit was never to b! How much more proof did I need? They had taken everything precious from me; in such a brutal, deceitful way. They had planned it all those years ago after my mother had lured me home w promises of doing mother/daughter things only to throw me out n have the entire 1/2 family, my 1/2 siblings family, her ex boyfriends family she was close w line up against me once again. My then best-friend their cousin also involved. It was horrible.
They set me up to b used, I would b left w nothing. I had no words for this until recently—a 20yr Rape! I was told online. Human-Trafficking isn’t just women tied up in foreign countries, but women exploited n used right in a small-town like ours. I was n object to them, of no value other than to b taken advantage of. Serving my in-laws part of what a slave does. I had no idea about slavery or White Supremacy. I struggled to learn as neighbors, playing along from the start threatened to lock me in their basement to do laundry.
I felt in some kind of nightmare unable to wake up, but now see this hideous evil plastered across the internet as the storming of our Capital unfolded and they beat a Police Officer to death, n another took his life. Neighbors I once knew n thought were decent became vicious n threatening. Involved in putting me out of my 20yr home n threatening to condemn it. I found out my ex husband had been a Racist all along, lying n deceiving me repeatedly. Their scheme coming to fruition as Trump took office n their threats mirrored his. They all made threats using him as their example of how things should b. It started to all come out as they were embolden by his rhetoric n aligned w so many others that shared their hatred.
My ex had pretended we were similar all these years, “we’re so alike,” he would say. Today I know that was never true. I could never keep a person as a slave. I feel sick knowing I spent so much time w people that can! I struggle to make sense of why we r dealing w this horrible part of our history again, but I guess in ways it never goes away. We just learn to b more vigilant, aware, active in our beliefs. Seeing examples of them rather than just talk. My in-laws had a history of having “Polish maids,” come here n staying. My mother grew up wealthy, spoiled w “farm-hands,” all fine if people r paid decent, acknowledged for their work; not enslaved. I was not given that option. I thought I was a wife not a maid/servant. Wives often do the majority of housework; serving, tending to so many home things; this was far worse.
As I survived the cold, something deep inside had finally been cleared n replaced w a core of believing I survived not only the cold, but so much else. I’m capable, resourceful, and belong. I read the meme on the soap dispenser at Planet Fitness as I shower. “You Belong!” it says. Yes, yes I do, I think! I know they did a number on my finances. I’m still homeless n dreaming of a home—it’s brutal to b rough sleeping. They took my new car, did a number on my career n business, and I miss my sweet dog everyday, but I’m a survivor n know I can find a way once again! This time I know it deep down. There is something to this Kundalini stuff after all.
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