A Story of Exhausting Behavior

Sometimes you wake up and question your worth. Everyone does it, I'm sure. Sometimes, you just can't be sure you aren't taking someone else's place here on this earth, and that person might have been the one to figure out world peace.

Me, all I've done is screw up everything I've landed on. No self pity, here, just the facts, ma'am. Well, three marriages, and this one on the skids already, only three years into it. Funny, now I realize that the length of each marriage has been a shorter and shorter stint, until I am fairly sure I'm not up to commit to another one, if this one's done, I'm done. Damn, but I love this guy.

I woke up one day, maybe in the womb, and said, I think I'll float through this life like a cliche, not becoming anything or anyone of note, I'll not be intelligent enough to get through one course of college level math, will suck at writing papers, and I think I'll call it good.

Everyone wants the big time; that fame, or brass ring, or the gold at the end of the rainbow. Or maybe they want to be known for being a champion for a cause. Me? It was animals, and by extension, people. Yeah, I was gonna stop people from consuming too much meat, which would stop farmers from killing more animals, which would cause the corn that would have been fed to the animals, to be shipped to the Sudan, feeding those starving little kids. Yeah. That was me.

But I'm one of those people who jumps into the river head first, only to break my neck because it is only three feet deep. So, how do you be a part of a movement? You mingle with people at conferences? Get their email addresses, go to their house to plan the next shelter protest? Pass out flyers? Or just shoot the breeze because they are just as gung ho as you are, but just as lost?

I'm one of those persons who believed I was a leader of rebels. But I'm not. I need direction, and I'll weigh it against my to-do list, and see what comes of it. I've been a rebel all my life. From the first time I got drunk and jeered at my father, who whipped me for being drunk, which infuriated him. He whipped me again, and like the cliches I've read so many of since the eighth grade, I said, "is that all you've got?" He had been whipping me with his belt, which didn't carry the same impact as other tools of this particular punishment. He liked the end of fishing poles, they whipped about nicely, made that cool whirring sound as they cut the air, before they cut my flesh. But this night, all he had was what was holding up his pants. Three times, each time harder than the last. I bit my lip trying not to cry. I scarred my lip, I think, trying to hold it in. "Is that good enough for ya?" he yelled. The last bit of sass I laid on him was, "yes, that will do." He yelled some more, fumed some more, but I was upstairs, across the landing and in my room by this time.

Seems one of the cops at the combined Fire and Police station saw me and my sister staggering home, after finding the case of beer Kelly ditched near my house by the bridge, ditched because the cops were watching him, following as they do a souped up car driven by a teenager with five other kids in it with him. That mix just causes trouble, ignites it, or draws it.

They knew my father well, a good ol' boy fireman, good at his job, and quick with a great story and a joke. He could charm the slither out of a snake. Good looking, quick to help anyone, great with motorcycles. Won us from my mother, who lost the custody battle. He made sure to groom us for many things, but the most work he put into us was to disparage my mother. Which created rebellion. Which made me.

Since I was one of the teenage kids in the car the previous night, Dad was at work, I talked my sister into finding the beer with me, breaking the necks off on rocks and drinking it down. Yeah, I know, pretty foolish, huh? I did cut my lip on one jagged neck, but you learn quick to just open your mouth and pour.

I am not a lush, but I was trying to be then. I liked the taste of beer, just not too much of it. All the adults drank the stuff at all the dirt bike rally's, rides and camp outs. Man, it was fun to ride into the hills, just go, for miles, and come back when your gas was low. We three had bikes, my brother, sister, and me. We'd go camping at the coal piles, mountains of slag that slow burned for all the years we went. I'm sure it is still burning, no one tries to put it out, or anything. But I heard they fenced it off from the general public.

After we drank most all of the 10 or so unbroken beers between us, we staggered along the road, and across the field, to home. But we were seen. It wasn't long before Dad's truck was stirring up the dirt driveway and sliding to a stop at the house. It took no time before my little sister was crying even before she was hit. She was sensitive like that. But it was my fault. And it was just part and parcel of the crap I did for attention. I didn't know it was for attention then, but all the books say it was, and I suppose they are right.

I tried to be loved from the git go, I'm sure, like everyone else. But I took all the examples, the movies, the men in my house, the women around me, my lecherous grabby-feely grandad, to heart, but most especially the porn my Dad made available for me to read, as the Oldest Child, and Special, and learned the value of a woman. Now, you just try and not live the lessons you were raised with as a child. Go on, try. Sure, you might beat the lessons at first, but not always. Because you don't recognize them always.

I say this, because my third marriage is struggling. My. Third. Marriage. Dear God, three marriages! I only ever wanted to be attached once, because that is how it is done. Or, was done. In the old days, that is. Still, it sucks to be made to recognize how wrong you are as a person, how many mistakes you make daily.

I am a product of my upbringing. Now, mind you, I dearly love my mother. She made more mistakes than anyone, but she too is a product of her upbringing. As a woman child, she suffered at the hand of her father. She suffered mightily. She came to mother hood a very damaged young woman. She was sixteen when she gave birth to me. My dad was 17, and drunk. But there I was the baby of two kids, who would go on to have three of us.

Is it her fault? Is it my dads? The answer is yes, and no. Yes, he formed my rebellious nature, where I would rebel at any request, any assignment, any good thing that came into my life. Yes, because he destroyed my childhood, like a terrible nightmare, taking my innocence and shaking my security for years and years later. I'm still dealing with that, with how I am to be with a man, what a man wants from me. My mother sabotaged every good relationship that came her way, because she didn't know who else to be with a man. I didn't think I took that one in, but apparently, that was the main thing I learned, was that to be safe, sabotage. If you're secure, sabotage. Oh, my goodness, thirsty? Forget water, have a drink! Sabotage. Clean your house? Sabotage, and this last one is the most insidious.

Why that would be such a problem, I don't know. But it is. I've not cleaned the house in all three of my marriages. I've sabotaged myself, my home, by not cleaning it for far too long. But suddenly, after thinking that my current husband doesn't love me, I realized that he does. But the state of the house is torturing him. I am not a hoarder, nothing that bad, but there is disarray everywhere. Until now.

You know that feeling of waking up while you're talking to someone? The conversation is suddenly in focus, the room richer colored, and your purpose made clear. It was at this moment in our conversation, the moment when his frustration led him to tell me he disliked me, that I knew how to clean my house. How does this happen? From the point of not seeing what is in front of me, to finding places for every bit of stuff, and letting go of everything else? I am an adult, and just learning this? How sad for me; how ignorant and sad. Man, I've a lot of apologizing to do.

I don't care; I don't care where the awareness came from, or that it might be just a bit too late. I know how to fix it and what to do.  The only drawback to this plan is will he give me just one more chance? I sincerely hope so. I tell you, in my life, I've never loved someone so much, or felt so loved, as by him. Until his frustration boxed him up, and crumpled him. Hmmm. I've seen this before.

In his frustration, that nasty bit of unfiltered emotion, and truth, I knew all the damage I had done over the years. Depression will do that. I was depressed most of my life. Though that answers most of the issue, it doesn't fix the current situation. That is my next big prayer, and hope. That we are not too late.

It doesn't help that I pestered him to apologize for his part in the argument that strained the relationship between him and our neighbor. Nor that the neighbor didn't own his part in it, just said that he appreciated it. It didn't help that he came away from it not feeling like the bigger person, but that he had been humiliated. All of this, then the animal rights conference, on top of the No Kill Conference that he really wanted to go to, drove to DC an hour and a half away, couldn't find parking, and came home. With another defeat, and with our stumbling to understand each other, it seems typical of us, to him. Depression doesn't cover what he is going through today.

But hey, I cleaned the house. After the horse left this barn, I cleaned it. I've always had great timing.