Interlude II: The waiting

This isn’t the sweet story of myself and Jess, this is the story of Treez. She’s still me but the me that came before the incredible meeting of a wonderful man who would change my whole life.

I grew up with an overbearing mother. Okay… some would say abusive. I just did what I could to get through and please her. I can always remember from early age being called stupid, thick, an idiot, ugly and many other names. I once overheard a conversation in my mum’s living room with her sisters (my aunts) and her about having me put away in a “special” home. I was about five, no older, I think, and that stayed with me all these years. I felt rejected, dejected, broken like some toy thrown by the wayside, no longer played with as it wasn’t perfect like the others. See, I was born with HMS, or Hyper Mobility Syndrome. This meant I had issues with my joints, pain, bowel problems, bladder issues and, most devastating, learning difficulties. Okay, I was only half second behind my siblings, but it caused my mum and family to single me out as deficient, not quite right in the head, a cause of mirth, teasing. But I managed to live through this thanks to the love I had from my father.

When I was sixteen I had a trauma no child should go through, let alone just survive. I’m not going into details because neither you nor I need them to get the picture, but it left me very scarred. In fact, scarred for life, I’d say. I never shared it with my family, didn’t think they would care or they would lay the blame on me, which later down the years was proven true. I can remember that night standing scrubbing myself raw at the bathroom sink in the dark so as not to waken anyone, washing my mouth out with carbolic soap as mum never bought us tooth brushes or tooth paste. I shivered all alone, scared, confused. I really went into myself for months… no one to ask about what had happened to me.

Some time after this I fell pregnant with my amazing daughter. She was the result of a friendship I had with a guy who tried to help with my trauma and months of turning in on myself. I’d had to hide my pregnancy right till days before. My mum had said she would make any of her girls have an abortion if she found one of us pregnant. I hid my precious bump under baggy clothes, again terrified of what my mum would do if it was discovered. I’d had some of her beatings in the past so I was scared for both mine and my baby’s life. Outside the house I talked endlessly to my child, running my hand over my small lump. It had to come out inevitably as it did after a doctor’s visit. I was dragged to the hospital. I can’t remember much about it… it went by in a blur. I do remember being stripped naked and laying on a table, shivering, not from cold, but from being touched, prodded, poked like a piece of meat. My old trauma chose then to call with a vengeance. I just shut down. This wasn’t happening to me, this was someone else in my place. I’d gone from my head. It’s all I could do to cope.

Becky was born two days later. I was very ill during her birth, cut from one end to the other as I was too tiny to give birth without forceps. I also faded in and out as it turned out I was really sick with blood poisoning. I eventually went home with my baby. I was told they would decide later what was best for her. THEY would, not ME!!!!.

Life was hell. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house at all. If I was, it was to go to the shop for mother. She timed me to the second. Let’s skip ahead 18 months and mum had a heart attack. She was very ill but survived it. I took over running the house as well as having a young daughter to care for. Around this time dad allowed me to go out occasionally while mum was in hospital. Guess he felt sorry for me in a way. I met a man via what was a new trend back then: CB radio. I loved mine. It allowed me to talk to people while I was locked in my home. This man showed me attention, seemed lovely, didn’t mind I had a daughter. We seemed to get along okay. Then I did a stupid thing. I fell pregnant with another child. My mother called me every kind of whore she could lay her mind to. I didn’t disabuse her of this as I believed her words, but now I know all I wanted really was to be loved, accepted, wanted… I needed to find someone to help me escape the so called ‘family’ home. I think he saw that.

We moved into a small two-bedroom apartment after our son was born. From then on my life again became controlled. This wasn’t the love and freedom I so badly longed for and needed. Again I was ridiculed, told I was useless, couldn’t cook, couldn’t do anything right. I was fat, ugly. I believed this as I’d heard it all my life. I waited on him hand and foot because that’s how I was raised. Mum taught us girls that men were god’s to be obeyed, worshiped. He worked, but I raised our children. His words: “I hate kids.” I cleaned, cooked, made him coffee. Everything, anything for his comfort. I even bathed him for God’s sake! I had little freedom and if I put makeup on I was told ‘Why are you doing that? It makes no difference. You’re still ugly.’ I had hair down to my bottom. I wasn’t allowed to have it cut or I was told that I would be locked out.

Things grew steadily worse over the years. Between him and my mum I was bullied until I honestly thought I deserved my lot. I guess I just did the best I could to survive. If I got ill I was screamed at. If his dinner wasn’t ready or the house cleaned I was screamed at. At thirty-seven I developed a huge tumor in my stomach. The pain, folks, was like nothing on earth. I was vomiting daily, living on the occasional bite of food as I couldn’t keep down anything else. Painkillers were my best friends. They took the edge away… some, but not all, of the agony I suffered daily. Getting out of bed was hell. I hurt everywhere. I was in agony… but there he stood, hands on hips: “Where’s my dinner?” screaming in my face as I did my best not to pass out. I’d give in, crawl out of bed and make his food… clean up and crawl back. I had lost a lot of weight. I cried with pain in my bed each night, yet, still, he selfishly wouldn’t allow me to sleep when I could. If I did not give in he threatened to not feed my children. If I still refused, well… don’t ask.

By now I was also suffering from PTSD, agoraphobia, anxiety attacks and hadn’t left my house in ten years. In fact, I couldn’t even touch my door without anxiety. One day when the pain grew extreme, I decided to go to the hospital. Those that knew me well knew now I was in pain. I’d never gone anywhere in all those years. I had issues at the hospital but it was discovered I had this huge 7lb tumor mixed up within my womb, tubes, bowels… it was a mess… and I had to have a hysterectomy. Thank goodness… before I’d had our youngest son but still I’d wanted more children. I longed for a big family. But I was alive, so that was something, I guess.

Things eased a little at home, well… for about a year anyway. My health problems increased. I had cataracts so bad at one point I couldn’t see for months, but I was at least going out some. Never by myself though… wasn’t confident enough to cope. Next when I was forty came breast cancer. This should have told me how low I had sunk by then as, like many illnesses before, I got through my operation. Dreaded chemo, radio therapy but, by now, I think I’d truly died inside. I knew I was alive somehow but I was numb… like most of me had died on the operating table and I was just waiting for the rest of me to catch up. It’s so hard to describe, really, but I think I just got through the days in some kind of limbo. I’d suffered much abuse, although my ex would swear on a Bible I didn’t. I think the man actually lived in contempt of me. If anything in his day went wrong it was me that he took it out on. I was belittled in front of friends, lied to about numerous affairs, lied about constantly to anyone who would listen. He delighted in making sure people thought me the lowest of the low. He played his ‘woe is me‘ part to perfection. Ladies loved it. Like most bullies, to the outside world he could be charming… a happily married family man. Most could never believe his propensity for abuse, his serial affairs, his physical violence, his penchant for forcing me to bed by withholding food from the children I love, his spending all our money for himself leaving me to face the bailiffs who came to collect… spending our money needed to feed the kids to buy things for his train set and fish for his aquariums. If they could see his true colours they would not be so sympathetic about the situation he has brought upon himself and wouldn’t do his bidding by branded me a scarlet woman… shouting the most vile vitriol at me when I walked the streets of our small town of Market Rasen.

Toward the end of our time together his berating, belittling and abusiveness grew. I will explain that another day, but when I met Jess I went from a woman so dead inside I swear I was in God’s waiting room to a woman who was shocked back into life by one man’s faith, gentleness, love and endless patience. Without him I’d still be dead-eyed and lifeless. His love kick-started my heart and I knew then I’d found the love I’d waited for all my life for the first time.