Ask any of my inner circle I get really sick and tired of looking for the silver linings. Rising from the ashes is tuff work. Finding hope in darkness is grueling. The meems on social media are full of little saying about getting through tuff times and metaphors about Japanese cracked pottery. I hate these.
That all being said there are things I have learned about myself and my perceptions of things that could only have been learned in adversity. I’m going to share some of them with you, and I’m going to try to do it in a way that is not tired or cliché
Being displaced from an apartment with in the first months of renting it taught me about home. The details of how I came to be without a place to house myself and my 2 lovely boys is not the point of this musing…. but I will give you the nutshell version. We moved into a basement apartment, the land lords seemed nice, the previous tenant was sad to be moving out but had an opportunity they could not pass up. My kids seemed to like it; I was happy as it was an above ground suit. The main house upstairs was having some renovations done to it, so the family was staying with in-laws. That didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time, it would give us a change to settle into the basement. So we moved, and slowly small issues start to surface. And by issues I mean rats. I eventually came to find out that there was a rodent problem beforehand that ballooned during the renovation. Which was no small 3 week reno it was a 2 month total gut of the upstairs with ponding and banging and workers hollering at random times. See it was the landlord’s cousins doing the job so regular jobsite hours and practises were not followed.
I did what I could to make the best of it, our dog became anxious and destructive when left alone. I was a bundle of nerves, never quite relaxed. Then came the Rats, they started getting into our suit. Every hole I plugged up, they found a new way in. I would find droppings in the laundry closet, in the cupboard under the sink. The landlord refused to do anything, until after the renovation on the upstairs was complete. I didn’t tell my kids. I didn’t want to frighten them. Then one night while tucking them into bed, my oldest son found evidence that a rat had been on his bookcase. He was terrified and became hysterical. The vermin had a party in my kid’s room while they were away at their dad’s. I tried to comfort them, and I didn’t do a good job of it because I was freaked out and crying too. We all slept cuddled up in my bed with our hound that night. Having convinced the kids and myself that the rats wouldn’t come into my room, because it smelled like the dog and surely rats were scared of dogs. We were also confident that the dog would not let a nasty old rat get us.
Very next morning we headed off to visit grandparents. Thank the Gods that it was summer break, we stayed the whole week. The kids helped in the garden and I researched tenant’s acts. I contacted housing authorities and e-mailed the land lord formally about the issues. Naively I believed in the goodness of people and hopped for the best, surely we could work something out. Mr. Landlord did not like that I had gone to the tenancy board, and as freighted people are apt to do, went on the attack. What that looked like is really not that important, it was clear to me that a new place was going to be needed and the sooner the better. Not sure what I was going to do, hoping that I could get emergency housing, as I had been on the low income wait list for a few months and was now in a real bind. I had a rodent infested apartment that was part of an unsafe renovation job site. Unfortunately Typically the housing board did nothing more than update my file.
My kiddos went for to their dad’s for their week with him. I slept fitfully with my hound on full alert and spent as little time as possible in the apartment. On Day 2 of my hound’s vigil over my bed, she failed me. I came home late from a friend’s my trusty pup curled up on her favorite chair by my bedroom door where I had left her a few hours earlier. I settled into bed with a book and a tea. Called my dog into bed with me as guard. When I heard scritching. Panicked I froze listening with all my might…. sure that it was in a wall or cupboard or some “other” area. I tried to settle back into my book. Skritch skratchy skreeetch. Coming from my dresser. I took a baseball bat, yes I do keep one near my bed, and poked at the dresser. Scuttling and scurrying answered me back ! They was a rat in my room!! In my dresser !!! Half crying, I got out of bed put on my shoes and grabbed a big broom. My hound had let the vermin into the rat free “safe zone” that I had created in my mind. In a total panic I pushed around the dresser hearing the rat moving in there. My not so trusty hound did help now by following the rat with her eyes (that’s right she did not leave the comfort of my bed) when it left the dresser and scuttled out the doorway to the rest of the house. Banging each drawer and rattling it so as to scare any other beasts away, I checked the dresser drawer by drawer. It seems Mr. Rat thought my peppermint foot lotion and vanilla mocha body butter might have been food. My top drawer was full of dropping and gnawed on lotion bottles. I went through the room checking under the bed in the closet banging and poking at furniture and the unpacked boxes. I eventually deemed the room rat free and sat up most of the night terrified. That was the last night I stayed in the apartment.
With only a few days before I had my kids for our special summer vacation, 3 custody weeks in a row, I was without a place to house them. So naturally my anxiety went from its usual 5 up to an 9.8. I was weighing my options of where to sleep over the next few days. What was I going to do with my dog when I worked? Planning how to house the kids when they came home. We had vacation plans and camping plans, this was supposed to be special, a way to relax without the negative influences of their abusive father. The stress of the landlord to deal with was buzzing around at the peripheral of my awareness as well. When I am this stressed, I have considerably hard time reaching out to people. I carry this false belief that help will never come, that I must go it alone. I feel that not asking for help is a better alternative than being turned away when in need.
The hell of my divorce has forged deep bonds with a very select group of individuals. Gathering all the will I had, these are the peeps I texted. The resounding response overwhelmed me. I had secured a small home base for myself and the kids. In a little suit on a friend’s acreage above her garage. Confirmed and extended my plans to take the kids to the Okanogan on vacation. A third family was going out of town so had offered up their house to us for a week, making it easy to go see places and for the boys to spend time with friends. I even received a text back from my dear friend’s husband, scolding me for thinking I had to ask. Telling me that I am forever welcome ! kids, dog and the whole shebang, whenever ! however ! and to not be so damn silly ❤
So now, you may be thinking she learned to reach out and it worked, big whoop. That is not the lesson I learned. There are millions of memes telling you to reach out, and suicide awareness post reminding people to check in on friends. I told you I wanted to share parts of my journey that I don’t see reflected back at me everyday. The stuff I have found in the lower levels of the onion.
In the first days at the acreage, I felt an ease come over me that I had not felt in what must have been years. It was the easy flow of family and home. The feeling of calm belonging. People around a table enjoying the company they bring to each other. This feeling of security had faded long ago from my family life. The process was slow, layer by layer comfort was eroded. Scoured away in the storms of arguments.
At the start, it was when I was happy or successful, when I had something going on that I was proud of. That was when he would start in on me. Narcissistic attacks, because how dare I be joyful for a reason other than him. Then came the put downs, the accusations, projections of his own selfish behaviors onto me. When the emotional turmoil ebbed, there was not resolution. No making up and reconnecting. There was this dull feeling of exhaustion. I would just keep my distance, walking on eggshells hoping and waiting. Then things would go back to “normal” he would be happy again, and I was expected to be loving and nurturing to him. If I tried to talk about things, bring up his behaviors, say I was hurt or that it was not ok to shove and scream at me. Everything would get turned around on me, how sensitive and overly emotional I was. He would never be accountable. Never say he was sorry; it was my fault. I was crazy and hard to deal with. I was lucky he put up with my antics, no other man would ever put up with all this crying. —- woah, ok re-set…. I’ll stop here before I write myself into a flash back. This is the picture of what my home life was. I’m sure you get the picture. There I would be, blaming myself for not communicating well. Because surely if he just understood me, if I just chose the right wording, he would understand and he would see that it was all a big misunderstanding and it would somehow all be okay again. And you must remember this happened over time. Domestic violence rarely looks like a what your told it looks like. Months would go by where we would laugh together. But when it was bas it was ugly. There were days I would start panicking and crying on my way home from work. Dreading walking into the emotional land field that was my home. Struggling to hold our family together, as the cycles of abuse and outbursts became more frequent and more intense. Slowly overtime the feeling of safety and security most of us associate with home was gone for me. Leached away like a black shirt gone grey. It was only when placed next to bright colours, I could see what I was missing.
Five years later, I still had not felt the sense of security most people associate with coming home. It was so far removed that I hadn’t even notices it was missing. It was a forgotten plot in a book that you reread one day. Lying in the spare bed above the garage I felt this peace deep in my limbs. I felt at home. I was in a familiar place, with people who cared for me. I was safe. It was different than staying with my own family, I have a role to play with them. I am loved and mostly accepted. But I am not myself in that setting, I am a daughter or a sister. I am not just me.
In that cozy space above the garage, I spent some days crying. Digging into my lost feeing, reflecting back to times I had felt secure, safe and warm, both with in my marriage and before it. This produced more tears, because I was remembering nice times. The days back before the abuse started, when my spouse saw me as an ally and a source to comfort to him. I thought about the places our family had lived. Renovations we had done together, the joy we shared in working together. All that I wanted to build. All the promises made and broken. What it was like to plan the future with some one. It brought up a new piece of grief.
The times before the phoenix fires slow ignition in my life. Back to when there were only occasional sparks. I remembered enjoying my weekly chores, vacuuming and meal planning. (no judgement please its true) Long afternoons with toddlers, days listening to teenage woes. The satisfaction I feel when I care for people. Because I lost some of that feeling too. I had stopped cooking big family meals and baking bread. I didn’t want to do the domestic things I was responsible for within my marriage. I was angry at the parts of me who enjoyed being a wife. That anger was white hot. It was where I had stuffed a bunch of blame that I didn’t deserve, the believe that it was some thing about me that made my husband violent.
I remembered the calm that came into the family home, that last house we owned together, during the first year of separation. How cavernous and large the house felt once empty of anger. The new memories the kids and I created there, of singing and dancing together, our voices washing away all traces of fear that hid in the corners of that house. We were like the piglets in the story rejoicing that the wolf was outside. There was a respite from danger, but conflict still loomed all around us. It showed up at the school yard, in the drive way, in the nightmares that plagued each one of us. The hot acid breath of that angry old wolf, would be felt on neck for years yet.
When we were forced out of the family home and into that first tiny apartment, I thought it would be temporary. It was never thought of as a home in my mind, just a place we were staying until everything was sorted. It was small, the majority of our stuff was and still is in storage. We stayed there for 2 years. That’s 18 months longer than I had anticipated when we moved in. And it wasn’t a bad place, we had lots of fun in it. But it wasn’t my home.
I realize only now having no fixed address at all, that home is a feeling you have. It’s not really attached to the structure you reside in at all. I have felt less anxiety lately, even with all the added stress of a midnight move, looking for a new place and dealing with the rat king landlord. I feel more at home and more peace above the garage these past few weeks. I’m living out of suitcases and storage locker #2, but still feel more stable and wanted than I have in 5 years. It’s not a wonder to me anymore, that the apartment I tried to start over in, now that all the legals are done was a total disaster. How could I create something I had forgotten? What hearth magic could I cook up when I no longer remembered the feeling of home?
In my search for a place to rebuild my life, I had not found a home. I discovered something better. The elements that would lead me to remembering what real security felt like. The roots of why I have felt so disconnected. That I miss my role as a nurturer, that I liked a lot of parts about my former life as a domesticated woman. It is painful to admit that, but I have to look at it and forgive myself for staying in my marriage as long as I did. If I don’t do the work and look at this ugly reality, I won’t ever be able to create the kind of welcoming home I want. I want to feel at home in the next place I live. I want my guests to feel at ease and comfortable when we sit and drink tea together and laugh (or cry.) Strangely enough having nowhere to call home has resulted in some very deep and needed healing.
** public service announcement: I am posting this essay months after it was started, but chose to keep the original tone and phrasing from when I was living above the garage. We have found a pretty great suit to live in and it feel homier than any other place we have been…..creating a home is still a work in progress….so is the self forgiveness piece. This is the first big essay I have posted so it also took a wee pinch of courage to finish it off and post it.
Diary of the Phoenix 