When Your Soul Feels Threadbare

I'm in the mood to bare my soul.

I'm not sure why.

Perhaps it's the Mucinex, perhaps it's the Dayquil, perhaps it's the low grade fever.

Perhaps, I just need a soul cleansing.

The sun is shining outside in a most deceptive way - you'd think it's almost nice out.

Step outside and the cold will take your breath away!

Nearly single digits.

Glen's napping after getting up at 3am, the cat is on my lap kneading my upper arm and purring loudly.

I'm sick.

I'm disappointed that the workout with my Coach that was scheduled for tomorrow will

probably most likely be postponed.

I have a few friends in a really hard spot right now.

It reminded me of the times, that I too was in a really hard spot - and how you tend to feel when you are in that spot.

Overwhelmed.

Scared.

Mad.

Alone.

Depressed.

We've all been in them - some in deeper, darker places than others.

But you know - you can't judge anyone - or tell someone in a dark hole that your hole is deeper.

It just doesn't work that way.

Today - I want to tell you about why I never had children.

I want to tell you about my father.

Reheat your tea girls - this might be drively.

I was born in 1962 - the fourth and last child.

Four girls.

My eldest sister is mentally handicapped and 14 years older than me.

My next sister lives in Chicago and is 4 years older than me -

my next sister, Aaron's mom - is two years older than me.

Thinking for sure that I'd be a boy - my mom had the name James picked out - hence - I'm Jayme.

I grew up with no other younger children around me.

I babysat in my teen years - not much - but enough to know that I didn't feel that children were

 'my thing'.

By the time I was 18/19 years old, the neighborhood I grew up in had changed dramatically, and most, if not all of our neighbors were now broken homes. 

 Mainly - single moms raising what I will just call 'hooligans'.

You have to realize that this was my perception at 18 years old.

I felt like I never saw a 'whole' family.

Children seemed to be a burden.

Couple this observation with my mother - since I was 13, begging me not to have children.

She begged us all not to have children because my father was mentally ill.

Bi-polar.

Apparently, and I shan't divulge much, because I have great respect and love for my father - but apparently his illness had become so great that he attempted to kill my mother while she was breastfeeding me as a new baby.

I was told that he had a nervous breakdown when I was born.

It was at this time, he committed himself to an institution.

He was there six months.

He remained on Thorazine my entire childhood and well into my adulthood.

When ever I'm tempted to think "I have it so hard" - I remember my mother - living in Chicago with a 14 year old mentally handicapped daughter, a four year old, a two year old, and me, a newborn - with a husband in a mental institution.

No family anywhere to help.

That's a hard time.

I never knew my father to be anything but loving and kind.

In fact, I never ever once heard my parents argue.

He never missed a day's work at the mill in 40 years.

When I think of the fortitude that took, I have the utmost respect for him.

My father's father committed suicide.

My father's twin brother committed suicide.

There have been numerous nervous breakdowns in the family.

And this is why my mother begged us all not to have children.

I obliged willingly - and thankfully Glen was on board.

Bless his heart - he said he'd like to have kids, but he was OK with not having them.

Bless him.

Fast forward to 1988.

We moved out here to Crown Point, Indiana and began friending people that had children.

You have to imagine me like the Grinch on the morning that he realized that Christmas came after all - without presents and decorations...

I was puzzled.

"These people enjoy their children!"

"So THIS is what a family is like!"

"These children weren't 'accidents' - they were wanted!"

I was too busy making this dilapidated old farmhouse a home to really give it all much thought.

It was also the year that my father had a heart attack and took himself off of his Thorazine.

Things steadily went downhill from there with him - as his illness came back with a vengeance.

I can tell you gals that I've seen things a daughter should never see.

I've seen my father completely out of his mind - pacing in a mental institution in his underwear.

I've seen him sit catatonic as I struggled to stay and visit him in the hospital as he never said a word for days - weeks.

I've seen the paramedics come to our house and physically remove him as he tried to hold on to the door jambs crying, begging to stay.

When you are in the throes of that - you feel that it's your only reality - and actually - now that I think of it - when I think back to the times I sat in the car at numerous hospitals and institutions, mustering the courage to start the car and drive home - perhaps it is. 

Perhaps it just is something that overtakes your own life.

In the midst of all of this - which went on for over a good ten years - I was mourning my barren womb.

We considered adoption.

We considered surgical reversal of measures we'd taken to never have children.

Glenco felt that he was too old to start a family at 42.

I tried to be understanding.

Also during this time, my mother was gravely ill with emphysema.

My eldest sister was having a lot of gynecological issues at that time that I had to address - and I oftentimes had to take her to the Dr.

I remember at one time having to sit in the doctor's office and talk to her doctor about her vagina.

Oh girls - let me just tell you - where I was mentally and emotionally at the time - weighing nearly 300lbs - between my sister, my mom and dad - I felt like I lived at doctor's offices.

My life really wasn't my own.

I clearly remember being really 'mad at the world' that this was my lot in life.

I myself visited the doctor often to get reassurance that I wasn't crazy - or bi-polar.

I was on and off of Prozac for several years.

Then I had 'the dream'.

The dream is still as vivid today as it was the night I dreamt it some 20 years ago.

I was in heaven.

My sister approached me - completely normal, and thanked me for helping to take care of her.

Moments later - my father - with complete mental clarity and a peace in his eyes I had never seen before - thanked me for helping him.

It was at that moment when I realized - there would be a time when it was all over.

There would be a time when my mother and father were gone, as they are now.

 I still sometimes mourn not having children.
I think it's only natural and normal. 

Yesterday, having my hair cut - in the chair next to me a girl was announcing that she was seven weeks pregnant and talking about ultrasounds.

It stings.

I'll never be a grandmother.

I'll never have a 'houseful' of kids around the Christmas tree.

I'll never know what it's like to have a daughter that looks like me - or has some of my personality quirks.

But I have Aaron.

And that's a 'whole notha story' of love, redemption and goodness.

I also realized that I would have made a fabulous mother!

Well, actually I am a fabulous mother.

Ain't no tellin' me that baby ain't mine.

One thing that my Coach teaches me is 'that it's all happening perfectly'.

Today - looking back at my life - I have to agree that it has.

It was complete madness for nearly 15 years.

It was illness, mania, mourning, no time of my own, and feeling that it would never end.

Perhaps that's why now - now that my life is quiet, and my mind is calm - that I'm so very extra grateful for it.

So. very. grateful.

I wish I could have heeded some advice 'back then'.

It's hard to heed advice when you are knee deep in the muck of it all.

I wish someone would have put their arms around me and said -

"Jayme - make time for you.  You will still be here when it's all over."

"Breathe".

"It's OK to cry."

"It's OK to be weak."

"Yes, this sucks."

"There will be an end."

I wish so hard.

I wonder if I could have heeded it?

Please know that I'm not dwelling in the past.
Au contrare - I'm embracing the future, big time.
I'm just hoping my journey can help someone else.