How Can You Say You Love Me?

I became obsessed with the idea that no one had ever looked out for me.  There was no one for whom protecting and providing for Jenna was a consideration.

Not my mother, she had her own issues with men, depression, alcohol, drugs.  She was verbally abusive and physically abusive to my brothers.
My father had never given me a second thought.
My daddy had essentially abandoned us.  By now we had learned that the reason he took so long finding us a place in Germany was that he’d shacked up with another woman.  We’ve heard rumors they even had a child together.
My mom’s current husband, the man I still refer to as my dad, had started acting a little protective after my emergency surgery, but there were wounds there yet to heal.
No partner I’d ever had put me first.  They could even be considered abusive.  I wasn’t perfect, but I’ve always prided myself on my refusal to say ugly, hurtful things to people.

How could they say they loved me and treat me like that?  How could they say they loved me, and let those things happen to me?  Why couldn’t any of them want for me the things I’d wanted for them?

I began having disturbingly vivid dreams.  One such dream featured a naked alien with a sword for an arm chasing me through the wreckage of a small town.  I ran into a house and hid behind a curtain.  I could see the alien in the distance.  If he caught someone, he would thrust his sword-arm into the person.  He’d throw his head back, open his mouth wide, and butterflies would fly out.

The alien came into the house where I was hiding.  I was standing as still as I could, afraid that if I moved, he’d see me.  He stood with his face just millimeters from mine through the curtain.  I held my breath.  And that’s what woke me.

I told my counselor about the dream I’d had.  He told me that dreams like that, that vivid and terrifying, are usually recalling actual events.  He asked me how I felt when the alien got close.  I told him that I just pulled myself into as small of a space as I could and felt like I had to hold my breath.  He said you’ve felt like that before, haven’t you?  He pressed and I searched my memories.  It was a familiar feeling, now that he mentioned it.  It was how I felt when my mother would go into one of her rages.  She had been abusive, verbally and physically.  She struggled with depression and had at least a few episodes of completely melting down into child-like sobs.  I had been convinced that she was suicidal when I was only 10 years old.  All of those things had terrified me the way this alien had.

I sat quietly for a moment, which is unusual for me.  My counselor asked me what I was thinking.  I stammered, “I  g-guess m-my mom w-wasn’t a very good mom.”  I cried.  My counselor asked me why that was so hard to say.   “Because I love her in spite of all of that,” and I continued to cry.

Ben and I had gone to counseling to try to work on our relationship, but he refused to look at himself.  He kept saying, “What she needs to understand…..”  I got so tired of him saying that, I shouted at him, “No.  Sometimes you’re the one who needs to understand.  Not everything is about you!”

The last straw for me came when I had to put my beloved Magnum down.  Because money was so tight, I had to borrow money from a friend to have my boy cremated.  That was the end, and we broke up at the next counseling session.

I’m sad to say that that was not the last bad relationship that I had.  There will be three more to read about in upcoming entries, as well as several dating disasters.  I hope you’ll keep reading.    There are many lessons that will manifest in the next few years.