Please know that anything I write is not ever to hurt anyone (especially when regarding the children). I am very careful and aware when choosing my words, but there are significant lessons here. They must be delivered in a manner that is as close to the raw truth as I am capable of delivering. Otherwise, how can any situation be transformed? How can you reach your light without first knowing your dark?

~

My love had only ever told me horrible things about the mother of his children. Both of their boys had been diagnosed with Autism early on. By the time I met them, it was barely noticeable in one of them, while the other one struggled. He said their mother was physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive to the one who struggled. That she would turn his brother against him.

When I first started spending time with the boys, they saw their mother a couple nights a week. Over time, this turned into long periods of her not seeing them at all to her popping back up in regular bouts of insanity. One of the boys was angry…he was so angry. It would come out verbally and physically towards his brother a lot, his dad, people at school, anyone really. The other boy stayed deeply within himself. I remember that anytime she would come around, he would pee the bed.

I grew up similarly. To me, it was evident that they were afraid…severely afraid of the world they knew. It was gut wrenching to watch.

~

I have few memories of my own mother from early on in life. I’ve heard stories (few good ones). One fuzzy memory I have is after my dad had left her and moved us out to stay at my uncle’s. I guess she came to see us. I don’t know exactly what transpired, but there was sudden chaos, and a knife was involved.

For as long as I could remember, I had made it my duty to “mother” my brothers. I understood, as much as I could understand in my young brain, that they would need that. I was achingly protective over them and always looked after them. I even remember sneaking from my class at lunch time to check and make sure they had their lunch and milk money. Some days they didn’t, and I would give them mine. I never, ever could stand to see them in pain…not for a second. If they were hurt, I was hurt, but they wouldn’t know I was hurt. No one would. I would do anything to avoid that.

When I was 7 or 8, we had gotten a place of our own. An unfamiliar car came to the house one day. Two people came to the door and said that they were there to take us away. I remember my dad felt panicked to me, but he was keeping it together. He explained to us that these people were going to take us somewhere else to spend the night. I was scared, something didn’t feel right, but I was trying to keep it together too for my brothers. We got in the car hesitantly.

Eventually we got to a house and went inside. There were kids there and lots of toys. I felt relieved for a brief moment until they told me that only the boys were staying there. They were taking me somewhere else. My heart dropped. They were separating us. I wanted to cry and scream, but I couldn’t. My brothers were looking to me to show them that everything was ok. So, I had to pretend like it was.

They took me by myself to a house where an older couple lived. I remember they gave me a dinner that I didn’t eat and were asking me questions that I didn’t answer. I was terrified. I laid in a stranger’s bed that night and prayed harder than I ever had…Please God, be with my brothers. Please God, don’t let my dad be sad. Please God, I want to go home. Please God, help us. Why did this happen God? Why??

I don’t know how long this went on, but soon enough, we were living with my grandparents. We were allowed supervised visitations with my dad at a counselor’s office. I remember there was a blue poster there of a dandelion with its seed heads blowing in the wind…it said “Wish…”

I never forgot that and anytime I saw a lifeless dandelion, I would pick it, say a little prayer, and watch the seeds float away into the sky. My daughter does the same thing now and it still feels like magic…

I overheard that someone had reported my dad for molesting us. We were forced out of our home, separated, and made to receive counseling for something that never even happened.

Eventually things began to normalize somewhat…we were back with my dad. He had met a good woman who was another saving grace in my life at times. At some point, my mom got sober. Though according to my memory, she was still in and out of our lives whenever she saw fit. I don’t know how many times she would call and pump us up for a weekend with her only to cancel at the last minute.

All that being said, in my mind, she was a goddess. She was a physically beautiful woman…very fashionable. Always in brand new clothes and shoes with her bright blond hair and painted on face. She was funny and charming. Always with a new man every time we saw her. Sporadically, she would take us hiking, to the movies, shopping (lots of this), swimming, out for ice cream and burgers, to the beach. She would drag us along to meetings sometimes, my first introduction to AA.

The truth is, that by this point, I already wasn’t alright with myself or with life in general. This was true about me wherever I was or whomever I was with, though it was especially heightened around my mom. I’ve always had blond hair, but when I was in elementary school, she bleached my hair. It wasn’t blond enough. The clothes my dad had for us, weren’t stylish enough. I was the “least fashionable person she knew.” “You aren’t pretty yet, but hopefully someday you’ll grow into your features.” “Why aren’t you a girly-girl or a cheerleader or interested in movie stars…?” My dad was a jerk off who took her kids away from her, his girlfriend a bitch who was trying to take her place. Everything was always someone else’s fault. Everything revolved around money, not having enough, trying to get more. Everything was about her.

My brothers rarely wanted to go. They would cry and scream at times. I would have to talk them into it. When we would get back home after visits, my one brother would be angry for days. The anger seemingly directed at no one in particular, just the world at large. My other brother would internalize it all. Lots of times, he would be more sad than anything. As for me, there were countless days and nights of endless tears and longing for my mother…for my mother to be a mother.

I had some very highly developed delusions of who my mom really was. In reality, she was a woman on the run. She couldn’t hold onto a relationship because as soon as it got real, she’d be gone. She always had to look and act good on the outside to hide who she was on the inside. She had an insatiable thirst for money because she needed it to fill the bottomless hole within her. She was a fugitive from herself…a sorely lost soul. And it was very, very sad.

No story I ever heard about her mattered to me though. That was my mom. I loved her immensely. No one could talk me out of it or tell me anything that would have changed any of that. I had to learn for myself. She may have been one of the greatest heartaches of my life, but I still thought I needed her. A part of me thought she might free me from my internal hell. That her love was the missing piece and that it would save me…and ultimately, in a way, it did. She’s the reason I knew of the place that would save my life. She’s the one who introduced me to the man who gave me Betsy’s number…

~

So, in dealing with these boys, I knew that a lot of this would be true for them too. I could see it. In anything I said regarding their situation, I was always conscious of putting them first. I say that not to prove that I’m some really good person, but because it was just the plain and simple truth. Because of my experience, I understood them and bonded with them in a significant way. In a way that had real potential to matter. I could literally feel their pain as if that pain were an entity itself. It was an affliction we shared, and it became yet another aspect of this dynamic that would convince me of the undeniable fate involved here. The love that developed for them was automatic and it was true and only grew the more I got to know each of them individually.