Thank you to everyone who commented on this site or on Facebook, or who wrote to me personally after last week’s post. Your words and support mean so much.
To those who contacted me because you’ve experienced similar, thank you. We can draw strength and support from each other, so please continue to write.
Now, here’s the second part in the series. (For anyone who missed last week’s post, please click here.)
***
The Final Years of School
By the time I hit my final year of school in 1984, my parents were suing the government and my mother was gambling.
In 1982, a Casino had opened in Launceston and my mother was spending increasing periods of time gambling. To be honest, I didn’t mind—not only did it mean she wasn’t at home to yell at us or hit us, but she gave us fifty dollars if she won and let us into the gambling room underage. We weren’t allowed into pubs, but she believed gambling was acceptable because you had a chance at winning your money back.
In 1983, the Consumer Affairs Council tabled a report in parliament that warned people about my father’s business, so my parents decided to sue the Council for defamation.
Because my mother was at home less, she didn’t see what we were getting up to. By this age, I’d discovered alcohol and I loved it. Under its influence, I became the extrovert I wanted to be.
One Sunday, my mother picked my sister and I up from outside the church. I actually hadn’t been to Mass, but had been drinking at a Sunday session at a pub instead. When my mother smelled alcohol on me, she pulled the car over and hit me. I put my arms up to protect myself, then she told me to get out of the car. At first I didn’t get out, but she said she wasn’t moving until I did. My sister started crying and telling my mother to just drive home.
I got out in the end, and watched them drive off. I waited, hoping she’d just drive around the block and come back, but she didn’t, so I walked to a friend’s house where I spent the night. I had to wear my friend’s too-small uniform to school the next day because I had no clothes with me. One of the teachers noticed that my uniform was short, and I told him that it was my friend’s because my mother had kicked me out.
Another time, I remember the same teacher noticing the bruises on my forearm, and lifting my hand to look at them. I didn’t say anything, and he let my arm drop, shook his head, and walked away.
I tried to tell people what my mother was like, and some people knew. A lot didn’t want to interfere or get involved. Some didn’t want to fall out with my mother. Others, I think, didn’t want to know about any of it.
Meanwhile, my behaviour was spiralling further downwards, and although I wanted to be good, I couldn’t.
Somehow, despite wagging school, barely studying, handing assignments in late, drinking, and passionately devoting myself to self-sabotage, I still managed to get into Medicine. Once at University, I took full advantage of the freedom of living away from home and drank my way through the first few years. I was the ‘go to’ person if anyone wanted a drinking partner, and I was good for a few hours, until I passed out.
Because that’s what I did—I drank until I passed out. It wasn’t the best coping technique, and not one I’d recommend, but it was the only way I had of coping at the time—for a while at least, there was no pain.
Then, in 1987, my sister was killed and I spiralled further downwards. I failed the following year and the faculty told me to take time off—I think they hoped I wouldn’t return.
I had to get out, and I escaped to the other side of the world, to Europe. The day after I arrived in London, I queued all day for a cheap ticket to a Lloyd-Webber show. I sat in the old theatre in a seat near the front, and as soon as the music started and the curtain rose, I had tears in my eyes. I couldn’t believe home and its misery were so far away. For the next few months I lived in a city filled with history, saw buildings that had witnessed the Great Fire, walked through Hyde Park, and visited the places on the Monopoly Board. Tasmania and its grief began to recede.
No one knew me or my past, and I thought I might be able to start afresh. I didn’t drink as much because I was in a huge and unknown city. I hadn’t changed as much as I wanted to, not yet, but it was the start.
Helping demolish the Berlin Wall
Ponte Vecchio, Florence
I began to see my home state for what it was—a tiny island in a much bigger world. I realised I wanted to be part of that world, and I didn’t want to waste my life. Slowly, I began to claw my way back. I returned to Australia and to university, and tried again.
A Happier Life
Not long after I returned to uni in 1991, I met my husband.
I studied hard this time, got good marks, and graduated in 1994. At my graduation, my mother said, ‘I should be the one going up and getting that degree.’ I wanted to tell her to leave. How dare she try to claim my achievement for herself! I’d worked bloody hard to earn those letters after my name.
My husband and I married, and at our wedding, my mother made a speech. She didn’t wish my husband and me a happy life together or talk about us as a couple, but spoke about how everyone there knew that I’d gone off the rails and got back on. Then she told a story about the Danish sculptor, Thorvaldsen, who’d wanted to make a heraldic statue of Jesus, one with his arms in the air, but the mist came in overnight and Jesus’ arms drooped. Thorvaldsen immediately thought his statue was a failure, but it went on to become a famous ‘Come unto me’ statue—it was a failure that turned out all right in the end. She held out her hand towards me, and said, ‘And that’s how I think of Louise.’
Inside I was cringing, but I kept a smile on my face, and I went over and kissed her. In my speech, I thanked her and told everyone how she’d never deserted me.
It didn’t take long for us to start our own family. As soon as I held my babies and saw their innocence, I knew I couldn’t hurt them.
As they grew, I saw that they were good children, and I felt relieved that they weren’t bad like me. Then they started doing the same things I’d done, the naughty things that all kids do—throwing tantrums, hitting each other, telling lies—and I saw that they were just like me. And I’d been just like them—a normal kid. I hadn’t been bad. I wasn’t a ‘selfish bitch’ or a ‘lying bastard’. I’d been a normal child—in fact, I’d been a good child.
It began to dawn on me that it wasn’t ‘punishment’ I’d received—it was, in fact, abuse.
My Parents’ Legal Case
My parents’ defamation case against the Consumer Affairs Council was still going. After commencing it in 1982, my parents had sold their house and holiday home in the late 1980’s, and moved in to a flat behind their business. In 1991, their case went to court. The case was discontinued, Dad was given an apology, and each party agreed to pay their own costs. However, my parents weren’t happy with the outcome, and continued the fight to ‘clear our names’. Over the years, they took their case to a few Ombudsmen, reported their trial lawyer to the Law Society, counter sued their lawyers who were suing them for their bill, took their files to police and the CIB, lobbied politicians and Attorneys-General for an inquiry, and wrote to the Governor. They were convinced of injustice, incompetence, and cover-up. In 2000, they went to mediation during which they were offered an apology and a substantial amount of money. They declined that offer.
I was devastated when they rejected this offer. I was sick of hearing about the legal battles, which had hung over our family for eighteen years at that stage. I couldn’t understand why, when given the chance to end it, they rejected it. After that, I banned the topic from being discussed in my presence. My mother ignored my wishes and still brought it up …
My parents wanted to go back to court and reopen the case from 1991. In 2001, at my mother’s request, my husband and I bought their final properties. My mother told me it was to get their assets out of their names so they couldn’t be sued, but really, they’d run out of money and needed to finance their lawsuit. My mother promised to pay rent to cover the mortgage. ‘It won’t cost you a thing,’ she said. However, we rarely received the rent on time and sometimes went months without any money at all.
I didn’t like it and I complained from time-to-time, but I put up with it. For lots of reasons. My mother kept reminding me how much I’d cost them over the years, financially and in terms of anguish, and I felt as if I owed them. I was still frightened of her, and of what she could do to me. I knew my mother’s punishments only too well, and I worried that she’d try to hurt us financially, and that the rent would stop coming at all. I worried about what she might tell people to turn them against me, people I cared about—she’d done it before, to me and to others.
But the main reason I tolerated it was because I still wanted a mother, even a flawed one. I kept hoping that one day I might be good enough, that I might have paid back my debt for being such a bad kid, and that the abuse might stop. So I did whatever she asked and let her do whatever she wanted …
‘Close that door’
In January 2004, while my parents were staying with us, my mother told our elder daughter that she was taking her out. She hadn’t asked me and I was annoyed, particularly because it was a school night. However, because I didn’t want to disappoint my daughter, I went along with it. As my mother was brushing my daughter’s hair, I asked her what time she intended to bring her home. My mother didn’t answer, so I repeated the question.
She stopped brushing, turned to my father, and told him to pack their suitcases, that they were leaving.
I knew I was meant to say, Okay, just bring her back whenever you want. But I didn’t. I let Dad dutifully pack their bags and I let them go. Because I was sick of it. I was sick of being told what she was doing with our children and when. I was sick of coming home to find her rearranging our furniture, without asking us. I was sick of their legal battles. I was sick of owning their house and being told off each time I had to ask for the rent. I was sick of being abused if I dared complain about anything she did. I was sick of pretending that she had been a nice mother. I was sick of not being free to say what I felt. I was sick of not being free to live my life how I wanted to live it. I was sick of it all.
That night I watched my children sob and scream as they tried to stop their grandparents leaving, and I saw my mother not care. I watched her spend half-an-hour with the phone and Yellow Pages dialling a taxi, then move out onto the verge still calling a taxi that never came. Inside, I had four howling children, including a twelve-month-old who had no idea what was going on but was crying because everybody else was. Our eight-year-old kept running out to her grandparents, grabbing their suitcases and trying to haul them inside. I was racing out after her, prising her fingers from their legs, and dragging her back in as she kicked and screamed.
It took me back to my childhood, back to when my mother threatened to leave us and when I sobbed and screamed for her to stay. It had been such a traumatic part of my childhood and I was not going to have it in my family now. Not in the family my husband and I had created. We had a peaceful home, a peaceful life, and I was determined to keep it that way. I wasn’t going to let my mother do to my kids what she’d done to us. I could put up with the abuse when it hurt only me, but no way would I let her harm my children.
After about an hour and still no taxi, I drove my parents into the city and dropped them off at a hotel. As they climbed out, I gave them a hundred dollars towards their hotel bill—I can’t believe I did that now, but at the time I felt guilty because I wasn’t giving in.
Back at home, my husband said he wanted nothing more to do with my parents.
‘Neither do I,’ I sobbed.
But I didn’t know how I was going to cope. I knew I’d done nothing wrong that day and I couldn’t continue with the relationship how it was—handing over my kids, my home, my money, and living my life according to my mother’s needs. But the alternative—a life without my mother in it, and therefore without my father, too—was too horrible to face.
I rang my parents and howled as I left messages on their phone begging them to come and see us before they went. They didn’t, and by the time their flight departed, I was a mess—a sobbing on the floor in the fetal position mess.
My husband found a psychologist who could see me that day. I cried as I told him the story, then I waited. I waited for him to tell me that it was my fault. That I was a bad daughter. That this was my mother, who’d done so much for me, and I needed to react differently and learn to get along with her.
‘Close that door,’ he said in his American accent. ‘For your protection and that of your children, you have to close that door.’
‘But … it’s my mother.’
‘You’ve given her hundreds of chances to change, Louise,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘And she ain’t going to.’
‘But … what about my kids?’ I said. ‘They won’t have grandparents.’
‘It’s much more important for your children to have happy parents.’
I needed to hear this. At 36 years’ of age and a mother-of-four, I’d finally found someone who understood what it had been like to live with a mother like this. This was the first time someone told me that I didn’t have to put up with it. The first time someone gave me permission to shut the door on the relationship. The first time someone told me that my happiness was just as important as hers, that my rights were just as important as hers. The first time someone gave me permission to protect myself.
The first time someone told me that it was not me, it was my mother.
As I left his office, he added, ‘And if you feel like ringing her again, ring me instead.’
***
Next week: Part 3
Obediently, I closed that door. Intellectually, I knew what he was saying was right, but deep down, I still hoped that my mother would change. I hoped that once she lost us, once she saw how much she’d hurt us, that she would realise how important her family was to her, how much she did love us after all.
I still hoped.
You tell your story in such a rush. It’s heart wrenching, Louise, and I can only imagine that to unpack all this detail must be terribly painful. It’s tough stuff writing about your life, especially when it has been so fraught. We autobiographers have much in common, the exposition of cruel secrets. I look forward to the next episode.
Thanks, Elisabeth. I know I’m skimming over some things, but I can’t unpack everything or this series of posts would go on for a year! I’m trying to more or less stick to the reasons I closed the door on the relationship with my mother, but it’s hard to decide what to include and what to omit. Anyway, thanks for your feedback.
It’s funny but I don’t think of myself as an autobiographer, and I have no urge (at present) to write a memoir. Having said that, I’ve just enrolled in a Creative Non-Fiction course on writing memoir and essays, as I like, perhaps I should even say need, to write these types of pieces.
Dear Elisabeth, I’ve just revised this post. I knew the bits I was rushing, the bits I was skimming over. They were the last years of school and the first few years after I left—the most turbulent years of my life. They needed unpacking but they were almost too painful to re-visit. However, I have gone back and filled in more detail—and the post is now about 1000 words longer! Thanks for your feedback on this.
It’s like you just have to get it all out there before you think again. This is tough to read, but I imagine so much tougher for you. How do you feel afterwards? Is it cathartic? Or are you a bit of a mess?
Thanks, Monique. It does feel like a catharsis, as if I’m purging myself, blowing away that big, black cloud that has hung over my life. It’s nice to be able to write about it, but it’s even nicer being able to show that writing to others. I’ve been too frightened to tell my story, scared of what my mother might do, but I’m not anymore. It’s my story and my right to tell it. It’s been a huge burden to bear.
Louise, how my heart aches for you as a young person and now trying to still close that door. You made me cry and realize how lucky I was to have the parents I had and the family of two grandmothers as well. And I was unappreciative, thought I was unloved,etc. I was not a good daughter as a teenager and it wasn’t until I became a mother myself that my mother and I resolved my old resentments (which at my age now seem pretty stupid). Feeling are never stupid — they’re just feelings. All was not my fault as my mother was a controller and I was (still am) somewhat uncontrollable. Beautifully written. Write your memoir for yourself and for those other daughters who might gain from your feelings.
Thanks for all of your comments and kindness, Betty. I think we’re pretty forgiving of our parents once we’re adults. I certainly forgave my mother for the childhood stuff, and we’d probably still have a relationship if the abuse had stopped. But it didn’t …
As for a memoir, I don’t think I could sit with the pain of my memories long enough to write them all down. I can only do it in bits and pieces—maybe I’ll end up with one from writing it down in this way! It would be nice to leave it for my family, so that they knew their history.
You, Betty, are the memoir champion. I hope you’re still writing 🙂
I cried all the way through this Louise. I’m glad you’re writing about it.
Thanks, Rashida, as always.
You are lovely, sane and wise x
Thanks. So are you. xx
Louise, sharing your story, although a distressing tale, is so empowering to help others understand and break the cycle of abuse. Every word is beautifully written but I especially loved the realisation that you gained from having your own kids and the contrast between between being relieved that they were not like you, then that they were, culminating in:
“It dawned on me that it wasn’t ‘punishment’ I’d received—it was, in fact, abuse.”
It is not just the abuse that is so awful, but that it is compounded by the blame that abusers lay on those they abuse and the subsequent guilt and self-hatred. Having these messages so deeply ingrained from childhood make it so hard to understand and challenge.
I admire your strength and courage, both in what you have had to deal with and in turning your experiences into stunning passages that will, I believe, help so many others.
Jacquie x
Thanks, Jacquie. I really want to reach out to others—that’s probably my biggest motivation for writing my story and posting it here. I want to show people that you can survive an abusive childhood, that you can live a good adult life and have loving relationships. It’s not easy, and there are demons that must be faced, and behavioural patterns that must be changed, but it gets easier. I’m still flawed, though, believe me, and I still have wounds that just won’t heal …
You’ve hit the nail on the head with the guilt and the shame that the abused child, and then adult, feels—you believe you’re bad, that you deserve the ‘punishment’ that is meted out to you, that you are unworthy of being treated well. You basically give up your right to happiness. It’s a type of brainwashing, really, and it becomes a self-belief. It’s very hard to dislodge, if ever it can be—you live your life trying to prove that you’re ‘good’, trying to earn people’s love, because you don’t know unconditional love.
Then, once you know these things intellectually, it’s another huge step to believe it emotionally …
No child should have to go through abuse but you are a shining example that you can survive and more, Louise! You can and do nurture family and friends, and are remarkable in so many ways.
A friend pointed me towards this Amy Cuddy clip the other day – http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are? Although ostensibly about body language it does have a strong message about self-belief and becoming who we really are – in terms of believing it emotionally maybe it’s a case of doing it until you know incontrovertibly you are it? No doubt a lengthy journey to throw off the shackles of ingrained messages – brainwashing as you say – if it wasn’t you’d probably be glossing over it.
Your writing is so powerful. I can’t wait to read more!
I will definitely take a look at that TED talk.
Sometimes, you do have to just act it until you believe it. The psychologist that I mention in this post gave me homework. It was a form of ‘Accelerated Behavioural Therapy’. I had to recite ten good things about myself, twenty times a day. They were things I’d chosen—like, ‘I am a good wife and mother’, ‘I don’t care about what anyone else thinks of me’, things like that. Each week, I had to rate myself out of ten for how much I believed that statement. At first, I gave myself 0 out of 10, 1/2 out of 10, 1/10, those sorts of marks. Gradually, I improved until I was giving myself 6 and 7 out of 10. It did help!
The other message I am hearing is that Psychologists do help! Obviously you had to do the work and you did even when it must have been uncomfortable, but there’s nothing wrong with needing some guidance along the way. x
Psychologists not only help, I’d say they’re essential!
Your stories leave me with so many questions, and so much sympathy! But first I’m so sorry that in all of these goings on so many years ago you also lost your sister. xx
It was a black period of my life, that’s for sure. Thanks for your kind words, Lily. x
You must have a truly brilliant mind to go through all that in your senior year and still managed to get into medicine. Although Louise I already suspected you may have a brilliant mind. All this horror you’ve gone through has made you the mother, doctor, wife and writer you are. You’ve swum up from the depths and surfaced into the sunshine. The scene when your Mum finally left rang alarm bells of narcissism to me. Not that I’m a psychologist. You could write a book just about all of this you know. I’m sure you already do know. x
Thanks, Pinky. I have made it through to the sunshine, and I’m still in one piece! I’d rather not have experienced much of it, but it happened, and you’re right, it has shaped me into the person I am and I’m proud of that person. Who knows who I would have been if I hadn’t had the experiences I did? We all have experiences in life that aren’t good, some more than others, and we just have to make the most of the lot we draw. I’m trying to be a sunshine person, but still acknowledge that girl who swam in the depths …
What an extraordinary story, Louise, and how very entangled you were with your mother on every level, financially, emotionally and with your children.. her grandchildren, and how little they must have understood about the measures you had to take – perhaps the most poignant part of the story.
I had a sense of ‘oh no’ when I read about your parents’ propensity to take litigious action. Having a sister who went broke trying to sue people, and who sued my father at one stage.. something I could never, ever do, I saw the full extent of what you were trying to deal with. It is bad enough for a sister to do this (she continues to ‘bludge’ shamelessly off family members), it is incomprehensible to think of a parent acting in this way.
The way I see it, chronic financial irresponsibilty is a kind of illness. My sister is ill with multiple sclerosis but has made no provision for her present or future, preferring to allow others (her adult children, mother, siblings) to take the brunt. Forcing others into patterns of behaviour, and in particular, when it involves money, results in total destruction of relationships.
Having read this, I feel like I understand you far better. There’s a lot more shocking behaviour In my own family, I could reveal, in regard to siblings, but this is about you and your story and I’m grateful to you for sharing it
Thanks for sharing some of your story, Dixie, and feel free to write about it in the comments here because this isn’t just about me, there’s a lot of us out there with stories to tell. After reading what you’ve written here, I feel as if I know you a lot better, too. I’d kind of guessed there was a story, from things you’ve written before. It’s a shame we all pretend we’re normal, from normal families (whatever that is), and hide the hurtful things that have happened to us and that aren’t our fault.
… the writing is really powerful, Louise and it seems you’ve already made a start on a really good autobiography. You have so much attention to detail, and such good recall, that it makes a wholly engaging story. As a piece of writing, and I get bogged down in the past myself, the material is dying for some lighter moments, or some black humour to alleviate the misery of those times. I know, it’s hard to get past the things our parents did. They often didn’t know/weren’t wholly aware of what they were doing, “They know not what they do” is the phrase that someone used when I was drowning in the consequences of the things my mother did.
You have so much to give, not only as a doctor, but in life in general.. and as a writer.
Thanks, Dixie. I appreciate the feedback—I’ll try to inject some humour into the posts coming up …
I think it’s really important to revisit painful memories from the past as they impact so much on our present. As a child, I learnt to put my head down and plod on, don’t think about it. I was also told that I had no right to feel aggrieved, that I wasn’t being treated unfairly or wrongly. I learned to block it out because I thought what I felt was invalid.
But even now, occasionally something happens that triggers really painful emotions in me—it’s usually to do with the kids being treated unfairly or their goodness not being recognised—and the memories come flooding back, and I’m in the fetal position on the floor again …
That’s what prompted me to write this—to go back and nurture that child in me and tell her she was good.
‘They know not what they do’ might apply to your parents, but I believe my mother was, and is, aware of what she does, that’s why she doesn’t want people to know.
Sending you a big hug over the internet!
Just feeling the love now. Thanks, Em. xx
It’s hard to let go, time heals, and yes better for your children to be without. I wonder now that they are older that they see their grandparents and their behaviour for what it was. An ongoing punishment for you. Mine have seen their grandmother once, and it’s not something they have forgotten. Brittany’s words were is that red headed lady our nana. I said yes, they said they didn’t like her, she’s scary x
You’ve done really well, Rae. Your have a wonderful relationship with your family and are a wonderful, warm, and caring person. Thanks for letting me know about your children and their grandmotherlessness. My children understand why they don’t see their grandmother. My daughter has never forgotten the incident I describe here. She was hoarse the next day, and believed it was her fault. It took a lot of explaining and reassurance from us for it to sink in that it wasn’t. She even wrote about it years later for a creative writing assignment, and when my mother came to Perth in 2011, our daughter was distraught and frightened she’d do it to us again. The kids all know what my mother has done, and they don’t want anything to do with her.
Dear Louise, your story is heartbreaking. To have carried that burden for so long… It’s so true what they say, you can’t choose your family. Thanks for sharing with us, and for writing it so beautifully. Sending love and good wishes xx
Thanks for visiting, Helen, and for your encouraging words. I’m on a roll now, and I have to keep writing it down. Thanks, again. Louise x
My dear Louise, I’ve read each part as you posted and now I’m rereading it as a whole. I have so much to say but I’m afraid if I start I won’t be able to stop. I thank you so much for writing this. With every paragraph this mantra runs through my mind ‘Tricia, you and Polly (my sister) are not alone’.
My mother tried to stop me from marrying Rod, and then she tried to break my marriage up because he helped me to stand up to her. He taught me I was lovable. He loved me! I adored him but was constantly stunned by the fact that someone found me worthy of love.
I read the comment about the value of psychologists – I first began with sand therapy because I’d blocked so much out of my mind. For me this was an invauable beginning. To find the right psychologist is everything.
I’m so sorry that you lived this and so grateful to you for sharing your story. xx