All my Chances Are Over...Thanks to Death

Daddy, Gary, heck I don't know what to call you. I don't even know who you are. I want to search for you on Facebook and try to reconnect, but reconnect to what?

 You were always like a brick wall, never giving anything back.  So rigid, so unloving, I don't understand how my sister got the other side of you, the side with smiles and a relationship. I don't know what I did wrong, if anything.

 I don't know how long I would search for you-maybe until I could erase the image of you lying in the coffin, or until the past was erased, but  the past can not be erased or changed. What's done is done. I can see the stark image of you lying in the coffin, and I know all my tries are over.

What I have left are scraps of memories, your obituary, and 2 Polaroids that somehow get plastered to the fridge, no matter how many times I take them down. In one of them I am kissing your cheek and your just beaming. You would have thought it was a beginning of a beautiful relationship, but I just couldn't let go of the past. That kiss, that moment, that high transformed into a dark valley, and that picture may be the only proof I have that you loved me.

I remember we were sitting at the bar at Applebees. You wanted to learn about my life, my husband, and my baby. All I could think is how ironic it was we were sitting at a bar, while all I could think of was transforming into a little girl, so I could finally sit on your lap and cuddle with you. I just couldn't let go of the past, and I asked you if you loved me. It may have been the millionth time you mentioned that the past is the past and it was just a soap opera. You abruptly paid the bartender and told me you were driving home to Buffalo tonight.

I begged you to stay. I promised I would be good. Promised I would tell you about my life, but you told me it was too late. I am so angry how could you leave? You were driving me back home and I just screamed, "I just want to know if you love me?" And you screamed back, "Of course, I love you." You said it like it was a given in a geometry equation. I sobbed all the way home, and I sobbed as you left. I begged you to stay. You left me crying on the doorstep. I stood there and watched you leave.

Did you drive all the way through to Buffalo? Did you get a hotel? Did you cry too? These things I can never ask you.

We didn't talk for years. When my sister got married, I called you and asked you if we could spend some time together alone. Your response was, "Haven't we tried that already?" When you became ill, you began calling me. I didn't know you were sick. It was my mom who mentioned to me that when people think they are dying they try to reconnect. I was so ecstatic to talk to you. I was going to invite you to my college graduation, but instead I had to settle for your class ring around my neck.

Did you know I missed the first few days of my last semester to be at your funeral? I would have rather made the trip to tell you goodbye, to tell you I loved you, and to hear the words," I love you, Kara."  You knew you were dying, even a phone call would have sufficed, but you just gave up and died.

If we really want to face the truth, you were ill, incapable of showing emotion, incapable of showing love. You were crippled by depression. You were punishing yourself, slowly killing yourself for letting us be given away, for allowing another man to give us his name. You have been killing yourself with drugs and alcohol for years, and that is the one thing that you succeeded with.

You just gave up. You stopped drawing or making anything artistic. You just sat on your leather couch with your cat and drank yourself to death. Good job Daddy, you did it. I wish you would have fought, if not for me, for yourself. No Daddy you didn't fight, you became entangled with your emotions. You let them strangle you, and you tried to drown them. You just laid down and fucken died.

Now I can search out my family tree, and see that beast, and I see it devoured you, and I vow it will not devour me. No matter how many times my emotions cripple me, I realize over and over again that even if I do not want to live my life for me. I have a child who needs me and loves me, and the time to break the cycle is now.

I have to be present and accessible for her. I have to take my medication to keep the beast at bay. I have to seek out help when I need it. I have to connect with her, and others. She needs me and I am not going to stamp her with my rejection.I need to show her how to live, especially if the beast comes and visits her.

Not only that I have to live for me. I need to be more than a shell that eats and sleeps. I am not going to give up and slowly die, slowly commit suicide because I am too much of a coward to end it quickly. No Daddy; I am going to fight.

Fighting to be Sane

The beast  is swirling and rising, trying to devour me, again, but I fight back. I have too much to live for, too much to fight for to let him win. As I sit on my bed sobbing, I feel so lost and utterly alone. I sob uncontrollably and loudly, I know I am losing control.

The beast is bipolar. Most days there are slight reminders of my disability, while other days the beast wrangles me to the floor, and I wrestle to break free.

It is Easter and my stepson dropped by to get some lasagna, while I thought he was staying for dinner, yet another miss-communication. He wanted to discuss his plans for the future, and one of his plans included living in my home. I just told him he couldn't live here.

We fought. He yelled. I screamed and sobbed. The argument ended with him sitting in the dining room ignoring my sobs. Shortly thereafter, he left.  My husband gave him a ride. I kept on crying. I was still crying when my husband returned home. I was hoping for someone to help me reason through my thoughts and emotions, someone sane, but my husband was too busy eating his lasagna and pretending nothing was wrong, his usual M.O. I really really need him.

I run upstairs and slam the bedroom door repeatedly. Then I run downstairs and scream at my husband. I declare my spiteful regret for ever loving and taking care of his hateful son, and I tell him that I feel like dying. I pick up my phone and scream that I am going to call a hotline, and talk to someone who cares. Someone who can help.


I hate, hate, hate myself;  I can do nothing right.  I want to die, and if I wasn't a coward I would do more than just have the extreme need to die.There are just some things that just rock my core. I have heard many call them triggers. I was literally brought to my knees by a visit by my 19-year-old stepson. Someone I dearly love. Yes, I have to look back at photographs of his youth to dissolve the anger and bitterness to see and open the love I have for him, but it is still there hidden.

I am so angry. I love him! I have loved him, and as he was growing up, I did my very best to be a mother for him. Maybe that is what the problem was, but I am not going to argue the dynamics of what a relationship between a stepmother and a stepchild should be. It is just so difficult loving someone as your own, and it isn't reciprocated.


I don't know maybe you have felt like everybody hates you, and nobody understands. But this pain was multiplied. My stepson has just told me the most dreadful words that I never wanted to hear. "But Kara, she's my mother." And it just wan't just the words, it was the tone.  What I really want to know is what am I? Did I imagine all those years I took care of him?

It's time someone finally spoke the truth, and it appears that only one that is going to speak up for myself is me. When his father wanted to run away, and reinvent his life, who was it that encouraged him to stay? Who explained to him the effects, pain, and heartbreak of divorce on a child? Who emphatically stated that weekends, holidays, and summers do make a difference in a child's life?

It was me. I have felt the lack of a father two times over. I was the engine in their relationship. If there wasn't a me, there wouldn't have been a them. I drove an hour each way to bring them together.

I had done this and so much more. And yes as the years wore on, and he moved in with us. I have never felt that he loved me. I have felt his anger bristling to the surface. I have felt his rejection when I asked him to eat a family dinner with my daughter and I. I have felt hurt after I pulled into the driveway and I saw his shadow ascend to the stairs so he could burrow in his bedroom. I suppose I have always wanted more, but maybe there is nothing more to attain.

Since my argument with my stepson, I vowed I would never go to his wedding, if he ever got married. I feel so displaced in his life, so much like a third wheel. Many people have taken the time to explain to me and my husband how I should have nothing to say about anything in his life. I fear going to the ceremony just sitting there. Not being invited to be part of any of the symbolic rituals because I am nothing. I am not his mother, and therefore I guess I am nothing.

I suppose that if he gets married i'll go; I am not heartless, and yes I love him. But I don't know how to take the rejection that I am sure to experience.

All I can say a week later after this experience is I am still raw, and yes I am sane. I could give you the boring details of how my husband and I finally discussed the argument, but instead I wanna know how would you react? Is any of your loved ones mentally ill? How do you handle it when things begin to fall apart?

Running with scissors...

This is a post I began after being released from the psychiatric ward late this summer. I went through a horrifying experience of my throat, tongue, and mouth swelling up. This swelling caused a 5 day hospitalization on the general ward. To relieve the swelling I was given steroids which resulted in a bout of mania, and a hospitalization in the psychiatric ward...

September 2011

Running with scissors...maybe that is what they thought we would do.

 While I was in the hospital all I could find to write with was a nub of a pencil and crayons.It amazing the freedoms we take for granted.Writing on this computer is such a privledge. Somethings we take advanatage of so much. I really wanted to take this time. To talk about these things while they are fresh. A wise social worker told me just because I was in the ward didn't mean I was no longer well that I just needed some help. I needed to slow some things done and help myself, not my daughter, me. His wisdom really shined through as I was crying. I was here for me, and there is no shame in getting help.

April 4, 2012

Hi.... readers. A lot has been going on with me the past 6 months and I am sorry I haven't been here to share it with you. A lot of things have held me back from writing, let alone blogging. Mainly I have been gripped by anger and fear of failure. I will do my best to  share my journey with you. Some posts may only be snippets. I can only offer what I have. What I have come to realize lately is that writers write.

My goal is going to write everyday - regardless if it is in my journal, on my blog or on scraps of paper - writers write and that's it. The only way I can truly fail, is to not write at all. If I am so talented, now is the time to test it. Living in this stagnation is getting old.

Please enjoy the ride.