Growing Home For the Holidays

Growing Home For the Holidays

“There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats: For I am arm'd so strong in honesty That they pass me by as the idle wind, Which I respect not”
--Shakespeare
December 24, 2004, I Fed-Exed a letter to my abuser, asking him to please stop making comments about my body. I was 38 years old, 100+ pounds overweight, with an out-of-control binge-eating disorder being the most obvious sign of my distress. The armor of fat with which I had coated my body was nothing, compared to the problems inside my head. Simply put, the life I had with my husband and three daughters was in peril because I had been playing "Let's Pretend," as in, "Let's Pretend That I Was Not Sexually Abused Throughout My Childhood"-- and the tricks I had used to cope weren't working any more. I was on my way to CrazyTown, and I was taking four other people with me. Something had to give. It was to the point that I had no choice but to choose another way, and that way was honesty --with myself and everyone around me.

The first step to dealing with reality, at least the first step that involved my extended family, was the letter that set the first boundary I had ever had with the man who crept into my childhood bedroom at night for years, and who felt entitled to comment on my body even as I was nearing age 40.The consequences of the letter were immediate. My husband, children, and I followed through on the planned Christmas Eve visit to my abuser's home. I know: crazy, right? I was so naïve that I thought that he would understand my request and do as I asked. Instead, I discovered my abuser hiding in his bedroom, his wife not speaking to me, and other family members clearly unhappy with what I had done. Subsequent communications with his wife made clear that she was unwilling to discuss, in any way, shape, or form, what had happened to me. It did not matter that my life was falling apart because of it. According to her, it was all my problem. Period.

I spiraled into such a depressed state of mind that my husband did not allow me to drive, for fear that I would follow through with the idea of plowing my car into a bridge column. The suicidal feelings that surface in the face of rejection are still my demons, but they have lessened dramatically over the past four years. The things that have saved me from self-destructing are the love of my husband and daughters, a kick-ass therapist, hope that pain will go away, hatred of that which is wrong, and resilience~perseverance that are fueled by my family's love, my therapist's guidance, and infinite hope for healing.

I suppose the feelings I have at Christmas now are akin to what I would experience if my abuser's wife died four years ago-- it's like an annual reminder of what I have lost. I loved her so much. I love her so much. I love the person I thought she was. It is the juxtaposition of who I thought she was, and the person she has been in the face of the truth I have to live in my recovery, that is hardest on my heart. December 24, 2004, was like being thrown into an icy lake. I am still trying to catch my breath from the shock. I don't know that I ever will, but I sure am trying.

As a child, I loved the holidays like nobody else. I started playing Christmas music in August. I decorated my dollhouse elaborately, and the family residing there not only understood my holiday lust, they embraced it. They didn't have a choice. I created in that miniature world what I craved in my own reality.

The holidays following 2004, however, marked the advent of something I had never experienced: dread of the holiday season. I wished I could just skip November and December completely: just go to sleep around Halloween and wake in time to go back to living on January 2nd of the new year.

I never shared those feelings with my children, though, because I felt a responsibility to provide the same sort of Christmas that they had always known, complete with elaborately decorating our house. I did the best I could. My mind was shit and I inevitably descended into a sort of spacey, emotional state that lasted about a week or so. But my family was very supportive and understanding. It was not easy for any of us. It still isn't.

The stockings were hung on the corner cupboard with care, just as always, but some things changed forever from the holidays of the past. For one, no more Christmas cookies or baking marathons. Facing the truth about my eating disorder meant the end of baking,decorating, and pigging out on sugar cookies. I no longer churned out baked goods with the intensity of a professional bakery, and I no longer numbed my feelings with sugar and lard.

The biggest change, though, was where we celebrated and who we celebrated with. All my life, and all of my children's lives, we had spent Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve at my abuser's house. Things were great, do you get that? Things were great and the holidays were magical, as long as I didn't face the truth and I didn't ask any of the people who were there when I was growing up to face it, either. It was when I set a boundary that things blew apart. That was not allowed. When I did that, I lost the person I thought of as my best friend: my abuser's wife. I thought of her as a person who was always there for me. There are days that I still can't believe our relationship is what it is, now: non-existent.

I look back at who I was then and I know without a doubt that there is no way, NO WAY that I can ever go back and be that person again. Beth, circa 2004 and before, the one who kept silent and smiled and played the game of "Let's Pretend," is dead. I don't even know her any more. Likewise, my own extended family does not know me-- the person bent on recovery from childhood sexual abuse; the person dedicated to living as authentic a life as humanly possible; the person still trying to catch her breath from the plunge into the icy lake of Christmas 2004. They knew a pretender, and the pretender is dead.

I thought about writing this piece for the past several days as I prepared for Christmas 2008. I was struck by the difference in my little family's life, when comparing 2008 to 2004.

I cooked my first full-blown Thanksgiving dinner, this past Thanksgiving. My family and I made the decision that we would stay home this year, rather than putting out feelers to my mother-in-law or my husband's brother and his wife, to see what they were doing for the day. For the first time since 2004, our little family knew that we were "enough" for each other, and my mind has healed enough that I was able to do the sort of mental gymnastics required to pull off something like Thanksgiving dinner.

It is only in undertaking holiday family dinners 100% on my own that I have an understanding of the work that goes into them. My abuser's wife always made it look so effortless-- and, if we still had a relationship, I think I would ask her how she managed to do that.

I am motivated by love for my family, of wanting them to have the best possible experience. I think she was motivated by the same thing. But I do not understand how that kind of love exists in tandem with the sort that demands secrets and the sacrifice of my innocence and right to my own body, to not having it taken by someone else. I do not understand the coexistence of love with deliberate indifference. I do not "get" how I ceased to matter and it leads me to believe that in fact I never really did, to her. It makes me wonder too, how it is that someone who is so gracious a hostess to everyone can be so conditional with her love for me.

Christmas Eve, I cooked my very first Christmas dinner. My youngest daughter came up with a family Sweet Potato Casserole recipe, and I found my grandmother's Cornbread Dressing recipe in a stack of recipes and cookbooks I inherited from her. I avoided looking through them before, because it hurt so much to think of her and the holidays. But I have healed enough now that I am able to do things like look through her recipes and see her handwriting, without it undoing me completely. The sweet potatoes and my grandmother's dressing were the two entrees my children had missed the most, in the years since we lost the relationship with my extended family. I searched the Internet high and low for a recipe that seeemed close to the traditional Butterhorn Rolls. Didn't find the exact one, but the one I did find, my children said was even better than the family recipe. We invited my brother and his wife. Their attendance at our table was beautiful not only because they were there, but because he and I were estranged for many years and are now closer than we have ever been in our lives. It was the first time since we reconciled three years ago that we have gone through an entire visit without really talking about the painful journey we endured to reach today. We have an appreciation for one another that was distinctly lacking when we were growing up.

Yesterday, Christmas Day, we hosted my husband's family: 18 people in all. We had people seated all over the place and I fell asleep sitting up in bed last night, but we did it. At the end of the night, my husband said, "Thank you for hosting such a fun evening." He says that I get better at preparing the traditional foods every time I make them, which gives me hope for next year, when I will be brave enough to actually attempt stuffing the turkey and trying [sigh] again to make gravy. So far, pan gravy eludes me. Thank God for the stuff that comes in a jar.I look back at what I have lost, and I look at what I now have-- and even though it's been a walk through hell --and it ain't over yet-- I can see a day in the future when the ache in my chest isn't quite as sharp as it still is today. I have hope, and I have home. I AM home. And that is more than enough for me.