How do you deal

[orthodoc]

with the reality a grown child throws at you ...

With the reality of how awful a childhood was, how much trauma it caused? Whether caused by a father who went off the rails and became a monster for a number of years ... whether caused by a church that was too strict, too unforgiving, too unaccepting.

In the end, it's all at my door. There are mitigating circumstances, but then there are always mitigating circumstances. I don't feel up to mustering the argument. I am responsible for my actions and inactions.

My oldest son is upset and has withdrawn since my remarriage. My third son really doesn't understand, although he tries. He's very articulate, though, and makes clear how terrible the trauma was.

I don't have anything in self-defense except the old chestnut that we don't know what we'll do, or feel, in a situation until faced with it. We can talk all we want but it doesn't mean a thing. It turns out that, having divorced my husband, been abruptly abandoned by a new friend, and having taken on a new job in a new state where I knew no one ... I didn't want to face cancer and death alone.

I had so many nightmares of being lowered into the ground in a wooden box, screaming and pounding on the lid. I didn't sleep for months. So I finally texted my ex and asked for his help. I hadn't been able to arrange the basic surgery needed to figure out what stage of cancer I had. I was falling apart.

I know Bruce and others warned about what was likely to happen, and it did happen. But it's not so easy to get comprehensive home care and everything you need to cope with four drains and night fevers and visual catastrophes for weeks and months on end. After every chemo treatment I knew what it was to feel death coming on. I'd be so exhausted that I'd lie in bed and I couldn't feel my hands, arms, or legs. I'd try to put my cell phone onto the night table and I couldn't do it because I couldn't feel my hands, even though I could see the phone cradled in my right hand as it lay on my chest.

I don't know what would have happened then without help, although I know I wouldn't have managed to continue working. I suppose I'm that person who will do what it takes to survive even though she becomes a despicable object.

I can't think of my past life without wanting to kill myself. I don't know what the future holds. I can't escape the fact that, in spite of having done everything in my power to save and sustain and empower my children, they are permanently traumatized and struggle daily due to their history.

I put one foot in front of the other. I'm not sure for what, anymore. I do it. Maybe in future I'll regret this, too.

eta I am trying to find courage. I look at Barbara Brenner and Ann Silberman and I conjure up courage. But during the night it slips away.