Author: Deb M

I'm a Wisconsin native working on my first book. My focus for the last few years has been on writing and continuing to shine a light on trauma and ways to heal from it. I love books, dogs, fresh pencils, and balls of yarn.
C-PTSD, Childhood, Pastor John Grant, Salvation, United Pentecostal Church

Salvation is Fleeting

Deb M

Part 8

I can remember the night I got “saved” like it was yesterday. I was wearing a blue jumper and sitting close to the back of the sanctuary. Boys were starting to notice me and a couple of boys sitting behind me kept trying to pass me notes. I had to be very careful because my mother did not tolerate playing around in church. I took one note and read it listening to the boys giggling behind me, the note read, “You’re a fox.” Now I had no idea what that meant but I knew those boys were always grinning at me and trying to get a seat as close as possible. Little did I know how many times those two boys would throw me a lifeline of friendship. Both of them became very close friends of mine and understood me better than most. When I asked my mom later what the note meant she was not pleased. After that, she gave those boys the side-eye for a long time. It was 1980 and I was 10 years old.

Things turned dark when the pastor lumbered up to the podium. I was afraid of my pastor. He was a big man and kind of loud. It was not uncommon in our church for a preacher to yell, stomp, and pace while preaching. This was one of those nights. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move and it seemed as if his eyes were drilling into me. His words rang out through the auditorium sending a sick feeling into the center of my chest, “Your name is written on the gates of hell until Jesus takes it off!” Pastor Grant painted a picture complete with flames, demons, and gates waiting to open for me. At the end of his terrible tale came an altar call. Just like in The Shining when Danny is staring down the long carpeted hallway, I was staring down the long carpeted aisle that led to the altar. My body felt like lead and I couldn’t stop shaking. I was too scared to stay in my seat and too scared to start the long lonely journey to the front of the sanctuary. Self-preservation won out and I willed myself to move forward. I was more afraid of hell than I was of making that long lonely walk. My knees hit the carpet and I started to ask Jesus to forgive me for all of my sins, whatever sins a ten-year-old could have, immediately I was surrounded by women, they appeared like vampires seeming to come out of nowhere. A cacophony of voices speaking in tongues and loud music was all around me. In my memory, this plays like a 1970s horror movie. The women’s faces appear like images in a funhouse mirror, all distorted and clownlike. My body was being pushed back and forth and words of encouragement were being urgently whispered in my ear. The fact that I was sobbing uncontrollably was not a reason for alarm, it was a sign that I was broken and that was exactly the desired outcome. They say I spoke in tongues but I have to wonder how much of that was just me sobbing and no longer being able to form coherent words. Their encouragement got louder and louder, “Yes Yes Yes! Talk to Jesus!” Once I calmed down, probably just due to exhaustion they told me that I should get baptized. I had been taught that this was required for salvation and so I was not taken off guard. The women were all smiles, like alligators grinning from ear to ear, they told me I could choose which minister would baptize me. I think this was supposed to make me feel less afraid but it did not. My father would often take me into the water at lake Mendota not far from our house. He was unafraid and would put me on his back and carry me out into the waves. My mother, on the other hand, was terrified of the water and would sit way up on the beach near the bathrooms. So yeah, tending to feel my mother was slightly more trustworthy than my father, her fear won out and so I was a little afraid of being dunked by a stranger. 

Before I knew it I was being shuffled off to a room to change into a baptismal robe. The robe was heavy and way too big for me. Everything after this point is kind of a blur. I was very scared but determined. My heart was pounding in my chest and I now recognize that feeling. It is the same feeling I get when I’m in the midst of a panic attack. Our church had its own baptismal tank. It was situated behind the choir loft so it was easy for folks to gather all around it. It was loud, people were singing, clapping, and speaking in tongues. I was helped down the stairs into the deep water. Women were motioning me to squat a little so my robe would get wet and not float up and expose my legs. Brother O’Neal extended his hand to me and before I knew it he was saying the words and my body was headed back down into the water. My body felt the shock of the cold water as it hit my chest. Once I came up out of the water the watching crowd exploded into singing and clapping. The music and the sound of many voices speaking in tongues and clapping was so loud. I just prayed for it to be over. Soon I was out of the tank and dry, back in my own clothing. 

My feelings about speaking in tongues are complicated. For much of my adult life, I felt pretty unsure about what I had experienced. The human brain is hard to understand. I can only speak from my personal experience. I see it like this, I was a child and so I looked to the adults around me for guidance about behavior and community norms. Children mimic adults all the time and so I feel that some of what I was doing was the result of mimicking. Then you add to that the hyped-up environment that puts your brain into a very suggestive state. It feels hypnotic, all of the pacing being done by the worship leader and the repetitive choruses. I feel when you blend all of that together you create an experience for people and then the UPC just slaps a label on it. They call it speaking in tongues, I call it manipulation.

After being baptized, I felt relief for a little while, for about two weeks. Jesus loved me and saved me from hell and now everything is going to be ok. Then the fear started to creep back in. Did you know that you can backslide and lose your salvation? Just because you are saved today doesn’t mean you are saved tomorrow. God doesn’t send you official warnings that you are about to go too far or that he is coming today, so you never know for sure, not really. Believing this started a near-constant cycle of repenting and chasing salvation, never feeling clean enough and always worried about slipping up. I had to be vigilant. The rapture could happen at any time and almost any infraction could cause you to be left behind to suffer the tribulation. 

“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.” 1 Thessalonians 5:2. 

The fear of this event and going to hell stalked me like a hungry lion. My childhood was marinated in this fear. My mother passed her terror onto me like a virus. The church injected me with weekly and then daily doses. I would not find the antidote until well into adulthood. The idea of a wrathful god slithered through my veins winding its way into every nook and cranny. Of all the awful things that happened to me during childhood, being exposed to this idea had the most devastating effect. Starting when I was a toddler my parents exposed me to the Mark IV film series starting with “A Thief In The Night.” It made such a huge impact laying the groundwork for years of fear.  I cannot remember a time in my childhood when I did not worry about my mother disappearing into thin air and me being left to face the guillotine alone. To make matters worse I was about to experience something that I thought might be an unforgivable sin. 

I think of getting saved as being like your wedding day. Your wedding day is usually filled with wonderful memories of people wishing you well. You are the center of attention and love fills the air. There is music and dancing and hope for the future. You are wearing a dress you will probably never wear again and life feels fresh and new. You might even gain a new name. Marriage is long and often hard and it is unreasonable to expect that every day will feel like your wedding day. Now imagine if all the people in your life were constantly reminding you that you might lose your husband or wife. You better cook the right meals and earn enough money. Make sure even your thoughts are always in line with your partner’s thoughts or they might know and leave you. This is how salvation can be expressed within the UPC. You will probably never feel as good as the day when you get baptized. So you chase that feeling of freshness. You can get close if there is a rip-roaring service or a hellfire sermon that breaks you down into tears, but you will never duplicate that first high. 

I was an early bloomer and people often assumed I was older. This is kind of funny because now people often assume I am younger. I found out recently that my pastor is telling people that I was “always was a loose child.” I do not believe that children are capable of consent or being “loose.” It shows the lengths they will go to protect themselves from accountability. Starting at an early age most of my friends were adults. At church, I hung out with kids close to my age but I also spent a lot of time with twenty-somethings. Once baptized I threw myself into service for God. I was a very devoted child, devoted to God and devoted to my church. I never experienced the love of God. I only saw him as a scorekeeper and a wrathful judge. I feared God, my pastor, the government and the devil all in the same way. Salvation did not lessen these fears because I had been taught that I could lose it. 

I was a weird kid. I took the Bible very seriously and I also took my responsibility to share the gospel very seriously. I wanted to please and know God. My grandma would always say that when you stand before Jesus on judgement day you will be held accountable for all of the people you encountered on earth. Jesus would ask if you shared the gospel with them. Things would not go well for you if your answer was no. After going through my salvation experience I decided that I needed to get to work. I asked my pastor if there were any ministries I could get involved with. He recommended I start working on the Sunday school bus route. On both Saturday and Sunday, my day would start early. Rain, shine, snow, or freezing cold would not keep me from doing God’s work. On Saturday we would visit kids in impoverished neighborhoods and invite them to Sunday school, on Sunday we would start early and pick them up on the Sunday school bus. Almost always without fail I was around men. Men were the bus captains and so that’s who I worked with. The same would go for all of the ministries I became involved in. Men lead the nursing home ministry, campus ministry, and the Bible quiz team I would become captain of. They would give me rides to church and to other activities. It was normal for me and no one around me seemed to bat an eye. I don’t think they saw me as a child. I don’t believe they saw any of us as children. When I look back on it now it seems so inappropriate. I am a mother of four and I would have not wanted my children to spend so much time alone with adult men who were not members of their family. It isn’t like I was alone with them at church either, I was alone with them in cars and buses. Anything could have happened and eventually something did. 

Being responsible for staying on God’s good side was a monumental task for a 10-year-old child. I had to be sure I stayed within the dress code at all times. I had to be sure to never cut my hair, listen to the radio or watch television. I could really only read the Bible because I was too young to discern other content. I had to be watchful of every thought, action, and emotion. A minor slip up in any of these areas could give the devil an open door. We were taught that there was a war going on. 

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12

While engaged in this war we also had to be seeking souls we could win for Christ. I was taught that when I stood before Jesus at the end of my life I would have to account for every soul I ever came in contact with. Did I share the gospel with them? This is a heavy load for a child. It is hard enough to be ten and have to deal with school and growing up. Add on my parent’s divorce, our poverty, and my mother’s depression and you can start to see how overwhelmed I was. I was a bright child, very thoughtful and sensitive. This made me fertile ground for all of the church’s teachings. I took my responsibilities very seriously. I took everything very seriously. This led to depression, insomnia, and pretty severe stomach issues for much of my childhood. 

I wanted to serve God because I wanted to follow his word and I wanted to win his love. I was unsure if winning his love was possible. Another big part of my motivation towards service had to do with just loving to be of service and help to those in need. I would wash the hands and faces of the kids riding the Sunday school bus because I cared deeply about them. I understood being poor and not properly tended to. My heart broke for some of those children. 

One message that came through loud in clear is that every part of me was sinful. I have always felt wrong in the world. I have never felt a sense of belonging or of fitting in. Unconsciously as a child, I believed that every part of me was infected and broken. The devil was always lurking and trying to trip me up and deceive me. This led me to believe that I could not trust my own mind. 

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5. 

I became rather neurotic and filled with worry about whether my good works were even good. What if I was an awful evil person but so deceived that I was not aware of it? In my child’s mind, I had so much evidence to back this fear up. If not a sparrow falls without God knowing and caring then why did he seem to not care at all about me? 

My heart was no better. A line from “A Distant Thunder” , one of the Mark IV films comes to mind. “Well just because you have an understanding of the Bible in your head, doesn’t mean you have Jesus in your heart.” Maybe this was my problem? Within a childhood filled with hunger, poverty, mental illness, and trauma I looked to myself to create change. When I could not move mountains or pray solutions into existence I began to question whether Jesus was in my heart and whether he accepted me. Does faith grow from the mind or the heart? Where do good works and compassion grow from? Again it was Pastor Grant who gave me insight into my unworthy condition. Often when he spoke during a sermon it felt like time stopped. 

Almost like an in-between space, everything slipped away and all that existed was his voice and the pounding of my heart. His voice boomed out, “Your righteousness is as filthy rags!” In my mind’s eye, he is like a dog foaming at the mouth, snarling out a message meant to shame and remind me of how unworthy I am. All at once it hit home that no matter what I did, good works coming from my heart, it was all filth, none of it was worthy of goodness or God. My heart was garbage unless Jesus shined it up, and Jesus seemed to be absent. I never felt like I was created in his image. I always questioned how it could be so because I am a female and God is male. Eve brought sin into the world and I felt more in touch with her than with Christ. 

C-PTSD, Childhood, Devil, Family, Fear, racism, Rapture, Trauma, Uncategorized, United Pentecostal Church

New Church

Deb M

Part 7 ***Trigger Warning*** Some discussion of end times material and suicidal tendencies.

One afternoon my mother was standing in the kitchen talking on the phone attached to the wall. She seemed scared. I had no idea what was going on but I understood that it wasn’t good. With tears in her eyes she explained that my father was in the hospital. He had taken some pills and we rushed to be at his side. When we arrived my mother was hysterical with worry. She asked to see him and after a minute they told her she could go in. Because they would not allow children into the emergency psychiatric rooms I waited alone. It was all very institutional looking. Sterile green, hard plastic chairs filled the room. In the ’70s hospitals were not very inviting. No one spoke to me as I waited, it wasn’t very long until I saw my mother. She flew through the doors crying and yelling. My father had asked for his girlfriend and did not want to see my mother. This is where things went very wrong. She grabbed my hand pulling me through the halls of the hospital and out to the car. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she wailed and yanked me into the car. She was in no condition to drive but that didn’t matter. We drove around for what seemed like hours. She cried and recounted the story to me. At times she was driving on the sidewalk. “I have no one who cares about me!” “I’m all alone in the world.” “I wish I were dead,” she said. “But you have me and grandpa and grandma!” I tried to comfort her. Finally, after what seemed like forever I convinced her to go over to a friend’s house. She barreled into his driveway startling him. He was sitting in a lawn chair having a drink. John, a friend of both my parents, would sometimes watch me if they had to go out at night. My dad had done some work for him and through that they became friends. John listened to my mother’s story and did his best to calm her down. I stood at the end of the driveway frozen, not recognizing my mother. She had been upset before but nothing like this. She sat in the chair next to him crying and talking about dying. She wailed and screamed. At some point, he went inside and called an ambulance. When they arrived my mother started to yell. He had betrayed her by calling them and there was no way she was going to get into that ambulance. By this point, random neighbors had stopped to watch and John had to try to explain why there was a crazed woman wailing in his driveway. When the ambulance arrived somehow they convinced her to get in and I rode along clutching her purse in my tiny hands. I felt kind of guilty. I was ashamed of her behavior, scared about what would happen next, and also excited about riding in an ambulance. No one talked to me because they were too busy trying to keep my mother in check. She fought them and refused to lay down, finally they sedated her. She was much quieter by the time we got to the hospital. She told me to hang onto her purse and I immediately spilled it all over the emergency room floor. Tampons and money went flying. I was mortified. I wasn’t sure what tampons were but I knew she wouldn’t want everyone to see hers. That day is one of the saddest of my life. When I left the hospital she was calm and cuffed to the gurney. I went and stayed with John. He brought Muffy over to keep my company. Eventually, my aunt, Wanda, and Uncle Mike came to get me. They tried to comfort me but neither of them knew how. They were childless and everything in their house was white. It was not a kid-friendly environment. For the few weeks my mother was in the hospital they took me to see her and made sure I got to school. The hospital would let my mother out for a couple of hours to have lunch with us. I hated to see her go back. Living with my mother was hard but living with my aunt Wanda was worse. My aunt Wanda had money but she was a very cold person. I knew her and my mother did not get along and so I could never really let my guard down around her. I also knew, because my mother had no filter, that my aunt Wanda strongly disliked my father. There were many reasons to dislike my dad but one of hers was his race. Knowing I was half Mexican made me wonder if she hated me too? Soon my mother and I were back in our little apartment but nothing would ever be the same. Abandonment is one of the worst things a kid can experience. I almost lost both my parents on the same day. The dangers of the world became very clear to me. I understood that there are so many ways to lose your parents. You can lose them due to something like the rapture, or suicide, you can lose them through divorce or depression. Loss doesn’t always have to be physical, it can be emotional or mental. To this day I’m not sure which is worse. I felt guilty for being embarrassed by my mother’s behavior. I felt anger towards my father for hurting her so badly but I also wondered why he was so sad he wanted to end his life. Later he would tell me it was an accident. Neither of them ever wanted to talk about it even as the years passed and I could have better understood. All the adults around me, teachers, and neighbors looked at me with pity in their eyes but no one said a word. I could tell things were different now. 

Sometime around age 7 or 8, we moved to Vera Count. It was just a couple of blocks away from School Rd. We now had a bigger place but it was definitely a step-down. We lived at the top of a circle and next to our building was a big field and wooded area. There was plenty of room to play outside and the school playground was just behind the building across the street. Just a couple of blocks can make a big difference. I could feel our poverty and the poverty of our neighbors after we moved. My mother would point out to me the good buildings and the bad buildings within our low income block. “At least we don’t live over there” she would say. 

The older I got the more scared I became. During this time my mother was also becoming more and more unhinged. After her suicide attempt, she was at least being treated for depression. Later we would find out that she was bi-polar.  My dad was in and out of our home, as usual,  and stability was nowhere to be found. My mother was upset with her pastor because she felt he did not help her enough when she was in the hospital. She called some other pastors around town and wasn’t happy with their response either. This left us without a church and that was uncomfortable for her. She had gone to church every Sunday for her entire life and she feared for what would happen to her salvation if she wasn’t going somewhere. My aunt and uncle would invite her to go to church with them and we did for a while. That church was tiny and it reminded me of the church in the Thief in the Night series. The one they were taken to when they were about to be executed. Behind that church was a movie theater that my dad would often take me to. The theater let the church members park in its lot. When getting out of our car I always wished we were going to the theater instead. When we returned after the Sunday morning service you could smell the movie popcorn drifting through the air. 

My mother used God, the rapture, and hell a lot when she was upset at me. I remember one incident when she turned the shower on for me and I was complaining that it was too hot. “It will be a lot hotter in hell if you don’t get in that shower and start listening to me! Any normal childhood sassiness or conflict could warrant a warning about missing the rapture or burning for eternity. God was her enforcer. She and my grandparents talked often about how he could see and hear everything I did and thought. Not only could my actions send me to hell but my thoughts. It’s weird to grow up having no privacy, not even within your own head. I felt like God and the devil were following me everywhere all the time. God with his book of life ready to scratch me out or write me back in and the devil just seeing if he could trip me up. 

When I think of the 4 years we lived on Vera Court what stands out the most to me is how unsafe I felt all the time. The older you get the more you understand why the world is dangerous. My mom would go over the rules with me all the time, don’t answer the door unless you know the person knocking, lock the door, and deadbolt the door whenever you are in the apartment. When you are inside make sure to use the chain lock. My mother had some OCD tendencies so she would have to check the door multiple times, along with the windows, and lights. Bedtime could take awhile. After that man broke into my room she was always worried it would happen again. I was more worried about other monsters. No amount of locking things would keep Satan or God out for that matter. 

When I was around 4 years old my father took me to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. We went to see it in the theater near my aunt’s church, the one that always tempted me with the smell of popcorn. It was pretty magical. The old theater had twinkle lights in the ceiling and I was impressed! The seats felt scratchy and heavy curtains hung down in front of the screen. Now that venue is mostly used for music and comedy performances. Whenever I go there I feel the warm memory of that first movie outing with my dad. It is still just as magical as it was in 1974. I loved the movie but the evil queen really terrified me. Soon after someone bought me this lovely gold edged Disney storybook and on the back cover was the old scary witch from Disney’s Snow White. Every night I would have to make sure the back cover was facing away from me so her evil eyes would not stare at me as I slept. Really she was the least of my worries. 

In the darkness, I could never be certain that the devil would not grab me. He could be anywhere. Under my bed, in the closet, or under a pile of clothing. I would worry about men coming to get me and chop off my head or make me take the mark of the beast. I always slept with my face and right hand covered in hopes of keeping someone from giving me the mark when I wasn’t awake. Silly really but it was kid logic. All these fears fed into other unrelated fears, or maybe regular childhood fears. I was afraid of this character on Sesame Street and to a greater level Mr. Yuck. Whenever the character came on or the Mr. Yuck commercial came on PBS I would hide under our coffee table until it was over. All kids go through these things but I had no adult around to talk me through it so the fears got bigger and stronger. I can still remember how my heart pounded. My mother was oblivious to it all until she was home on vacation one week and witnessed me cowering under the coffee table. We talked about it but I don’t know if it made me feel any better. I was very fearful of UPC symbols on products because I had been taught that the mark of the beast would be just like those symbols. Each UPC symbol already had 666 embedded in it just waiting to be activated when the Antichrist came into power. Add to that all of the things that had Mr. Yuck stickers on them and even things like cleaning products under the sink became diabolical. I would turn the labels in the refrigerator and cupboards so the UPC symbol was facing away and if I was in the bathtub or shower I would do the same. As I write this my thoughts are that I sound nuts, and then I remember that I need to show compassion to myself. Children should be taught healthy fear of some things because otherwise, they may not survive childhood. The problem is my childhood was awash in all sorts of unhealthy fears. 

Not long after we moved to Vera Ct we were invited to ride the Sunday school bus to a new Church. At first, when the Sunday school folks would knock on the door my mother would hide. She did this whenever someone came to the door unexpectedly. She hated when people would try to sell her something or the Jehovah’s Witnesses would stop by to chat. She would pull the shades and put her finger to her lips to signal to me to be quiet. She would peek through the shades in order to judge when they had left the building. Only then would she tell me it was clear. These new unexpected guests were from the United Pentecostal Church. At first, my mother was reluctant. She did not agree with how they baptized people, but after a while, she gave in. She was a church hopper and I think she was tired of trying to find the right place. She also really enjoyed their worship style and I think that kind of grabbed her. My mother loved music more than almost anything and if there was one thing she hated it was dry worship services. Calvary Gospel United Pentecostal Church did not have dry worship services, in fact, it was quite the opposite. It was not unusual to see people loudly speaking in tongues, dancing in the spirit, or running through the aisles. It could be pretty entertaining for a kid to watch, it certainly wasn’t dull. It seemed a lot like the Jimmy Swaggart services my mother would watch on television. He would sing and speak in tongues. He sometimes danced on stage a little. It wasn’t that foreign. I liked the church at first. The people seemed friendly and the church itself was a nice facility. As an adult, I can look back and see there was a fair amount of love bombing going on. These people appeared friendly on the surface but there was an edge there. I enjoyed the worship services along with my mother. The clapping and upbeat music were fun to sing along to. At this point, I was too young to really understand what we were becoming involved with. There is no way I could have known that there was no room for childhood within this church just like there was no room for childhood in my regular day to day life. I was a stressed-out kid and this was about to get much worse. They say His burden is light but the burden of his church almost killed me. 

Before I go any further I feel I should say that I believe The United Pentecostal Church to be a cult. I believe that they engage in brainwashing and use cultish means to keep people in line. I know that not everyone who reads this will agree with me. I can only speak from my experience and from what I hear from fellow survivors. 

I liked riding the Sunday school bus! We would sing and when they dropped us at home I would get to pick a piece of candy. Sometimes my mom did not want to go and she would force me to hide with her. It never mattered if I wanted to go or not. My grandparents were very unhappy to hear she was attending a “Jesus Only” church. They gave her a lot of grief about it. They did not live in town and the church people saw her more, I think in the end the church won due to proximity and persistence. My aunt Wanda did not approve either. She would tell my mother any chance she got which drove them further apart. 

In reality skipping church was not that bad. The Sunday school bus was fun but my Sunday School class was another story. When we skipped church my mother would make homemade cinnamon rolls with me and she would watch some television preacher while I did whatever I wanted. I thought she was an amazing baker, she wasn’t, but she could turn that dough into something so delicious!.

My parents and my grandparents taught me from the cradle that giving money to the church was very important. My mom would press coins into my hand before leaving me at Sunday school so I would always have something for the offering plate. Weirdly my mother did not feel that tithing was important, she would always say God understands and so we give what we can. Calvary Gospel Church did not agree with that. God may understand but Pastor Grant did not. Sunday school was ok. I really did not enjoy being around other kids that much so I just tried to get through it mostly for the cookie and juice. I’d much rather be upstairs where the action was happening. We would hear the same stories over and over again all told with little felt people on a felt board. We had two older ladies who taught our class of 7 and 8-year-olds. One would tell the stories and the other would glare at us so we would not get too squirrely. Whenever we were allowed to be in the adult service, usually during the holidays, it was so interesting. All of those ladies in their fancy dresses and big hair. Part of me wanted to be just like them and another part of me wanted to be like the pastor. Whenever I played church at home I was always the pastor and I didn’t know yet that women couldn’t be pastors. I wondered how they chose which verses to read? Do they practice a lot? Maybe when I was a grown-up it would all come to me. I made little hymnals out of paper and handed them out to all of my stuffies. When I got older I would have my Barbies dress up in their best dresses and there might even be someone dancing in the aisle. I created a little church using books and blocks. Lots of Barbie weddings happened there. I believe what drew me to the idea of being a pastor was a desire to care for others. I knew that the adults in my life placed great importance on the church and so if I wanted to impress them, and I did, the church would be the best way to accomplish that.

I made a few friends when we started to go to more than just the Sunday morning service. I always felt a little on the outside of things because we were attending but not officially “saved” and therefore not totally in. My mother eventually gave in and got rebaptized so she would be considered saved by their standards. This only made the pressure on me greater. Adults would always ask, “When are you going to get the Holy Ghost?” The United Pentecostal Church only believes you have the Holy Ghost if you speak in tongues. I have spoken to many adults who grew up within the UPC church who fully admit to faking speaking in tongues just to get the pressure off. Of course, this doesn’t remove the pressure of worrying about going to hell. The UPC believes that you must repent, be baptized in Jesus’s name by immersion, and then speak in tongues to be saved. If any part of this formula is missing you will not be allowed into heaven. It can be heartbreaking to watch people struggle through waiting to be filled with the Holy Ghost. They would often repent and get baptized and then not speak in tongues for a long time all the while their salvation hangs in the balance. Our pastor taught a hell where you would burn forever but never die. It is a terrible idea for most adults to grapple with and for children it is the stuff of nightmares. Being separated from God is sad but for a child to be separated from every adult in your life is even scarier. Abandonment is a huge worry for all children. They ask the question, “Am I safe?” “Can I depend on the adults in my life to be there?” The church I grew up in would answer, maybe not. Children are exposed to these messages long before they can handle the content and are expected to make decisions about faith long before they can really comprehend the message. My childhood understanding of salvation went something like…I’m bad, Jesus is the only one who can save me so I have to do what he says, or His father will send me to hell if I don’t comply. Not really much of a salvation message. 

My favorite part of church was the worship portion. I loved to sing and when I sang I felt close to God. If the worship service was really hot we might not even have a preaching portion. It all depended on how the “spirit moved.” I loved those services, all-singing, and no scary parts. Once the preaching started, who knew what you might get. 

My mother had a hard time making friends even after they considered her saved. She never thought she was good enough and always thought people were gossiping about her. She just seemed to lack the ability to trust. In the end, there were a few kind souls who tried to be friends with her and for a while, this church looked like it might be a good thing in our lives. She still had her good pal Gail and my mother even invited her to church. Gail did not seem as impressed as my mother was but she would still come from time to time. She always came if they were showing the “Thief in the Night” films. Yep, this church showed them too. No matter where we went I couldn’t get away from them. Strangely, my mother never had trouble making friends outside the church. It is only within the church that she struggled. 

As a side note, it turns out there was a lot of gossip going on within the church so my mother wasn’t totally off in her concern. She would have never fit in there for the long haul. She was too working-class poor and eventually divorced. Plus they considered her marriage to my father to be interracial and that was a big no-no. The church taught that if you were in an interracial marriage when you became saved you should stay in that marriage. Over the years I watched how people in interracial marriages were treated and it was racist. My mother can be difficult to understand. As much as she was worried about missing the rapture she was also a bit of a free spirit. I think those parts of her core personality were always at odds with each other. She never gave up her pants or stopped cutting her hair even though the church taught strongly against these things. Compliance was not strictly necessary for salvation but then it kind of was. If you sinned by not following God’s word about your hair then you might miss the rapture or lose your salvation. Salvation was something we were always fighting for and it could slip through your fingers in a moment. I felt like I was always one mistake away from being lost. As a teen, I would envision what it would be like to be in heaven if my mother ended up in hell. I could never figure out how I could be happy knowing she was suffering forever, how could that be heaven? The church would say that God and heaven would be so wonderful and pure and therefore you would have no concern for such things. 

C-PTSD, Childhood, Crime, Dad, Family, Fear, isolation, Parents, Poverty, Stress, Trauma

This is Five

Deb M

Part 6

During kindergarten and first grade, we were lucky enough to live only two buildings away from the elementary school. It was a great place to live because I could walk to school easily and it created a cozy environment. Our block was mostly middle-class homes mixed with apartments. About a block and a half from our building was a tiny store where I bought ice cream and popsicles. I learned to jump rope and ride a two-wheeler when we lived there. When everyone had gone home for the day and the parking lot was empty I would go and hit tennis balls off the school building. I got pretty good at returning the ball with my huge adult man-size tennis racquet. Even at the age of 5, I was already a free-range kid. I played by myself and most of the milestones of that age like getting the chickenpox or learning to ride a two-wheeler I experienced alone. Jerome was my one friend. He lived next door and would often come over to play in the backyard. He was kind of an odd duck and he was bullied at school. We got along ok even though he would never let me play Spock when we played Star Trek. Spock was a boy and I was a girl so that was a no go for Jerome. I always admired Spock because to me he seemed to be the most intelligent. He is still my favorite. 

My parents bought me a red bicycle. It came with training wheels and I kept asking my dad to put them on for me. Of course he did not do it and one day I got tired of waiting. I drug my bike out to the driveway/parking lot of our building determined to teach myself to ride. Because it was the middle of a work day there were no cars in the lot, thank goodness for small blessings. I hopped on my bike and attempted to balance and move the pedals at the same time. I spent the whole afternoon trying to bike up and down the long driveway. I fell often and my pants now had holes in the knees. By the end of the day both of my knees were skinned and blood ran down my chins and into my socks but on the other hand I was riding my bike! I was so excited to show my mom and dad when they returned home at the end of the day. My mom was really upset when she saw my knees and her and my father started to argue about how he was supposed to put the training wheels on my bike. On this day their fighting could not dampen my spirits. I could ride my bike and I learned all by myself. For many years, really up until young adulthood, riding my bike was an escape for me. I loved the speed of it all and how far it could take me from home and my everyday hell.

Before I learned to ride my bike I wanted a Big Wheel! Other kids had them and I was glued to the commercial every time it came on the television. My parents eventually bought me one, but not really. They purchased a knock off version that was actually better made and more sturdy but it was just not the same. It was rusty brown in color and had real tires. It left me longing for the red, yellow, and blue plastic that the other kids had. Fitting in was hard. I just wanted what the other kids in my neighborhood had. 

My father is Mexican and that created some hurdles. We did not know any other Mexicans and no one really looked like me. Poverty and religion did nothing to help. We were dirt poor for much of the time we lived there. The cracks in my parent’s marriage were already starting to show. I have always wondered why at times we had no money but then at other times we seemed to be doing pretty well. I can remember times when we would go out to dinner on Friday nights and my mother would take crafting classes. Neither of my parents could really manage money but the swings in our fortune seems to swing too wildly for money management to be the only cause. 

My father came home one day with a brand new red Firebird with black leather seats. I have no idea how he was able to afford this car. When he first brought it home my mother was not pleased but eventually she made peace with it. Once in a while, my mother would drive his car when we would travel to see my grandparents. She learned to love the car and received many speeding tickets while driving it. I know there were times living in that apartment when we had no food, so I’m not sure where the money came from. After infidelity, money was always the hot topic of my parents’ disagreements. We were often one bad week away from having our lights turned off or having no food. At this point, my dad was still mostly living with us at home but before long that would all change. My father was a bit like a feral cat. He wanted to be able to come and go with the assurance that he would be welcomed back with open arms when he needed a place to come home to. Even in his happiest relationships he cheated. He couldn’t bear to live the sedate life of a middle class married man. He wanted to mix it up with different people. He craved novelty and despised feeling caged. I think he had a deep hole inside of him that he could never fill. He was always seeking women and praise and no matter how much he received it was never enough. He was always on the make and I’m sure his red Firebird helped him feel more confident when out looking for women. I have no doubt that my father loved my mother, I’m sure he loved me too in his own twisted way, but he loved himself more. He felt entitled to be unfaithful and resented being questioned. He led two lives, one where he was married and had a child and then another where he was single and had no responsibilities. When he was feeling beat up by the world he would come crawling home to my mother but when he was feeling high on life we were on our own. 

After he and my mother split I took her place. I would see him when he was between women and then not when he was dating someone. I grew up resenting this and always seeing myself as second place in his affections. I felt disposable. I have always believed that one of the biggest issues between myself and parents is the fact that I could really see them from an early age. I think I made them uneasy. They never hid anything from me so I couldn’t help but see it all. I tried to hide from what I saw. I wanted to believe the best about them. I needed to be able to trust them. It was easy to see that they did not understand each other. At this point I still wanted them to stay together, but it would not be long before that opinion changed. 

Several major things happened while we lived on School Rd. First, a man broke into my bedroom while I was asleep and my dad had to chase him off.  The man managed to get one whole leg and the top portion of his body through my window. I can still remember my dad standing in the doorway of my room holding a flashlight and yelling. He is wearing a white T-shirt and boxers. The wind was slightly blowing and the curtains on my window moved in the breeze. By the light of the flashlight, I could see a figure with one leg dangling over my windowsill. Before I could really register what was happening he was gone. My parents called the police and I remember the cops trying to get prints off my windowsill. They also looked for footprints outside but it was raining and so nothing could really be found. This event made my sleep issues even worse. I think it also fed into my mother’s fears and may have triggered her worries about locked doors and windows. It gave my father something to brag about. My dad was a golden gloves fighter in his youth and he always saw himself as tough. Now he could tell people how he scared this guy away and saved his little girl. Experiencing this made it even harder to be a kid home alone. There were periods when I had a sitter and then periods when I did not. Just like with the money issues I have no real grasp as to what caused the lack of childcare. 

I started kindergarten when we lived on School Rd. As usual, something that should have been focused on me was focused on my parent’s drama. My mother couldn’t or maybe wouldn’t take off work to take me. When I think of my own little ones going to kindergarten it fills me with bittersweet memories. As a mom, you are both proud and sad. I think I cried with all four of mine making sure to do it once I was in the car so they couldn’t see. I do not remember it being much of a big deal for my parents. My father had his own business and so it wasn’t hard for him to take me. I was so excited because he told me we were going to go out to breakfast beforehand! This was a big deal! I was such a daddy’s girl. He took me downtown to eat which was kinda far from my school and when we arrived at the restaurant my dad introduced me to a woman. She sat down and had breakfast with us and much to my surprise, she and my dad had a long conversation in a language I did not understand. I knew my father could speak Spanish but I had no idea he could speak French. So what I thought was going to be a special first day of school breakfast with my dad became the day I realized he was cheating on my mom. At this age I had heard them fight about his infidelity but I did not really understand what it all meant. I did not have the language for it but I knew something was off. After breakfast he took me to school very early, I was the first one there, and I had to sit there with this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I feel some part of me thought I had done something wrong, somehow participated in his wrong simply by being there. After school, my mom and I talked about the highlights of the day. I finally broached the subject with my mom. She was mortified and more than that she was furious. I told her everything I knew, which wasn’t much. I did know the woman’s name, it was Jennifer and she was a French professor. Of course, my father tried to pass her off as just a friend but my mother wasn’t buying it. After that things were never the same, she always suspected him and he always gave her a reason to. Jennifer had an apartment on the lake and my father took me to visit with her. She was nice enough but I just couldn’t feel comfortable around her because I knew the pain my mother was going through. My mother would cry and tell me that men are dogs who cannot control themselves. It made it hard to love my father. I felt guilty for wanting to see and spend time with him. She would call him a “dirty Mexican” which made me feel bad about the part of me that was Mexican. I was old enough now to understand that my father and I were different from most of the people around us. Over time my mother would become more and more unstable when the topic of my father’s infidelity came up. Once she took me with her when she went out looking for him. At this time they both worked at the same place and mother suspected my father was carrying on with a co-worker. My mother drove over to her house with me in tow. Like Karen from Goodfellas, my mother called to my father’s mistress through the door. She banged on the apartment door and finally, the woman answered. She only opened the door a crack but that was all we needed to see my father sitting in a chair in his boxers. My mother did not have the foresight to leave me in the car so I bore witness to her calling to my father and him shaking his head refusing to come to the door. I don’t remember what happened after this. I have since learned that this often happens around traumatic memory. You remember the event but maybe not what happened just before or after. This is because when in a state of trauma your brain doesn’t make a memory in the same fashion as it does when just experiencing life normally. I only imagine how humiliated my mother must have been. When she was in that state of upset she would drive like a lunatic all the while crying and screaming. I can only imagine how scared I was. To this day I know exactly where that apartment building is and which unit she lived in. It remains a landmark representing pain and the ghosts of the past. 

The last major thing I can recall from School Rd is hunger. I don’t think my father was around much at this point. He had a key and would come and go as he pleased. Home or not he couldn’t really be relied on for financial help. When I was in grade school we had the option to walk home during our lunch hour and have our lunch at home. I never made this choice unless I had no other option. It was a warm spring day when I dashed home over my school lunch break. Feeling for the key around my neck and using all of my strength to turn the deadbolt. I didn’t have much time and so I raced to the kitchen and found the peanut butter and a butter knife. I didn’t bother to sit down but instead scooped as much peanut butter as I could onto my knife. Grinning, I licked a huge chunk off and felt the emptiness of my stomach subside. I continued scraping and scooping the almost bare jar until it was time to go back to school. Hunger was with me for much of my childhood and the peanut butter was all we had on that day. No bread, no jelly, and no milk to wash it down. At this age I really loved peanut butter so at least I really enjoyed the one food we had available. There was some shame with this act. It felt wrong to only be eating this one thing for lunch and it felt wrong to be licking it off the butter knife. We had learned all about a balanced diet at school and I knew this wasn’t going to cut it.  One day our next-door neighbor asked me why I was home in the middle of the day. When I told her I had nothing to take for lunch she took pity on us. She met my mother at the door later with groceries. My mother smiled tightly and said thank you. Once we were safely inside our unit she let me have it. I learned that day that I was never allowed to talk about being hungry or anything else with other adults. My mother warned me about this thing called social services and how they could take me away if I complained too much. She also talked about God and how we should always look to him and not the government for help. Very early on she instilled in me a fear, fear of other people, fear of the government, fear of the rapture, fear of God, and lastly she taught me to fear her. There were other times when we had enough food and I would end up in conflicts mostly with my father. It seemed to me I had no control over what I put in my body. Much of the time there was very little to choose from in our house. It wasn’t very often that my mother would let me pick things from the store because we were always on a budget. This meant there wasn’t much variety to choose from at home and then my father had very strong ideas about food. One night after sitting at the table taking too long to eat my peas my father decided he would force-feed me. I was about five years old. He held my mouth open and made me eat all of the peas on my plate. I was out of control sobbing and almost immediately ran to the bathroom and threw up all of my dinner including the peas. This involuntary action earned me a spanking. From then on I almost never felt good about food, either because we didn’t have enough or because I felt judged for what I did and didn’t like. My father liked to preach to me about eating and exercise. Every choice I made equaled me being good or bad, the stakes were always so high in my family. Both my parents were very judgemental but my father was more judgemental about food. I am much more relaxed about food now but I feel like it has taken me a lifetime to overcome my anxieties around food. I cannot bring myself to put a pea into my mouth. 

As I grew older I questioned why God did not provide for us and then I would remember that to suffer was to be like Christ so I should be happy to have this struggle. When I would ask people at church about why bad things happened to us they would always say so that we can help others later on. They would remind me that God has a plan for all of us and his ways are not our ways. My child mind was too little to understand the ways of the almighty God. Through all of this, I developed the idea that money was bad and wanting it was worse. There were higher things to be concerned about. Focus on heaven and maybe you will forget being hungry or being bullied for being poor. I had one horrible tormentor who was worse than the rest. One day she and her lackey discovered me riding my bike after school. I was wearing a new off brand puffer vest my mother had purchased for me. It was ugly. Lime green and yellow. It wasn’t a cool color like the other kids had, but my mother had tried and so I wore it. My bully stepped out in front of my bike so I would have to stop or hit her. When I stopped she spit all over my vest. Then she and her lackey laughed and made fun of me as I cried. I biked home to clean up my vest. I felt terrible because my mother was home and she would see the mess. But yeah, focus on heaven and forget being worried about your off-brand clothes and no food. 

“And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20. 

I was not moving any mountains which meant I did not even have faith the size of a mustard seed. My mind was failing me. I could not believe hard enough to save my family and I couldn’t control my doubts. Doubting God was a big no-no and I was failing big time in that department. At this point, I never put any blame on God but took all of the blame on myself. I must be doing something wrong if I could only figure out what it is! I wish that I understood why I took on so many adult ideas when I was so little. I suspect it was because I was never allowed to be a child and my parents always spoke to me like I was an adult. Oversharing caused me to consider things only an adult should worry about. 

Around age five is when many of my worries and fears really kicked into high gear. I worried about my keys and setting my alarm and on top of that, I wasn’t really sleeping. I don’t think I was ready for this responsibility so it took a lot out of my 5-year-old brain. I would lay awake at night thinking about the rapture and the ticking of the clock would remind me of the beginning of “A Thief In The Night.” As a side note, to this day a ticking clock can trigger me. I will start to feel like I cannot catch my breath and my fight or flight reflex will kick in. 

I wore two keys around my neck. One for the outside apartment building door and one for our unit lock. I can remember struggling hard at times to turn the key in the lock and I remember asking adults in the complex to help me if they were passing by. Not the safest plan. If my mother was running late for some reason I would worry. I would often get to school very early because I was worried about being late. Before leaving the house I would check my lunch box multiple times to be sure my lunch was in there. Through all of this I learned to be very responsible and also a little neurotic. When scary things happened, no matter how big or small, there was usually no adult around to help. 

Sometimes when my parents fought it was just screaming and yelling. My mother would get in my father’s face and he would shut down. Often it felt like violence could break out at any moment.  I know pushing and shoving happened between them. My mother would make some pretty scary threats and I believed she was capable of carrying them out. Now I am not saying that my dad was innocent. He was awful with money and his source of income was not always the most reliable. He left my mother to pay all of the bills and carry all of the stress of working and raising me. Add onto that all of the cheating and it is easy to understand why she would get upset. She would cry and rage and I would be in charge of comforting her and helping her to cope. This was a big job for a little girl. This job would often leave my stomach in knots. So much to be concerned about. Money, cheating, my mother’s mental health and then just regular kids stuff. I was made fun of throughout my young childhood. I never had the “right” clothing. My mother would shop for me at Prange Way and fashion was not the consideration. Her concern was getting the most bang for her buck. I begged for Garanimals when I was really small but I don’t recall her buying them often. She once bought me these knock off Nike’s and for the rest of the school year this one boy named Mike called me “Polish Nike’s.” My mother tried to get me what I wanted but it was always a little off and so I was often the butt of the joke at school. My mother was a very hard worker and I don’t fault her for not having money, at least not when I was young. Her work ethic was stellar, it was just her mothering that needed some work. 

One fight I remember very clearly involved my mother raging at my father after finding evidence of his cheating in their car. I crouched in the lowest part of the hall closet and watched through the barely cracked door. She was pushing and shoving him and he was raising his arms to defend himself. Her words rang out through our apartment, “If you ever do this again I will string you like sausage from the trees!” At the time I couldn’t really understand what her words meant but once I became old enough to understand, her words chilled me to the bone. She even went so far as to grab a sharp kitchen knife. As she brandished it at him my father looked like a little boy. He never forgave her for those moments and would bring it up often as an excuse for why he left her. Hiding in the closet I cried and wished that they could figure out how to get along. In those moments I tried to make myself as small as possible, something I still do today when I’m confronted with very angry outbursts. They both seemed unaware of how their fights impacted me. They never attempted to hide any disagreements from me. My father would always leave and tell me to watch over mom. When I would go off to spend time with my father my mother would tell me to love him and be kind. No matter what they did to each other and no matter how they spoke about each other to me, at the end of it all would come the admonition to love the other parent. They both reminded me it was my duty to honor my father and my mother. It was like they could not love each other properly so they used me as a surrogate. My father knew my mother needed watching over so he tasked me with that. She knew he needed acceptance and love, so she tasked me with that. No thought was really given to what I needed. When he wasn’t staying with us he would arrange to see me. My mother would dress me up and I would wait by our big picture window for his car to pull up. Sometimes he wouldn’t show. He would later tell me they had been fighting and he did not want to risk my mother coming out and making a scene. This left me standing at the window for hours. Each hour washing more and more of my hope away. I needed a break from her and I missed him so much. She never pulled me away from the window. I remember one day he was supposed to come to get me at lunchtime and I waited for him by the window until my mother forced me into bed. I was in the second grade. 

I could never understand how my father could leave me with her. He always claimed to be afraid of her and the violence she threatened but then felt fine not only leaving me with her but tasking me with caring for her. As I got older I would challenge him on this topic and he would always say he never believed she would hurt me, but how could he be so sure? In my father’s narrative everything was my mother’s fault. He cheated because she was mean and he left because she was violent. He couldn’t come around to help with finances because he did not want to fight with her. In other words, in his mind he bore no responsibility. I suspect my father was fighting demons no one knew about. He never wanted to talk about his past and when he did his stories never added up. I always felt like he was hiding something from me. They were just really bad for each other. While I was still in elementary school they both tried to commit suicide on the same day. I stayed with a family friend and then my aunt until my mother was able to leave the hospital. It was on that day I decided I just wanted them as far away from each other as possible. 

Anti-Christ, C-PTSD, Childhood, Fear, Rapture, Uncategorized

Apocalypse Comes Calling

Deb M

***Trigger Warning*** Rapture, Endtimes, TITN

My parents were married around 1968. They appear miserable in all of the photos from their wedding day. In each one, they stare back at the camera with somber expressions made all the more depressing by the black and white color. They don’t appear to be at church. It’s just the two of them standing by a Formica table. Some of the photos include a small cake. My father is wearing a suit and my mother is wearing a simple white dress. They both appear to be there against their will as if someone is holding a gun to their backs just outside of the frame. My father, Amando, seems steely and looks to be clenching his jaw tightly. My mother, Marla, seems sad and resigned. Neither of them ever talked about their wedding day or courtship but they did seem to love each other even if that love was toxic and almost killed them. It may have been the time period. There are photos of my aunt from the same time and she appears equally unfriendly and gloomy. My aunt is probably not the best example because she is gloomy and unfriendly by nature. I was born in June of 1970 and luckily there are some photos of my parents smiling with me. My favorite photo from that time period features my mother in a summer dress, hair wrapped in rollers, cradling me in her arms. She looks relaxed and happy. My father remains serious in most of the photos from that year but there are a few from time to time where he looks like his guard might be down, in those moments a smile creeps in. Like many little girls, I adored my father. I think I spent most of my childhood chasing after his love, time, and acceptance. I loved my mother too but I saw her as fragile and in need of someone to look out for her. I could never really be a child around either of them.

I have lived in the Madison Wisconsin area all my life. It hasn’t been until the last couple of years that I could really imagine living anywhere else. Now I dream of Colorado or somewhere in the desert. There is a lot to love about Wisconsin. There are beautiful parks and lakes. I am a nature lover and so I would miss this for sure if I ever relocated. I am an empty nester and it almost feels like I’m starting a new life filled with all sorts of possibilities. I have a love-hate relationship with my home town. While it is a great place to live it also holds some truly awful memories for me. Part of me knows that these memories will follow me wherever I go because they live inside of me, the other part just wishes to not be reminded every day of my past. For now, most of my children are here and so this is where I intend to remain. In the wee hours of the morning when I’m staring at the ceiling, I have to wonder if the ghosts would continue to haunt me if I slipped away in the middle of the night. Madison has and always will be a haunted place for me, filled with the monsters of my childhood.

When I was very little my parents lived on Main St. I can see the street in my mind’s eye but I couldn’t tell you which house we lived in. My earliest memory is from the time when we lived there. I was sitting in a highchair. I’m in the kitchen and people are bustling around me. I am watching the dust fly around in a sunbeam streaming through the window. This memory, although brief, is warm and vivid. When I think of that memory it makes me feel peaceful inside. When I close my eyes I can still see it. 

The next memory is shrouded in darkness. My father is quickly carrying me out of the church sanctuary. I’m around toddler age. I am crying hard and he is trying to quiet me. The noise coming from the sanctuary is loud and there is screaming. Our little Assemblies of God church is screening a movie and the congregation is emotional. The screaming could have been from a congregant or from the film. The film was “A Thief in the Night.” I remember looking down through my tears to my black patent leather shoes. That church had a soundproof glass viewing window and a speaker out in the vestibule. This way parents could take their children out if they needed to without missing any of the services. So even though my father took me out I could still hear the scary sounds coming from the sanctuary. To this day whenever I think of that church it sends chills down my spine. Now, as far as I know, I have no other reason to be scared by that church other than the spanking I might get if I wasn’t quiet during the services. Even now when I drive by the building something in the pit of my stomach clenches. In my mind, it represents the rapture, being left behind, and everything that comes with that. My parents thought the whole incident was humorous. They liked to brag about how I never cried or misbehaved in church. My father would brag about spanking me until I learned to be quiet. “We never put our child in the nursery”, they would boast. That one night was seen as an oddity when I cried so hard they had to take me out. Thankfully they did not spank me for being scared. My parents loved that church but before long they felt they had to leave. Their beloved pastor left and they did not like the new pastor.

In 1972 A Thief In The Night was released. It is the granddaddy of many of my childhood nightmares. It is also the first in a long line of rapture themed films. I see it as the scarier, more traumatizing version of the Left Behind films. It has not waned in popularity over time probably due to how effectively it delivers its message. A Thief In The Night was never shown in theaters but it was passed around from church to church. This made it possible for the film to skirt the rating system. It has been shown all over the world but it is best known in the American south and midwest. You could find it at Sunday night church services, youth groups, Bible camps, and Sunday school classes. Because it was shown in churches parents could expose their children to it’s dangerous message with no oversight. From what I’ve heard it seems that many churches used these films to target teens in particular. I am so glad streaming from the internet was not a thing when I was a child. Now parents do not have to wait for their church to gain access to this series, they can stream it from the internet for free and bring its horrors right into their living rooms. I have C-PTSD for multiple reasons but I believe the seeds of it all lie within this series of films. 

This film series was written by Russell S. Doughten Jr. and directed by Donald W. Thompson. Russell S. Doughten also worked on “The Blob” in the 1950s and has a producer credit. The  original film was made in Des Moines Iowa and snaked its way through the Bible belt. The imagery and the theme song created an unforgettable experience. To this day the theme song of that film lives in my head. All I need to do is read a snippet of the lyrics or hear a tiny part of the melody to have it stuck in my head for days. Even as I’m writing this it is playing in my mind and I will have to try to do something to dig it out so that I’m not riddled with anxiety later. My mother liked the theme song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” and would play it on her accordion. She would sing it over and over. I was surprised to learn that song was really popular at the time and a big part of the Jesus movement. For me, it is like hearing the chimes of hell. 

There are four films in the series, A Thief In The Night, A Distant Thunder, Image of the Beast, and The Prodigal Planet. The first was released in 1972 and the last in 1983. I saw the first one when I was a toddler, probably around age 3. All of the churches we attended following that first church showed these films. My mother would sit on the bed and sing that song not understanding the trauma she was causing in my young mind. Every year following our viewing of these films I would go through a period of time when I could not sleep alone. I would have nightmares about government officials coming to get me to be beheaded. I would go through periods when I was afraid to be alone and that was a problem because I was almost always alone. If you watch the films now having had no experience with them they might seem dated, campy, and just plain weird. If you see them as a young child and all of the people in your life believe that these things are actually going to happen you will most likely be traumatized. The internet is full of people who were traumatized during childhood because they were made to watch these films in school, church, camp, or at home on video. Many horror fans embrace them as true horror films and consider them to be classic B movies. I have also seen people write about them being a gateway to their love of the horror genre. I experienced them as truth and a certain future. 

As horror films, they might be fine but as tools to scare children into salvation, they become something much more sinister. As a side note, these films are often still used for evangelism but I feel their true purpose is to keep people who are already Christians in line. Patty the main character is a Christian throughout the whole film but she isn’t the right kind of Christian. She believes in god’s love but not all of the rapture theology people keep trying to tell her about. Its message doesn’t focus on God’s love, it focuses on fear and keeping yourself on the right side of an angry vengeful god. Being a Christian is not enough. That lesson followed me through my whole childhood. The reach of these films is greater than you might think. It has been estimated that over 300,000,000 people have viewed these films. It can be a hard thing to get good estimates about because they are not shown in theaters but in church basements. One thing is for sure the memory of this series haunts the dreams of many adults who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s to this day. 

My mother believed the message introduced in these films wholeheartedly. It bled into every part of my life. Believing her heart was never quite right with god she would spend hours shut away in her bedroom crying and speaking in tongues. I would stand by the door and worry about whether or not she was going to be ok. She didn’t want me to make a lot of noise while she was praying so I couldn’t even use the television to drown out her wailing. I recall those nights as being very lonely. If she came home and couldn’t immediately locate me she would worry that I had been raptured leaving her behind. One day I was playing with my plastic sled and I fell asleep under it. She came home and searched the apartment high and low for me and when she couldn’t find me at home or at the neighbors she started screaming and that woke me up. I jumped up from under the sled and saw our neighbors and my mother standing there looking down at me. She grabbed me and held me tight to her chest. I could feel her heart racing and her face was wet with tears. On that day I got a very clear idea of how real all of this was to her, and it became even more real for me. From that day on the thought of being left behind haunted my dreams and my waking hours. I worried about what small sin or act of childhood would keep me from flying up to heaven with my mother. I constantly asked Jesus to forgive my sins even asking him to forgive sins I might have forgotten about. In my mind, Jesus was a scorekeeper. He was keeping track of every thought and action, and he had no problem at all with sending a little girl to the guillotine. 

Even after my parents moved on to other churches we lived within eyesight of the little Assemblies of God Church until about 1979. For much of my early childhood, I could see it from our front picture window. We had neighbors who attended there and my mother was close with them. Whenever they showed the “Thief in the Night” film my mother and I would go to service with them. My mother had a weird fascination or maybe obsession with the film. She and her best friend Gail were always excited to see that it would be showing again and they would pack up us kids and drag us to it. Afterward, we would all enjoy a meal together and my mother and her friend would recount everything that happened in the movie and talk about how close to the end times we were. I have never been able to understand how someone who feared the rapture so much would want to torture themselves by volunteering to watch that movie. As sequels came out we went to see all of those as well. My mother would complain about my fears, my fear of the dark, of being alone, and especially of sleeping alone but she never seemed to really get what she and my father had done by exposing me to that series of films. There were so many nights when I would lay awake worried about missing the rapture. I would dream about being chased by soldiers and being beheaded. I would flee to my mother’s bed and she would let me sleep with her but not without being pretty grumpy about it. Over the years these fears grew. I feared loud noises, especially anything that sounded like it might be a horn, white vans (because of the movie), bar codes, and men in uniforms. Later when I was older that fear would spread to credit cards, computers, and anything automated. I even grew to fear the television. My mother and her family would talk about how someday the government would be able to watch us through our television set and even see-through walls. They would talk about how after the rapture there would be no place to hide. Even as a very young child, I took their words very seriously. I would lay awake at night making sure that my right hand and forehead were covered by the blankets at all times. 

Revelation 13:16-17 King James Version (KJV)

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

I am sure this all sounds very strange to you if you have never encountered these beliefs before. I am also sure that some of you have shivers running down your spine right now because you know exactly what I’m talking about. The fears caused by all of this would only get louder as I got older. It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I figured out how to deal with them. Even then I can only deal with them, the CPTSD makes sure they are never far away.

Anti-Christ, Childhood, Dad, Devil, Family, Satan

Lonliness and Punishment

Deb M

Part 4

Violence was not uncommon in our home. It wasn’t just the big altercations between my parents but all of the little everyday things that happened. The worst spanking I ever received was when my father spotted me standing close to a man outside. He was standing near the fence that divided our yard from the grassy field above. He was watching a softball game. I was outside and when I saw him I went to say hello. What my parents did not know is I had been talking to this man for a long time. He lived down the hall from us. One day I spotted his open apartment door when I was exiting out the back door of our complex. He had just moved in and so I stopped by to say hello. Yes, my parents had taught me not to talk to strangers but I was desperately lonely. He chatted with me and was always friendly. I know I was actually in his apartment at least once. I have no idea what this man was actually like. I do not have much memory of him but I remember his apartment and I remember his figure standing by the fence watching the game. My father spotted me outside with this man he did not know and he came out to fetch me. Once in our apartment, his anger boiled over and he started to interrogate me about the neighbor. He yelled about talking to strangers and I remember crying very hard. I don’t remember what I said to him but I know that I attempted to explain and that only made him angrier. I was in elementary school at this point, maybe 7 or 8 years old. My mother seemed unconcerned until he reached for the dog collar to spank me. He was not wearing a belt and the dog collar was the closest thing within reach. I lurched to get away and my mother yelled at him. The collar had metal notches in it and a metal clasp and she thought it was too dangerous to spank me with it. He did not listen to her and started swinging at me hitting whatever he could, mostly my legs. It was expected that I would sit still when being spanked, if I moved they would hit whatever was where my butt was supposed to be including my hands. In this case, I tried to get away because I could sense the fear in my mother’s anger. He grabbed my arm and let me have it. After he was done my mother and father argued about what he had done and I cried alone in my room away from their fighting. I believe the big concern to be whether or not someone might notice and call social services. Eventually, they tried to make peace with me by giving me a flour tortilla. As weird as this might sound, they often tried to comfort me by handing me a tortilla or banana. They explained why talking to strangers was dangerous and life went on. As angry as my mother was with my father she was often the more violent of the two of them. She spanked me but she also pinched me and twisted my ear when she wanted my attention. She would pull my hair when she was really angry and that hurt the most. It amazes me that they would believe that a child left alone for 10-12 hours a day would have the self-control to not talk to strangers given how lonely I would naturally be. My mother cried over her loneliness all the time and my father sought out other women to keep him from being lonely. I feel like they did not see me as a real person. They seemed unaware that I was a human and not a doll. I had needs and emotions. I felt all the same things they did. To this day I wonder if they did not understand or did they just push away that understanding because had they acknowledged it they would have had to change how they were interacting with me. 

When you are a kid there is so much to worry about. I worried about losing my keys and being locked out of our apartment. I worried about people breaking into the house and strangers. It was the 70’s and stranger danger was a big deal. Then there was the alarm clock! I was always concerned with being late for school or oversleeping. So I developed little rituals around checking the clock and checking the locks on the doors. I looked over my shoulder when walking down the street alone and always checked the back seat of the car when I got in. The keys around my neck were like a security blanket. At various times during the school day I would feel for them just in case they might have fallen off of me at some point. I learned all of this from my mother. She was never diagnosed with OCD but she definitely displayed some of the behaviors. She drove me nuts checking the knobs on the stove and having to go back and check to be sure the door was really locked. She planted this worry into me. No amount of checking and rechecking life was enough for her. She was always preparing for doom. I would stare off into space as I waited for her to check and recheck. I was trying  desperately to be somewhere else. 

When I left for school in the morning my dog Muffy was the only one there to see me off. She was also the only one there waiting for me when I returned. She would be watching at the window when I left for school and waiting for me there when I came home. Every day I would run home after school and feel for the key around my neck. Sliding it in the lock I would fight to turn the stiff deadbolt. Immediately a walking cloud would come bounding towards me. Her fluffy white tail curled over her back and I would bury my face in her neck. The apartment was always silent. After putting my things down and taking off my coat anxiety would wash over me. With Muffy by my side, I would wander through each room checking for who might be hiding and waiting for me to come home. I checked every closet, under the beds, and behind the shower curtain. There was never anyone physically there, just me and fear. Dread would wash over me and I would remind myself that you can’t see the devil. 

The devil or Satan as he was sometimes called was a part of my daily life. He was as present as any person I could see with my eyes. God felt like light years away but Satan felt as close as the breath in my lungs. All of the adults in my family seemed to be very concerned about him. I knew one thing, he was tricky. I was taught that he and God had some kind of falling out and now he was the enemy of God. Because God created me the devil wanted to steal me away and take me to hell with him. Some day the devil was going to burn for all eternity and if I chose him over God I would burn too. In Sunday school we learned a lot about how the devil might try to trick us. He might tell me lies and I had to question every thought, action, and emotion, to see if they were of God or of Satan. This was tough because the devil was so manipulative and how would I know if I was right? The adults in my life made it sound like Satan was always lurking around every corner, under every bed, and in every closet just waiting for a chance to deceive me or worse yet drag me to hell. Later in life, I would learn about the AntiChrist and in many ways, he was even scarier than Satan. He would be in human form and as the church and my family would often say, “He might be alive right now!” There was much speculation about who he might be. The Pope was always a popular candidate but some people said that Ronald Reagan might be as well after all his name added up to 666 just like the Bible said to look out for. As an adult, I look back on those teachings with disgust. I have raised four children and thankfully none of them have had to deal with fear the way I did, I am 50 years old and it has taken me decades to let go of that fear. I cannot remember any time in my childhood or up through my 40’s when I have not been afraid. My childhood was soaked in teachings about an angry God and so much of what I endured during childhood is wrapped up in those teachings. Fringe religiosity and mental illness do not go well together and my family had equal amounts of both. I am descended from a long line of very religious people. My mother’s roots pass through both the Assemblies of God and the Church of God organizations. Eventually, she ended up attending a United Pentecostal Church. It was this church, Calvary Gospel United Pentecostal, that had the biggest impact on my life. The combination of the end-times theology of the 1970s and on through the ’80s and untreated severe mental illness created a childhood full of uncertainty, worries about abandonment, and child neglect. I did not come through this childhood unscathed but I have managed to survive and I keep leaning into the hope that I can continue to get closer to being whole and healthy. Most people who know me see me as a driven and fairly successful person. I have a devoted partner and I’ve raised 4 children. I am politically active, and I participate in volunteer initiatives within my community. Some might tell you that I am creative, a lover of furry creatures big and small, a collector of books, and driven by a desire for transformation. If they know me well they might tell you that I never sleep, have to be reminded to eat, and that at times my anxiety is crippling, and sometimes depression follows me around like a fog threatening to swallow me whole. If they know me even better they might tell you that when I do sleep I tend to be plagued by nightmares complete with guillotines and often involving me running from some sort of One World Government authority figure. Writing this book is one way I am trying to heal myself. As you continue on this journey with me, I will tell you about the other ways I am working on healing and helping others to heal. None of this is easy but it feels necessary. 

Childhood, Family, Fear, isolation, Stress, Trauma, Uncategorized

Childhood and Adventure

Deb M

Part 3

Both of my parents were checked out much of the time. I was raised by television. Many of us who grew up in the ’70s had this experience. I lived my day according to what show was on next. The people on television were my friends and they kept me company while my mother was away. I would build tents out of the dining room chairs and blankets from my bed.. My dog Muffy and I would hunker down inside and eat snacks while watching Gilligan’s Island. I loved building those tents. Once inside it felt like I was in a different world. Under my blankets with my furry companion felt safe and warm. I can still feel the softness of Muffy’s fur and the way she smelled. Muffy was my only company when my mother was away. She was a beautiful white Samoyed dog with happy brown eyes. She was very easy going and always willing to play tea party with me or even dress up. To this day I love dogs and I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to Muffy for taking care of me. For the first ten years of my life, she was there. There were times when she was the only being around to comfort me and she was often the only really dependable thing in my life. She was like a second mother to me and many of the good memories I have from the first 10 years feature her. 

In the morning my alarm clock would go off and I would hear Bugs Bunny say “Eh What’s Up Dock?” I loved my Bugs clock! Alone I would get up, eat, and get myself ready for school. I knew when “Leave It To Beaver” came on it was time to go. At the end of the day when I returned home, I would watch “Bugs Bunny” and “Gilligan’s Island”. Most of the time the television was just on as background noise to keep me from feeling alone. I would bring art projects out into the living room and work on them in front of the television. When there was nothing on tv I wanted to watch I would go play in my room or I would play outside. Sometimes I would play with friends but I felt guilty about leaving Muffy alone if she had been alone all day. I wonder if she saw my being out of the house as a break, much like a young mother might relish nap time. For a little bit she would not have to be my Dressy Bessie. 

In the evenings my mother and I would watch “Sonny and Cher”, “The Love Boat”, “Fantasy Island”, and “Charlie’s Angels”. I enjoyed all of these shows. When my mother was home we would often sit on the floor, in the dark, and she would bring out a big bag of nuts from the kitchen. It was like being in a movie theater. She would crack the nuts open for me and we would have them as a treat. Sometimes we would have a generic soda too. My mother loved orange, grape, and root beer flavors so that is what we had to choose from. When I think of these times with my mother it warms my heart. It calls to mind the physical closeness I so needed and that could be hard to come by. I lived for these moments. The person I loved best in the world was finally there beside me and she wasn’t crying or screaming, she was laughing. In the dark it did not matter that we had no sofa to cuddle on or that the devil might be hiding in the closet, all that mattered was that we were together. 

I really loved Cher! She was one of the only people on television who looked like me. Certainly, she was the only woman I was aware of. She had long black hair and olive skin just like mine. I loved seeing all of her glamorous Bob Maki dresses. She was both beautiful and talented. She gave me the impression that she ran her own life and maybe Sonny’s too. She was confident and I wanted to be like her. Another woman I admired from television was Lucille Ball. I thought she was beautiful as well and so funny. Lastly, there was Carol Burnett. I did not see her as a great beauty but as the funniest woman ever! I loved her show and couldn’t wait for it every week. When it went into syndication, I could watch it in the afternoon. I never missed a show. These women helped me to develop my sense of humor. Cher was sharp and kind of dry, Carol and Lucy perfected physical comedy. When my mother would go into one of her depressive moods I would act out scenes from these shows to try to make her laugh. If that didn’t work I would dig into my candy stash to find something to make her smile. My mother loved candy so the combination of my best Carol Burnett impersonation and a Snickers bar could go a long long way. 

On the action side, I could not get enough of “Charlie’s Angels”, “The Bionic Woman”, and “Wonder Woman”! These women inspired me to be strong and athletic. I would run through the woods pretending to be Wonder Woman! I love those memories. I had a fort in the trees and I would perch on a branch and pretend to be in my invisible plane. I saw myself in these characters. They were tough, confident, and dependable, all things I hoped to be. I tried and tried to make my hair do the 70’s flip or feather, no matter what I did it never worked. 

To this day I love female comedians, especially if they embrace physical comedy. I enjoy female cop shows and superhero characters. When I get lost and I can’t find my way they help me to get back to myself. They remind me of who I was at the beginning, who I am at my core. They remind me of my mother, which can be both good and bad. They remind me of how far I’ve traveled to get to where I am now. They continue to provide comfort and inspiration! 

Television offered me predictability and comfort. Shows were almost always on when you thought they would be. I could see this extended family whenever I wanted and they would always be the same. The sounds of their voices coming down the hall from the living room made our apartment feel like it was full and not so empty. I feel the shows helped me to become more socially confident. My mother and father were socially awkward and so they did not provide good examples of how to fit in. I have always felt odd in the world but it could have been much worse. I watched these shows and learned how to interact with people and it showed me how adults should be with kids. Television helped me see the inappropriateness of my parent’s behavior. Television also helped to keep the things I was afraid of at bay. 

When I wasn’t watching television I played outside. We had a small wooded area next to our apartment along with a large hill and field. On the other side of the field was my elementary school and playground. When the weather was nice I would play in my “fort”. Wonder Woman was my favorite scenario. Those woods had the potential to be so much. They could be my invisible plane when I climbed the tree and sat on a branch that overlooked our street and the low brush was my fort or secret lair. The large rocks made great chairs and an easy to move low hanging tree branch served as a secret invisible door. In the summer it wasn’t 

unusual for me to waste the afternoon running through the tall grass having spectacular adventures. Even in these happy times fear followed me around lurking behind every tree and waiting for me at home. When I think of that fear now I can feel it in my chest. I can imagine it is not unlike what a rabbit feels when it senses danger. You become still and hope you can’t be seen. 

My dog Muffy liked to be outside when it wasn’t too hot. She made a pretty good playmate. Even though she was a big dog I managed her fine. She never ran away even when I dropped her leash. Even though I don’t think she enjoyed it much, she would climb in the sled with me and go down the hill. Well, truth be told she only made it half way down the hill before jumping out of the sled and running to the bottom to meet me. Once at the bottom of the hill she would chase after me to get to the top and do it all over again. When the weather was warmer she would play kickball with me. Which meant I would kick my small red rubber ball and she would chase after me as I pretended to run the bases. When we grew tired we would plop down in the grassy field and I would make dandelion jewelry and crowns. I was very allergic to both the grass and the dandelions so it didn’t take long for us to be driven back into the apartment to cool off. Once inside I would grab a popsicle and arrange my dandelion creations so that I could show my mother when she returned home. Often by the time my mother arrived they were very wilted. It made me sad that I could not figure out how to keep them pretty for her. 

On other days I would slip through a small trail in the treeline behind our apartment that opened onto some railroad tracks. I would follow those tracks all the way to the beach. When I think about it now it seems so dangerous. I would bring a towel, some beach toys, and whatever change I could gather so that I could buy some ice cream once I got there. I would play in the sand and water all day without any adult supervision. To this day I am not the strongest swimmer and I recognize how lucky I am that I never got hurt. Even though it was dangerous I can’t help but think of these days warmly. My childhood was not safe by any stretch of the imagination but it was filled with childish adventure. I had so much unstructured time to explore the world around me and these days at the beach are the best example of this. All I need is to hear the sound of the waves hitting the shore and I’m instantly taken back to those days sitting on the beach eating a popsicle with my toes buried in the wet sand. By the end of the summer, my skin would be a deep brick-brown making me stick out like a sore thumb. Adults and children alike seemed confused and interested in my appearance. They would often ask me about my ethnicity and when I was young I thought it was kind of a game. Later it would make me feel bad about being different. 

When I wasn’t outside I loved to create little art projects. My mother saw early on that I was a blooming artist and so she made sure I always had paint, markers, and clay to play with. My mother was an accomplished artist. Part of my desire to create was driven by wanting to be as skilled as my mother. She liked to draw nature scenes and especially animals. My mother grew up around horses. I could tell by the stories that she told me about her childhood that she loved her horses. I would ask her over and over to tell me about Dolly and the others. She would tell me each horse’s name and then describe what they look like. She would include details like which horse liked to get into mischief and which ones liked apples. I would try my best to draw them as my mother had described. I also drew my dream horse over and over again. He had a black tail and mane and was a deep chocolate color. I could never match my mother’s sketching talent and this distressed me. She bought me this large oversized book about how to draw horses and I spent many hours trying my best to follow the instructions. I became pretty good at it! But sadly never as good as my mother. It really bothered me. It took me until well into adulthood to be able to create art for art’s sake and to not be still comparing myself to my mother in my head. 

After my horse drawing stage I moved onto my fancy lady stage. I was fascinated with dresses from the 1800s and I would draw what I called “fancy ladies”. Some would have parasols and others would have very elaborate hats. I dreamed of being like them. This led me to be obsessed with the “Gibson Girl”. I loved to draw elaborate updos from that trend and I would practice them over and over. I think this phase was more enjoyable to me compared with the horse phase. My mother did not draw these “fancy ladies” and so I was not constantly comparing myself with her. I could just draw for the love of drawing. For a long time Snoopy was a subject I would sketch over and over. I always looked forward to the Charlie Brown specials mostly for the scenes that featured Snoopy. 

I tried many other crafts and it was easy because my mother had a closet full of half-finished projects. I spent hours playing with my spin art toy. It was one of those toys where you put the paper in the tray and then drop bits of paint onto it while it spins. I also learned to finger crochet and latch hook. I was not a big fan of finger crocheting but I loved to latch hook. I would sit side by side with my mother and we would make latch hook projects together. She also taught me to make little potholders with a plastic loom. When she was creating she was smiling. Right from the start, it was clear to me that she became bored much faster than I did. She would start a project and then get bored, it would go to live in her bedroom closet and maybe one day I would pick it up and finish it. This is one way in which my mother and I are very different. I hate having unfinished projects laying around. This goes for books too. I will finish the most boring books just because I can’t seem to allow myself to just not like something and then put it down. I really have no idea where this comes from. 

I possessed a big imagination and it showed through in my playtime and art. I believe that my imagination is what got me through all of those long hours of being alone. When I think of this time it brings a smile to my face. I was a vibrant child so full of promise. When I think about it a little longer my smile turns to sadness for all of the hours I spent alone. It wasn’t safe and I never felt safe. 

boundaries, C-PTSD, Childhood, Depression, Prayer

Boundaries

Deb M

Part 2

As I comb through the first 18 years of my life it can be hard to find anything worth preserving. My home did not provide comfort, instead the air was thick with unease. When I drift through the memories of childhood there is a gray wash over everything. The memories that make me smile are not associated with people so much as activities and things, like the orange push-up ice cream treats I would buy on hot summer days or my neon green and yellow bike. Solitude brought intense loneliness but also some of my most joyful moments. When I was alone I was free and could often breathe more easily but sometimes when I was alone I would be stalked by the things I feared most.

My mother worked long hours and sometimes two jobs. She had a very physically demanding job working at a laundry where they washed and pressed uniforms and other things. F&W Means was the name of the company. The laundry was hot and working there did some damage to her hands. In the summer she would be forced to work overtime often being gone from morning until after dark. She never minded the overtime because we always needed the extra money. Sometimes, not very often, I would go to work with her. The air in the laundry was humid and it burned the back of my throat. There were huge baskets on wheels being pushed from one station to the other and music blasting through speakers. Sometimes I would go sit outside, just to get some fresh air and my mother would buy me a soda. Those days seemed so long but she did not seem to mind. The laundry was filled with mostly women employees and they smiled and joked with each other in spite of the terrible conditions. 

My mother was a very dedicated worker and took pride in providing for our family.  I understood why she had to be away but that understanding did not make the days any easier. After work, she would sometimes deliver pizzas for extra money. This only made my lonely days even longer. My father was often in and out of our home and he could not be counted on to help with the rent or our bills. He made good money but it seemed to slip through his hands easily. My father lived in the moment and never seemed to have a plan or concern for the future. He enjoyed playing cards and I think drinking was sometimes involved. They fought a lot about money and his many affairs. They had epic fights that included objects being hurled across the room and my mother lashing out physically and threatening my father’s life. My father wouldn’t hit my mother but he did try to protect himself. During these fights he always appeared to be the innocent one because he was the one being physically attacked. That being said, he was the reason my mother flew into a rage. He would play the role of “why me?” but even at a young age I knew that he was torturing my mother mentally and emotionally. In reality he was torturing me too but I was too little and too much of a daddy’s girl to understand it. I witnessed my mother cry over our finances again and again. My father was often responsible for the financial issues. He wouldn’t pay his fair share and then he would come around begging her for money. He even went so far as to support another woman with my mother’s money. You can imagine how that went over! 

My mother wouldn’t go to her family for help unless she had no other options. She was close to my grandfather but she did not like asking him for money. I got the message that her family had a pretty strong bootstrap mentality.  My grandmother and my aunt would gossip about my mother and that caused her a lot of distress. She definitely gave me the impression that her mother and sister ganged up on her. My aunt Wanda is a cruel judgemental woman and my grandmother would cover for her nasty tendencies. Even though my aunt lived in the same city as we did she could not be depended on in any way. My mother did not have many friends and the ones she did have were not in any financial shape to help us. On top of that, she was proud and believed that asking for money was a kind of moral weakness. Her family strongly believed it was wrong to go to the government for help so she would not apply for food stamps or welfare checks. She did not want social workers nosing around her business. All of her family was suspicious of the government and concerned about it being connected in some way with the antichrist. They firmly believed that someday a one-world government would come to power and following that Armageddon. All these beliefs did not leave my mother with many options. She would cry and pray for hours. I would sit outside her door wishing God would answer her so she could come out and play with me. I believe this is the age I started swallowing my pain. We couldn’t both be crying. Above all, I wanted to comfort her and fix all of her problems. I prayed to God in hopes that he would answer but for some reason, he always seemed so silent and unreachable. 

My mother was a very talented woman. I looked up to her musical ability. She had this huge accordion and she would often sit on her bed in the evenings and play it. I was fascinated with all of the buttons and the large case with burgundy velvet lining that she kept it in. She only sang gospel songs and when she was singing I could tell she went somewhere else in her mind. She played the piano and organ too but we did not have access to these on a regular basis. We sang together, pretty much everywhere, in the car and the house. She would always give me high praise when we sang together and that praise made me feel warm and loved. By the time I was three years old she was having me perform for strangers in the grocery store. I would be riding in the cart minding my own business singing some happy tune and it wouldn’t be long before a gaggle of older women would be smiling at me and asking me to sing for them. This seemed to really make my mother happy so I sang for them even though I was terribly shy and kind of scared of old people. I would sing tunes from the radio often misunderstanding the lyrics and I would sing Sunday school songs. I can imagine a world in which she could have been happy teaching music or working in a music store. If she had possessed more confidence maybe she would have sang in the church choir or even led a choir. I’m not sure she really grasped how talented she was. Maybe because her family tore her down so much or maybe it was mental illness standing in the way. When I take a minute to allow myself to gaze upon her with my child eyes I see a shining star, capable of anything, and almost goddess like. As a little girl I just knew I would never reach the pinnacle of her perfection. She could do anything. 

At a very young age I was aware that there was something wrong with my mother. She called it depression so I had a word for it even if I had no idea what it really was. During the day I was alone but often in the evenings, I was also alone because she was consumed by whatever financial crisis was upon us. Then there was the question, “Where is your father and what is he up to?” She never had security, not financially or in her relationships.  She would watch Jimmy Swaggert preach on television and then go retreat to her room to cry and pray. When she finally came out her eyes would be very red and she would be silent as a stone. I would attempt to comfort her in any way I could. Often I would try to make her laugh just to see her smile was a comfort to me. Maybe things would be ok? 

Jimmy Swaggert was a big deal in our house. He was a skilled piano player and when we watched him the television camera would often focus in on his hands gliding over the keys. He sang with a tear in his eye. My mother was enthralled. She hung on his every word. I believe she felt very connected to him and watching him on television helped her to feel less alone. She would sing along while watching and her face would soften. Those were the only times I saw that look on her face. 

I can remember so many nights when she would retreat to her room after dinner to pray. Often she would watch Jimmy Swaggert or listen to some music beforehand. I would watch television with the volume down low so I would not disturb her. As the night would wear on I would wander over to the door of her bedroom and slump down to the floor listening to her wail and speak in tongues. I hated to hear her cry and I knew she was waging a battle. She was trying to convince god to help us. She was trying to pray away whatever sin was standing in the way of us being blessed. She was fighting for her salvation because she was always afraid of missing the rapture and going to hell. It was high stakes prayer, that was the only kind of prayer ever said in our home. All of this crying, praying, wailing, and speaking in tongues did nothing to make our little apartment feel like a home. There was an intensity to my mothers religiosity that created an atmosphere of danger and fear. 

Childcare was always a struggle in our home. Working an eight hour day was hard enough but then add in overtime and a second job and finding childcare becomes impossible. I never really cared for any of my babysitters and I suspect that is because my mother did not trust or like many people and she handed that suspicion down to me. My father could not be counted on for more than a couple of hours, maybe once a week. She could never afford to take off work to be with me over Xmas, spring, or summer break. I wanted so desperately to help her so I would tell her that it was ok I didn’t need a babysitter. She would look at me so unsure. She weighed my opinion heavily too much because I was just a small child and had no idea what was appropriate or safe. I wish she hadn’t given in so easily. I wish she hadn’t let me try to solve her problems for her or be her savior. It did not help that my father was always telling me I was smarter and more capable than other children. He thought pretty highly of himself and since I was his child and in his mind an extension of him then I must be above average. 

I remember times when it felt like I held my parents’ fate in my hands. I had to keep them together and I had to help them survive. I was responsible for their emotional well being and safety. When they would have one of their knock down drag out fights my father would cry on my shoulder. After he left our apartment my mother would collapse and it would be her turn to cry. As I’m writing this I remember how small I felt in those moments. How insurmountable the problems of my family seemed to be and how these things happened regularly. In these moments I have to really focus on loving myself and cutting myself some slack. You see, I have complex post traumatic stress disorder. As I document all of this it is like watching the seeds of my condition being put into the ground one after the other. I am aware of how small and defenseless I was to stop any of it, and that realization helps me to breathe through the process of being gentle with myself and remembering that none of this was my fault. Even at 51 I need that reminder sometimes. 

My mother was more than my mom; she was my best friend and I believed I was her best friend. The healthy boundaries between parent and child would often melt away in the midst of her depression and loneliness. She overshared and because of that, I was also depressed. I worried about money, my parent’s relationship, and God. She was my mother but I was her caretaker. I cannot remember a time when I was allowed to be a child. I carried my parent’s burdens with me everywhere. They went with me to school, the playground, and then at bedtime they followed me there too. My mother’s burdens were scary. I worried for her safety and at a young age I knew that sometimes she wanted to die. 

Because of all of this worry I started to develop some pretty severe stomach issues in early elementary school. I would go to the nurse’s office with stomach cramps and it didn’t take long before the school psychologist became involved. Eventually after talking with me several times he asked my mother to come in. I sat there fearing what he was going to say to her. Had I told him more than I should have? She came into the room and sat in one of the hard plastic chairs across from his desk. They talked and I tried to pretend like I wasn’t there. I felt like I was being a problem. The last thing I ever wanted to do was add another problem to my mother’s plate. If I’m being honest I was probably a little scared of her at that moment. She always told me to never discuss things from our home life with anyone. How was she going to take the fact that I had been talking with another adult about my life?

He said, “Do you have any idea why she might be so stressed?” 

She replied, “Well her father and I are having problems and I’m having money issues.”

They went on to talk for a long time. My mother cried and told this complete stranger all of her whoas. I felt so seen. At school I tried to hide my unhappy life. Now my unhappy life was on display. Eventually towards the end of the conversation he said, “You have to find a way not to share all of your problems with your daughter. She is going to end up with ulcers before she finishes elementary school.” I recognized his tone, he was speaking to her like someone trying to talk someone down from a ledge. Telling her the hard truth but doing it with kid gloves. Soon after we went home but now I was on the school’s radar. I would meet with him from time to time but that was as far as it went. After this I witnessed my mother recount the story to multiple people. She seemed worried and put off by his expectation that she hide her problems from me. She couldn’t imagine how that would work. She hated anyone knowing what went on inside of our lives. I knew I had created a problem for her. I never received any help for my “nervous stomach”. As an adult I have struggled with ulcers, IBS, and GERD. Whenever I experience stress it shows up in my stomach first. Eventually she would have a similar meeting with another school psychologist, this time it would be my senior year of high school. The message was very much the same. Dr. Zuberbear asked for her to come in and he told her I was very depressed. By this point she was physically sick and struggling. She listened and even expressed sympathy after we left but that was all she had to give me. From the earliest of ages my mental health was mine to manage. She just didn’t have the bandwidth. 

My father would tell me that I had a nervous stomach like him. He would tell me not to worry while at the same time laying his worries at my feet. He would also tell me that my depression was a weakness and that it came from my mother’s side. She was “weak minded” and I should endeavor to be strong like him. Anytime I had physical issues it was due to my mother, at least that is what my father said. My allergies and later asthma were a result of her weak genes, he was after all healthy as a horse. I spent my entire childhood and young adulthood being worried about being “crazy”, as my father put it. I worried that I would have my mother’s mental health issues and emotional instability. This concern forced me to always be an “adult”. I strove for emotional balance and I tried to let my intelligence and logic rule. Now I struggle to access my emotional side and often I see any emotional outburst I might have as a moral failing. I’m still striving to always be an “adult.”

Childhood, Depression, Fear

Back to Writing

Deb M

Hi everyone! I have been in a writing slump for a long time. I am back on the horse for the time being and I intend to share some of my pages here. I’m open to feedback either in the comments or better yet at my email survivingchurchandchildhood@gmail.com Please be kind, memoir is really hard.

This morning I find myself sitting with my coffee at my lonely laptop. I am banging away at the keys trying to pound my story out onto the page. This feels like just another new start. It is filled with hope, maybe this time will be the time when everything gels together. Fall always feels like the right time to write. There is something about the cool mornings that drives me to try again. I have been away from this work for a long time and then suddenly there it is in my face beckoning me back to this lonely task. On days like this the words burn through my fingertips, they cannot escape my brain fast enough. Being a Gemini part of my brain just wants to put words to page and part of my brain wants to craft the perfect memoir. These two parts are always at odds and through this struggle, I push this work into existence. 

I have been seeking to make sense of my childhood for as long as I can remember. Even though I recognize that there are some things I will never understand I feel compelled to keep searching for truth. Truth is wobbly when you are talking about others’ motivations and when they are no longer around to ask your questions to. I am a quintessential gen-Xer born in 1970. I was a latch-key kid with my house keys always around my neck. I grew up in  Madison Wisconsin and I’m still in the area. I wonder how many others are out there like me. Wounded souls trying to make sense of their childhoods through writing memoirs. Looking back all I see is trauma, fear, and sadness. When I look a little harder I can see moments of creativity, freedom, and joy. Those moments are much harder to reach for. I can guarantee that there will be times when my story overwhelms you, just know as you continue on with me that I am okay now, I’m a survivor. 

Throughout my childhood fear was my constant companion. It hung in the air like a thick cloud around me and its friend sadness clung to me like an old thread worn sweater. Fear was brewed first at home followed by my church and school. My mother was a very fearful woman and she passed her fear onto me the same way she gave me my freckles and my smile.  She was tough but at the same time, it seemed like she was always scanning the landscape looking for danger. On the other side of the coin, my father insisted that I be strong and fearless. He has zero tolerance for weakness unless he was the one being weak. He and my mother were like the sun and the moon. How they ever got together is beyond me. At this moment I cannot think of one way in which they were alike other than their tendency towards being fixed on themselves. My mother suffered from severe depression and her childhood was pretty dysfunctional. My grandmother was a severe parent and my mother always felt like an outsider within her family. My father has always been a mystery to me. His accounts of his origin story seemed to vary and there were many topics he had no interest in talking about. My parents never seemed happy although they did seem to really love each other. They certainly were ill-suited for the long haul and could barely take care of themselves let alone each other. Looking back on it now, I think they loved each other more than they loved me. 

My mother was pretty in a tomboy sort of way. She was dark-haired and covered from head to toe in freckles. Her green eyes were the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen. She was not the most domestic woman in the world. She viewed housekeeping as a chore and not something to be enjoyed. She wasn’t much of a cook and had no interest in learning to be better at it. She was all about comfort food and she did that well. She felt the most at ease in nature and preferred the company of dogs and horses to being around people. When my mother was around people she could be very charming and those who knew her liked her more than she could ever acknowledge to herself. She was an artist and could draw almost anything. Her family valued music and so she learned multiple instruments and she was a gifted singer. Marla, my mother, loved to laugh and her playfulness created some of the only happy memories of my childhood. When I was in elementary school we did not have much furniture in our living room but it did not matter. She and I would snuggle on the floor, backs against the wall, and enjoy one of our favorite shows. No TV night would be complete without a bowl of hazelnuts, a nutcracker, and generic grape soda. Those nights were my favorite. In those moments we laughed together and I could breathe a sigh of relief. 

My father was short and his skin a chocolate brown color. He always seemed to have something to prove. He was a boxer and fairly ambitious. Armando, my father had a boyish smile and an impish sense of humor. He was a whistler and sang along to the radio even if he often got the lyrics wrong. People liked him and he liked them back. Depression could come knocking at his door if he spent too much time alone. My athleticism and tenaciousness come from him. He was a wanderer and philanderer and often these tendencies took him away from me. I chased his affection long after it became clear to me that he only wanted mine when he could not get it other places. I was a consolation prize, a toaster when what he really wanted was a boat. 

I loved my parents fiercely! My love for them was strong but this does not mean they were good parents. They were flawed as all of us are and they were tortured by personal demons. My mother came from a strict religious home and her upbringing informed much of her parenting style. Growing up outside of her family’s love and acceptance made it so she never felt accepted or loved. I believe this crippled her and made it hard for her to give love and acceptance. She was deeply lonely even when friends tried to be there for her. It was never enough or she just couldn’t believe that they “really” liked her. She had a dark deep hole inside and it seemed it could never be filled. Her sadness and fear permeated every part of our lives. Even the material objects within our home seemed to take on her personality. Heavy and oppressive miasma clung to everything. She could go from being jovial and childlike one minute to screaming and violent the next. I learned very early on to be careful what I said to her. If something was going to get me into trouble it would most likely be my mouth. Often her anger came from unexpected places. She always seemed to believe I understood why she was raging even when I often did not. When in a loving mood she would pour out affection on me and when in an angry mood she could be petty and mean. She would spank me but also pinch me, pull my hair, and twist my wrists. It was as if all of these little acts of violence lanced some painful wound within her. People who cut themselves sometimes say that when you do it it releases some of your pain, I think her hurting me did the same thing. It’s like it kept her from doing something worse. 

My father often spoke of being emotionally and physically abused as a child. He was generally mellow in personality but at times his anger would flare. Both my parents spanked me with a belt but my father was the one most likely to take it too far. If I did not meet his high expectations he could be cruel with his words. Weakness seemed to send him into anger faster than anything else. My mother played by God’s rules as she understood them and my father played by no one’s rules but his own. He was very unconventional and independent. At times I miss them and my inner child longs for my mother. At other times the flames of anger burn within me so brightly I could set the world ablaze. It is all very complicated and I have had to come to terms with many truths about my childhood.  If this book were about my parents it might be written from a place of more understanding and questioning what led them to be who they were, but this story is not their story it is mine. There was a time when I went through my life seeking to make excuses for their choices but I can no longer do that. I have to put myself first in a way that neither of them ever could. I find myself shouting to them from across the years, “Can’t you see how your choices are affecting me? Please get some help for yourself and for me!”

C-PTSD, EMDR, Trauma

A Summer of Processing

Deb M

Hello fellow survivors and supporters! I hope this post finds you well, whole, and having a good summer. I have been taking a break from therapy to process everything and give myself a little bit of rest. It has been fruitful and at times surprising. Many things are bubbling up to the surface and I have been surprised by what I am processing. The hardest issues have to do with my parents and how abandoned I felt as a kid. I have also become aware of how colored my decision making processes are due to never feeling worthy. I recognize that I tend to draw toxic people into my orbit because of how I feel about myself. It’s a lot but I’m doing ok. The more clearly I can see the past and how it has impacted the now, the longer the road seems. I have to keep reminding myself that if I never make it to the end, if I never purge all of the poison within me, I’m good, I am ok, and I’m worthy.

When I think about feeling abandoned I can see how it causes me to hang onto relationships that are not healthy. Because, my righteousness is as filthy rags, I always assume I am at fault in every situation. This means whoever I’m dealing with must always be right. After decades of work, I still twist myself into a pretzel to try to accommodate even when I am not at fault. I chase after people and their approval the same way I chased after God. When I fall short I hear the words of the Bible and I am reminded of how worthless I am. I always feel like I need to say this, I know this is not everyone’s experience but it is mine. Your mileage may vary.

Right now I am in the business of letting go. I’m letting go of people and things that cause me to feel unworthy. I’m not chasing people anymore. I feel like I say that all the time and I’m still trying to enforce it. I realize more that ever what a sad child I was and I’m trying to cut myself some slack. Believe it or not, the questioning voices still rise up from the ashes from time to time. They say, well maybe it is your fault, or maybe you could have made better decisions. I know what these voices are and who they belong to, I know they are not based in truth and I battle them back into the fire to burn again. Each time I catch them quicker and it is a little easier to push back.

I have not decided if I will go back to EMDR this fall. I might need more time. I have some health issues happening that are overwhelming me right now. I just don’t need one more thing. I will keep you posted! Right now I am busy dreaming of pumpkin everything and trying to allow myself some peace.

D