The Final Explosion

• December
• 23

6:00 am Christmas, Mental Illness, Survivors of Abuse, The Friday Files

The Friday Files continue …

Christmas – or more specifically Boxing Day 1986 – was when it all came to a head.

I’d just finished my final year at college, and was happily anticipating a teaching job in the near future. Maybe I’d even get a position in the country so I would have a reason to escape from home!

Mum soon put an end to that little dream, demanding that she “needed” me to help her and the family, insisting that I make it clear to the Education Department that I was not able to take a job outside of the metropolitan area. 

With high hopes of starting my teaching career, I’d quit my part-time job at a jewellery store.  One sister had just finished high school, whilst the next one down had had completed Year 10. We were growing older, most would even consider the high school graduate and myself as adults. Not that Mum ever treated us as such. 

Basically Mum was in a foul mood and absolutely spoiling for a fight that particular day. It didn’t matter what we said or did, she wanted an argument!

Ironically, she was the one who always wanted “peace”. One of mum’s catch-cries was “All I want is peace!” which seems terribly ironic because wherever she went, devastation and havoc soon followed.  For all that she claimed to want a quiet and peaceful life, mum was guaranteed to overreact to almost everything – good or bad.  She was the original Drama Queen and suffice it to say that most things in her life were bad and she sure let everybody know about it!  For somebody who supposedly loved peace so much, she sure stirred up a lot of arguments and strife.

This particular afternoon when she stomped into my room and began to belt into me, I hit her back. After all those years of abuse, I couldn’t take it anymore.

It turned into a real free-for-all which all of  my siblings joined, lashing out at Mum all while trying to pull her away from me and get her to stop.

We had committed the unpardonable sin and finally recognised the strength we had when we banded together, and Mum couldn’t bear it.  She snarled at us to get out, that she never wanted to see us again. As I packed my bags, I knew that she fully expected us to come crawling back in a couple of days.  But I vowed that I would never go back.

I drove halfway to a friend’s house before I had to pull over as I was engulfed by my sobbing. When the storm subsided, I continued to my friend’s, where she greeted me with a hug and a cool drink.

And so for the next couple of months I became a couch surfer, reliant on the goodwill of friends and their families to have a roof over my head and food in my tummy.

I had very little money, and no income until I either landed a teaching job, or the compulsory 6 week period was up and I could apply for unemployment benefits.

All I had to my name was a typical student car, which I had purchased with a student loan, a box of clothes, and that was pretty much it. I didn’t even have my credit  card – my mother had insisted on taking it from me before I left as she didn’t “trust me with it.”  Trust ME?!  Ha!  I didn’t trust her with it and the very next business day I reported it as stolen and had it cancelled! It gave me great satisfaction to think that two can play that game, thanks very much!

I had no family, no home, no job, no money, no prospects, and didn’t even have any contact with my sisters who had also fled to friends.

It took at least a month but eventually I arranged to share a house with some other single girls from my church. By this stage I was working as a casual check out operator at a supermarket so could afford to pay my share of the rent.

It was a very difficult start to the rest of my life but at last I was free … scared, hurting, damaged, vulnerable, poor, alone … but FREE!

NB. In this post I am linking up with my friend Wendy at http://mmuser.blogspot.com/2011/12/holiday-competition.html, as we share our Christmas memories. I’m hoping to win a copy of The Upper Room devotional, as I’ve never seen a copy before!