An open letter to parents in bad relationships

 
As I get older and friends with children have increasingly become the norm in my social circle, I've had more and more conversations with good people making tough decisions about leaving a bad relationship. As parents, the decision is never a simple one, whether getting into or out of a relationship. But from what I have seen, getting out of one in particular, especially if the relationship is between both parents of the child, is very tough. 

As a child of parents in a very unhealthy marriage, the undoing and relearning I have needed to do as I have grown up has been an ongoing and steep learning curve. Some of my friends have found my sharing of my own experience to be helpful. Maybe you will too. 

I think that because kids are so "me" focused, it's sometimes difficult to see the impact their parents' lives have on them. But I think part of being "me" focused is being hyper aware of what impacts how you are treated, who spends time with you and how much energy your parents are able to give you. Kids also can't help but normalize the situation they find themselves in. They assume their experience is universal until they grow up enough to see others' lives clearly. So they absorb. 

My experience was maybe more dramatic than most peoples, and both parents also had a couple bad relationships after getting divorced. But as a result, these are the things I have needed to learn as an adult because I didn't learn them from the relationships around me. 

1. I never learned how healthy anger should be expressed - anger around me was always explosive, or silent treatment. No one ever sat down together or had a conversation. Instead, the anger or hurt I witnessed was cruel and cutting. As a young adult I was downright mean to my partners - I did not have the vocabulary to express hurt or anger in another way. Learning to be kind while furious was a long and difficult lesson.
2. It was normal to talk shit about a partner, sometimes in social situations in which the partner was also present. I can't remember how many times I overheard or saw my parents saying truly awful things about their partners to other people. I came to believe that was just how people vented. I was never exposed to compassion, or at least the understanding for the hurt that both the rant, and the sharing with others, might cause. Worse, they then stayed with this person they talked like that about - leading me to internalise that it was normal to hate and vilify parts of your partner, or to air grievances in public.
3. I never saw true apologies or forgiveness - I witnessed justifications, excuses and defensiveness, with peace finally being restored by one person just giving in. It took a long time for me to learn how to offer or receive a true apology, or compromise. 
4. I seldom saw random acts of kindness for the sake of kindness. I saw grand gestures in lieu of apology, or kindness with the expectation of repayment. I still struggle to accept help with random things from my partner (ask him about how it never occurs to me to give him half the shopping bags, I always grab all of them before he takes them from me!) I also came to think that grand gestures sufficed in lieu of true remorse and behaviour change, and struggled to see the difference when my own partners later followed the same pattern. 
5. I never saw anyone stand their ground or maintain a boundary in a healthy way. "Standing up for yourself" was a negotiable position that a person could be wooed out of. "You may not treat me that way" was always followed by wheedling and rationalization. Sometimes, withdrawal of love and affection was described as a boundary but was, in fact, a punishment. It was hard for me as an adult to learn that a boundary was not negotiable, or a rejection - which made it hard to both make and accept healthy boundaries. 
6. I never saw love expressed in both good times and bad. In bad times, pain was handled alone, support was seldom asked for, or given freely. Or if it was, then it had a cost. Later it would be used as a weapon: "Remember how good I was to you with XZY". It's been hard to learn to accept support. For most of my adult relationships, I never got genuine support, and didn't notice because I didn't expect it. I still feel anxious when my partner is really there for me when I'm having a tough time, like I need to somehow pay it back.

Finally, I think the thing that I learned most from my parents and their various relationships, is that I was least important on their list of priorities. Not intentionally, I am sure they gave me what they had to give, but a bad relationship takes up a lot of headspace, energy and time. A good relationship frees your time and gives you the energy and support you need to be the best version of yourself. My parents were always drained, tired, focused on appeasing or aggravating their partner, fighting for their needs to be met or just generally emotionally depleted. What was left for me was negligible, not necessarily in terms of tasks done (like school lunches or help with homework or whatever - sometimes these were done as 'evidence' of good parenting) but in terms of emotional availability, the ability to focus on me or see my own needs for love and connection. Instead I learned self sufficiency, and caretaking of them, rather than the other way round. I became hyper aware of the mood of the house, so I could avoid drama, or simply avoid weighing my parents down with my own needs. I never felt able to ask for attention, love or support - there never seemed enough to go around, and I didn't want to be the reason for further distress. 

So that's been my experience. Obviously, every house, situation, life, is different, but I think unhealthy relationships have a lot of overlap, regardless of the cause. I hope you find this helpful, and that some of it will help reinforce that being healthy, fulfilled and having your own emotional needs met is the best gift you can give your child. 

Sleeping tablets and Amazon

This is my life now. My literal, true, happened last night, honest to god story of my life.

Last night I was tired but couldn't sleep, business as usual. Monday morning meetings with no sleep are, frankly, worse than waking with a hangover to a 5 year old learning the violin, so I popped a sleeping tablet, hoping to present the world with a less violin-smashy version of myself in the morning.

My bedtime routine includes removing various creatures my cats have brought in during the day and checking under the covers for any cockroaches that may have escaped their claws (one night I failed to do this, which resulted in my extremely abrupt ejection from the bed, doing the "ITS STILL ON ME" dance in the nude in the middle of the night - zolpidem notwithstanding. I assure you, a 10cm cockroach does NOT make for a pleasant bed-mate). Once all was clear I settled in, launched the kindle and awaited the fluffy effects of the pills.

I awoke this morning feeling refreshed and well rested, with no obvious signs of co-sleeping with small creatures, ready for a day of meetings with various people frothing about the water crisis. As is usual, I take the first few minutes of my day to clear my phone of all the marketing emails and SMS' I get overnight, and check my calendar to make sure I haven't forgotten an appointment with the apocalypse or something. This morning however, I had an entire bevy of SMS notifications that made no sense, and which I had no recollection of generating. I spent some time re-creating a timeline and the following is what I have pieced together from notifications, my banking app and my Amazon account.

It would appear that I finished my book shortly after lying down to read. Not feeling ready to sleep just yet, I browsed online on my kindle to find another book and made a purchase. This purchase was declined, due to insufficient funds on the card registered on my Amazon account. I appear to have been in denial, for I then attempted to purchase a further 23 books, all of which were declined.  I then (I assume) logged into my Amazon account and tried to change the card assigned to Kindle purchases. However, when one changes a credit card, Amazon will prompt you to verify security, usually by asking you to complete a phone number. The last phone number on my account is from my stay in India, and I have about as much memory of it as I do of the Pi sequence. At some point I must have locked myself out of my account as I appear to have tried to reset my password. I know I was persistent though, as I have 9 reset password emails in my inbox.

In what I can only assume was an almost insensate drooling state of book-reading desperation, I clearly finally twigged that perhaps just checking the card might be a good idea. I logged into my banking app and transferred R100 to the card in question though it’s possible I meant to transfer R1000. The book (God knows which one by now), was R121 and the payment was once again declined. At this stage I must have given up on reason completely, and I accepted one of those "INCREASE YOUR CREDIT LIMIT TO SOMETHING OUTRAGEOUS NOW" offers. I awoke this morning to a brand new credit limit of R125,000.00. It would also appear that every one of the book purchases went through, all 23 of them.

That was one seriously expensive sleeping tablet.

The Moth-apocalypse

What follows is in no way embellished. I sorely wish it was.

Last night, I was in bed. I've recently gained a little so my clothes aren't as comfortable as they could be, so I had decided to sleep in my usual summer gear - knickers only. This may seem like T.M.I. but it becomes important later. Anyway, I'd just finished an amazing book, which naturally I had to finish before I could possibly sleep, and at 1 AM I was finally ready to pass out. I was pretty exhausted, and had pretty much been using matchsticks to keep my eyes open while I finished the book, so it was with a sigh of relief that I switched off the light and settled back into the fluffy sleepiness.

Naturally, this is when I heard my cat, Jinx, growling and the distinct sound of some sort of winged creature frantically fluttering. Part of me was thinking "it's going to die soon, its probably beyond help, I'll just let it go", and the rest of me was thinking "WHAT IF IT GETS FREE AND FLIES INTO MY FACE WHILE I AM SLEEPING?!?"

So I switched on the light, preparing myself for the worst. I mean, those wing beats did not sound petite. I looked around the room, and could see nothing. No cat, no winged creature, nothing; but I could hear it. I cautiously got out of bed, peeked around the wall into the toilet area and there sat my cat, one paw resting lightly on one wing of the most enormous moth I have ever seen. Dinner plate seized, fly into your face and scream sized.

Jinx was sitting quietly watching the moth struggle under her foot. She turned to look at me with an expression that clearly said "nothing to see here, move along human".

Task one was to disconnect cat from moth. She knew what was coming and started growling at me, low pitched and frankly quite terrifying, coming as it did from the cute furry face that usually nuzzles up to me at night. I steeled myself and grabbed her, heading at speed for the bedroom door while she struggled as if I was heading for a deep-fryer. I literally threw her through the door and barely got it closed before the hissing growling fury that was Jinx darted back through. She nearly lost her head in the door slam. I was immediately treated to frantic scrabbling from the other side, while I leaned against the door and breathed heavily in an almost picture perfect horror-movie type "escape from the monster" scene of relief. Until I realized that I was now stuck in the bedroom with the fucking moth man prophesies and no way to capture it, and all possible capturing vessels were on the other side of the door. With Jinx.

At this point, I still had not got round to putting any clothing on. Part of me was thinking about the potential horror of trying to capture an enormous moth and the risk of it getting near my vulnerable exposed chest. However, the rest was thinking that it wasn't like I was going to lose a nipple or something, so I just steeled myself and darted back out of the bedroom door, slammed it behind me, and went searching for a family-of-30-sized tupperware container with which to catch the moth-apocalypse. I finally found something suitable, made it back into the bedroom and with relative ease was able to capture it, cover the container with a piece of cardboard and triumphantly hold the trapped bastard aloft.

It was then I realized that since I was largely naked, I could hardly pop out the front door and toss the mutant beast over the fence. I settled for through the bathroom window. As I opened the bedroom door (with an elbow, since both hands were busy holding the fluttering beast) Jinx dashed back into the bedroom and frantically searched for her prey. I am not ashamed to say I felt some distinct pleasure at her consternation over its sudden disappearance. I may have even stuck out my tongue.

Heading into the bathroom, I stepped into the bath, reached both hands through the window and tossed the moth-monster out. I breathed a sigh of relief and reached for the window to close it, with which the bloody fucking stupid asshole of a mutant beast from fluttery hell FLEW BACK THROUGH THE WINDOW!

I swore loudly to myself and prepared to try catch the bloody thing again, at which point I felt my cat join me in the bath and heard her yowl at the giant winged freak. What followed can only be described as naked human versus furry clawed yowling insanity as I dashed back and forth across the bathroom, naked breasts swinging, bum jiggling, and arms flying as I tried to beat the tiny hunting machine at my feet to the capture of the moth monstrosity. It was with a barely suppressed shout of triumph that I beat her to the post, captured the prize and with absolutely no grace whatsoever threw the whole bloody lot, moth, tupperware and cardboard through the window and slammed it shut.

I collapsed onto the closed toilet seat and took a shuddering breath, and just hung my head. When my heart rate had returned from "about to jump off a cliff to certain death" to something more like "ran up a mountain because a hot shirtless man was waiting for me"  I wobbled back to bed. Naturally, Jinx curled up on my shoulder, gave a satisfied purr, and went to sleep.

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For visual reference of size, please see HERE

(Ok, so it was probably more like this, but it was the middle of the night and I was tired and NAKED)

Champagne is for idiots

Finally, some time to write the rubbish that happens in my life. I seem to be in a phase where there is to be no significant travelling for a while. And though this is a very sad thing for me, I did recently make it up to Victoria Falls, and I shall be having adventures of a different kind shortly.

I have decided to venture into the world of business. Yes, I know I am crazy. But I figure I have started and run enough businesses for other people that I should be able to do it for myself. Hmmm...  More on that later.

In the mean time, I was reminded when trying to explain to a friend why I don’t have a smart phone anymore, of one of the reasons that I have decided to leave the world of events behind me for a while. I currently work for a company that runs and caters about 25 events a week. We have three event coordinators. Basically, you won’t have an event coordinator at your event unless you are willing to pay extra. Usually we send a waiter supervisor, and a head chef to run the catering side (as there is generally also a bar manager and a venue manager on site).

For this particular wedding, we sent a chef, a manager and a staffing manager. The only person not on site was me, the initial event contact. Why? Because I had booked the day off long before the client had even heard of us, and I was due to be on a party bus, drinking mojitos and celebrating the 2^nd anniversary of my friends 30^th Birthday.

That is exactly what I proceeded to do. About an hour into the bus ride (and three double strength mojito punch glasses down) the manager calls.

Manager: Miss P, the bride is going nuts, we don’t have the right champagne.

Me: Of course you do, I delivered it to the venue myself yesterday afternoon, and put it in the fridge.

Manager: No, you can’t have, because it’s not there.

Me: Look harder.

I then proceeded to have three more mojitos. The bus broke down, so we had an extra shot of rum. Then my phone rang again.

Manager: Miss P, there is no champagne here at all! There is only the cheap stuff, and the bride is furious and almost in tears and the barman doesn’t know what to do!

Me: Yesh, it’sh definitely there. I promish, I delivered it myshelf *hic* and I put it in the frid- frid – uh... fiddidge-y thingy.

Manager: Are you drunk?

Me: YESH! Now go away

The bus got moving again, so we had an extra shot of tequila to celebrate. It took a really long time to get over the mountain pass, so naturally, when it reached the top, we had a a shot of Jaegermeister  to celebrate.

My phone rang again, and as I looked blearily through fuzzy eyes, I spied the name of the bride. I briefly considered answering it, realised I couldn’t actually articulate anything other than a faint gurgle and some woop woop sounds, and simply tossed the phone, still ringing, out the window of the bus.

Two days later, when I had recovered from my hangover, I went back to the venue to see what the hell had happened. There, in the bar, blocking one whole side of the access hatch, was the champagne. The storeman had very helpfully placed the chilled wine in the bar, ready to serve for guest arrival, and the barman had spent the entire wedding carefully stepping over the boxes as he ran to the walk in fridge for the cheap stuff.