Pain

Its hard to fathom the fallout of a justice system that is blind to the truth.  I've been more and more finding out how far reaching the shrapnel is spread.  I wonder some days, were the girls even aware of what damage they were unleashing?  Are they aware now?  The answer to both those questions is probably not.  At first it was a sheltering of sorts, to not cause anymore damage to already damaged minds.  E was still to fragile to burden her with the truth of what she was doing.  Then the courts stepped in and we weren't allowed to even talk about anything with her or K for fear they would twist it more and more charges of tampering with a witness would be added.
The truth of the matter is, I don't know what payout they are getting from this.  K wanted her freedom, wanted to answer to none and make her own rules.  But E?  I still don't know.
I do know that until she was 13 years old, E and her dad were best friends.  They just were.  Her memories of that have been warped, but those of us who lived those times with her know the truth.  She loved her dad. Loved spending time with him, going to work with him at the Park, watching stupid movies mom couldn't stand.  The list goes on, but to hear her now, she never liked him.  I don't know who's story she adapted to be her own, but I know some people that have helped keep it going.  I ran into one of the professionals that worked so hard to help me find her the help she needed to be safe in her own skin, before DCFS told her she wasn't mentally ill, she was just a poor victim of abuse.  He was dumbfounded.  The caseworkers that took her from me for all this had never even bothered to contact the therapist we had been working with for over 2 years.  DCFS is all knowing and the professionals were just duped by me making things up.  I live in fear that while she is in the care of those idiots, they are going to kill her by ignoring the care she really needs.  It's hard to have to watch things happen while you have no control only the knowledge that something is truly terribly wrong and no one will listen.
K is living feral now, wild and free and doing what she wants.  She graduated high school last week, and I am so very proud of her. It couldn't have been easy, and yet she did it.  I was blessed to watch her walk that walk and receive her diploma.  It broke my heart into more jagged pieces that she listed a woman I have never heard of as her mother, but hey. she was willing to lie and send Eric to jail so I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised.
The true broken parts really belong to the little sisters in this nightmare.  M and L are really the ones hurt most by their big sisters.  They are the ones that sob themselves to sleep nightly because daddy isn't here to tuck them in. They are the ones who have lost their home, their support and their sense of safety and stability.  I can only do the best I can in a mind so bruised and broken that it's a daily fight to find any sense of normal for them.  They don't understand why lies and hate have torn the very fabric of their world apart.
 They love K and E so very much, but they don't want to talk to them.  M was so mad at me for even talking to K on the phone.  It hurts my soul to see the pain in her eyes when she talks about them.  "Daddy would never hurt them, or me momma"  and while she's right, until E or K have the strength of character to finally be honest, the pain will continue to build for her.
I find myself having to tell her that no, daddy won't be able to go on your field trip next year, he won't even be able to ever go to even one of your school plays, in fact, he won't be able to go to her high school graduation.  K and E stole all those memories from her before they were ever there.  Stole them from L too.  Lies and hate have ripped away all the good memories they would have ever had with their daddy, memories that both of the big girls already have.
My fragile faith is on such rocky ground.  I can't find the solace for my own heart to share with my hurting babies.  They need their father.  The need his priesthood and spirit and love in our home.  And yes, even though he has been sentenced for the lies the big girls told, even the Lord knows he did nothing and he still has his priesthood.  One day the girls will have to make right all they have sought to destroy.  They will have to make amends for the broken hearts and all the tears shed.  I pray that it's not to late when they decide.  I hope that the lessons I try to teach M and L about hate making people go away and never come back make it easier for the little ones to hold on to love in spite of pain.  I pray for my family to be make whole again.  I pray mostly for the courage to forgive them, even if they wait until they stand before the Lord to be ready to admit they were lying all along.

Silver Linings

Some days are sunnier than others. I remember how to breathe and dress myself and even smile. Some days.  Some days are darker, and I can't find the silver lining even if it's trying to strangle me for my stubbornness.  I am all alone.  I am not alone.   I am angry, and hurt and healing.  I am single, but taken.  I am me.
I've been bawling about being homeless for the last few weeks, and while it's true that I don't have my own home, I'm not homeless.  M says we are "Ownless".  We have a home, we just don't have one of our own.  Big difference, and IF I can start seeing the differences, I can start the long uphill climb.
Eric is surviving in that place that he shouldn't be in.  I still shy away in saner moments of saying where he is.  Jail.  Jail, Jail.  nope, repeating it doesn't help.  But there he sits. He has been able to get out and do community service, which means that instead of working his butt off for any living, he's doing it simply to be doing it.  He worries about supporting us, but for now, that's my responsibility. That thought scares the crap outta me.
My sister reminded me that while I've lived alone before, and supported my kids, I haven't had to after being beaten down so badly.  I know that I can find the strength, and as soon as I allow my self to heal from the torture my soul has endured, I'll be okay. I needed to hear that. I feel so weak, I feel like I should be standing on my own two feet taking care of business. But right now, I can't.  She helped me realize something, that just like a physical beating that has to heal before you function normally again, I've taking an emotional and spiritual beating the likes of which all most killed me.  I need to heal.
 The Lord knew this and sent the angels into my life I needed the most.  I will never be able to thank Jon and Tina enough.  They have given me the care and love and safety that I need while I learn to heal.  And I have to learn to heal.  I don't know how to not be in charge of every aspect of life.  It's always been my job, what I do.  I've been so broken that I'm not strong enough to do it right now. That's okay right?  To admit that?  To acknowledge that I'm broken, and not ready to be the adult in charge right now?  I think so, I think that's some of me learning how to heal.  It would be easier on me if I had only been physically beaten within an inch of my life.  It hurts when you use bones that haven't healed or stretch skin still mending.  The pain tells you, "hey stupid, you can't do that yet" and you stop.  Emotional and spiritual wounds are harder to accept, and let heal before you try flexing.  It's harder to accept that your mind needs time to heal and recover, to be able to adult again.
I'll have my good days, and they will be more than the bad.  I will make the strides to heal and be the strong person people keep accusing me of being.  But it will take time, and today, I can see that.  Tomorrow who knows.  I have angels hiding as friends that keep reminding me that it's okay to take time to heal.  That I don't have to know where I'm going yet, because right now, I'm home.  And for now, I know that that is the Lord's hand in this.  His angels on earth helping my family until I can take over.  So for today, I will start to heal, and quit doing things that make that process harder.

if

I see the pictures and quotes all over Facebook asking "if I die tomorrow what would you remember about me?" and as self serving and attention seeking as they are, it makes you wonder.  If I simply ceased to exist, or if I had never existed, would it really be so bad?  Now stay with me here, I'm fighting some major depression and anxiety, but I have enough sense to know the damage me ending my life would would instill in my babies, so simmer down.  But really, would the world be better off without my presence in it?
I inflicted my older daughters into this world.  I raised them and tried to teach them right from wrong and look where that got me,  I'm ashamed of them, so much that I cringe when people ask how the are.  I'm ashamed to be their mother, and call them mine.  I'm ashamed.  And for that, I'm a terrible person, I get that. I really do.  I tell my self that a thousand times an hour.
I've become a burden, a waste of space, a parasite living off a host, though that host is a pretty amazing person and family.  I don't interact with the world correctly, and even talking to my husband is challenging because if I say how messed up it is he's in there, then it reflects on him, that he isn't compliment with sex offender classes by not being properly sorry about what he did.  How messed up is that?  He shouldn't be there.  The end.  He did nothing, but I better not say that or the judge may take my little ones away because their daddy is a threat.  It simply pisses me off.  If I had money, I could find justice for my sweet spouse.  I don't, so he sits in jail, worried sick about how he is going to provide for his family in a future that is to scary to look into.
And the best part is???  I'm not supposed to feel this way.  I need to put on my big girl panties and deal with it.  Life's hard, quit bitching and do what needs to be done.  You know what?  Today, I CAN'T.  Judge away, I do it to myself in my head all the time.  I am the cause of all the pain in my family.  If I had been a better mother, if I had gotten K help as hard as I was trying to get E help, if Eric had never met me, and on and on.  It's never ending, and for a while, my mask can hold it in so that socially, I'm doing the acceptable, strong thing and getting on with it.  Inside is such another matter.
I am not this strong, amazing person people keep telling me that I am.  I am broken, and lost and hurt and shouting and mad and crazy and so very messed up.  I have no idea what I'm doing.  Most of the time, I can't remember to breath.  I write it out because if I keep letting it run wild, it truly will kill me.  I can't even find the words for a small fraction of what I need to put down to paper and get out of my head.  What I can find words for seems so shallow and weak.  I want to shout to the world, yet I don't want to go outside.  Outside has become a terrifying place, a place bent on destroying my family and stealing my children and husband.  But none of that came from outside now did it?  It came from me.  So we are back to my original mind wander, if I were to die tomorrow, would the world be a better place?   Would I then cease to unleash my brand of horror on the rest of an unsuspecting planet?
Just for today, and let us be honest, most likely a while longer, I simply give up.  My strength is gone, I've worn my mask until it no longer hides what I need it to.  My pain and anger are leaking through to often now.  My rock is missing, the glue holding the messy bits is gone.  So I'll lay my anger and pain and sorrow and fear and whatever else ugly I have at the Master's feet, and hope for just  a moment, He will lift my burdens and ease my soul.  I know he hasn't left me, but someday the pain is so strong, it's hard to remember.

Easter

It's early on Easter morning, almost 2 am.  This is a time of year that I love dearly.  I love to reflect on the Savior's life, his lessons, and his love. This season brings to mind the greatest sacrifice ever made for mankind.  By willingly submitting to everything that was asked, Christ paid the price I will never be able to even remotely come close to.  He paid for every mistake I will ever make, every pain I will ever complain about and every situation that causes me to mummer against the Father.  He paid what can never be repaid.  Only received and used and shared.

I have been reflecting on receiving help today.  A lot.  I am not very good at asking for, let alone accepting help.  I am strong enough, smart enough, dense enough, or stupid enough to make it on my own.  At least that's what I tell myself.  The place I sit now has shown me how very dense and stupid I can be.  Eric is in jail, for crimes no one but the judge thinks he is capable of committing.  Crimes that my children dreamed up to get to their own ends.  I could go on about that, and I probably will in the future, but for today, he is simply gone.  I need him.  I have needed him for every thing I am for the last 10 years.  He has shielded me from my own frailties and weakness and made sure that my children and I were taken care of.  It wasn't always a walk in the park, but he was by my side every step.  Without him, I need help.  HELP.

How do you go about asking for help when all your life you have avoided it?  I am sitting here writing this at a kitchen table not my own, in a home not my own, where my children and I will sleep until we can find a place of our own.  I don't know how long we will be without our own home, and I've called us homeless, but, we are not destitute.  I have so many people that have said "we love you, let us help".  Let us help.  I have had to swallow what shreds of pride I've been holding onto.  It's not easy, and it hurts, a lot.  But as with the Savior, who offered us the help we need to get home, what good is that offer if we foolishly believe we can do it alone?  I need my friends right now, more than even I know.  I need to let them help me because I simply can't do this on my own.  I can't.

This Easter, the gift the Savior offers each of us is so HUGE to me.  He is offering us the help we need, if we know it or not, to get home.  Just as I am homeless without my friends who love me right now, in this very moment, so too will I be homeless forever if I don't willingly take the Savior's help.  It's a concept I thought I knew and understood.  I was so very wrong.

In the midst of my unimaginable life, with all scary nightmarish things that I seem destine to wade in the midst of, I know this:  I am not alone, I just need to let go of pride, and accept the offer of  help and love.  He will walk with me, Eric will come out the other end of this horror, and we will go on, hand in hand, with the Savior guiding us, to our forever.   This is what Easter means to me this year.  I am so humbled to know that Christ loves me enough to hold out his hand to me, even when in my arrogance I don't reach back.  He never has left me alone.  The only way I will ever be able to thank him, is to take his outstretched hand, and follow him home. Because in the end, being thankful for something is to use it for what it was meant for, not just view it as a pretty picture.

Happy Easter,

endings

 This was my undoing today. This simple, stupid, family dinner table.  I couldn't get the legs off of it to move.  It was like a slap in the face, telling me I'm not good enough to do this.  It's not been my job to break apart furniture for 10 years.  It's been Eric's.  Eric's job to make sure I don't fall apart, don't lift things I shouldn't,  Eric's job to move the heavy stuff while I pack and organize and chase kids and run the home.  AND HE'S NOT HERE!  I am so damn mad at this!  I am so mad that my children would do this to our family.  Mad that the justice system only works if you have money. Mad that I can't fix any of this.  I have never felt so helpless in my entire life.  I have always known what to do, who to call, what had to be done.  If it weren't for some amazing friends I have made in the last 6 months, my children and I would be living in our car.  I am not exaggerating.  Simply stating the facts.

I don't know what we are going to do.  One year lock up for him, and every day my soul dies.  He hasn't called us now for 3 days.  I don't know why.  I need to hear him, even if it's only for a few moments a day.  I need to know he is okay, and get some strength from him.  I need him.  And I need to get on with things without him.

I am so intensely upset at my girls.  I hate to even seen pictures of them.  I sold every piece of funitre that I have ever bought for them,when we land, I'll start over and buy things without the taint of memory.    I want to have never met their father.  I want to never have given birth to them.  And yet I want them back here, back inside my hug, where my children all belong.  I love them and hate them with such fierceness that it tears me apart with every beat of my heart.  How do you reconcile your heart to hate and love?  How does a mother admit to the fact that she wishes she had never had some of her children.

My dear, sweet husband is subjected to things that I don't even want to think about, and he will have to complete therapy that includes him "admitting" that he did something to them to please the judge.  What a joke.  I was so hoping that he could serve the time close to me, so I could see him, and it turns out, that won't happen now.  I worry about him, but he is amazingly strong.  I shame him by thinking him weak.  He is such a strong man with an amazing spirit.  I am so blessed he is mine, and he is willing to still love me even after K and E have done this.  He is willing to pray for them, and hope that one day they make right what they have hurt and come back to our family. . He has prayed for them even when I couldn't speak their names.

We are leaving this house that has been our home for almost 5 years tomorrow.  We will be homeless, but we have a place to land until we find our feet.  I have never been this destitute.  It's a bitter pill to take, but I know that we are forever in the Lord's hands.  I may not see where we are headed, but he does.

Fallout

Yesterday the foot was taken off the landmine that has been haunting our family for the last almost 2 years.  Eric was sentenced to 365 days in jail, and 10 years on the sex offenders registry for the lies that my oldest children dreamed up.  I listened as E read her emotional,and completely made up letter to the judge.  She describes things that never happened, in no detail, that are completely different from what she first told her case worker all those months ago.  The judge didn't even bother to note the inconsistency of the story, and the joke of a public defender didn't bother to point it out either.

I don't know how to go on.  Eric is the half of me that holds all the broken messy bits together.  He is the reason that I am even remotely sane and functional.  He is gone.  My older children are dead to me.  I want nothing to do with them, right now that means forever.  But my momma heart knows that if they will just make things right, my family can be whole.

I know that the Lord has his hand in this, that this is part of a bigger picture that I cannot see.  But I just want my soul back.  I need him more than I need oxygen.  I'm terrified for him, as he is now considered a child molester.  All for simply trying to love my children.  I guess that my ex's genes were to much to over come,  Some decisions haunt you for the rest of your life. I regret ever meeting Kyle Harvey, let alone marrying and having children with him.  Eric did nothing to deserve this.  NOTHING!

I'm lost, and alone, and so frightened.  I have survived these last 2 years with him holding me together.  I'm so afraid for him, he is a kind, sweet man who is in the darkest of places with the meanest of humankind.  I worry for him every second.

My life is destroyed, the devastation from the evil that i brought into this world has seen to that.  I have no home, no income, no hope.  I can only cling to the last thin shred of my faith that the Lord will keep us safe, because heavens knows I can't.

Christmas truths

My preparations for Christmas are almost done.  I keep telling myself that.  They are almost done for the little girls anyway.  The girls that are still in my home.  The girls I get to keep for this year.

Last Christmas was a blur, with the death of the baby, her memorial, and then her actual due date all happening in October, November and December.  I was lost in my own fog, going through the mothering motions to try and hold the magic for M and L.  I don't remember what we did last year, what memories we made, what gifts were given.  I know we did it, there are pictures as proof, but the emotional links that solidify memories are missing.

 I do what I can for my little misses.  They are the real victims in our horror story.  They are the ones that keep losing people and don't know why.  They are the ones I keep in the dark trying in some vain way to protect them from the monstrous truth that we live in.  They have lost 3 sisters in a year and a half.  They lost their baby sister to something that not even the best medical care in the world could fix.  They learned at 4 and 6 the horrific, finality of death.  They learned about babies dying in your arms instead of coming home to be loved.  They learned of loss so intense that you never are the same again.  And they learned the saying, "families are forever".

Then they learned the truth of what mommy always says, "hate makes people go away and never come back."  I tried to teach them all that, even the big ones that grasped onto a hate so intense that they have now gone away from our family, and never come back.  That is the hardest lesson my littles have learned, and one they still haven't learned all of yet.

I have 5 beautiful daughters, 4 that walk this earth and 1 that flies the heavens.  My older ones have brought so much joy and love and pride that it seems impossible the depths of betrayal and pain they have inflicted.

I don't prepare Christmas for them.  This has become an awaking for me, I finally put into words why this was killing me.  I don't want to remember them this year.  I don't want to remember the 3 that are missing.  I can't breath when I think of them, I can't focus, and I can't make memories or magic with the girls I still can hold.  I spent years making magic for the big ones, memories and fun.  Now I want to not think of it.  I need to make memories with the littles that don't include the shadow of their big sisters that hate our family so much they are willingly and actively trying to destroying it.  I don't want a memorial to my dead baby being the focus of our Holiday season.  I don't want to be reminded that I held her as her heart stopped beating.

I want to live in a fantasy world. .And I think that's what makes me the worlds worst mother.  It's a time for family, to hold loved ones and remember cherished memories.  I DON"T WANT TO.  I want to forget.  I want to blot out of my mind those missing pieces.  I can't.

My little girls will have a very different Christmas this year.  Everything they will receive is something that I have made them from scrapes and leftovers in the house.  Lawyers and bankruptcy and mounting medical bills and the like have taken every penny.  I am barely able to keep the lights turned on and the rent paid.  The big girls are a different story.

  E is in foster care, I have no rights to her anymore and she blames me for this.  I am at fault, I tried every way to get her the help she needs.  She stood in the hospital they day before I had to sign the papers and declared that she would "tell them all a story so big it would get me and the little girls taken away"  because I had put her in the hospital for a suicide attempt, again.  She sure did tell a story, and she keeps changing in it and adding to it. She will receive everything she wants because she is a poor unloved child lost in the system.  Never mind that her family is brokenhearted and longing to have her back.  She would have to tell the truth, and why do that when pity gets adults to give you everything you want.  She hasn't had to eat "what's left in the fridge casserole" because there was no money left for groceries.  Her little sisters have.  Her little sisters will probably find out this yer that mom and dad are Santa because there is no money to keep up the magic.  I want to not think of her this year.

K is right where she wanted to be when she set the bomb to light.  The casualties left in the wake of her self centered actions are to numerous.  The one that worries me most is what will happen when the littles learn that her lies led to this.  Led to the horror of criminal charges against their dad, charges that threaten to take him away from them for the rest of their lives.  She hated our home and rules so much that she devised the most heinous plan.  And it worked.  She is gone now, and can never come back as she is unwilling to acknowledge what she has done.  She is still so missed, and loved that pieces of sanity and soul die each day trying to figure out how I raised a child who could do this.  Her biological father is good at giving her what she wants, it shuts her up.  No rules or morals for her either, how dare I try to instill some in her.  She wants to lie and steal and do drugs and have sex and whatever else pops into her mind.  For trying to teach her to be a moral human, we received lies and hate.  As much as I love her, and always will, part of me hates her too.  What kind of mother says that?  Puts that thought to words?  Her little sisters love her still, they don't know what she has done, yet.  There will come a time when they learn the truth and I live in dread of that day.

Christmas is a time of joy right?  It just highlights the darkness for me.  And yet, in the midst of all the pain and hate and sorrow, there is a spark of hope that lives in my dead, black heart.  I know that my Savior was born in Bethlehem to a young mother named Mary.  I know that He came to learn, grow and ultimately die showing me the way home.  I know that without Him the darkness would swallow me whole and nothing would be left.  That small spark deep inside, it keeps me going.  Knowing that while He never did anything to deserve the price asked, He paid for me, washed me clean, and will help me walk through the darkest depths to find my way home.  I am a mother that fails, fails daily, a mother that admits to loving and hating her  children at the same time.  A mother that has the fear of loosing her children not just in this life, but forever.  Without them, what good is eternity?

 I can't see when this shadow of pain ends, maybe it doesn't in this life.,  Fear may walk with me until my last breath, but He will be waiting for me when I cross that veil.  He will be there to hold me and soothe the pain and terror that has become my constant companion.  So maybe this Christmas, while I want to forget those missing, maybe I'll just remember the one who came to show me the way.