What's Up - 4 Non Blondes (HQ Audio)

7/26/07 - It's been 12 years ago today that you were taken from us, Ericha. I love and miss you.

I'm Sorry

Ericha,

I miss you. I’m so sorry for what happened to you. I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there with you. I’m sorry that I couldn’t help you. You did not deserve what happened to you. You were a great person. You made me look forward to each afternoon after school. Your presence in our home was fun, comforting and wanted.

I so wish that I could have known you longer. You would have made a wonderful mother. I remember the time we went to the circus. I remember your warm smile. I remember your twinkling white teeth and your pantene shampoo. I remember your feathered black hair. I remember how protective you were of those you loved. I remember how you cleaned and organized the house each day. I remember how you taught me to stock the refreshments in the back room of the gas station. I remember spending the holidays together. Mom bought you a nice jacket – you were overwhelmed. You bought us a beautiful poinsettia. We laughed and talked and ate. We could always count on you to help. We could always count on you to be there. I could ponder the random happenings of life with you.

I miss you. I’m so sorry. I wish I could have done something. I wish I could have protected you. I wish I could have been there with you. I wish I could have hugged you, comforted you.

You saw the ugliest part of our world in your last moments. For that – I am truly sorry. As a member of this human race – I apologize to you. I don’t understand how or why there are monsters that roam the earth. You encountered not one of them, but two.

Now – I pray that you are in a place where you feel no pain, only love. I pray that you know how much we love and miss you. I pray that you are in a place of peace, warmth, comfort and love.

Love,
Emily

Ericha

***Please be advised - this post contains some graphic detail.***


Ericha.

She was my friend. I first knew her as my sister’s friend. My sister and Ericha were extremely close. My family got to know Ericha well and we all grew to count Ericha as one of us. So, when Ericha’s mother threw her out of her house, she was welcomed into our home. She spent every day with us, every holiday, every birthday. She was part of our family. She helped me take care of my nephew every day. She cooked and cleaned. I wasn’t used to another person in the house cleaning. I had been a latch-key kid. Before Ericha moved in with us, I had gotten used to coming home to a quiet, empty house each day after school. After Ericha joined our family, I came home to a warmer home with more activity. Ericha would greet me and I would settle down into the couch next to her to watch whatever program she was enjoying. Or I would sit and tell her what I did at school as she cleaned. She would offer me a fudgecicle – a delight I had not known before being introduced to them by Ericha. These small things – they’re what made Ericha so important to me. Until this point in time, I had never lived with a family member that didn’t expect me to be an adult, to take care of them or fix their problems. Ericha was just there to talk with, to spend time with – without yelling, fighting, hitting, touching, blaming or guilting. She didn’t take a maternal role either – she was there as my friend. She was calm. She was helpful. I once told Ericha how pretty I thought the ring on her finger was. A few days later, she had left the ring for me – on my pillow. I took the ring back to her – protesting her generosity. “No..no,” she insisted. "You must take it and keep it," she said.

11 Years Old.

I was in Florida. I often spent a few weeks of the summer visiting my father in Florida when I was growing up. The environment in my father’s house was not one that was necessarily healthy or sound – but it was a welcomed departure from my own home environment which was still much darker, much more dramatic and chaotic. After about a week in my father’s home and around his family, I had begun my usual slow and uneasy settling into the home I would inhabit during the next few weeks. This afternoon in particular, I was at my father’s home with my stepsister – Krista. It was just the two of us, watching tv. I didn’t particularly like Krista. I found her to be crude, selfish and apathetic. Still, I kept the peace, as I always chose to do in my family. I was 11 years old.

The phone rang. It was my mother. The moment I heard her voice, I knew something was wrong. “Emily, I need to tell you something.” My heart sank. “Ericha was killed, Emily.” My jaw dropped, my mind went blank. The room went blurry as my grasp of the telephone loosened and the phone dropped to the ground. I sat down on the couch, my eyes fixed ahead of me. Krista asked what was wrong. I couldn’t speak. She picked up the phone and began talking with my mother. “Oh my God…” As Krista spoke with my mother, slowly – pain seized my chest, tears welled in my eyes, yet my body was still frozen. My mind raced – then stopped to fix on one vision. My mother had not yet explained to me what had happened to Ericha – yet in my head the vision had formed. Ericha was in her chair in the back room of the gas station she worked at. I had wondered immediately why that was the particular vision of her that came to my mind at that very moment. I later found that Ericha was murdered in that very chair in the back room of the gas station.

Ben and Matt Bryant were brothers. They had gone to high school with Ericha and my other siblings. They were generally acquainted with Ericha, although they did not know her well. Yet, because Ericha knew the brothers she had let them into the gas station after hours while she was closing up. It was then that they attacked Ericha, tied her to the chair in the back room of the gas station and held a screwdriver to her back, telling her that it was a gun. They wrapped a telephone cord around Ericha’s neck, and then pulled so hard that they shattered her trachea. When the police searched the crime scene they had gathered that the killers had gotten away with about $1,200.00 and some rolling papers. $1,200.00 for the life of a beautiful person. A person who was my friend. A person who had never done anything to them. $1,200.00 to shatter the lives of everyone who loved her.

She died brutally at the age of 18, in the dirty back room of a gas station. She died on the squeaky chair that she hated.

Unearthing the negative

By this time, I had taken my completed timeline to Sara. We went over a short period of time on my timeline during each session. There was decidedly much to cover, so Sara and I concluded it might take a while for us to go through the timeline so I could give her basic explanations of each notation. After we were finished generally going over the timeline, we would move on to the biggest traumas, going over each in a more detailed manner. I certainly was not looking forward to those sessions, but today I wouldn’t need to worry about that quite yet. Today, Sara and I had reached the birth of my nephew on my timeline. I was ten years old.

After I explained the circumstances surrounding my nephew’s birth, Sara sat back in her chair for a moment, pensive. She then leaned forward and asked if I really realized how difficult my childhood was. I sat in silence, thinking. To me, it was an odd question. I had always thought that your childhood is what it is. There is nothing you can do to change it, so why mope? I had routinely told myself while growing up that no matter how bad I had it, others in the world had it worse. Feeling sorry for myself, therefore, seemed selfish and weak- it was not an option. It hadn’t occurred to me that one must greive the loss of a childhood just as you must grieve over the loss of a loved one – in order to heal, in order to be able to move on.

Sara urged me to see my childhood in terms of it happening to someone else. Not myself, but another child. A child, even, that I loved – perhaps one of my nephews. Sara asked that I visualize a child other than myself in the position of keeping their mother from committing suicide or stifling molestation or performing hours of daily house work. The thought struck me like a truck. I suddenly felt outraged, horrified, grief-stricken. This childhood was simply unacceptable for someone else to experience. But for some reason, I had felt it was okay for me to experience.

Now I needed to figure out why I thought a stranger deserves more than I do. Why did I so firmly believe that I was unworthy of a good and happy life? I had been shown and even told throughout my childhood that I wasn’t good enough. I had been mistreated so many times that I began to let the hateful feelings that accompany abuse sink into me, forming my opinion about myself. I had been told that I was bad and I believed it.

Now, my task was to try to slowly begin to undo these thoughts. I had more hard work ahead of me, I thought, as I have had these negative thoughts about myself for a long time and I didn’t exactly feel like I knew how to break them down yet.

BPD

My mother has Borderline Personality Disorder. As there is only a relatively small amount of clinical information on this disorder, it is still largely unknown. The best way to explain BPD is, therefore, to describe the symptoms of a person with this disorder:
- Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment or separation.
- Pattern of severely unstable relationships, characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
- Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures and/or threats
- Severe instability in moods – severe swings within hours of each other
- Chronic feelings of emptiness.
- Inappropriate and intense anger - often targeted at a caregiver (frequent displays of temper, constant anger, and recurrent physical fights).

Growing up with a mother who has BPD was chaotic, invalidating, confusing, devaluing and exhausting. I was told from a very young age by my mother that she was “sick” and couldn’t help anything that she did or said. I was never able to place blame with my mother if she said something particularly horrific or threw a weekend-ruining tantrum.
As a child, anytime I began to feel the slightest bit angry towards my mother for her actions, I immediately felt guilt and shame for blaming my mother. After all, she was “sick” and “couldn’t help her actions.” I, therefore, blamed myself. I blamed myself for not being a good enough care taker for her, for not making her happy, for not anticipating each of her erratic changes in mood. I walked on eggshells throughout my childhood, trying not to be a nuisance to my mother. In my eyes, she had been the parent that stayed with the three kids that hadn’t pleased their father. In my eyes, she stayed even though I was decidedly flawed. Because of this, I felt I owed it to my mother to try to care for her. At times, it was impossible to please her. I spent time each day making dinner, doing laundry and cleaning, before I settled into my own room to do my homework. These daily tasks began at a very young age for me. Instead of my upkeep of the household making my mother happy, it just became expected and on those days that I didn’t spend as many hours on those tasks, I would be criticized for being “selfish.”

At a young age, I shifted into the role of adult. I took on the problems of the family. My mother would come to me to ask what we should do about my sister, who’d begun to chronically run away from home. What, also, should we do about my brother who’d already become an alcoholic, she’d ask me. I answered the phone when the creditors called. My mother often asked me for advice on how to get her finances under control. I tried to offer her any helpful ideas I could (I didn’t have a lot of knowledge of managing finances by the age of 11). I would eventually make a suggestion that my mother would take offense to. The next hour after that was spent by my mother alternating between sobs and shouting at me for being insensitive.

One night, when I was about 14, my mother told me to have dinner ready by the time she came back, before leaving the house. I had felt extremely ill for several hours. After my mother left, I began shivering uncontrollably. I found my heaviest winter coat and curled up on the couch, too weak to move. My mother returned about an hour later and immediately upon entering the house, began to yell at me for not having dinner ready. Weaker yet, I tried to lift my head to explain that I had fallen ill. Mother launched into a rage - streaming insults ranging from how lazy I was to the claim that I never did anything right. I could no longer hold my head up. I fell back into the couch, unable to move. I let the screams of my mother fall over me – she grew increasingly angry, as I was no longer able to lift my head to look at her during her insults. Later in the night, she had calmed enough to take me to the emergency room. By this time, I had a fever of 106 degrees and a bad case of mononucleosis accompanied by strep throat and an enlarged liver and spleen. Of course by this time, my mother was sweeter than she could be. She sat next to my hospital bed, stroking my hand. That’s why it’s so difficult to completely cast off someone with BPD. Their swings in mood are so extreme that they provoke confusion and conflict in the person they’re associating with. My mother did have the ability to be extremely affectionate at times.

While I do realize that my mother’s condition must have been very frightening and difficult for her to experience on a daily basis, I slowly began to hold my mother more responsible for her actions as I grew older.

For those who may have a Borderline parent or a parent with Borderline tendencies, I recommend the following books (the first of which I found especially helpful):

1.) Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem by Kimberlee Roth (2003)

2.) Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul T. Mason

My Baby Nephew

After a few therapy sessions with Sara, I was beginning to see that my childhood had been chaotic, more chaotic than I had thought. It's difficult to know what's "normal" when you don't grow up around it. You don't know what to expect. Sara looked over my completed timeline, wide eyed, and explained that we would need a lot of time to go over everything I had constructed. By Sara confirming that I had, in fact, gone through chronic trauma as a child and had survived an especially difficult childhood, I felt relief. I felt validation. Finally, someone with trauma treatment experience was not telling me to "suck it up" and "you had it better than some." Validation, I believe, is one of the first steps to giving yourself permission to grieve. By documenting what has happened to me and saying to myself, "this was traumatic," I've completed the first step in validation. I would now need to mourn the traumas that occured as well as the loss of my childhood. But first, Sara and I had to complete the task of getting through my timeline. By this particular session with Sara, we had finally reached the age of nine.

When I was nine years old, my fifteen year old sister found out she was pregnant. The family debated on whether my sister should have the baby or not, but collectively decided that the final decision was my sister’s. My sister and her boyfriend decided to have the baby.

It was a chilly, yet sunny day in March when I received a note in class to come to the office. I knew this was it – I had insisted that my mother call my school if I was in class when my sister went into labor. After school, I ran to the nearest city bus stop going downtown and jumped into my seat, my arms and legs fidgeting with excitement. The bus stopped a few blocks away from the hospital. I ran to the hospital to find that I hadn’t missed it – my sister was still in labor. I waited in the waiting room, my foot tapping the legs of the chair in which I sat. About two hours after I had arrived to the hospital, my nephew was born. My mom came to get me from the waiting room and shuffled me into the birthing suite. I squinted, entering the dark room. I saw my sister’s boyfriend in the corner of the room with a small bundle in his arms. I slowly approached my sister’s boyfriend, not wanting my excitement to scare the brand new being I would meet. I looked into the blanket to see a wrinkled, crying, slightly purple being. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, I thought to myself. I giggled with joy. I slowly settled into a chair next to my sister’s boyfriend before he placed my new nephew into my arms. I cradled him in my arms, not moving an inch. I loved him. I couldn’t understand it, I couldn’t grasp why or how I already loved this little being.

During the 48 hours that followed my first meeting with my nephew, joy would give way to terror, anxiety and pain as we learned that my baby nephew had contracted a rare disease during delivery which affects the immune system. Before the end of his third day on earth, my baby nephew’s compromised immune system had allowed him to contract pneumonia, beta strep infection and meningitis. He was rushed to infant intensive care. In the days following my nephew’s birth, I got onto the same city bus each day after school, got off at the hospital and went to work on my homework in the hospital cafeteria. This had become my routine; I insisted that I would be in the same building as my nephew. I was in the hospital cafeteria on the third night when my mother came to tell me that the doctors gave my nephew a 25% chance of living through the night. My mom went back up to my sister’s hospital room. The cafeteria was silent. I walked to the hospital chapel. The chapel was also quiet and bare. I knelt down before the alter, my hands squeezed together – as if the harder I squeezed my hands together, the more likely my prayers were to be heard. I closed my eyes and prayed on my knees, tears streaming down my face. I didn’t understand why I was so upset. I didn’t know this baby, yet I already loved him. I asked God not to take him away.

I stayed that night with my grandmother. She knew I was upset. She tucked me into bed with her. In the dark she told me a story of the Saint for “lost causes.” We prayed together to this saint. She held me and warmed my feet with her own. The next morning, I would wake up to find that my nephew had lived and he would live the next night and the night after that.

The Babysitter

As my next session with Sara drew closer, I again found myself sitting and staring at the timeline I had started. Shortly after my grandpa’s death, a family member began to sexually abuse me. In the middle of the line I drew on my timeline to represent the sexual abuse, I drew a box and labeled it “inappropriate contact with babysitter.” I thought back to the incident with my babysitter. My mother had needed a babysitter at the last moment; neither of my siblings was available. I was about eight years old. My brother volunteered his friend. Not too soon after my mother left, I began to feel uncomfortable with this person – the way he looked at me, the way he’d pick me up and put me on his lap. I got up from his lap to go “find a toy.” He picked me up to put me on his lap again, telling me to read him a story. As I began to read my story book to him, I could feel his hands rubbing me. I got up a few more times, each time – picked up by him and brought back to the couch. I wanted to run, I wanted to scream. I wanted control.

I was noticeably upset at school the next day. A close friend of mine followed me outside to recess and picked at me to tell her what was wrong. I finally told. My friend told the school counselor. Before the school day was over, I was called into the counselor’s office. I didn’t particularly like our school counselor. I sensed that he was indignant, uncommunicative and lacked in the department of compassion and patience – all bad things for a school counselor to possess. After spending time and energy dancing around the subject at hand, I finally gave my counselor a run down of what had happened with the babysitter. I was then sent back to my classroom. No more was said – no words of encouragement, no affection, no one telling me that it wasn’t my fault, that I wasn’t bad.

Of course, those are the things I came out of this experience with. This contact with my babysitter as well as the chronic abuse I was experiencing made me feel that I was dirty, ruined, bad.

My mother looked at me as she closed the front door that night. She had just returned home from work. She said, “Well, Emily…I got a call from your school counselor today.” I looked at my feet. “You did?” I was ashamed. I couldn’t look at my mother. “Yes,” she said. “He told me what happened between you and the babysitter.” “Oh,” I said, still unable to look at anything other than my shoelaces. “Well, Emily, I just wanted to let you know that we’ll have someone else watch you next time.” My mother put her purse down and went into her room, where she would remain for the rest of the night, as she usually did after returning home from work.

About one month later, I was sitting on a bench at the mall when my mother nudged my shoulder and said, “Oh hey, Em…look – it’s your favorite person!” I looked up to see my former babysitter. He passed us both – nothing was said. My mother had sarcastically pointed out a person I was extremely fearful of in such a calm and lighthearted manner that I did not know what to say. I had again been put in the position of being the adult, as my mother had routinely decided to place herself in the position of being a child.

I knew then that I couldn’t trust her to keep me safe, to be an adult, to comfort me. Who will do this then? I had already learned how ugly the world could be, so to come to the realization that I would never be protected by my parents, was a scary experience. I knew now that I could never tell my mother about the sexual abuse that had plagued the last few years of my life. I couldn’t bear to hear her make a joke of it.