Friday, July 8, 2011

I am the Daughter of my Mother!



She founded Polo in the Park in the early eighties and it benefits the James Brady Riding Program.  I have volunteered most of my life for my Mothers non-profits.  She is an entrepreneur in San Francisco, or at least that is how she refers to herself.  She originally started her church, Christ Bearers Chorale Congregation in 1971 out of her friends home on Balboa Street.  Previous to that she worked for Student League and promoted Rock Concerts, working along side people like Bill Graham.  In fact there was a point at a concert in Golden Gate Park when she threw him off the stage because it was her turn to have her band perform, so the story goes.  She is very much a supporter of herself and of her opinions in life.  She is a self-ordained evangelical minister along with her husband. 

She originally moved to San Francisco after living in Marin County with my father. They moved to San Francisco because she told me that he stood out to much over there. Of course that was the story that she gave when she told me why they moved from Salem, Oregon. The stories that she told me of  herself and now ex-husband, my supposed father, were so crude that I have yet to be able to share them with anyone other than my psychiatrist.

When I was three years old she actually took me to see a psychiatrist because I had stopped speaking completely.  So, needless to say that my life has been difficult for a very long time and there have been definite signs along the way of trouble in the home. What is so funny is that three or so years ago, one of the agreements that I had to sign  in order to stay in her home was to go and see a psychiatrist. I was only in her home for six weeks before they had me arrested, but that is another story all together. During that time my mother and step-father took me to the office of the psychiatrist that they were going to employ for me.  Low and behold, to my surprise, we get there and I look at the door!  Vuksinick? I said, "This is the guy I saw when I was a kid," in an instant I felt three years old again.  I had remembered his name and just then he walks out of his office, I almost fell over dead.  It turns out I was not going to see him but the other psychiatrist down the hall, Kilgore.  However the trap had been set and it did snap.

It is odd to take your troubled daughter back down memory lane however in my Mothers case she was trying to see if I remembered anything from childhood. They, being my family have been petrified for years that I was going to write a "Tell All" book.  Something I had never taken into serious consideration due to the very nature of my past.  I had never wanted to re-visit any of it, at any time because it was so paramount for the health and welfare of my life to distance myself from it.  After the arrest and subsequent jail experience, I was not able to go  back to see Kilgore until this past year.  I mention this because it is so pertinent to my life's story.  You see Vuksinick remembers my mother also, in fact he has been kind enough to fill Kilgore in on some of the back ground story of my life.  One of the first things that he said was "Your Mother wrote the script for your life." How honest and true that statement was to make. You read about these things happening and you may discuss them with your current counselor but what a rare opportunity to have the shrink from your childhood make such a bold statement.  It is unique to be able to piece over 43 years together in your life like I have been able to do in the past few months.  It lends such credence to your story that the worry of not being believed is lifted off of your shoulders.  I am now grateful that my Mother took me back to where I would have my memory jogged by a name.  It was a difficult few years, she did cause the flashbacks that I suffer from to begin, but in the end I believe that for me at least it has been worth it.

I am sure that my Mother never intended for me to be able to afford Kilgore, thus leaving me out in the cold with only the reality that my childhood psychiatrist still existed.  Knowing that I had not made up the story of having to see a shrink at three years old.  It is or was yet another teaser on my family's part to say "Ha ha, we know what you went through but you will never be able to get it together enough to prove any of it."  However, I am fortunate enough or lucky enough and have been able to go back and see Kilgore.  This is something I am sure she never thought that I would be able to pull off after being arrested and thrown out on my ear.  I now go once a week to discuss the how's, and the why's of my disastrous life, but I have the comfort of knowing that the man down the hall is on my side, so now reality bites!  For I have two wonderful men that root for me. They work out of the same office and  are professionals in the field that I need on my side to only say one thing to all of you that question my life. I just need them to say that I am not crazy or insane, I just suffer from severe PTSD.  I had never forgotten my shrinks name from when I was a child.  Finding him again was something I had desperately wanted to do but was not sure that I could accomplish. So how blessed I must be that my family was desperate enough to push me down a path causing nothing but pain and bad memories to rise again, that I ran smack into what will one day be the strangest and most unique story to ever be told.

Life is beautiful but awfully strange.