I was born in Iowa, home of the Iowa State Fair’s butter cow, the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, and the covered bridges of The Bridges of Madison County fame. People often mistake Iowa for one of those other Midwestern “I” states (Illinois? Indiana? No, Iowa.). The Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams, gave the state a bit more name recognition, but geographic recognition lags behind. Contrary to popular belief, Iowa is a state of rolling hills far more often than being abjectly flat. It is, though, a farming state, full of corn and pigs and other agricultural products. Bordered on the east by the Mississippi, and the west by the Missouri, the state is sandwiched between two major rivers.
Council Bluffs hugs the Missouri, and would probably be a suburb of Omaha, NE if it weren’t for the being located in another state. Things I remember: the original downtown was gutted in order to install a mall as part of an urban renewal plan; the Carnegie library, with its squeaking wooden floors and combined old books/old building smell; Fairmont Park, with its oak trees littering the ground with small acorns and carpets of colored leaves in fall; the bluffs along the river, crowded with trees.
My family was dysfunctional in a secretive, high functioning way. Our secrets were well kept; on first glace we appeared to be a normal, although large, working class family. My family owned a house with a white picket fence in front and a swing set in the backyard. The station wagon parked out front wasn’t new, but it ran. A small terrier took the place of the sheep dog, and instead of 2.5 children, there were 7. We were fed, bathed, clothed. We struggled with money, but the rest of the people in our working class neighborhood did, too. Our beds may have been secondhand from the army surplus store, but at least we didn’t sleep on a folding lawn chaise, like one neighbor girl.
Where the dysfunction came in was with my stepfather. From my perspective now, I can see that he fits the definition of a sociopath. He controlled us. We were, as a group, abused in every way, although individually we fell into different categories. We were ridiculed, insulted, threatened, hit, pushed, fondled, and penetrated. For my brother, it was physical abuse. For me, it was sexual. What we all had in common was the constant fear of not knowing what he would do next. I realized how much of a shadow he cast over our lives when he unexpectedly had to work late. When this news spread, the tension that had been building over expectation of his arrival broke. Giddy with relief, the atmosphere felt the way it feels after a storm passes – cleansed, open, full of possibility. I realized then that everyday was the opposite of this, that we closed down more and more the closer it came to time for him to walk through the door. We were not really living, we were surviving.
I went to college after graduating from high school, a first generation college student in the days before they had support programs for this like they do now. I had no idea what I was doing. Intellectually, I was capable of doing university level work. Emotionally and socially, I was a train wreck. Depressed, overwhelmed, I coped by injuring myself and by periodically attempting suicide. My grades fluctuated between failing and excellent. I left without graduating, and tried a variety of jobs (data entry, factory worker, army reserves) before going back to college.
Borrowing student loans to finance my education, I slowly pulled my GPA back up (from a 2.4ish to a 3.7 )when I graduated with my BA. I worked my way through an MA in English. I began a PhD program in English at the same school I’d started college after high school. By now, all the coping methods I’d developed to hide from my past and to keep moving forward (dissociation, minimizing, avoiding) were slowly losing the capacity to help me cope. My protective strategies became, instead, things that limited my life. I started having panic attacks in classes. I spent nights huddled behind the couch, unable to sleep because I thought someone would break in to the apartment and kill me. Counseling helped me limp along, and to not have to resort to self-injury or suicide. Unable to keep it together, I left the PhD program and Iowa behind.
Moving to Montana for the summer, I thought I could figure out what to do, could pick up the pieces of my life, and move on to something else. The summer lasted over 13 years, though. Something about the mountains soothed me, helped me feel smaller and less visible. I could be safe. I could relax. I did what I needed to do to survive financially, and my resume exponentially grew. Working even took on the rhythm of the seasons – the time of fallow, the time of growth. I met my husband, and we moved to Missoula so he could attend school. Missoula had rhythms of its own, and welcomed creative people. It felt more like home than anywhere other than Wales.
I worked. I took classes, thinking I’d get a teaching certificate, until I realized how much I hate grading papers. I flirted with other options – art, science, still borrowing student loans. I didn’t end up with a degree. What I did get from it was another chance for dealing with my past. I joined a group for sexual abuse survivors, and while that was a limited success, I met the woman who I would work with for the next 3+ years. Together, we opened doors into most of the scary rooms and explored them together. How I coped might have labels, like post-traumatic stress syndrome or dissociative disorder, but I learned that I was not helpless or hopeless. The past had happened. I couldn’t deny it. I could choose to try to avoid the pain, which had never worked, or I could choose to move through it. I needed help with the process, but I learned I could look at my past, move through it, and not die or be destroyed. I could let it be the past, a shaping force in my life, but not my whole life, and not my whole present or future.
Looking at my past, I started seeing the patterns in my life, and where those patterns had limited me. I’d bought into what I’d been told as a child, that I was stupid and worthless. I had college degrees, yet I continually worked at jobs that only required a high school education. I didn’t believe I deserved more than that from life. I still tried to keep myself small, to fly under the radar. Being visible was unsafe in many ways. I began to struggle with the conflicting desires to be less, but to want more. I started to believe that I deserved more from life than survival, that I could channel my will to survive into a desire to fully live. From that came my graduation from an MFA program in writing for children; my divorce from my husband, a substance abuser whose emotional unavailability kept me invisible; and my resignation from a job that, while filled with caring people, did not provide enough intellectual stimulation or financial compensation.
In breaking free, though, I scared myself. An issue with which I struggle is having trouble living with something uncertain, with wanting to make a decision to get that immediate sense of relief for having chosen something. Since I still struggle with trusting myself, that feeling of uncertainty causes my to question not only my ability to handle an event or situation, but my whole ability to survive, cope, live. When I left my job, I immediately made a series of decisions to move myself out of uncertainty. One of those was to apply to library school. I had been researching this option for close to a year, so it wasn’t completely out of left field for me, although I’m sure it might have seemed that way to others. Library school made sense to me, and was a good fit with my skills, experience and temperament. It would give me the ability to support myself, to pay my bills and not have to live in a cardboard box, to be a tax paying, contributing member of society. What I wasn’t sure of was how to pay for school. My decision was to go anyway; if I waited until I could figure out the finances, chances are that I would not go. The other decision I made was to move to Iowa temporarily until I knew where I’d go to school. I thought it would be easy to find a seasonal job; that turned out differently than expected. When I was accepted to Indiana, friends helped me financially with the move, and I became a graduate student yet again.
First semester went well, intellectually. It was more difficult emotionally than I expected, leaving Montana. I struggled with wanting to go home. I wasn’t sure I’d made the right choice. Still, I knew I’d be going back for the summer. I started to settle in to Bloomington. I applied for financial aid and scholarships for fall, knowing my options for loans were limited. I hoped something would work out. My plan for summer was to go to Montana, work a lot, and come back with some money saved for school. On my last day in Indiana, I fell while carrying a box. I sprained my ankle and tweaked my shoulder. Neither healed well, and after several doctor’s appointments at a clinic, I was finally seen by an orthopedic specialist the third week of July. The sprain was diagnosed as a fracture and a torn deltoid ligament, while the shoulder was diagnosed as frozen. That explained why I’d had trouble being on the ankle for long, and why I’d been unable to do the sorts of temporary summer jobs I’d planned – housekeeping, retail sales, etc.
The summer took its toll physically. Emotionally, it was tough, too. I found out I didn’t get any scholarships. The loan I qualified for paid for almost 6 hours of school. I was rejected for a plus loan because of credit issues I’d had from my marriage. I tried finding someone to endorse a plus loan for me, but that was unsuccessful. I kept it all inside, though, and put on the façade of everything-is-fine. My friends and family had their own problems, with relocating, moving, drug rehab, fostering children, and all the other messiness of life; my problems were my problems and weren’t anyone else’s burden or responsibility. Besides, sharing them would have meant admitting my struggles and showing my vulnerability.
I considered not returning to Indiana. I applied for jobs in Omaha, and tried to figure out where and how I would live. I had signed a lease in Indiana that I couldn’t get out of, though. Not being a student meant I’d have to start making student loan payments again. This was a big factor in deciding to find a career that paid more than clerical wages in the first place – I’d actually be able to afford loan payments and support myself. At this point, some large waves of shame came crashing over me. Here I was, close to 50 and not able to get a loan to do what I needed to do to support myself. I didn’t even have the money to get to Indiana. I’d struggled with the problem by myself for the summer and hadn’t gotten anywhere. I decided to go to Indiana. I at least had a place to live, paid for until September. I hoped that I could find a job and make the money I needed for rent, and maybe even the 200 plus dollars for tuition.
Was this practical? Possibly not. It was, and is, my best option to continue moving toward a better life, though, to keep moving toward being alive and visible in the world, instead of only surviving and trying to be as small as possible. Where these decisions will take me, I’m not sure. I’m trying to stay centered and here, and to become comfortable waiting without jumping into making decisions in order to feel better. That’s difficult on the days when depression hovers, or shame tries to lay its claim. What’s been the worst is the feeling of isolation, of carrying this alone, not only the summer’s financially unfortunate events, but many of the parts of my past. It’s hard to be authentic and grounded when I keep parts of my past boxed up, so as not to disturb anyone. My past is part of who I am, though, and how I got to where I am today. Moving through it is one thing, but not acknowledging how it’s shaped me, for fear of putting people off, is another. My past is part of the whole. If I am to become visible and to live fully, I need to be not partially here, but completely and totally available, all parts of my life, whether comfortable or not.
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