I’m about to share, with you, the last twenty years of my life. There are four reasons: (1) Personal healing; (2) To stress the importance of family; (3) To convey the importance of forgiveness; (4) To contend that there’s no monetary value on someone you love.
I was a struggling single mother for fifteen years, raising my son, Jack, from the time he was one year old when I met Monty, my current husband of 19 years. I have two living older sisters, and one older brother. I had a little sister who passed away when she was three and I was five. So, most of my life, I was the baby of the family. I was also the child that was constantly told by my father that l was supposed to be a “boy”. He thought that after my brother was born, his “luck had changed”, but then I came along. Needless to say, with his constant reminders of his disappointment, and my brother’s daily teasing and beatings, I grew up with some major hang-ups; one of them feeling that my parents wished that I had died instead of my little sister, Marjorie. I really needed therapy a loooooong time ago! Anyway, I digress.
Fast forward to twenty years ago when I met the love of my life, Monty Tatom. I was 39 and he was 47. Because I had been single for so long, my mother was used to having me to herself. She helped me tremendously raising my son while I worked and went to school for four years to get my Bachelor’s degree. She helped me out financially many times, because I just didn’t get paid enough to make ends meet. Many times I had to work two jobs, which wore me out, and also took me away from my son too much. It was a rough life. I was viewed by my siblings as the “underdog” or “loser” in the family. Even though I was the only one with a college education. But I can say that I was a fighter. I didn’t rely on a man to support me, like my oldest sister did. She could never stand on her own two feet. She always jumped from man to man. She said once she didn’t want to struggle like me. Well, I’d rather live under a bridge than be married to a pedophile, which is what she married. I digressed again……my mother was used to having me at her beck and call, and my sister was used to me being “beneath” her. Suddenly, I wasn’t around so much for my mother and I had a better man than my sister had. I started getting some resentment thrown at me from both of them. When Monty and I married in 2001, my mother was downright hateful to me at my wedding reception. She actually cornered me and insisted that I pay back every dollar she ever gave me. When my son and I had moved into a house a few years back, my mother had taken out a credit card in her name, without my dad knowing, and she bought a used refrigerator and some furnishings for us, as well as a computer for Jack. She was paying the credit card, but she now insisted that I now pay it in full. She felt that now that I was married, Monty should pay for my past debts. Wrong! He is not responsible for MY past! What does she want me to do? Leave Monty? If I left him, I definitely wouldn’t be able to pay her. So, either way, she wouldn’t get the money. All she would accomplish is splitting us up. It seems that’s what she wants.
Enter Cathy, my oldest sister. She started calling me about the money. Then she had the gall to tell me we lived in sin because we lived together before we got married. This coming from a woman who was pregnant when she married the first time, then cheated on her first husband with a married man (and got an STD), and lived with husband #2 and #3 before marrying them. In fact, her first husband attempted to molest me when I was 13 years old. Cathy knew it, my mother knew it, and my father knew it. They swept it under the rug to avoid family problems. Another reason I’ve always felt like a “dispensable” member of the family. This next thing Cathy told me on the phone really threw me for a loop. She said that Monty turned his first wife into a lesbian! (She left him for a woman. She had been cheating on him throughout their marriage.) I tried to explain to her that it doesn’t work that way. But Cathy has never been known for having much upstairs. Then I got a call from my father. Cathy had opened her big mouth and told him about the credit card my mother had hid from him. My mother told my dad that I should pay it. So, he called me to tell me to pay it. Monty got upset and told him that my mother took the card and bought those things, knowing I couldn’t afford them. Monty told my dad it was my mother’s decision to buy them, not mine. So, Monty and my dad had nasty words, and my dad hung up on Monty.
I don’t remember writing this letter, but evidently I did. Jack and Monty, both, remember me reading it to them. (I have a seizure disorder now, so I forget little things.) My sister, Cathy, showed it to me years later after my mother’s death. So, I know for a fact I did write it, and I stand by it. To this day, she’s holding onto it. Weird….right? Remember this letter. It’s important later. The letter tells her that I love her dearly, but, for my own sanity, I have to love her from a distance. I just can’t take the family fighting anymore. It’s too toxic. The stress is too much for me. In fact, just shortly after sending that letter, I ended up in the hospital with a massive infection throughout my gut. They didn’t know how I was even alive when I arrived at the hospital. I was there for a month. At one point, I was rushed in for an emergency second surgery and the doctor told my husband to inform the family he doesn’t expect me to survive. Monty called my mother, and couldn’t get through, so he called my sister, Cathy. Cathy said, she had my mom on the other line. She said she would tell her. Then she told Monty to call and let them know what happens. He was shocked. Well, needless to say, by the Grace of God, I survived. I was in the hospital for a month, and not one member of my family visited me. Not one flower or card was sent. I was beginning to think my childhood instincts had some validity.
Kimberly Six Tatom’s Online Therapy 