Christmas Eve, 2007

#christmas #joy #trauma #anxiety #depression #cptsd #healing

12 years ago, I had a 3 week old baby sick with what I feared might be pneumonia. I was 17 years old and on holiday break after giving birth the weekend of Thanksgiving.

I lived with my Aunt and Uncle [plus their four little kids + my nana] after being thrown out by my mother at 3 months pregnant that May.

I started my whole life from scratch.

Changed towns, homes, schools, friends, became single from my 2+ yr h.s. relationship.

Left the parents who'd abused me and neglected me for 16 years.

In my new High School I was treated HUMANELY.

The kids were all nice to me.

The teachers were so helpful and accommodating.

People looked me in the face and conversed with me about my pregnancy. My own gym teacher asked me to keep a pregnancy diary and log my nutrition as credit.

Even though I had no belongings from my parents' house, I had grown out of my size 00 pants and xs tshirts. My body had changed and adapted to my pregnancy coming in at 118 lbs by birth. Which was the healthiest my body had ever been.

I was badly malnourished while living with my mother and i had a horrible binge habit + sugar addiction.
FUN FACT: The body converts alcohol to sugar, which causes a spike in blood sugar levels. When alcoholics quit drinking, their blood sugar levels drop, and they develop sugar cravings.

My mother was an addict and alcoholic since her teen years. By the time I was born, there was no chance of her getting clean safely on her own. She barely cooked but we always had sugary foods in the house as well as a fully stocked globe bar next to her seat in the living room.

I am 29 and still have a sugar addiction.

I feel sick when I eat sweets and even more sick when I don't.

I am majorly addicted to drinking milk every single day, especially late at night.

All milk has sugar in it.

It took me until this year, when awakening from major disassociation, to realize my sugar cravings were due to my childhood.

To realize addiction did pass on to me in an unexpected way.

After I had my daughter, holding her felt like my whole world paused every time she stared back up at me.
I had FOUGHT to keep her.

I had sought out a pregnancy confirmation at Planned Parenthood, via bus I took after school with quarters from my moms coin bucket in the hall closet.

I had walked to the hospital clinic in our town to see a doctor for the heartbeat and first sonogram visit. Spoke with a social worker and applied for Medicaid under the precursor that I was now a medically emancipated minor due to carrying a child. I took care of it all discretely and responsibly because that was what I had to do in order to act like an adult.

Like a mother.

I had worn over sized shirts and unbuttoned by shorts, dove into the bathroom to puke between classes and once during an auditorium presentation for drug safety. I kept that expanding belly and my aching breasts a secret because I was afraid, with good reason, that my child would be taken from me.

She was my entire world from the moment I got those pink lines. Because love overpowers fear like the brightest light in the darkest galaxy.

So seeing her frail little 6lb body struggling to breathe and coughing felt like a tractor trailer was parked on my chest.

We went into the hospital Christmas eve.

I watched as SIX NURSES had to hold her body down to get a catheter and IV into her tiny body. While she cried like a tiny little blinded kitten looking for it's mommy.

We spent her first Christmas in there, me watching her receive medications intravenous and get breathing treatments.

I slept on the chair next to her, which really meant I sat perched watching her chest move up and down all night long. Listening to the emergency room peeps and alerts, watching nurses scuffle around and nervous parents get escorted into little beds and curtain spaces like ours.

It turned out to be a bad cold and was treated early enough to not develop into something more serious. Her lungs were clear and the fluids helped her tremendously.

At about 5 am, a jingling of bells startled some of us parents and the sound of HO, HO, HO, echoed through the children's wing.

Suddenly Santa emerged with 2 elves, carrying a HUGE red sack of beautifully wrapped Christmas gifts.
EVERY SINGLE PARENT AND CHILD RECEIVED A WARM HUG OR PAT AND A GIFT.

While the older children giggled and squealed at their gifts, I knew my baby would not know anything different. So I asked Santa to take ours back for someone else in need.

But he still hugged me and insisted i keep the gifts.

☆ A hand made quilt with stars and a crescent moon that smiled.
☆ A hand knit baby hat and booties.
☆ A talking puppy toy.
☆ A musical baby toy.

I wept as I held her presents and watched the nurses care for her in ways I couldn't.

And I felt so guilty receiving anything while sitting alone there with my baby.

But it was so beautiful that someone had decided to walk around doing this for the parents.

It was for us just as much as the kids. Maybe more.

I felt like we hadn't deserved anything.

I thought things like "she wasn't that sick".

"It isn't that bad". "She is taking from others".

But what I now know I felt...

I felt small.
Smaller than her.

Too small for joy or tradition.

To small for recognition or appreciation.

To small for that hug or that giddy excitement to see Santa.

I felt like a bad mom because I'd taken her out twice that week and then she was sick.

I felt bad because my family I was staying with were a REAL family with a mom + dad and their kids.

All preparing for Christmas.

All being a normal, married traditional family.

While I was a 17 year old abandoned by everyone including the partner I'd made her with.

At that time, his mother was MIA and angry about it all. His father had come to see us Christmas eve unexpectedly and with a few gifts. But realizing the baby was sick, decided to drop us and leave us at the hospital children's emergency center. My ex decided to leave us completely.

He had shown up at her birth thanks to his father after none of them were involved the entire pregnancy. After no one had helped me with anything.

The two guys, father and son, had peaked at my brand new baby and then left.

I realize now I felt completely broken.

Who was I to be able to care for this baby?

To do it all alone?

To be an adult already when I was just a kid.

I'd been an adult since the first time my mother trashed the kitchen and left to ride some guys motorcycle. I was in second grade.

In fact, when I'd gotten beaten up in kindergarten by a boy and stood up for myself ---> I think that was the first time I crossed over the child border and into something else entirely.

For 17 years I had been beaten and bullied and abandoned.

I felt it was only fitting for me to have a sick baby in the hospital on Christmas. That I deserved it.

And she didn't.

That guilt did not really leave me for years.

My mind just filed the report into a metal cabinet, marked "unfit" in the category "medical".

I filled those cabinets in that office for years.

I've heard people talk about having a mind mansion.

I have a mind office.

I've written about it before.

And I picture it so vividly, as I now visit it to retrieve old cases and documents.

All the dark shadows of my past and the harbored guilt.

Those swarming shadows are the keepers of that office.

And the reason I feel in the dark often.

I feel still this immense "not enoughness".

But I'm learning it was just the mistake of a young girl who was not taught any better.

Trauma gave me a cool, dry place to store my problems in.

But I'm ready to clean house.

To clear out all those cabinets and shelves that clutter my mind, body and soul.

I have emotional and physical pain because of my experiences.

The holidays reveal major triggers for me because I never knew how to process those bad experiences so I just tucked them away.

Micromanaged the clean sweep and put myself on autopilot.

12 years I've raised my baby girl and I still struggle with feeling worthy of her.

She is my whole world.

And now my world has expanded.

I have three beautiful babies that daily I cannot believe are mine.

That I'm so lucky I have a little family of my own now.

And I get to be Santa for them, along with my husband.

I have a HUSBAND.

And what that means to me, in the person I chose, is I have a best friend to care for this beautiful nest of babies with.

Together we get to make NEW memories.

I am reminded now that I have always done the best I could.

And I was every bit a good mom.

Because I never treated my daughter like a biological burden like my mother treated me.

I am grateful now that I can wake up Christmas morning with my kids and my partner.

Yesterday I just leaped and hugged him really tight mid conversation.

He is an anchor to the present.

When I spiral with flashbacks or get stuck in a deep emotional gust of self loathing, I quickly reach my arms out for the reminders close to me.

I hug my kids or my husband. And I instantly feel my soul + body come back into place.

My whole world, centered.

I remember that I am HERE in the NOW.

And that my memories do not define me.

The love and effort I show now DOES.

2019 has made me remember I am a survivor.

I have endured so much and still kept getting up.

Now it's time for me to Rise.

♡ J.S. Jaded Savior.

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