Chapter Five

Anyway, where were we?

Oh yeah, my craziness. My nervous breakdown.

When you are raised in a traditional southern family in the sixties, you know your place in the animal kingdom. Men are king, women and children are invisible. As a female child, you have no voice and if you express an opinion, you are being disrespectful. The father makes all of the decisions and the rest of the family follows silently. A sixteen year old girl raised this way, never wakes up on the morning of her birthday and suddenly has the self-esteem needed to express herself freely. She has given all of her power away her entire life. Usually, she is lost.

I looked to my father and obeyed his rules until suddenly the king decided to take his paper family of a wife and three daughters and crumble them in his hand and throw them in the trash.

I had to take care of myself and I didn't trust that my mother was capable of caring for herself, much less me and my two sisters. I saw that my mother and sisters were incapacitated so I took over. When my father came back six months later and became the king again after his girlfriend left him, I was more than bewildered with him and everyone else in my family for letting him back so easily and pretending that nothing was wrong. Everything was as it used to be. He took up his patriarch role and everyone else followed mindlessly behind him. When I verbalized my objections, I got absolutely no validation for my reality. After several months of living in this minute by minute, day by day, unrealistic reality, I lost my mind. I could not play the game anymore.


I found out years later exactly what happened to me.

Dr. L.A. psychologist said it was simple. I was gas lit.

"Gas lit?" I asked.

"Yes, you were like Paul Revere, riding your white horse and waving your flag and warning everyone 'the British are coming, the British are coming!', and no one wanted to listen to you. They resented you coming and yelling and screaming and ruining their happiness. There is a movie Gas Light and it is about a man who drives his wife crazy by never confirming her reality. They would read at night and he would lower the gas light and she would comment about her difficulty reading and her husband would ask her what she was talking about. He would pretend to be able to read while he kept lowering the flame of the gas light. He finally succeeded in driving her crazy. Your family never acknowledged the reality of what was really going on and you refused to pretend with them so you went crazy. You started to question your own reality. You began to think that what you were seeing and feeling was unreal so you were never able to trust that what you saw and felt was really the honest version of reality." Dr. L.A. watched me intently as he spoke.

I had an explanation for my craziness. Dr. L.A. validated me. For the first time ever in my life, I was validated. I learned that everything I felt and thought was correct for me. I gradually learned to trust my reality more.


So, that is why Savannah in the "Prince Of Tides" had a nervous breakdown. She went crazy because she was raped and everyone in her family wanted to pretend it never happened and Savannah could not ignore her pain, her reality. Savannah wasn't strong enough to leave her family so she went into her own little world. It was her family that drove her to a mental institution, it was not the rapist. She could have survived the rapist. She could not survive pretending that none of it happened.



That is why I love my husband so much. My house, my home, our home is never gas lit. Our home is real and honest and true. I never look around this place and question my own reality. If I ever have a moment of doubt of what is true and honest, real and right, I ask my husband and he validates me. When I think something or someone is weird, my husband is right there with me, and he will even tell me how they are more odd than I ever imagined. My amazing husband gives me what no man ever has, he gives me the gift of security and sanity.


So, it could have been worse. I could have been molested. I could have been raped. I was only the victim of an adulterous father who abandoned his wife and three daughters for his new lover.

I decided not to let that fuck me up forever.

Everyone has their shit. Everyone has their baggage. Most people keep it a secret.



Carolina CocaCola



Ingredients: Bottled CocaCola
1 small package of salted peanuts


Pour entire contents of peanuts into CocaCola bottle. Drink CocaCola. Last taste is the best.