Jean's Story

I was born on June 6, 1953, in Quincy Massachusetts. I have a brother Paul and two sisters, Clare (deceased) and Nancy. We lived with my Father’s mother for my first year.

They say we don’t have memories at that young age, but I have a clear picture of me standing in my crib and my father’s belt buckle right in front of my eyes.

We moved to Scituate in my second year. I don’t remember much but I do remember my grandmother dying when I was four years old.

Mama loved music, reading and writing. She was the class valedictorian in her senior year of high school. She loved going to plays and writing. She wrote book reviews for the local newspaper, enjoyed coffee with her friends and loved listening to her music. Mama was very happy then.

Dad loved making things. He was artistic. He made a breakfast nook for the kitchen and a wooden Santa, reindeer and sleigh for the front yard. He also made his own ornaments among other things. He smashed many of them in a fit of rage. Such talented hands yet so violent.

Dad started abusing mama when I was very young. That was the beginning of what my brother Paul referred to as living in that hell hole, and that was exactly how it felt.

Dad was a maintenance drinker at that time. He would go to work every day and then stop off at the bar on the way home. He was a mean drinker.

Mama was pretty much of an around the clock drinker. I don’t remember her being sober very often.

Dad started to abuse her physically and emotionally. Mama would be

listening to her music that she loved, and He would come home and

smash her stereo. The next morning Mama had my sisters shatter all her records. That left them with horrible and emotional scars that had quite an imprint on them.

Dad didn’t like mama going to coffee with her friends and he wouldn’t let her have coffee at home. So, she hid her coffee pot and would have some when he wasn’t home.

Christmas there was always a truce. They would make things wonderful for two days. We all got presents and it was a happy time. I still love Christmas.

I was beginning to show emotional problems. I would shake my head. I guess I was screaming NO to all this stuff going on in my life.

We would come home, and find Mama laying on the couch. She had urinated on it and was dead drunk and passed out. This happened quite often.

One time Clare had come home and found that dad had beaten and raped mama. She was bruised from her head to her feet.

We went to school every day, even when we were up half the night from hearing all the fighting and violence. It affected my grades and school.

What happened at night was never talked about. It was the elephant in the living room. We all walked around it like it wasn’t there. I was in my twenties when I was finally able to talk about some of my life in that hell hole.

I did have fun playing outside with the neighborhood kids. We played softball, and kickball and rode our bikes. I remember one day when I was seven years old, it was starting to get dark, so I rode my bike home, but the house was dark. I was scared, so I rode my bike down the street to Mama’s friend’s house. She was there and they were all drinking. They sent me upstairs to lay down.

We went to the beach a lot since we lived less than a mile from it. I loved being at the beach and loved swimming and that would make for a nice day. I still love to swim. Mama went with us one day and fell asleep on the sand and we could not wake her up. She had passed out from drinking and we had a difficult time waking her up. Once awake and still under the influence of alcohol she still drove her car and it was after 5:30 by the time we got her home.

When I was five or six years old, I remember my Aunt’s boyfriend Uncle Wally. He brought me two pretty dresses and was always nice to me and I really liked him. I recently found out that he had molested my cousins and might have molested and abused me. I don’t have a lot of memories about being sexually abused but in my heart, I think I was and every psychologist I have seen have stated I am a classic case of sexual abuse.

When the violence went on inside the house, we would wait outside sometimes with just our underwear on or in a freezing car until it quieted down inside the house or waiting for the police to arrive.

Everything would have calmed down by the time the police arrived, and they said everything is going to be ok, but we knew better.

One night when I was nine years old everything came to ahead. My mother was up in her bedroom drunk. She kept calling dad asking him for beer. He got so mad he went upstairs with a pair of scissors intending to kill her. My sister Clare followed him upstairs with a knife and stabbed him in the back.

The next thing I remember is mama, Nancy and I on the couch. As I remember it Dad fell down the stairs and mama putting towels on his back to stop the bleeding. I couldn’t understand why she did that knowing that he was going to kill her.

I don’t remember any blood. I must have blocked it out from my memory.

The police came and took him to the hospital. He almost died but they brought him back to life. He was in the hospital for eleven weeks. It was never talked about. Once again, the Elephant in the room.

Their marriage was over Thank God.

Mama, Nancy and I moved to my Aunt Gen’s house. Clare lived with my Aunt Dotty and Paul stayed at home with dad. Gen didn’t like us or want us there and she was quite mean. Mama was still drinking and would leave for days on a drinking binge. I remember one day mama taking us to the movies. She dropped us off and than headed to a bar. The movie was “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”. It was a psychological horror movie about the psychical and mental abuse one sister Jayne did to her sister Blanche. In one scene Jayne served her sister Blanche a dead bird for supper. This movie scared me so much. I was only nine years old when I saw this. Gen finally said if we didn’t call our dad, she would put us out on the porch and call the police. He came and took us home to live with him.

Mama was gone out of my life at that point. I didn’t see her for a year. I think she was in a New Jersey hospital after being in a bad car accident.

She was hurt badly and couldn’t walk for quite some time. She was then transferred to Metropolitan State Hospital where she stayed there for nine years. She then went to Oceanside Nursing home in Quincy for nine years.

Mama was hospitalized when she was only 40 and spent her last 18 years in hospitals. Between alcohol abuse and my dad’s abuse and violence towards her she was ruined and beaten down to nothing That was the end of what I call my first life.

Life two began when Nancy and I moved with dad and my brother Paul in Quincy. Clare was still living with my Aunt Dotty. He wasn’t married at that time and we had a pretty good life for a whole summer. Then along came my dad’s new wife, Stepmother Polly. She was a cruel mean person and treated us terribly and she also drank too much. After they were married, we all were living with them. Clare had moved back home, but soon she moved back out. They were both being mean to Clare. Dad didn’t like Clare. She would talk back to him and stand up for herself and dad didn’t like that one bit. They both emotionally abused us and were so mean and uncaring.

Our first Christmas with Polly was different than what we were use too and all our traditions had changed. She decorated the house with all her decorations and the Christmas tree filled with only her ornaments. All our Christmas decorations and ornaments were gone.

Polly’s family came over on Christmas Eve for dinner and they would open all their gifts. We continued our tradition of opening our presents on Christmas morning.  On Christmas day we went to Polly’s sisters for dinner. It felt like our Christmas was smushed out and no longer in existence. I don’t remember seeing mama much and know I didn’t see her often during my teenage years.

Dad and Polly built a house in Scituate and did a nice job on the first floor.

Paul, Nancy and I slept upstairs which was never finished. The floors were plywood, the bathroom was never built and there were never any window frames. One night a bat flew in and it was very scary.

I was petrified of ripped sheets. My first memory of this was in my early teens. I would see a rip in my sheets and asked dad if he would buy me new sheets and the answer was no. Nancy told me to rip the sheet /tear down the middle and that worked, and I finally got new sheets. This fear still haunts me today and I can’t handle anything thing with a rip in it. I find rips grotesque and fearful. I believe it comes from either my dad ripping mama’s clothes or sexual abuse. I can’t really remember.

I met some friends and had a lot of fun playing in the neighborhood. We went to the movies, the beach, ice skating and we would sleep outside in tents. We had great times and it was a nice reprieve from my problems. It was in my teens when I started to notice boys. A few of them liked me, but I was so scared and shy I couldn’t even talk to them. I didn’t learn about sex until I was fifteen. My sister Nancy told me about it, but if I was abused as a child sex seemed to have been blocked out of my mind. I have always had problems with intimacy.

Dad and Polly were always abusive in other ways. It was mostly Polly at this point. Dad just watched it happen and never did anything to defend us.

She would buy snacks and make us eat them even if they went stale. We would throw them over the stonewall and just go without them for several days. I never liked vegetables. I couldn’t hold some of them down. One night, Polly made an all-vegetable meal and made me sit at the table until I finished them all. I don’t think I finished them. I just couldn’t.

They never purchased a washing machine. So, dad, Nancy and I would go to the laundromat every Saturday morning at 7: AM.  There was no television and no reason for it. Another example once again of her wanting to hurt us. Even dad didn’t like that but never did anything about it.

We hardly ever had friends come to our house. It wasn’t a fun place to be.

One day I did have a friend over, and we were outside playing in the backyard. Polly was outside as well in a house dress gardening and she pulled up her dress and we could see her underwear. I was so embarrassed and humiliated. Another time I was at a friend’s house and didn’t want to come home, so Polly came and tried to drag me out of there.

The police were called.  My parish priest came and took me to his friend’s house, and I stayed the night. They were so nice and caring to me. I so appreciated that. But I still had to go home the next day.

I got teased and bullied on and off in my life, but my sophomore year was the worst. Two girls were bullying me for quite awhile and I finally broke down and the principal put an end to it. My dad and Polly wouldn’t help

That was an awful time for me. If you think bullying doesn’t hurt or effect someone IT DOES PLEASE STOP IT.

My life was falling apart. I tried to commit suicide twice. I was desperate for help. I was not trying to die but desperately seeking help.   I was going to church most of my life and mama taught me to have a faith in God. I met a priest who was trying to help me out. I finally fell apart and this priest found a psychiatrist for me. I ended up at a psychiatric hospital when I was sixteen years old, but it got me away from dad and Polly. I received a lot of therapy and was there for eleven weeks. That was the start of quite a few hospitalizations through the years.

My third and present life. I graduated high school and went to live on my own. It was such a novelty to go to bed with no fighting, yelling or violence.

I went to work in Boston. I had some good friends and had a lot of fun.

I was never going to drink because I wasn’t going to end up like my parents. Then one day a friend offered me a beer and I never felt better in my life. I did a lot of partying in my twenties, and I felt free. Drinking blocked out all the horror-filled days of my childhood. I dated a little bit, then met John.

I married John when I was twenty-three years old. He is a wonderful person and I love him. He has helped me so much. He is a good man. His family accepted me right into their home. It was a family that I never had. John and I had a lot of fun times together. We went out to dinner, dancing, movies and vacations. He was fun and we socialized with our friends and enjoyed good times.

We always went to church with John’s parents. I am glad we did that because it enriched my faith in God. John’s mom liked to go shopping and we would go together. I was never able to do that with my own mom.  We enjoyed dinner at their home and always a nice time, His Mom was a great cook and his parents were gracious hosts. We also enjoyed our cocktails before, during and after dinner.

I crocheted a lot and made scarfs and blankets. I really enjoyed doing that.

I took ceramic classes and made beautiful things for Christmas, Easter and other occasions. My life at that point was well maintained. I went to work every day and made dinners at night. I kept my house clean and life was good on the outside. But my depression was getting worse on the inside. I was also carrying around a lot of guilt most of my life. I was petrified of intimacy. This has been hard, and I wish it had been different.

John and I would visit my mama at the Oceanside Nursing home in Quincy.

She was a broken-down woman and it was painful and sad to see her living her life like this. She died there when she was only 58 years old. We buried her on Christmas Eve. We were heartbroken.

When I was twenty-nine, I had a baby girl. She was so beautiful as she still is today. She was such a pleasant little girl and I love her with all my heart.

I did a pretty good job of bringing her up, considering from where I came from. When she was a baby, I had a terrible fear of taking her for walks in the neighborhood. I would force myself to do it and I felt good that I had done it but the next time the same fear would come back just as bad. I went to the mall with her to take her for walks because I didn’t know anyone there. They couldn’t hurt me, and I wasn’t fearful of them.  I was so afraid of people I knew. I would never help or volunteer with her school class or projects, school fairs etc. because I was too afraid.

I got sober at thirty-two years old when my daughter was a little over two. I was getting more and more depressed and my therapist said he wouldn’t see me anymore if I didn’t stop drinking. So, I stopped drinking and went to AA, and remained sober.

My daughter and I were best friends growing up. We did a lot of fun things together and she always had a good and safe home. She had many friends come over our house to play. When she became a teenager, her school was a fun time and she didn’t suffer from bullying. She played sports and enjoyed her teen years.  I remember her going to proms and she looked so beautiful. When she graduated, she went off to college. She met her husband and fell in love and got married. They have a beautiful daughter of their own. I love them all with all my heart.  I was so grateful that I could be sober for her.

But I was still fighting depression and my life fell apart.  I was involved in about nine car accidents and I don’t drive anymore, I gradually stopped cooking dinners and it is harder than ever now to cook. Dad threw supper at the wall when he was angry and that is all part of the baggage, I carry with me. I have been in three or four psychiatric hospitals in my adult life and have been in therapy forever.

John drives me everywhere. I really appreciate my family. I love them with all my heart. I have a wonderful daughter and son-in-law and the most precious granddaughter. We have a nice time together and they have helped me so much.

I started back to church twelve years ago. I love it and I am so grateful to my parish priest. He is an amazing priest and has helped me out so much with my spiritually and total belief and trust in God. Jesus works through him to give me a wonderful spiritually. He has told me that Jesus truly loves me, and I know it's true. I have prayed that my golden years would be good, and it is happening. I have gotten so much help and support from so many people. My current therapist says I am mentally ill. I didn’t think I was but now realize I am. I still have issues with ripped sheets and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suffer from anxiety attacks and depression. My therapist recommended I go to Neponset River house a Partner of Riverside Care. They help people in the community dealing with mental illness to get back in the workforce and

how to deal with everyday life. They also do many social and fun things as well, (movies, restaurants, field trips, etc.).

The first day I came to Neponset River House I felt at home. AA got me sober and I am grateful for that, but I never truly felt better and never felt like a part of it. I walked into the door of NRH and I felt a part of it. We have a bond here and other members and the staff are great. They help us all so very much.

I wrote my life story in hope of helping others who suffered like me with depression, obsessions, anxiety, fear, bullying and addiction. To quote from American author Robert Fulghum “Without realizing it we fill important places in each other’s lives. You may never have proof of your importance, but you are more important than you think. There are always those who couldn’t do without you. The rub is that you don’t always know who”.

I am on the road to recovery and It has been sixty-six years and I am grateful to Jesus for being here with me the whole way. I love and trust him.

I also thank my family and friends for their kindness and caring throughout.

God Bless us all