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Damaged - Love, loss and redemption
By DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE and NADINE WILSON all woman writers
Monday, May 05, 2008
15 years and I still can't move on!
SHE admits that the empty birdcages on her verandah; the dozens of cats that roam in and out; the perennially closed doors and the mounds and mounds of odds and ends she has collected in her house over the years may come off as a bit odd to people looking on, but she says hoarding is her vice and she can't help herself.
She says she knows she scares the children in the apartment complex, but she says she tries to be nice when she's not feeling "so bad", a feeling that she admits comes rarely - most of the time she's lost in her own world.
She says she knows that everyone knows why she's the way she is, everyone knows of her heartbreak years ago, and are wary because she hasn't got over it yet.
"But I can't forget," she says. "Every year the pain gets worse. I can't forget."
Fifteen years ago her fiancé sat her down for one of those talks - she says she was seven months pregnant with her daughter when he broke the news that he had someone else pregnant too, and that he was leaving her to live with the other woman.
"We were supposed to get married. I had the dress and everything. If I didn't have the dress it wouldn't be so bad, but I had the dress and I had told everyone. I couldn't even face my friends after that. I spent months afterwards just looking at the dress," she said.
Her fiancé moved out before her daughter was born, the child died by drowning at three.
"I wasn't even prepared emotionally for a child and I had to do everything alone. I have no family, it was just me and the baby. When she died he didn't even come to the funeral. When she died, again it was just me.
"I spent the first year of my daughter's life crying. The second year I cried about 50 per cent less. The third year when she died, I died too - my heart just died. I realised that I had no hope, no future, nothing to keep me optimistic."
Yet, she says strangely, that it's not about her daughter that she still grieves, but rather, about the love lost, and she admitted, the fact that she no longer has something to tie her to him.
"I think God took the baby for a reason. God knew I couldn't be a good mother, so she's in a better place. But I'm still in love with him. I still remember his eyes and his lips. I still remember that he told me he loved me. I would still go back to him if he asked. But he wouldn't ask, he just wouldn't."
About her extended grieving, she said: "I know people say you are supposed to get over these things and move on. But who are they to tell me that? You know how I've tried to move on? You know how I've tried? But I think some people find love once in their lives. There's nobody else for me. I'll die with his memory."
- Petulia Clarke
'Mad' love
THERE is heartbreak and then there is heartbreak - the kind that leaves persons damaged, mistrusting, obsessively jealous and sometimes even going over the edge.
In reality, good manners dictate that after being damaged, it's proper for persons to get it over it ASAP and move on with their lives.
But how they actually 'get on' with their lives is another matter.
Hilda tells of her daughter's experience, what she describes as 'man mad her'. Despite the fact that her daughter passed away three years ago, Hilda still recalls the incidents that led to her daughter's demise.
She says that when her daughter, Deloris, left high school many years ago, she was full of hope and life. However, she did not get a job as expected and the money was just not available for college.
"She started doing odd jobs with the hope of saving enough money to go back to school," her mother said. "But she met a man in the store that she was working in at the time and I guess she fell in love. After a while he moved in with her - right here so!" she said of her two-room St Catherine home. "Then after that she got pregnant for him. Then I don't know what changed but something changed and she start sit up at nights rocking back and forth and talking to herself. When you try talk to her she just keep calling the man name. But I never know what was wrong at all because sometimes him used to stay in town so I never know that is someone else him have. Is when she start talk to herself mi hear she seh it."
Hilda said her daughter and the man had made plans for the future as he had even invested his money in adding an unfinished room on the house.
"I tink she believed they would be together forever. From what I could see, he was the first man for her so she mek it get to her head. All the doctor I carry her to neva help. Sometimes she alright but within a few weeks she was off her head again. People used to tell mi fi go check her out but I know is the man she put on her head," Hilda said.
She said after the child was born, the man disappeared completely. Deloris and her mother were left to care for the child alone. And with her instability, she was unable to leave home for work.
"Then when she see her friends progressing and getting married I think that made things even worse," her mother said. "She was admitted in the Bellevue hospital for some months and then released."
But until she died at the age of 35, Deloris never recovered and many still hold the view that 'a man mad her'.
Spanish Town residents may also be familiar with the story of the young lady seen in the town who is rumoured to have been left at the altar and now goes around asking women whether or not they are married and if they are happy. She is constantly seen walking the streets looking very happy and talking to herself. When asked, she herself recounts the story.
"Mental illness is not caused by any one factor," Noel Julius, acting deputy director of nursing services at the Bellevue Hospital said. "There are a number of predisposing factors that lead to it, so to say that persons get ill because of a relationship gone bad would not be true," he said. "What you do have are factors that contribute or triggers it off. The main contributing factor being stress."
This, he explained, could be due to the person's inability to deal with pressures from the relationship.
"Different persons deal with things differently and a broken relationship would cause stress," Julius said. So while some person's genetic make-up, body type and personality enables them to deal with the stress of the situation - others may not. Stress therefore could trigger off mental illness in an individual if the person has any of these three disposing factors.
Julius explained that the genes inherited from parents are largely responsible for how the body - and even the mind - behaves and also determines how one deals with emotional stress, anger, or depression.
He said if a person's body type is of an asthenic built (tall, slender, long limb), he/she is highly predisposed to schizophrenia; while if children develop a negative personality as a result of (for example) lack of socialisation, but instead are left alone, they would be more prone to suffer mental illness if presented with a causative factor - the causative factors being stress, drug use and organic causes.
Unpacking the baggage
A failed relationship is something that most of us have to deal with throughout the course of our life. While some persons are able to overcome the break-up and move on, others are much more inclined to feel a sense of loss which affects their ability to move on, or in some cases function normally in relationships that follow. This lessens their chances of living a fulfilled life.
Emotional baggage is often referred to as those negative feelings we incur as a result of things like relationships that end badly. This baggage includes, but is not limited to our inability to trust, fear of moving on, becoming jealous and obsessive, and feeling a sense of worthlessness that affects our self-esteem.
Clinical pyschologist Dr Rose Johnson from the Institute of Psychological Development, says that losing a relationship one has invested a lot of time in can be devastating, especially in cases where the individual was not prepared. The pain and the trauma endured during this period is similar to those experienced with any other loss such as losing a relative to death. It means that it is an end to the hope and the dreams for the future with that person.
"The responses and the reactions are typical to grief and loss. So you are going to be very sad, sometimes people feel belittled or pain in their heart, that's the reason they call it heartache. There is a lot of crying, sadness, depending on the person and their strength. People might not want to eat, or they might overeat. The responses are varied, but what would happen is that the reaction would be different from what would be normal for the person," she says.
Men too?
PSYCHOLOGIST Dr Leachim Semaj believes that while men do suffer a sense of loss when relationships end, the "consequences of a broken relationship is inevitably more traumatic in all the various ways on the women".
This he says is attributable to the fact that women are believed to have a shelf life. Thus they have a particular time frame to get pregnant.
So for women he says, it might be harder to cope knowing that "you have given the man the best years of your life, now you find that you are 25 or 26 and you were living a lie, he wasn't who he said he was, so now you have to think about starting all over again."
But says Allen, a "bruised abd battered" Kingston resident, because men hide emotions so well, it's hard to know that they hurt inside and carry feelings maybe even longer than women.
"I know that after my seven-year relationship ended - she cheated - I promised myself that I would never love another woman again," Allen said.
"Women call me jealous now but I don't care. I would never give a woman the opportunity to hurt me again. So yes, I'll ask where she's going and how long she's staying. I have friends who follow their women around. I'm not that bad. But that's what breaking up does to you, it causes you to lose half your heart and 90 per cent of your trust."
'Like yuh wutliss puppa'
WHILE many persons are able to maintain a level head while dealing with their loss. Dr Johnson believes that not all persons are mature enough to do so, and as a result this can lead to among other things, the abuse of children who were involved in the relationship.
"I broke up with my baby's father before my son was born, he was with another woman in the last months of my pregnancy," Nadine tells all woman.
"My parents helped, but it was hard. I would find myself aching because my son missed out on so much. I would find myself hating him sometimes because he looked like his father, and when I couldn't afford diapers and had to spend all my money on my child, I would curse.
It wasn't until someone asked me why I was taking my frustration out on the poor child that I realised how bad I was. Now I try to calm down and not get angry at him, but I still think occasionally, why I had to have a child with one of the most worthless men in Kingston!"
Said Dr Johnson: "Some women are still able to deal with life and separate themselves from the hurt while they are with their children... unfortunately not all persons are mature enough to do so and become so absorbed in the hurt, so much so that it affects others around them," she says.
Dr Semaj believes that this is the reason for children having serious problems in schools, however, he says that sometimes the hurting parent "is not aware that they are treating the child this way".
Switching sides
PART of what is so frustrating about recovering from a damaged relationship is that most people know that they are damaged but feel there is no way out, because the hostility and mistrust is so deep, that repairing it to the point where peace can be achieved is a very difficult struggle.
For this reason some women decide to avoid heterosexual unions in exchange for same-sex ones as they feel they have been forced into total resentment of the opposite sex - mainly due to abuse and lack of love.
And while many women would resent the thought and feel there is nothing a man could do to force them into such a lifestyle, others are singing praises for switching sides.
In some cases, women like Kellie and Michelle have even sworn never to get involved with another man ever again! This as a result of relationships that left them so torn, that they felt it was impossible to be repaired. Instead, they both declared that they would be better understood and treated with respect by female companions.
"He was very abusive and he was cheating," Montego Bay resident Kellie said. "He would abuse me verbally and physically. This relationship opened my eyes to another level. I will never get involved with another man again, maybe in the afterlife, but not in this lifetime. I can only tolerate men on a social basis."
That was six years ago. Today, Kellie is an unrepentant lesbian.
"I lived with him for five years and had a child for him. But he was very abusive and he was cheating," Kellie told all woman. "He would abuse me verbally and physically."
And she said it wasn't the everyday one slap but rather it was so severe that she felt her only way out was to kill herself.
"I thought the abuse was my fault," she said. "When I was at work he would accuse me of cheating. Yet, he would leave home and not show up until the following day," she said.
She remembers one day coming home from shopping. Despite the visible evidence of the shopping bags, he still felt she was out cheating, he knocked her to the ground. She tried, like so many times before to fight back. But he was stronger than she was.
The only thing she could do was try to get away. She ran out of the house and kept on running, oblivious of her surroundings. She recalls running to her mother's house - three and a half miles away!
But that didn't end her troubles. In her anxiety to get away she had left behind her five-year-old daughter and all her earthly belongings. But she was determined never to go back. And as fate would have it, after learning of her whereabouts, he brought the child to her mother's house.
Kellie soon found comfort in the arms of another woman and knew that from thence she would never subject herself to the damage handed out to her from a relationship with a man.
Forty-four-year-old Michelle, who resides in Kingston, has been married since 1992. She has three kids, two of whom are girls. Unlike Kellie, she did not suffer physical abuse. Her marriage simply died.
"My marriage was both good and bad, but the last five years it just began a steady downhill path," she said.
They soon realised the relationship was over and felt there was just nothing that they could do. There was no more love. They separated. Since her marriage of so many years did not work out, Michelle gave up on men.
"Men just want to do their own thing. So the separation does not affect me in any way," she said.
And though she confessed that she does not blame her present lifestyle on a damaged relationship, she too found happiness in the arms of another woman.
She noted that being married did not give her the freedom she wanted to explore and to be happy. This she is able to do with other women.
And she was adamant that she would never get involved with another man again!
"Not even in my dreams!" she said.
The heaviest baggage
Another physiological spin-off that many persons have as a result of a broken relationship is to over-generalise. As such they feel that the other individual who comes into their life would be like the person who had hurt them. This is probably one of the weightiest pieces of baggage that is taken into a relationship and can create an atmosphere of distrust.
While dealing with break-ups can be difficult, it is important that the individual drop the baggage that can hinder them from living a fulfilled life or forces them to become aggressive to others around them - others like children.
As was pointed out by Dr Semaj: "Not every relationship was meant to last forever. It is said that people come into your life for a reason. It is rare, the person comes into your life forever."
[img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70394-bawlout.gif[/img] wow dis sad~~ [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70394-bawlout.gif[/img]
By DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE and NADINE WILSON all woman writers
Monday, May 05, 2008
15 years and I still can't move on!
SHE admits that the empty birdcages on her verandah; the dozens of cats that roam in and out; the perennially closed doors and the mounds and mounds of odds and ends she has collected in her house over the years may come off as a bit odd to people looking on, but she says hoarding is her vice and she can't help herself.
She says she knows she scares the children in the apartment complex, but she says she tries to be nice when she's not feeling "so bad", a feeling that she admits comes rarely - most of the time she's lost in her own world.
She says she knows that everyone knows why she's the way she is, everyone knows of her heartbreak years ago, and are wary because she hasn't got over it yet.
"But I can't forget," she says. "Every year the pain gets worse. I can't forget."
Fifteen years ago her fiancé sat her down for one of those talks - she says she was seven months pregnant with her daughter when he broke the news that he had someone else pregnant too, and that he was leaving her to live with the other woman.
"We were supposed to get married. I had the dress and everything. If I didn't have the dress it wouldn't be so bad, but I had the dress and I had told everyone. I couldn't even face my friends after that. I spent months afterwards just looking at the dress," she said.
Her fiancé moved out before her daughter was born, the child died by drowning at three.
"I wasn't even prepared emotionally for a child and I had to do everything alone. I have no family, it was just me and the baby. When she died he didn't even come to the funeral. When she died, again it was just me.
"I spent the first year of my daughter's life crying. The second year I cried about 50 per cent less. The third year when she died, I died too - my heart just died. I realised that I had no hope, no future, nothing to keep me optimistic."
Yet, she says strangely, that it's not about her daughter that she still grieves, but rather, about the love lost, and she admitted, the fact that she no longer has something to tie her to him.
"I think God took the baby for a reason. God knew I couldn't be a good mother, so she's in a better place. But I'm still in love with him. I still remember his eyes and his lips. I still remember that he told me he loved me. I would still go back to him if he asked. But he wouldn't ask, he just wouldn't."
About her extended grieving, she said: "I know people say you are supposed to get over these things and move on. But who are they to tell me that? You know how I've tried to move on? You know how I've tried? But I think some people find love once in their lives. There's nobody else for me. I'll die with his memory."
- Petulia Clarke
'Mad' love
THERE is heartbreak and then there is heartbreak - the kind that leaves persons damaged, mistrusting, obsessively jealous and sometimes even going over the edge.
In reality, good manners dictate that after being damaged, it's proper for persons to get it over it ASAP and move on with their lives.
But how they actually 'get on' with their lives is another matter.
Hilda tells of her daughter's experience, what she describes as 'man mad her'. Despite the fact that her daughter passed away three years ago, Hilda still recalls the incidents that led to her daughter's demise.
She says that when her daughter, Deloris, left high school many years ago, she was full of hope and life. However, she did not get a job as expected and the money was just not available for college.
"She started doing odd jobs with the hope of saving enough money to go back to school," her mother said. "But she met a man in the store that she was working in at the time and I guess she fell in love. After a while he moved in with her - right here so!" she said of her two-room St Catherine home. "Then after that she got pregnant for him. Then I don't know what changed but something changed and she start sit up at nights rocking back and forth and talking to herself. When you try talk to her she just keep calling the man name. But I never know what was wrong at all because sometimes him used to stay in town so I never know that is someone else him have. Is when she start talk to herself mi hear she seh it."
Hilda said her daughter and the man had made plans for the future as he had even invested his money in adding an unfinished room on the house.
"I tink she believed they would be together forever. From what I could see, he was the first man for her so she mek it get to her head. All the doctor I carry her to neva help. Sometimes she alright but within a few weeks she was off her head again. People used to tell mi fi go check her out but I know is the man she put on her head," Hilda said.
She said after the child was born, the man disappeared completely. Deloris and her mother were left to care for the child alone. And with her instability, she was unable to leave home for work.
"Then when she see her friends progressing and getting married I think that made things even worse," her mother said. "She was admitted in the Bellevue hospital for some months and then released."
But until she died at the age of 35, Deloris never recovered and many still hold the view that 'a man mad her'.
Spanish Town residents may also be familiar with the story of the young lady seen in the town who is rumoured to have been left at the altar and now goes around asking women whether or not they are married and if they are happy. She is constantly seen walking the streets looking very happy and talking to herself. When asked, she herself recounts the story.
"Mental illness is not caused by any one factor," Noel Julius, acting deputy director of nursing services at the Bellevue Hospital said. "There are a number of predisposing factors that lead to it, so to say that persons get ill because of a relationship gone bad would not be true," he said. "What you do have are factors that contribute or triggers it off. The main contributing factor being stress."
This, he explained, could be due to the person's inability to deal with pressures from the relationship.
"Different persons deal with things differently and a broken relationship would cause stress," Julius said. So while some person's genetic make-up, body type and personality enables them to deal with the stress of the situation - others may not. Stress therefore could trigger off mental illness in an individual if the person has any of these three disposing factors.
Julius explained that the genes inherited from parents are largely responsible for how the body - and even the mind - behaves and also determines how one deals with emotional stress, anger, or depression.
He said if a person's body type is of an asthenic built (tall, slender, long limb), he/she is highly predisposed to schizophrenia; while if children develop a negative personality as a result of (for example) lack of socialisation, but instead are left alone, they would be more prone to suffer mental illness if presented with a causative factor - the causative factors being stress, drug use and organic causes.
Unpacking the baggage
A failed relationship is something that most of us have to deal with throughout the course of our life. While some persons are able to overcome the break-up and move on, others are much more inclined to feel a sense of loss which affects their ability to move on, or in some cases function normally in relationships that follow. This lessens their chances of living a fulfilled life.
Emotional baggage is often referred to as those negative feelings we incur as a result of things like relationships that end badly. This baggage includes, but is not limited to our inability to trust, fear of moving on, becoming jealous and obsessive, and feeling a sense of worthlessness that affects our self-esteem.
Clinical pyschologist Dr Rose Johnson from the Institute of Psychological Development, says that losing a relationship one has invested a lot of time in can be devastating, especially in cases where the individual was not prepared. The pain and the trauma endured during this period is similar to those experienced with any other loss such as losing a relative to death. It means that it is an end to the hope and the dreams for the future with that person.
"The responses and the reactions are typical to grief and loss. So you are going to be very sad, sometimes people feel belittled or pain in their heart, that's the reason they call it heartache. There is a lot of crying, sadness, depending on the person and their strength. People might not want to eat, or they might overeat. The responses are varied, but what would happen is that the reaction would be different from what would be normal for the person," she says.
Men too?
PSYCHOLOGIST Dr Leachim Semaj believes that while men do suffer a sense of loss when relationships end, the "consequences of a broken relationship is inevitably more traumatic in all the various ways on the women".
This he says is attributable to the fact that women are believed to have a shelf life. Thus they have a particular time frame to get pregnant.
So for women he says, it might be harder to cope knowing that "you have given the man the best years of your life, now you find that you are 25 or 26 and you were living a lie, he wasn't who he said he was, so now you have to think about starting all over again."
But says Allen, a "bruised abd battered" Kingston resident, because men hide emotions so well, it's hard to know that they hurt inside and carry feelings maybe even longer than women.
"I know that after my seven-year relationship ended - she cheated - I promised myself that I would never love another woman again," Allen said.
"Women call me jealous now but I don't care. I would never give a woman the opportunity to hurt me again. So yes, I'll ask where she's going and how long she's staying. I have friends who follow their women around. I'm not that bad. But that's what breaking up does to you, it causes you to lose half your heart and 90 per cent of your trust."
'Like yuh wutliss puppa'
WHILE many persons are able to maintain a level head while dealing with their loss. Dr Johnson believes that not all persons are mature enough to do so, and as a result this can lead to among other things, the abuse of children who were involved in the relationship.
"I broke up with my baby's father before my son was born, he was with another woman in the last months of my pregnancy," Nadine tells all woman.
"My parents helped, but it was hard. I would find myself aching because my son missed out on so much. I would find myself hating him sometimes because he looked like his father, and when I couldn't afford diapers and had to spend all my money on my child, I would curse.
It wasn't until someone asked me why I was taking my frustration out on the poor child that I realised how bad I was. Now I try to calm down and not get angry at him, but I still think occasionally, why I had to have a child with one of the most worthless men in Kingston!"
Said Dr Johnson: "Some women are still able to deal with life and separate themselves from the hurt while they are with their children... unfortunately not all persons are mature enough to do so and become so absorbed in the hurt, so much so that it affects others around them," she says.
Dr Semaj believes that this is the reason for children having serious problems in schools, however, he says that sometimes the hurting parent "is not aware that they are treating the child this way".
Switching sides
PART of what is so frustrating about recovering from a damaged relationship is that most people know that they are damaged but feel there is no way out, because the hostility and mistrust is so deep, that repairing it to the point where peace can be achieved is a very difficult struggle.
For this reason some women decide to avoid heterosexual unions in exchange for same-sex ones as they feel they have been forced into total resentment of the opposite sex - mainly due to abuse and lack of love.
And while many women would resent the thought and feel there is nothing a man could do to force them into such a lifestyle, others are singing praises for switching sides.
In some cases, women like Kellie and Michelle have even sworn never to get involved with another man ever again! This as a result of relationships that left them so torn, that they felt it was impossible to be repaired. Instead, they both declared that they would be better understood and treated with respect by female companions.
"He was very abusive and he was cheating," Montego Bay resident Kellie said. "He would abuse me verbally and physically. This relationship opened my eyes to another level. I will never get involved with another man again, maybe in the afterlife, but not in this lifetime. I can only tolerate men on a social basis."
That was six years ago. Today, Kellie is an unrepentant lesbian.
"I lived with him for five years and had a child for him. But he was very abusive and he was cheating," Kellie told all woman. "He would abuse me verbally and physically."
And she said it wasn't the everyday one slap but rather it was so severe that she felt her only way out was to kill herself.
"I thought the abuse was my fault," she said. "When I was at work he would accuse me of cheating. Yet, he would leave home and not show up until the following day," she said.
She remembers one day coming home from shopping. Despite the visible evidence of the shopping bags, he still felt she was out cheating, he knocked her to the ground. She tried, like so many times before to fight back. But he was stronger than she was.
The only thing she could do was try to get away. She ran out of the house and kept on running, oblivious of her surroundings. She recalls running to her mother's house - three and a half miles away!
But that didn't end her troubles. In her anxiety to get away she had left behind her five-year-old daughter and all her earthly belongings. But she was determined never to go back. And as fate would have it, after learning of her whereabouts, he brought the child to her mother's house.
Kellie soon found comfort in the arms of another woman and knew that from thence she would never subject herself to the damage handed out to her from a relationship with a man.
Forty-four-year-old Michelle, who resides in Kingston, has been married since 1992. She has three kids, two of whom are girls. Unlike Kellie, she did not suffer physical abuse. Her marriage simply died.
"My marriage was both good and bad, but the last five years it just began a steady downhill path," she said.
They soon realised the relationship was over and felt there was just nothing that they could do. There was no more love. They separated. Since her marriage of so many years did not work out, Michelle gave up on men.
"Men just want to do their own thing. So the separation does not affect me in any way," she said.
And though she confessed that she does not blame her present lifestyle on a damaged relationship, she too found happiness in the arms of another woman.
She noted that being married did not give her the freedom she wanted to explore and to be happy. This she is able to do with other women.
And she was adamant that she would never get involved with another man again!
"Not even in my dreams!" she said.
The heaviest baggage
Another physiological spin-off that many persons have as a result of a broken relationship is to over-generalise. As such they feel that the other individual who comes into their life would be like the person who had hurt them. This is probably one of the weightiest pieces of baggage that is taken into a relationship and can create an atmosphere of distrust.
While dealing with break-ups can be difficult, it is important that the individual drop the baggage that can hinder them from living a fulfilled life or forces them to become aggressive to others around them - others like children.
As was pointed out by Dr Semaj: "Not every relationship was meant to last forever. It is said that people come into your life for a reason. It is rare, the person comes into your life forever."
[img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70394-bawlout.gif[/img] wow dis sad~~ [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70394-bawlout.gif[/img]
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