Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - Finding My Voice

Written about 2 months after my hospitalization and going “no contact” with my dad and stepmom. (2018)

I wish I could tell you that the surprises in my life ended when I left the hospital March 9th, 2018. The reality is that my world was about to be shaken up even more. 

In the wake of my hospitalization, family and friends reached out to check on me. My traumatic experience gave me the permission I felt I needed to be more honest about my home life growing up, as I reflected on the circumstances that led me to the hospital in the first place. In return, my family and friends felt permission to share things with me that had been hidden for many years. Things that they knew I had not been ready to hear. In fact, I would discover things that had been hidden for over thirty years. Yes, THIRTY years. 

I would discover that my stepmom had been diagnosed in the early 1990s with narcissistic personality disorder and delusions of grandeur. This occurred during mandated psychological evaluations as part of the custody dispute over me; it was required for all parents/guardians involved. My stepmom was the primary female figure in my life. She and my dad got custody of me and raised me from age eight onward. 

My stepmom was not an obvious narcissist. She is what you would call a covert narcissist, who feigned caring, sacrificial attitudes and behaviors, even to the extremes in my childhood. Yet she did so to fulfill an inner need for power and admiration, and upon no longer feeling in control, discarded me while playing the victim herself. And my dad took her side, upset with me for not being there for her.

She lied to and manipulated me starting when I was only three years old, the true versions of events of which I would not discover until this year, age thirty four. These lies turned me against my mom, who ultimately moved four states away because I had rejected her. For thirty years, my relationship with my mom had been up and down. I felt an underlying resentment from the lies my stepmom told about my mom and her past behavior. And as a result, I did not have a very strong relationship with my mom’s side of the family, because I resented them, too, for having taken her side. All the while, they missed me, and I missed our former closeness.

Now my mom does not claim to have gotten everything right with me growing up, but she didn’t do the things I was told she did. 

I was told (by my stepmom) that my mom sent me to preschool without shoes on, as if she was an absent minded and neglectful parent. 

Truth: One day I threw one of my shoes out the open car window, as a silly kid from my car seat. When my mom realized it upon arriving at my preschool, she drove back along the highway looking for it and couldn’t find it. She frantically drove back to the preschool, upset and now late for work. They told her not to worry because they took off the kids’ shoes prior to playing outside in the sandy playground anyway.

It was implied that my mom neglected my physical health, as well. I was told I had urinary tract infections and repeated ear infections prior to my dad and stepmom taking over custody of me. 

Truth: I had some burning while urinating (likely from all the acidic grapefruit I loved to eat so much of as a child growing up in Florida), NO urinary tract infections. Yet my stepmom nearly convinced my pediatrician to perform a surgical urethral widening procedure, before my mom--who worked for an urologist at the time--called off the procedure as medically unnecessary. 

Truth: I had just one ear infection, after which my stepmom had me get ear tubes placed. (I had always wondered why I got ear tubes, because I could never recall getting multiple ear infections as a child.)

There was concern that perhaps I was experiencing Munchausen’s by Proxy, which is a disorder in which an adult--typically a parent/guardian--harms a child or fabricates an illness in order to get attention by seeking medical care for the child. A few years later when I was in my pre-teen years, I would visit my mom and grandparents in Virginia, bringing along a big sack of vitamins that my stepmom thought I should take every day. 

In order to perpetuate a myth that my mom was promiscuous, it was insinuated that she was caught doing something inappropriate with her policeman friend in the back of his police car. 

Truth: They were friends, never dated, and no such thing happened.

Unrelated to the policeman mentioned above, the most traumatic event in my childhood involved a 911 call when I was eight years old. After all the things I had been told about my mom, who had primary custody of me at the time, I gathered up the courage to tell her one night that I wanted to live with my dad. 

She broke down, crying and angry in her bedroom. I snuck away to the house phone to call my dad to pick me up. When my dad arrived at the door, my stepdad-at-the-time would not let me out. I suppose he didn’t want the lies to win either. I would unlock one lock and he would lock the other. Round and round we went. I could see my dad’s face through the clear glass by the door, and he could see mine. I was crying. Here was my apparent rescuer, and I couldn’t get to him.

At some point, my mom grabbed me and took me to her bedroom. She called 911. I would scream for her to let go of me, you know, because I thought she was so bad and they were so good, and I felt trapped. I would later hear a recording of that 911 call. My voice did not sound like me. My screaming was terribly eery, like something from a horror movie. 

Some time later, the police arrived. As I was about to leave with my dad and stepmom, my mom’s tone changed from fight-or-flight to that of sadness. She was losing her little girl, and she was powerless against the lies. Every time she tried to stand up to them, another lie appeared, like a game of whack-a-mole. And that wouldn’t change for many years.

Over the next few years, the lies continued. Of course, I never knew any of these things were lies. I just saw my dad and stepmom as my saviors from a bad situation. From a bad person. And my stepmom continued to reinforce my beliefs with more lies and nuances. It is unclear how much my dad knew of these lies, but he could not possibly have been fully in the dark. I know he enabled some of it. 

At some point, my mom started receiving letters. My grandma (mom’s mom) still has them in a drawer somewhere. They were too painful for my mom to keep, and I haven’t had the courage to read them yet. They got so bad that Mom tells me there are some she never opened. They were just too mean, and so remain sealed in a drawer. Some were written by me and many by my stepmom. 

Probably in some way related to my conversion disorder at a younger age, I have blocked out a lot of young memories. I don’t remember most of the letters, but in two of them, apparently I told my mom that I hated her and never wanted to see her again. Because I don’t remember, I am not even sure I was the one who wrote them. All I remember is that my mom moved away in 1997 when I was thirteen, and I felt surprisingly rejected. I then developed a mild case of an eating disorder during that time. I ate as little as I could without my dad and stepmom noticing, and my “big break” was a long youth trip, during which time I tried to lose weight while not under their direct supervision. 

I returned five pounds lighter, and I felt a sense of empowerment. (I would find out in counseling recently that children who grow up in controlling homes often use eating disorders as a sense of gaining control, since they can control so little else in their lives.) My stepmom started taking me to a psychologist when I was only three. I hadn’t been in a while, but at age thirteen, there I was again for a short time, until I got better from the eating disorder. My need for control over something would continue, but the eating disorder never got severe. 

When I graduated high school, I felt on top of the world, like I could accomplish anything! I’ve never felt so free. I had received a full-ride scholarship plus book stipend to the University of Florida. I had also applied for and received an additional nearly $27,000 in supplemental scholarships. I didn’t quite realize it at the time, couldn’t quite give words to the feelings, but I was happy to be moving away. Happy to make my own independent choices and be a little more out of reach. 

Then freshman year started. Nothing really went as planned. I was over three hours away, but my mind was still at home. I was calling my dad and stepmom all the time, needing approval for everything I did. I wasn’t free. 

My young stepmom had been diagnosed with an immune deficiency years earlier and (I was told as a child) was not originally expected to live past age thirty. She was now suddenly sicker than she’d ever been, at age thirty seven. School was harder than I expected. I was no longer earning straight As, despite my strong efforts. My boyfriend at the time was not satisfied with our relationship. He was off dipping his toes in the party life like a typical freshman, and I didn’t know how to have fun or make my own decisions. He told me “I feel like I’m dating your parents.” My boyfriend and I broke up, and I felt even more powerless, less attractive, less desirable, less intelligent, and empty. That feeling of not being enough-- tall enough, smart enough, fun enough, “chill” enough, would stay with me for many years.

Even the cat I grew up with was sick at the time. He was dying of cancer. And then came the news that my real mom was pregnant. She’d gotten remarried the year before and surprise, here was coming my little brother! 

I tried to hide it, but I struggled with the pregnancy news. Not because I wanted to remain an only child, but because I still was under the oppression of the lies I had been told about my mom growing up. (Remember, the truth wouldn’t come out until my thirties.) I was worried that my little brother would have to go through emotional pain like I did growing up, because I still believed the lies about my mom being neglectful and unfaithful. (It pains me now to know that the lies took away from the joy of his new life coming into the world.) 

This fear further added to the stress I already carried that first year of college. Unlike the typical student who gains the “freshman fifteen”, I lost weight, leading one of my friends to tell me I looked anorexic...even though this time I wasn’t trying. I was just too anxious and sick to my stomach to eat much. I tried to share my struggles with new friends at a bible study. My dad and stepmom discouraged this, telling me to be cautious of what I told people, that it would leave me vulnerable. 

I got so anxious at one point that I went to the mental health department at my university and asked if I could have a tranquilizer, because I just couldn’t deal with the anxiety any more. It was paralyzing me, and I just wasn’t living well anymore. When my dad found out about this, he was upset, telling me I shouldn’t go there, because it might go on my record. I felt even more helpless, forced to stuff my feelings, forced to keep secrets, more alone. 

At one point that freshman year, I had a warning sign of the conversion disorder episode that would come years later. I was eating at the campus cafeteria when I suddenly felt very weak. My friend had to help me back to my dorm because I had difficulty walking. I was so sickly looking by the time I got to my dorm room, that my roommate thought I had come down with food poisoning. At some point in the next 24 hours, the weakness went away, and life moved on.

Sophomore year got a little better I guess. I trudged along through the rest of college, struggling in all the chemistry classes I was taking as part of my Microbiology major. I majored in Microbiology to fulfill prerequisites for medical school. Becoming a doctor would satisfy my need to succeed in life--academically, financially, and in what I viewed as a respectable profession. The problem was I wasn’t succeeding, at least in chemistry. I had to retake organic chemistry II, and barely passed with a C the second time I took it. 

I started to feel like a failure. Did I have what it takes to become a doctor? Did I even want to become a doctor any more? I would visit a couple of my high school friends back home, who were now married. I felt like their lives were moving on, and mine was all about school and loneliness. I just felt so empty. 

Through a series of events, I changed my major. Actually, I ultimately double majored in Biology and Anthropology, dropping the Microbiology major because it allowed me to get out of taking another chemistry class. I couldn’t endure more disappointment in myself. I was probably depressed and it started to concern me. My dad and stepmom didn’t seem to understand, and just wanted me to keep pushing through. I think they thought I was overreacting.

I later applied to various medical schools, and was denied admission at most of them. For the others, I didn’t finish the secondary applications because I didn’t think I had a shot (or perhaps deep down I questioned the career choice). My perfectionistic personality was losing big-time. I went on to complete an online Masters degree in the burgeoning field of Forensics while I figured things out. 

Midway through a second year of medical school applications, I met with the admissions department at a school that had offered a secondary application (meaning I had made it through the first round the year before). The school was new, beautiful, with reasonably priced tuition and with a well rounded curriculum. I was told that had I finished the application process the prior year, I may have been accepted. Still, something just didn’t feel right. I knew that day that if I wasn’t excited by the possibility of acceptance into such a great school, then maybe I wasn’t supposed to be an M.D.

I started volunteering with animals and realized veterinary medicine could be a good fit. If I’m honest, it still allowed me to be called “doctor” and make my parents proud. But it was more than that, though. Medicine truly had fascinated me for years, and there was something about speaking up for a group that cannot speak for themselves that intrigued me. It still does. It’s why I almost went into pediatrics, geriatrics, or forensics when contemplating human medicine. It’s always been about speaking up for those without a voice, the underdog. Perhaps it’s because my voice had never truly been heard.