Surviving a Hot Mess Life

“You were a mistake. You should never have been born!” These were the words spoken to me by my dad from the time I was a little girl. The wounds in my heart from the sting of his words were what I believe led me to my first feelings of being unloved and being a loser. During these early years the imaginary neon sign began flashing over my head. Shame controlled the On switch. I thought the whole world could read the sign. It said, “Loser!” and had an arrow that pointed down to me. Those feelings are something that have haunted me most of my life. Perhaps you or someone you love has felt these negative feelings at one time or another, too. If so, this book is for you. It’s not fun to open up and bare your soul to other people, but I believe that’s what God has asked me to do. When He first told me to write this book, I wasn’t sure what He wanted me to say. Then He gave me the title. I pray that you will be able to use this book to find healing in your own life. When I finally opened myself up to God and asked that He heal me, He began speaking to me and teaching me in ways I never thought possible. Before going any further, please stop and ask God to speak to you through what you’re about to read.

I don’t believe my dad’s intention was to hurt me like he did. He was adopted when he was six years old after living in an orphanage for several years. To my knowledge, he had no recollection of his real mother. All he knew was that in his mind she didn’t want him, so she gave him up for adoption. He would always say, “My mother never loved me and neither do you.” As I learned from the book The Gift of the Blessing by Gary Smalley and John Trent, my dad never received the gift of unconditional love. If you don’t have something, it’s hard to pass it on. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand this idea until after I was an adult and my dad had passed away.

Mama was an only child. When she was ten years old, her mother suddenly passed away, forcing her to step up and be the “woman of the house.” Her father was a prominent Miami architect who didn’t have much time for a little girl and her needs. She met my dad when she was just seventeen and still in high school. He was in the Air Force and stationed near her home. They dated only briefly before eloping, infuriating her father. Mama was desperate to escape and thought marriage was the answer. A month after they wed, she became pregnant with my brother. Life was swiftly getting more difficult for her and my dad. To make matters worse, Mama became pregnant with me only four months after giving birth to my brother. My dad was so furious that he took her out on a dirt road and made her attempt to pick up the rear-end of the car in order to force a “natural” abortion. Perhaps my stubbornness began here--all their efforts failed, and I was born anyway.

Dad was unhappy with his life and began drinking more and more. The alcohol would completely consume him and always drag him into depression and the memory of his mother’s rejection. As most alcoholics do, he had to find a target for his anger…and he selected me. Even as I write these words so many years later, there is a deep sadness in my heart. Nothing I ever did seemed to please my father. I longed so much to crawl up in his lap and have him tell me that everything was going to be all right and that he loved me. But that didn’t happen. The more he drank, the angrier he got. He would yell and tell me everything was my fault…if I hadn’t been born, he wouldn’t have to drink. He was very verbally and physically abusive. I believed the lie that everything was somehow my fault and that I deserved the abuse. The more he drank, the more devastating and bizarre the punishment. The beatings with the belt (that many times left big welts) would have been bad enough, but the punishment didn’t stop there. If I spilled food on the floor at dinner, he would force me to get down on my hands and knees and lick it off the floor like an animal. One night I was washing the dishes, and he came from behind and shoved my face in the dishwater, holding my head down until I felt like I was going to pass out from holding my breath.

In an effort to find unconditional love, I poured my love into our family cat, Sparky. When dad really wanted to hurt me, he would bind Sparky’s front paws with duct tape and make him hop around like a bunny. Then dad would jerk the tape off, stripping Sparky’s legs of fur. I was forced to watch this torture; and if I said anything to him about it, he would punish me more.

At a young age I started becoming a perfectionist. I thought if I could do everything right, my dad would start to love me. It never happened. This treatment led me to live a life of low self-esteem, accepting blame for every bad thing, and of course, the feeling that the whole world believed I was a loser. This thinking had such a hold on me that when my grandfather suddenly died of a heart attack when I was only four, I thought that somehow I had caused it, a guilt I lived with for many years.