Ripples

Have you ever thrown a rock into a pond, and watched the ripples spread out from it?  Everything we do in life creates ripples which affect those around us.  Some of the ripples are good.  A parent who sacrifices to make sure that her child is able to accomplish his dreams; a doctor who uses his skills to save the life of someone; these ripples have positive outcomes for all involved.  But, the bad we do can create ripples as well.  My birth father created negative ripples, which continue to affect me even today twenty years after his death.

My mother and father divorced when I was only 4 years old.  Ronnie was a drunk who only cared about himself.  My mother has told me that there was times when the only thing in the refrigerator was beer, and she had no idea how she was going to feed my sister and I.  She would pray to God for help, and somehow, my grandparents would show up with a car full of groceries.  Not long after my sister was born, Mom realized that she had done all she could.  She came home one night from having dinner at my grandparents.  She had just put me in the bathtub, when Ronnie walked in, drunk of course.  He looked her in the face and said, "I hate you, I hate those two brats of yours.  Get the hell out of my house."  My mother didn't say anything else.  She got me out of the bath, bundled up my sister and me, and we went back to my grandparents house.  That was the last time that I lived with Ronnie.

The divorce was contentious.  Ronnie didn't want my sister and I, but he didn't want my mother to have something he considered to be his property.  My mother's attorney told her not to let him get us across state lines, because he felt she would never see us again if he did.  I remember going to Ronnie's parents house once and to his sister's house another  time.  Those are the last two times I remember seeing him.  Years later, Ronnie's attorney came up to my mother at a party.  He told her that he owed her an apology.  The attorney stated that Ronnie was the meanest son of a bitch he ever represented and he had regretted it for all these years.

Shortly after they separated, my mother met the man who would become my Daddy.  He was friends with my grandmother's next door neighbors and they met over there one evening.  Now, this was in the mid 1960's and they could not be seen in public together.  They would meet at the neighbor's house and fell in love with one another.  One day not long after they met, Ronnie showed up at my grandparents' home, drunk and carrying a gun.  He was yelling and banging on the door, threatening to kill all of us.  My mother called my Dad, her boyfriend at the time, and told him what was going on.  He left work, went to his house and got a shotgun and headed for my grandparents.  By the time Daddy got there, Ronnie was gone.  He and my mom found me sitting on the edge of the couch in the living room, staring straight ahead without blinking, rocking back and forth with my arms wrapped around myself.  The two of them sat with me, talking soothingly for four hours before I started to come out of it.

To this day, I have no real memory of Ronnie.  I don't know what he looked like or anything else about him. Quite honestly, I don't want to have any memory of him.  My grandfather kept a ledger until my sister turned 18 years old, indicating every child support payment Ronnie missed.  He did this just in case Ronnie might try to come back into our lives at some point.  Daddy wanted to adopt my sister right away, but wasn't able to until I turned 14 years old.  Even though he wouldn't pay child support, and had no interest in seeing us, he refused to sign away his parental rights.  They were able to claim abandonment when I turned 14 and my dad adopted my sister and I right after this.

Ronnie has created so many painful ripples in my life because of his actions.  I have had a fear of abandonment my entire life.  I always thought that if my own father couldn't love me enough to be in my life, how could anyone else.   As soon as other people would start to get close to me, I would do something to run them off, proving again to myself that no one could possibly love me.  I have suffered from PTSD for years, although we didn't know that was what it was until recently.  A psychologist traces it back to the episode with the gun, and feel that this was the trigger to my fibromyalgia, which is often brought on by either physical or emotional trauma.

Ronnie died when I was about 25 years old.  My mother brought me his obituary, and it was as if I was looking at some stranger's death announcement.  I did learn that I have a half sibling, and I have no desire to meet this person.  But with his passing, I was finally able to let go of most of the pain that he had caused me over the years.  I realized that he had no hold on me anymore, and I was able to find a little bit of peace.

We need to be aware that everything we do in our life can, and does, affect those around us.  Sometimes, we don't even realize it.  But I think we each have a responsibility to try and make the ripples we send out positive.  You never know the kind of pain that an insensitive comment or action can cause another human being.  Treat one another with love and respect, and remember that we all create ripples everyday of our life.