A Spoon Full of Sugar

By Elizabeth Jane Winters

Domestc violence does not end with the last punch, it remains a part of you, it affects how you live in your physical, emotional and psychological world. This is a true story written to help with the healing process, to find a way of building a future that breaks the cycle of abusive relationships, to give clarification and move on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477247136

Elizabeth Jane Winters

Now in her 50's and reflecting on her life she asks what impact she had on the things that she experienced and also what impact have her experiences had on her. Has she dealt with her past and what hopes she has for her future.

Book preview

A SPOON FULL

OF SUGAR

Elizabeth Jane Winters

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2012 by Elizabeth Jane Winters. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/04/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-4712-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-4713-6 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

LAST CHAPTER

I wrote this for myself.

I know we are all dealt a hand in life, some better than others, mine not being the best but of course not the worst. My hand contained 5 good cards, four aces, they are my children, and a queen. The queen is my humour and gives me the abilty to laugh at myself and situations. I love my queen she helps me, keeps me strong or at least the strongest I can be. Sometimes I believe my hand to be full of jokers, no not in the funny way but a very powerful detrimental way, a lack of love, self esteem and self worth. Abusive relationships are built on the jokers in your hand.

CHAPTER 1

H ave you filled in a form, the receptionist asked? What form, I enquired? Have you filled one in before she continued and I replied, well I don’t know as I don’t know which form you are referring to! I added that I had no idea who I was seeing either. ‘You are booked in to see Mrs Haden’, she muttered, plonking the form on the counter before me. Well, I have never seen Mrs Haden and before I had chance to elaborate she handed me a pen and said, ‘fill that in, and wait by the brick wall’. I wanted to say, ‘piss off you miserable bitch’, but being well mannered I managed not to. Tell me, why is it that when behind a counter people think they can talk down to you, they have control, they can make you wait, put you on the bottom of the list if they feel like, even say you don’t even have an appointment, ha! I didn’t know what bloody form she meant, I am depressed not a flaming mind reader!

The said form asked numerous questions about my mental state in the last few weeks but the categories they use to level my answers against did not have the ones I needed, so, I made it up.

I was called in.

‘Can you tell me why you are here?’ Mrs Haden asked. She was quite attractive and I guessed older than me. That suited me, I couldn’t tell my problems to some young firm beauty. I would instantly feel conscious of my age, looks and skin that is now way too big! I am sure I saw Mrs Haden looking at my arms, god, time for the long sleeves.!

Well now just why am I here, sitting on a plastic stacker chair like a child. Why am I so unhappy? I was thinking of how to answer when Mrs Haden began to read out the referral from my doctor.

So, you are divorced and following an incident with your ex- husband some years ago you have had several episodes of depression. You have received counselling and in the past taken anti-depressants, which you say did help. Following a recent distressing time at work you found yourself feeling low and spoke to your doctor about this. You did not want to go back on the anti-depressants as you have done without them for a few years now. You are not in a relationship now but Dr Simms believes you would like to have a partner. Here I interrupted laughing and said ‘be great if you could get a fella on prescription!’ Mrs Haden remained serious and she continued to read. Shit, not a time for the funnies hey, well I thought it was funny and at least I was trying to be cheerful, should I be sobbing uncontrollably, begging for help?

She asked if I had been able to deal with the incident with my husband? Incident bloody incident, no I have not and I never will, will I? I said that to myself and said to her that I had developed some coping strategies. (Like hell I have but I don’t want to talk about it, is that a coping strategy?)

I don’t know what makes me happy anymore. I don’t know how I am supposed to feel, how I am supposed to behave. Why do I find myself so sad and lonely, I have no friends, social life or partner. How do you get them?

‘Do you manage to get yourself out at all’, she asks? My god, she really is talking much slower and yes she is tilting her head to one side. That’s confirmation I am a sad case if ever there was one.

In a nut shell I don’t like myself, I must stop watching ten years younger!

I can portray a confident together person on the outside but inside I am totally different. I constantly compare myself to other women, looks, size, behaviours and dress. I never make the grade and believe myself to be the butt of their jokes or gossip.

Tell me about your childhood? . . . . Oh shit where’s the couch?

I spoke briefly about my childhood, they like that don’t they, and she summised that I have low self esteem. La la la, yes I know that, it’s why I came for help… duh!

Shall I tell you about my childhood? Maybe later? Let’s start with picking myself up from shall I say a rather unexpected separation from my husband at the age of 39. Shit timing, finding yourself single as everything begins to head south.

I had been married for thirteen years and it was only the last few that had settled into a reasonable existence, let’s say I was for most of the time 6 out of a possible 10, so things were not that bad were they? To the outside world my marriage to Brian was a happy one and everyone believed Brian to be such a lovely bloke. What a hard- working man and not many would take on three children not his own, always pleasant and easy going. Like hell he was! Yes I must admit he was a good provider, he worked very hard and had taken on my family but that’s where the good image ends. Should that have been enough? I really did appreciate the things Brian did and I don’t like to be mean about him honestly but that’s the point here isn’t it, I am talking honestly about me and my feelings and the impact Brian had on me obviously affected me and my feelings, good and bad. That said, Brian was a very jealous man and I’m afraid to say of rather low intelligence, ooh that’s not nice and it makes me sound like I am some sort of intellectual, not so, but I usually ‘get it’ if you know what I mean?. You wouldn’t believe how he would get on his high horse if I used a word alien to his vocabulary. Can you believe he had a go at me for saying, ‘Kindling’, yes kindling, bits of bloody stick! Well, who the hell did I think I was? If there was a conversation concerning something he did not know about ( life in general he he) and I contributed to that conversation, he always had to say ‘been to college have you’. I would want to say ‘yes actually I have and actually I went to school too pity you didn’t spend a bit more time in the classroom or even just with people who have some degree of common sense’, Silly man.

As I said, I had settled for 6 out of 10 and so the years passed and I gave up taking any sort of care of myself. I had settled into the role of happy in public wife, not so happy private wife and got on with it. I put up with the ridicule by my one of my sisters for my lack of interest in the bedroom department (probably because she was taking care of Brian’s needs there), I also decided it was best not to indulge in any sort of socializing.

I had my fourth child, a true miracle! I had been sterilized after the birth of my third child Adam. I had given birth to Adam alone, well apart from the eleven medical staff who had to do emergency operation in the delivery room as lucky me had a retained placenta and was practically bleeding to death. I decided I never want to go through that again so got sterilized. After meeting Brian and getting married I felt I had made the wrong decision and here is the good bit. I managed to get my sterilization reversed and so I had my little miracle.

Things were ok, we had a nice house and the children were attending very good schools. I was always working, at one point I had three jobs as well as looking after the house and five children, oops I mean four children and Brian.

Brian had two children from his first marriage and we had them at weekend too. We did a lot of work on the house, I loved DIY and was always decorating, making curtains etc, my life was very busy. I should have made more time for the children, they were busy too, swimming, Karate, football all the usual kid stuff.

I used to help my brother by giving some respite care to his baby girl, she has an illness, poor thing. It took up to two hours to feed her and I could not sleep as she needed to be monitored constantly, still does, my brother does a miraculous job.

As I write memories of events flood back, though each word is true I sometimes forget in what sequence they happened. I am not good at dates, maybe my mind chooses to operate in this was to help me deal with some things. I am writing my memories as well as things that bother me now, I have lived in 16 houses so have numbered them when referring to different times in my life. It may read like a list of unpleasant memories and experiences interspersed with the odd funny but that is the whole point to look back and see if writing it down helps. Will this answer my question? Was it low self- esteem that caused the domestic violence or was it the domestic violence that caused the low self esteem? I think that writing while I am struggling with myself may not be helpful to me but if I was happy I would probably have put all this behind me and therefore not be writing. I makes sense to me.

So back to how things were and living in house number 14. Whilst out walking, can’t remember where I had been, I saw a house for sale, half hidden by trees, I sneaked around the property which was empty and was immediately smitten. It was marvelous, what I had always dreamed of a real period family home. I was in a bad way but that would not deter me. I practically ran home and set the ball rolling, I was having this house and yes after over a year of being messed about it was ours. Ok, so now you’re thinking how come I’m making out my life is shit. Well, you will soon see this was a short lived happiness. The happiness was the house not the husband. I had given up on a happy ever after marriage but I could have this dream, couldn’t I?

We moved in the pouring rain and lived in a caravan in the garden. Brain and I worked full time and the once home worked on the house until midnight. I was studying too and gained a HNC whilst living in that caravan.

The first winter was awful, especially for the kids. The