Normal: Life in the Silent Prison of Emotional Abuse

By Maggie Thomas

Emotional abuse is real. Maggie Thomas knows. She was locked in its silent prison for a half-century. In her startlingly frank memoir, she shares her slow journey from normal to denial to survival. Rages, bizarre behaviors, disappearing pets, extreme parenting of her children, mental control, and fear reigned. As intense anxiety and frozen numbness vied to be her world, Maggie herself disintegrated as she slid into the abyss of nothingness.

This is a story for those who cannot imagine what it would be like nor understand why anyone would stay in an emotionally abusive relationship. It also is for those abused - know you are not alone. Healing is possible, and Thomas shares her insights on finding serenity.

This memoir is a must read. Maggie Thomas opens her normal to you and asks only that you enter without judgment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781665500876

Maggie Thomas

Maggie Thomas lives in Houston, Texas. She is a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a friend. She taught over forty years - preschool through college. She volunteers at a community college giving presentations on creative and genealogical writing styles and is active in several service and lineage organizations. Contact her at [e-mail]

Book preview

PROLOGUE

T he air smelled slightly stale, like walking into a room that had been closed for a long time. Maybe it was just me. I felt slightly floaty but not dizzy. I walked as quickly as I could, but people kept passing me or going around me. It seemed everyone was hurrying toward something or away from something—their purposeful strides making me feel rushed and a little off balance. I realized I was holding my breath. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. I had to pause and deeply inhale several times. In. Out. In. Out. That helped, but I was still tense. My husband charged ahead of me. As usual, he was into his own head, thinking his own thoughts, and forgetting that I was even there.

They knew we were coming; they had said to come sometime midmorning. I’m feeling a tinge of—oh, I can’t think of the right word—like I don’t quite belong here. Get a grip! That’s ridiculous! Especially at this time; especially after what has happened. I instinctively pushed these despairing thoughts deep into my inner self, burying them among all the other clutter in my heart. The same old anxieties were starting to bubble up as the elevator rose slowly, floor after floor.

Hospital interiors all seem the same—endless corridors that look alike—permeated by a sharp astringent smell that almost, but not quite, makes your eyes water. The elevator bell rang, and the double doors opened slowly. We stepped off, and I paused to look for a sign to point us where to go; he walked on without glancing back. One of us—I think it was me—asked directions from a nurse. I guess she was a nurse; she was wearing a white uniform. We headed down the hall on the right. And there it was—a huge viewing window. I saw row after row of tiny little bundles, all wrapped in pale pink or pale blue, but I couldn’t read the names on the ends of the cribs; the lettering was too small.

Max got the attention of one of the nursery staff, mouthing our last name: Stein. She pointed to one of the cribs that contained a pink bundle. In that swaddled blanket was our first precious grandchild—a little girl—the dream of any grandmother! I felt nothing.

NORMAL

CHAPTER 1

W hat caused me to become the adult that I am? How or why did my optimistic, other-centered perspective on life develop as strongly as it did and eventually become my fatal flaw? The only way to answer these questions is for you to spend some pages walking with me as I share a few scattered stories of my childhood. I think this is a good way to begin because it is a fact that a person’s childhood experiences have an immense influence on the adult that she becomes.

My first memory isn’t a memory. I used to think it was a memory, but I was told the story so many times that I guess it became a memory. Memories can be like that, you know. I was young—young enough to still have a glass baby bottle that I carried everywhere. My mother had told me that this was my last bottle. When—not if—I dropped and broke it, I wouldn’t get another one. Even at that early age, I was taught to take responsibility for my own actions. Smart parents. No weaning-from-the-bottle struggle for them.

One day, my mother leaned over the kitchen sink and called to me through the open window that lunch was ready. I don’t remember if it was just me outside or if I was playing with my older brother. I had been drawing designs with my finger in the white caliche that is so common to central Texas. Leaving the shade of the oak trees that protected us from the hot summer sun, I headed into the house. The coolness of our little rock patio felt good as I trotted across it like a horse (yes—I loved to play like I was a horse). I tucked my empty bottle under my arm and reached up to pull open our kitchen door. Looking through its slightly rusty screen, I saw my mother placing sandwiches on the table. Suddenly, I felt my prize possession start to slip. I pulled my elbow tightly to my side, but it was too late; there was a crash. Glass shards exploded in every direction. I knew not to move. I was barefoot. My mother rushed out and picked me up, checking my legs and my feet to see if I had been cut. I hadn’t. As the story goes, I just said, Gone. Gone. No crying. No fuss. I just accepted the reality of the situation.

There is a photograph that epitomizes my early years. I’m standing next to a table wearing a dress with a fluffy skirt. I don’t know the color of the dress because we didn’t have color photography then. There are big whitish-looking Band-Aids covering both my knees and both my elbows. Getting scrapes and scratches was just part of life; after all, we lived in the country.

I can’t think of a single bad memory from my childhood. Of course, I had sad times, a child’s worries, and occasional frustrations or disappointments, but bad experiences? Never. Scary ones like the time I was bitten by a rattlesnake, or sad ones when my goldfish died and we put him in a cardboard matchbox and had a funeral—yes, those happened, but that was it. I have since asked my brother more than once if my mind has enhanced my memories, shaping them in a warm, nostalgic way. He assures me that his memories of our family life are similar to mine; our childhood was amazing, only we didn’t realize it because we knew nothing else.

As I became older but not old enough to go to school, I developed a wonderful habit that strengthened my already strong bond with my father. As he stood at the sink in their tiny bathroom each morning, I would sit on the toilet’s tank top. My legs would dangle with my feet touching and, as I eventually grew taller, resting on the lid. This was our time. We were just inches apart. The piney scent of his shaving lather and the hot moisture of the running water that occasionally splashed on me are part of this memory. I would watch him carefully pull the skin on his neck, tightening it as he drew the razor up, then down. When he swished the lather-coated blade in the sink, he’d pause, and we’d talk. I’d share my thoughts with him, and he would ponder, respond, make suggestions, or just cover me in the aura of his unconditional love. He called me his baby bird because when I was happy, I’d constantly talk, pouring out my heart with every little chirp.

My parents met in high school, and when World War II started, they married. My mother used to tell a funny story from that time. She had gone to church, and the pastor’s wife had pulled her aside and asked in great seriousness, as if trying to rectify a social misstep, Don’t you think it’s time for you to have children? I can imagine my quiet little mother’s mischievous smile when she replied, Don’t you think it would be best for me to wait until my husband returns from the Pacific?

When my father finally came home, my parents purchased seven acres from a large cattle ranch. A water well was dug, a butane tank installed, and electrical lines run. My carpenter father built a tiny house with one big room, a separate kitchen, and a small bathroom.

My parents were very frugal. (There were no credit cards.) We learned the pride of saving and developed the patience to do so. My father’s motto was If I can’t fix it, we don’t get it. Always one to be safe, he covered the outside walls of the house with white asbestos shingles to protect his family from the occasional wildfires that swept the area. Asbestos later proved to be his death knell.

Our life was simple. My grandfather was an architect, and my father was a draftsman. They worked together in an upstairs office at my grandparents’ home in town. We had one car, so when my father was at work, my mother was without transportation. Sometimes, he would take me with him. I loved watching as he sat on a tall stool, patiently and carefully drawing on vellum drafting paper. The snowy white translucent paper seemed to metamorphize magically as lines gradually formed a precise structural plan as he smoothly glided his pencil, kept sharp by his ever-present pocketknife, along the edge of a T-square or a triangle. He had a collection of K&E drafting pencils, each marked with the HB graphite scale—a H indicated a hard lead and a B designated a softer lead. The hardness of the graphite determines the blackness of the pencil’s mark. For example, a pencil marked HB was hard and black, a pencil marked HH was very hard with less blackness, and a pencil marked BBB was really, really black or very soft. I was allowed to sit nearby as he drew, knowing to be quiet and not to disturb him. I would practice sketching horses on my own paper. With most projects, he also created what is called an architectural rendering which is the drawing of the future structure’s exterior. When doing this, he often used colored pencils and sometimes water colors, adding surface textures and shaded shadows to show the visual qualities more realistically. I slowly but surely learned how to draw by watching him. Once in a while, he would let me do my shading with one of his softer pencils. I look back on this memory and realize I also learned that only through diligent practice can one become skilled.

Often, rural areas like ours did not have enough telephone lines for each home to have its own, so households shared a single line. In our case, eight households shared the same line. This was called an eight-party line. We also had a ringing partner—your phone and a neighbor’s phone rang at both houses, regardless of who was being called. We knew a call was for us if there were two quick rings; our ringing partner’s calls were one long ring. Sometimes when you picked up the phone to call someone, you would hear another person talking. But as I remember it, everyone on our party line was considerate. If someone picked up while you were talking or vice versa, you just quickly ended your conversation, so the other person could make a call.

It wasn’t until my midteens that I started having my own phone conversations. Just a few, but they were important to me. One of the people who shared our line was an old lady who lived alone. I knew who she was; everyone knew who she was. She loved to listen to conversations. That was her entertainment for the day. She’d cough, eat something crunchy, rattle paper, and make little noises. Despite the evidence of her listening, when I’d beg her to hang up, everything would go silent. I complained to my mother, telling her that I thought it was rude for Mrs. F to do this. Mother would just smile her sweet smile and chide me gently. Maggie, she has no one, and she’s probably very lonely. Her listening isn’t doing any harm to anyone. Be kind and have sympathy for her.

Manners were important. We were taught to say yes, ma’am and no, sir to show our respect for others. The men and boys in our family opened the car door for a woman, held a door as a woman walked through, and pulled her chair out when she was being seated. This was not because a southern man thought a woman couldn’t do these things—it was what a person with manners did. We were taught that children should never sit when an adult needed a seat. We said thank you and please and wrote thank-you notes by hand as soon as we learned to print. As a little girl, I was taught to sit properly and keep my legs together when I wore a skirt or dress. There were no threats or intimidation. That was just what you did, what was expected of you as our parents’ children. We wanted to please them.

Gentle tones of voice were all I heard. Sometimes the voice may have had a certain strength to it, but I never heard yelling or ugly comments between my parents—or any other relatives, for that matter. Curse words were not uttered—well, I take that back. One time, I heard my father yell quite loudly, Dammit! when he was up on our roof hammering a nail and accidentally hit his finger. Yes, that was a startling, never-to-be-forgotten event!

My father smoked a pipe when I was a child, a habit he had developed during the war. I distinctly remember the woodsy, sweet aroma of the new tobacco. I always wanted to be the one who opened the big, dark brown can with the little black silhouette like Sherlock Holmes on the side. That first inhalation after the lid was popped was a much-anticipated olfactory delight. My father stopped smoking before we began going to school. No one else smoked, except my great-aunt Francis. Though she never smoked in front of us, we children knew that she did because sometimes we smelled cigarette smoke when she hugged us.

Many of the items we had—furniture, clothes, toys—were handmade by our parents. I made my own puzzles. I collected magazines—my mother’s Saturday Evening Post and Life and my grandparents’ National Geographic (which my grandmother had carefully gone through, tearing out any pages with photographs of bare-breasted women). Page by page, I would look at these magazines, cutting out pictures that caught my eye, then creating a colorful collage by pasting them on a scrap of plywood which could always be found around our place. Once the glue had dried, my father and I would go to his tiny wood-working shop which was attached to the garage. Using a step ladder to get up on the scarred work bench covered in paint splatters from previous projects, I would watch in eager anticipation as he pulled the ceiling light’s string and opened the screenless casement window. Most exciting of all was when, under his watchful eye, I was allowed to slowly push this soon-to-be-a-puzzle piece of wood against the jigsaw's blade, holding my breath as I twisted and turned the wood to make uniquely shaped puzzle pieces. I stored these puzzles in the empty tobacco cans that my father would give me.

CHAPTER 2

N o surprise, but my family was conservative with traditional beliefs. There was men’s work, and there was women’s work. My father did maintenance, repairs, and supported our family. Until we were in the older grades of elementary school, my mother stayed home, taking care of my brother and me and doing the domestic chores. My brother helped our father, and I helped my mother. We siblings were trained without realizing it. Before adjustable (I called them sit-down) ironing boards, I earned extra money by ironing my father’s long-sleeved white dress shirts that he wore to work and to church. I received ten cents per shirt but only after my mother had carefully inspected each one to be sure there were no unwanted creases or missed areas. Even today, the sensation of sliding a hot iron over damp starched cotton, the almost-scorched smell, and the sound of heat sizzling the cloth dry remind me of those times.

Traditional as she was, my mother had a spark of rebellion, though subdued by the social dictates of the time. Two memories come to mind. She told me when I was still in elementary school, Never let yourself be judged by the cleanliness of your house. I didn’t understand the impact of this statement then, but I certainly do now. Sometimes, my paternal grandmother would do the white-glove test when she and my grandfather, still dressed in their church clothes, would drop by unannounced during their Sunday-afternoon drive. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the white-glove test is when a person wearing white gloves glides her fingers over shelves and other furniture surfaces to see if there is any dust.

The other memory concerns cakes. There was a great deal of controversy when boxed cake mixes first came on the market. Good wives cooked everything from scratch. Many insisted that the boxed mixes didn’t taste as good as homemade cakes. The common question after eating was, Did you make this from scratch? Mother used boxed cake mixes. When we were preparing a meal in anticipation of a visit from my grandparents, after the cake was in the oven, she and I would have fun going to the burn pile—no such thing as garbage pick-up in the country—empty cake mix box in hand. We took turns with who had the honor of lighting then throwing it on the ashen area, thus destroying the evidence. We would share a secret smile or an eye roll when my grandmother would exclaim, You can tell when something is homemade from scratch. It just tastes better!

We made pickles and put up vegetables from our garden. In the summer, our hot kitchen reeked of the sharp, acetic odor of vinegar. I went to the grocery store with my mother. She was a natural teacher and wanted me to learn menu planning, which included never wasting food, healthy cooking, when to buy the expensive meat, and when to buy the cheap cuts. On most weekends, a pot of soup made of all the left-overs in the refrigerator bubbled on the stove. It was a comforting routine.

I was lucky that our traditional beliefs did not extend to my choices of study concerning a future profession. If I had chosen a subject that was not considered a woman’s profession, I knew without a doubt that my parents would have supported me. Education was encouraged. Depending on the generation, almost all of my relatives had a college degree or at least had attended college at one time. We had books everywhere—even a set of Compton Encyclopedias.

Church was a large part of my life; our family was Methodist with a few Baptists sprinkled in. Some of my ancestors were Methodist ministers, one being a circuit rider pastor. During his time, Texas was still