Marnie's Journals

By Lila Karoub

Marnie's Journals is a true story about a woman who participates in two decades of crime-related activities that went too far with her latest crime. She was arrested and charged with grand larceny, facing twenty-one years in prison. She was also facing other felony charges. She would begin to have headaches and confusion, trying to keep up with the hearts of three men. The death of one them would change Marnie's course and stop her dead in her tracks to consider her actions. After this death, her life takes a dangerous turn into a life of crime for two decades. Marnie's Journals is a story about multiple men, manipulation, deceit, dishonor, and mayhem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646288144

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Beginning

I sit and think about a man and his romantic words. This has been going on my entire life since I was eight years old and experienced my first crush. I used to play house with my siblings and neighborhood friends. One day, my best friend and I took all our clothes off in the back seat of her father’s car. After that, I was no longer welcomed to her home and suffered from this rejection. I cannot recall when rejection was not part of my everyday life. Every friend, every man, my parents, and siblings would all be perpetrators. I was so young and in such pain. I can still feel this pain. I have always been in some type of pain, where my heart aches, and mild tachycardia occurs. It causes me to overextend myself to avoid it. It doesn’t always work, but I automatically shield myself because no one else ever has.

I’ve had many loves that I think about, and in my mind, I could control them. Each man had a different way, a unique style; hence, fantasies were created. Head fantasies are powerful. This is a very convenient process because romance can be much greater and last beyond the butterflies. It didn’t start out that way when I was younger, looking for the right man to build a life with, as I always believed in tradition. Unfortunately, tradition couldn’t find its way to me; thus, I have gone through several men, all ending badly. I believe in romance, but it would ultimately go awry, either because of boredom on my part or rejection on theirs.

It always started out the same way, with excitement, romance, pleasure, fun, and mutual regard for each other. My relationships would inevitably become dysfunctional, which would cause a desire for something more, a search for another type of happiness. I am a serial cheater and have stepped out on every man I have been with, not ever looking at my shortcomings. I recall a boyfriend of mine that I dumped for another. He did not have a clue on how to be romantic, which caused restlessness.

This former boyfriend once went to my parents’ home when I had moved away and was screaming my name outside their front door, begging for someone to answer. My parents called at my Ann Arbor, Michigan, home and told me that this man was extremely distraught. This was actually very exciting to me, and this would be the beginning of infidelity in my marriage and in life. I became a romantic maniac and lost all perspective on what was ethically and morally correct in a relationship. This became part of my personality and how I operated in my relationships.

In addition to having severe flaws in relational skills, I am a thief and cannot remember a time where I wasn’t stealing something. I guess you could say that I have a criminal mind because one of my earliest memories was stealing money out of an envelope at my father’s office. Even confronted, I lied about it because somehow, at seven years of age, I thought it was okay to steal and lie. I would often go in my father’s wallet and take a few bucks. Of course, I would lie about it when questioned.

I would go on to steal from neighbors, get caught, and deny it. I would swear to never steal again, get more into my religion, and to do more charitable acts. It did not help as I would travel to my family’s home and stole anything I could get my hands on, money and various other things. I was less than a common thief, a lowlife, a derelict, and thought no one knew, when in fact, everyone knew.

Eventually, I would be convicted of welfare fraud, and I was among other thieves in the courtroom and was sure I was better than these derelicts. This would lead to the biggest crime of my life. My lawyer told me I was facing serious jail time unless there was a good reason why I did it. I was a failure. I was afraid to leave my young daughter and go to prison. What had I done? I had ripped everyone off that I knew, including my siblings.

What happened to me? Why was I like this? Everything in my life had some form of deception. Every man would just be a vehicle to the next one. I did one thing right, and that was to mother my three daughters. It was hard having a child just to be abandoned, which happened three times. How could that happen to me? I was a single mother that had to stay focused on providing a good life for my children. I have done this right; I am sure of it. My three daughters. My lovely daughters.

I called Dr. Laura on her radio program with my current partner, and he suggested we get some advice about something I did that made him unhappy. He was against my maintaining friendly relationships with my exes that I had children with and thought we should make this call on this beautiful 2,300-mile road trip to California, through the Colorado Rockies, in a new vehicle. This was something that I would have never done in my current relationship, but a six-month absence from each other led to this decision to drive back home to California.

I had been in Michigan for months, helping my mother with her illness. An ex-boyfriend helped arrange special discounts and a no-nonsense approach to do everything on the phone with the vehicle delivered. I always needed my tethers. One man couldn’t do the job. I am a kitten with one man and a devil with another. I am two people and often get possessed with anger and anxiety. I cannot stay calm, not ever. I cannot ease the mood with alcohol because that led to pills. Thus, I am always nervous and trapped in ruminating thoughts. Constant thoughts. Constant anguish.

Dr. Laura agreed with my partner and stated that I was not a good representation of her gender. This was crushing, and one is never prepared to receive such a brutal response. This phone call brought back a flood of memories, as I thought over mistakes in past relationships. Rejected by Dr. Laura, and so familiar to me, here is what I realized. I needed a strong man, and I needed at least two at once. I was never good with just one. Okay, I know it is not the right thing to do as Mother Laura would say, but she is not living my life. I love the lady, but I was convinced that she didn’t get it right on this phone call. It caused such a stir that I had to think about her statement and understand how I arrived at this juncture of my life.

I understand one may think I have some type of mental disorder, and after the suicidal attempts, you can bet I am not right, but God knows that I try to remain on the straight and narrow path. I am just a little bit on the wild side. Loving and crazy would be my modus operandi throughout my life; I still prefer it. I guess normal is not for me, and thank you, parents, for giving me this gift. My mother, well, that is what you call mental illness, a crazy, loud, screaming, greedy woman, that could not reciprocate in a relationship and where I am sure I learned all the misdeeds. Men, men, and more men. There are not enough men. This was my mother, and this became me. What redeems me is my good heart. I am kind to everyone to a fault, where it hurts me. I am thankful for this. I am not a saint, however, and have done many unsavory acts. I pray a lot and have been doing so for many, many, years. Praying lends itself toward normalcy although I know I am not.

Praying, like any concentrated yoga move, discards all negatives thoughts for the moment to help with sadness, negativity, and guilt. It is my belief now that the guilt was too much to bear, and it was better for me to calm down and learn how to be in a monogamous relationship. This is solely because of my current relationship. It took decades to understand this, and I’m still struggling with it. All good things come to an end.

Dr. Laura did not know who was really calling her. I never had the opportunity to explain my side before she ended the call. It was unfair and slanted toward my position and status as a woman. I went with it because of my low self-esteem. You cannot be normal when one doesn’t really understand what that is. Now my belief after the phone call was not that I may not be a good representation of women; rather, I am a mother and a survivor who wants to love a man in a traditional way. I am hoping that is possible. Still yet, I am a version of myself, and that version is not good. I am a misfit and don’t belong on this earth. I want to be better but have failed.

I live with a man whom I probably should not be living with. I have my ex whom I allow to shower at times in my home as he became homeless. I keep my exes close at hand. I need support, love, to be desired, and to laugh. One man has never been able to do this. I do have a tradition in my heart but not in my soul. I am a good woman, and then I am not. I can lie so easily and also be brutally honest. I prefer the latter, and I’m sure the opiates brought about more deceptive methods. I have good intentions, and then they disappear. I often feel like my life is a fraud because there is nothing real about me. What did Dr. Laura do to me to cause such a stir?

The men I have chosen as my partners in life were all wrong. Why did I always pick the wrong man? Marnie and her men, as my family would say with condemnation, particularly the oldest sibling, the admired one. In the end, three of my five siblings got divorced, and the other two would entertain the thought of divorce. I guess I was blazing the trail all along. For me, each relationship ended with less than charming circumstances.

For my siblings, they were not too happy when I left my home state and moved to California. In 1984, it would take three professional incomes to afford the rent; therefore, I asked a male friend of mine if he would go to California and move in my young family. My life lacks many traditional values, but I meant well. I was the different one in my family and was determined to prove that my choices were the right ones.

It is important for me to know how I became the way I am. I am depressed to think that not one relationship has brought me peace or added to my life. I guess my own inner strength was stronger than any man I’d ever meet. These days, and thanks to my current relationship, I am a bit more controlled with my larger than lifeways. I am not into infidelity, but if an opportunity arises, I may not hesitate. Lucky for me, I think I have learned the dos and the don’ts from each relationship. I know for sure that the minute a man is emasculated, it is basically over. I guess I could not help myself, as my mother had taught me the tricks of the trade. Screaming, lying, deceiving, and manipulating is what I learned to do and that which I did. This was the gift from my parents, particularly my mother.

What on earth were they thinking with their unpredictable screaming, yelling, and noise banging? I know there were families that did far worse, but, in my opinion, my siblings and I are an anomaly. We are all professional in our careers and well educated, yet all off-kilter with our relationships. My sister has been troubled her entire life, with two failed marriages and consumed with greed. One of my brothers also has two failed marriages that ended due to cheapness and lies I will never understand. My other two siblings have been separated from their spouses many times. I am many things, but greed is the one thing I am not. I want to say I am the worst of all because my thievery had no bounds. I was born a thief, gone through my life as a thief, and finally, I was brought to my knees with madness of stealing and thievery. I went too far, but greed was not part of my downfall.

I believe my father and mother’s relationship took its toll on all five of us, contributing to dysfunctional marriages, divorce, and mayhem. My father was the child of an immigrant, living in America through the Great Depression and worked hard to provide for his family. My mother was a refugee from a place that thrived on hard-driving business and then came to the United States on her own, completely dependent on herself. Her country would endure a civil war for over fifty years and stills remain in a state of unrest.

Their two worlds collided, and while my mother stayed strong and independent all her life, my father met an early and sudden death at seventy-three. My parents lasted twenty-five years, and the five of us would follow their dysfunctional patterns. It took almost an entire lifetime to get it right for me. I honestly do not know if I have it right now, but I am damn well trying.

I am an ambitious woman. I came from simple surroundings and found my way to Del Mar, California. It was a dream and an accomplishment. My dreams would be smeared and destroyed by the state agency that governed my license to practice psychotherapy. I was a new therapist and did not know a lot, but these people at the state agency were after me, my home, my equity, and my life. It all came tumbling down, and now I must write about it, or it will surely send me to an early death. I must unveil who I am and what I have become. The state agency, however, would bring me to my knees begging for mercy.

I have no one to blame but myself because I did commit the crime that provoked the state agency to come after me vigorously. I often thought it was too much what they did, and that I did try to comply with their grueling demands. The truth is that this agency, although lacked any mercy, did a tremendous service. Yes, they ruined me but actually contributed in saving my life.

This is a good time to reveal myself and talk about my inability to resist men that resulted in three births, two miscarriages, one abortion, and one almost abortion. I had miscarried instead. I had one beautiful daughter in my early twenties, another lovely daughter in my early thirties, and one more sweet daughter in my early forties. I am exhausted just thinking about it. That only inspired me to do more and to be more. I am accomplished, and my life shows it, but on the inside, I am a wreck. I have tried to die several times but remain alive. I have ruined my life, but talking about it gives me some type of enigmatic hope that it will be okay. Sometimes it would be easier to not be alive but what will my children think. Would I ruin them?

I am just like anyone else who has dreams and goals to accomplish. I used to love where life was taking me and all the struggles to get to the good life. I had one road to follow without a care of how difficult it may be. I had a dream, and it did come true, and then it did not. It was really my nightmare and something I must battle each day. I had been abusing pills for twenty years and have been in drug rehab twice. Because of my commitment to stay alive, I have agreed to never abuse alcohol and to completely abstain from prescription pain pills. It is difficult every day. This is the real me and life as I know it.

My ex-son-in-law once told me during the grueling process of being under the scrutiny of all of these agencies, It is your home that they want, and they won’t stop until they get it. I dismissed it. These haunting words would surround my life from 2002 until 2013. The legal battle to stay in practice cost me everything. It was the equity in the home that helped stay in the battlefield. I recall my lawyer saying that he would need more than $100,000 to continue to fight with an appeal. My partner said the house is all you have, and you have lost every battle. I still had my home, but I wish I hadn’t. This state agency refused to let me live my life. As long as I breathe, they will continue to monitor and entrap me.

I recall telling my father I was pregnant at the ripe age of forty, and he thought it was risky at my age. In fact, he thought it would ruin my life. This pregnancy was yet another one out of wedlock. My father and the rest of the family were never surprised in my ways. They thought I would do whatever I wanted despite the consequences. I suppose my father was upset with the pregnancy because eighteen grandchildren and now nineteen was just adding to the chaos.

Once I moved away, I knew my visits to Michigan would be full of criticisms, but I decided that since I had an escape, I would practice discretion. There was no reason to wrestle with my thoughts. My mother internalized, so I would follow suit. Of course, we would both explode unexpectedly. Screaming unexpectedly was a trait all my siblings practiced, and it was always shocking. One could never get used to it.

Three daughters with three different fathers. I wanted one more child, a fourth, perhaps a son with my current relationship, but I just got too old to start the process of conceiving. I was forty-eight. I did try once more, and like the other three before, it would lack traditional values. It never happened. I was too old. A baby every decade was more than enough. My three daughters were my blessings and helped me in the darkest times of my life. The thought of them could sway any negative thoughts or suicidal ideation. Each pregnancy may have been done without tradition, but that didn’t matter. I wanted to be a mother before I wanted anything. These children were my lifeline. I would have long discussions with my father about the stigma attached to going from man to man, but my father, he was not judgmental. That’s what he was, and that’s what I am. I will never listen to anything else.

My father was seventy-three at the time of my last pregnancy, and then a disastrous tragedy would strike. My life would forever change, including the changes that would occur with my siblings, and eventually, the entire extended family. My father’s heart detached from his chest wall, a dissection as it is known, and lived through surgery. An aortic dissection is a very painful event, and live to talk about was miraculous. His sister had died the year before with the same thing, and both my physician brothers explained we were all doomed.

I flew to Michigan from San Diego with my sister who moved out to San Diego ten years after me. I was pregnant, forty-one, and my obstetrician had put me on medication to prevent another miscarriage. I started to bleed halfway through the flight with this high-risk pregnancy and had to leave the plane in a wheelchair. The pregnancy was saved by my two physician brothers in Michigan with hormones. Ah, the power of hormones. So beautiful, yet such a curse. So although my pregnancy was saved, my father was struggling to stay alive.

I arrived in Michigan seventeen hours after his attack. My father was in the hospital, recovering from emergency surgery. He lived and gave us many beautiful days together. Because he was our father, and in the name of honor and respect, we all were thankful my father left the hospital; he was alive and did not die that day. It was a miracle that he’d made through many hours of surgery at his age. It wasn’t quite time for him to pass on.

Once he awoke from surgery, he saw all his children standing around, a rarity since I’d moved out of state, followed by my sister’s move to California, and my mother divorcing him. My father was smiling and look confused. He wanted an explanation. I quickly reminded him of my latest pregnancy. I guess I did not want him to see the weight gain before I jogged his memory and stated, Remember I called you and told you I was pregnant? My siblings looked at me quizzically with that California fruits and nuts thing.

Always experimenting from early on, with my sauna inflatable suit to lose weight as a teenager to the thigh slimming rubber wrap around, I often seemed like the odd one of the family. This is not to mention the banana and skim milk diets to the acupuncture staples inside my ear that worked with a vibrator. What did I know? Apparently, if you take a vibrator to these staples, it curbs the appetite, and as a fourteen-year-old girl, I wanted to stay in shape.

Conversely, my father thought it was crazy nuts to move to California but was sure I would return to my Michigan roots. We were an odd bunch, from sibling abuse to multiple marriages. I was a rebel from the start. So although my siblings thought moving to California was nuts, the screaming of my parents made us worse, California or not.

My father would pass away eight days later while he was home recovering. The five of us took shifts for several days. My father seemed to be doing well with plans to go back to his office in Detroit. He was self-employed once upon a time with these massive machines in his small factory; he worked as a printer and publisher for half a century. He would then turn this building into a ministry, like his father before him, and practiced this for the remainder of his life. He had quite the following, and it was impressive.

All five siblings agreed with my father’s assessment of himself that he was doing well. We needed to get back to our lives, as he was anxious to get back to his. If both doctor brothers agreed, I guess we all thought it was safe. I went back to California, and my brothers returned to their lives. Unfortunately, my father would suffer another dissection at home shortly after officiating a wedding at his chapel. It was just too soon for my father to be back at it again.

My poor father. This was sad. He was screaming for my brother to help him. My brother recounts these last moments as my father knowing nothing could be done, and he started reciting prayers, particularly this one phrase before he expired. In our holy book, if you are close to death, one recites, La ilaha illa’llah, (there is one God), an Arabic phrase. My father would repeat this until he took his last breath. My father knew this was it. My brother would have a life-changing experience as my father died in front of him.

As my father was dying, my brother would be paralyzed with fear and left my father alone to run outside, screaming for help, and running in circles. This well-trained physician lost his way. Thus, my family of origin had disintegrated. We still had my mother, but she was not my father. My father was a beautiful, kind soul. Although he made all five of us adhere to the work ethic with laborious-type jobs in his printing business, he did it with kindness and love.

From early childhood, my father would favor his first girl, making me feel different from the other siblings. He would prefer I sit with him and told me I was the special one. I recall on one of his California visits, he confided in me that he did not want to stay at my sister’s home, who lived seven miles away, and I wanted an explanation. All he said to me was, You’re the humble one. Four little words, and I knew what he wanted to say.

Several years after I relocated to California, my sister who followed me would stay at my home until she was settled. Speaking of my sister is probably the most difficult thing to do in my life. We should have been close, but it never happened. I am not saying we didn’t enjoy each other because we did. I had a different idea about being close, and she kept her distance. She landed a good job quickly as a registered nurse. In no time, she purchased a vehicle and leased a beautiful condo. Her head got big, and my head was in the same place as when I left Michigan. I never became a California girl; rather, it was just me in California. In other words, my father liked that about me.

My father was born in Highland Park, Michigan, a small town, west of Detroit. All five of us were born there, and my mother and father started their marriage there. In a less than perfect household, I am from a neighborhood that included horse rides. I recall my father saying, Don’t touch the horse dong, which piled up at the curbs. It was normal for us to do the opposite of what our parents said. We would take sticks and poke at this massive pile of dried-up manure. In an instant, the odor would follow us back home. My father knew, and then we knew the consequences of our actions. I looked up and down for a man like my father, but he was one of a kind.

There is so much to my father that went unnoticed because of the screaming and fighting. My father was ripped off of happiness, but as they say, it takes two to tango. He did the right thing and raised his kids with my mother. My mother, on the other hand, fought for her rights, wanted that silver spoon that she left back in her country, would often go away for months to Beirut, and had a pile of men in the background. I am sure if not for her cheerleaders, her marriage to my father would have fizzled out long before it finally did. This story should be called, My Mother and Her Men, but I only know places and faces, not the sordid details.

My father loved all five of us strong and made this love the priority in his life. He provided for us, taught us how to stand alone, and be independent. As anyone from this generation knows, there was a work ethic taught to most kids. My father insisted on this, and so did his father. He survived the Great Depression, and the money he made after this would be carefully protected. This would eventually become too much for my mother, as she was unhappy in the marriage.

My mother had a different kind of idea. She wanted all of us to concentrate on our education. In this regard, my mother and father’s combined efforts made us the five individuals that we are today. I say this with a lot of pride, and one cannot deny our thirst for education, fortitude, and careers. We all made it, but how the heck we did will never be known. I suppose the fast answer would be that we wanted to please my father for holding our family together.

Two jobs kept my father busy and my mother alone. He had his printing business, and my mother did help him, but her help was sporadic. If there was a war between them, she would be absent for weeks and months. These screaming fueled wars were very difficult on the five of us, but my father would make it up to us and take us on a short vacation. I suppose that pacified us. His second job was at the Detroit News, as this employer provided medical insurance.

On these long workdays, my mother would do her thing, and it was not honorable. The man that came to fix the reel-to-reel tape recorder only came when my father worked at night. The man in the elevator that gave my mother that ooh-la-la look is something one never forgets. The men at parties my parents hosted ogled over her in front of their wives. My father’s brother wouldn’t leave my mother alone. It was all scandalous. My father never stood a chance. He wanted peace and got anything but that. I followed my mother’s ways, but my father was my teacher. In other words, I would be good, and then I wasn’t.

My father’s printing shop was our second home. We all had our jobs, and when there was peace between my mother and father, she would be there with us. I spent so much time there that it is not a surprise that all my siblings never felt comfortable unless they were busy. Between that and my screaming mother, how much could his heart take? Unfortunately, we will probably have the same fate as my father because we all are screamers as well. We scream at our partners like we are crazy. Even the partner is shocked by it and the words coming out. It was too much for the situation, but we knew no other way. Scream your way through life. The only time my father stopped screaming is when my mother filed for divorced. Then he begged her with kindness to stay.

I am not fond of my mother, but I can say one nice thing. She divorced my father but wouldn’t leave him for several years. She knew he would die without her. There was no winning in this situation, scream or die. Even when she remarried, she remained with my father and would visit her new husband. This is almost impossible to understand. My mother stayed with my father to prevent the pain it would cause him. Her new marriage survived this crazy lifestyle. It kept the peace for several years, and my father did not know. You got to give that to my mother. In the end, her new husband would start to pressure her after years of patience. She finally had to leave my father, and it wasn’t any easier.

My father became extremely popular with his ministry. Many of his disciples would come to him for counseling. He redefined himself after my mother finally left. I think it was the best thing that could have happened to him. He would travel all over the Middle East and became a beloved figure. I was always proud of him, and now he was living a respectable life without my mother. It was okay, but then the bomb dropped.

My father had so many followers at this point. There was an organization my mother and father started, where my father was the head of this organization. My mother sat on the board of trustees. I suppose my father had missed a thing or two in the developmental stages of the organization, and my mother wanted her new husband, my father’s best friend, to replace my father. It was a ruthless act. My fraudulent mother and her new husband received hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. They were now in charge of this organization and brought in members they could manipulate as well as, ones that were well-connected.

My father had tried his best to move forward but was humiliated and devastated. He did all he could do to cope and then the letter. He wrote a letter to his congregation, whose members were all over the United States and internationally, what my mother had done. He mistakenly thought his congregation would help him. With my mother now in power, this made my father look like a nutcase and a man scorned. My father was at the bottom of his life, first with the divorce, and now this.

This was quite the scandal, and eventually, my mother was sued in federal court. She won the case, but she was finished, and whatever monies were coming to her had now stopped. My father was vindicated and could go back to resume his life without heartache. My mother would try to regain her status with the international organizations, but they were no longer interested. My father was somewhat redeemed and held this against my mother for the rest of his life. This is the reason I took my three-year-old daughter and relocated to California. It was a now-or-never type of situation.

My father raised us in the same neighborhood that he was raised in and never wanted to leave. It was my mother and the Detroit riots of the late sixties that made that decision to move to the suburbs. Prior to this move, there was kickball, basketball, and baseball right outside our front door. There were friends galore. We stayed out for as long as the night was young. There was never any danger like there is today. This quaint childhood town has now deteriorated, and I still dream of it.

My father did not hire employees, rather had his children as employees, another popular concept for the 1960s. When my father’s car pulled up, the siblings ran in five different directions but ultimately had to go into the house to eat dinner and await eruption. The fighting was not every night but most nights. In a typical argument, my mother would lock my father out, but he would kick in the back door. Actually, there was no door that would block his entry into his own home. That back door was never repaired. It still locked, but you could shove it open, and a second entry door that would access the cellar was also damaged for the same reasons.

I guess I became afraid with two broken doors in a neighborhood that discriminated against white people. Please do not misunderstand my words here as they are the reality of my life and my siblings’ lives. One of my earliest memories was wanting different parents, and since that could never be, I decided that I would need to be different to survive those early years. I believe all five of us just desired something more peaceful, but instead, we followed their patterns.

My mother is from Beirut, Lebanon, and her home no longer exists. The civil war had destroyed her hometown, and eventually, her mother would also abandon her country to come live with our family. This once metropolitan city had fallen to ruins. My mother was accustomed to the finer things in life and wanted out of the unsafe neighborhood. The Detroit riots had taken over. My father was fond of his childhood town, but he wanted to keep his children safe. It’s all my father knew, and although it was less than twenty miles away to the suburbs, it was a difficult adjustment for him.

My father had dreams, and whatever he did not accomplish, his five children would finish. He had five mothers, and the fifth one would be the grandmother I would know. I am like my grandfather. He went from woman to woman, experiencing divorce, death, and difficulties in his marital life. His last wife would be my grandmother. It was eerily similar to my life. My grandmother had a wicked soul who did not enjoy my grandfather, nor wanted what was in my father’s best interest. She seemed to put up with him and his five siblings instead of enjoying them.

This woman, which was my grandmother, would create a scandal within the family after the death of my grandfather. I was living in California and missed all the excitement. After my grandfather’s death, my grandmother remarried my uncle’s father-in-law after she forced this man to divorce his wife. One night, my grandmother sent her new husband outside to fix some fires that were down from a storm, and he was electrocuted. My grandmother received over a million dollars and left to return to her home in the Middle East. She was never heard from again.

In the days before the bombings of Beirut, my mother had a charmed life. Her family owned two homes, one in the city and one in the mountains. She has one brother, and both of them attending boarding schools. When my mother’s father died, she was fifteen years old, and her uncle took his place. Thus, my grandmother had a brother and sister that helped with the child-rearing. My mother was very close to her family, and they all lived together. When she came to marry in Michigan and realized that America wasn’t what she thought it was, living near Detroit, she wanted out. She felt poor and held that against my father for the entire marriage.

When someone asks what my earliest memories are, there is one that quickly comes to mind. It was my parents screaming at the top of their lungs. The neighbors heard, my relatives knew, and friends would run from our home and tell the freakish details to their parents. I was the odd girl with the crazy parents, and I took it personally. At nineteen years old, my girlfriend from college came to my home to study with me, and she heard my parents screaming. She would ask what the yelling and screaming was. It had become so normal that I didn’t notice. It was this friend who gave me my first lesson in life about parents.

In terms of getting along with each other or anyone else, this is where the disaster starts. The screaming of my parents could erupt over anything at any time. There was not a filter, and they would scream at the grocery store, my father’s place of business, the bedrooms, outside, hotels on family vacations, and in the vehicles where there was no escape. Once, there was a screaming incident on the Mackinaw Bridge in Upper Michigan, where the wind almost blew my father over while repairing a flat tire. My mother was screaming, and we thought my father would die on that bridge.

There was no safety net from their obscenities, and the five of us were deeply scarred. They stayed together to raise us, but I wish they hadn’t. When I look back at my past, I justify the screaming by thinking that there were kids beaten, left in closets, and starving; thus, this could not have been abuse. Now I think differently. It was another form of abuse, and it became too much for us. We would internalize all these actions that would resurface in our own adult relationships.

Eventually, my oldest brother started taking punches at me and thought he was entitled to do so since my parents adored him. They were either fighting, working, or attending social events every night of the week; thus, the discipline was taken over by this brother. So, at this point, I learned how