“Doing the best you can”

I just listened to the Audiobook called “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls. This book stayed on the New York’s Bestseller list for 7 years, which is crazy to think! It’s a memoir of her unconventional, poverty-stricken upbringing. Interviewed later, I was struck at the unemotional account of her childhood. She never thought of it as her being abused because she stated “ that was all she knew”. It was an aha moment for me, because what she suffered would be considered abuse in every sense of the definition. It literally made me both cry one minute, and literally be sick to my stomach the next. How many adults walking around with multiple events, like depression, alcohol and drug addiction, food addictions, and any number of other disorders, are actually victims-of abuse and don’t acknowledge it?

I think the reason this was so painful for me to hear, and actually made me physically ill, was that I could relate to a lot of what was being said.

The memories of existing in a two room house, with no running water, and things falling down around us, came flooding back. I never questioned why we survived this way. Daddy worked drilling water and Oil wells, a job that was probably a well paid one. Deeply seated in my memory are the times he would take me with him to work. At the time, I imagined it was because I was his favorite, I now understand it to be much more or much less than that. Now that I call back about it all I’m sure the good money was more than enough to sustain us, but was actually spent on alcohol, cigarettes and lost gambling. Instead, we held out in a house that was a total dump! Mom also worked in a factory, then subsequently in a Nursing Home. Both parents worked and we had nothing? Wow, I’m so stupid, to not realize this all until now.

We did eat, but mostly beans, in the Summer we had Garden stuff. I remember us being in the car and Dad stopping on the side of the road adjacent to the big Corn Fields. He would vanish for a while, then return with an arm full of Corn. Mamma said it was Field Corn not really for eating, but to feed the animals in the Winter, so it wouldn’t be missed and perfectly fine for to eat. It tasted so good to me, I was often teased from the family about eating so much Corn that I was going to turn into it.

I also remember going to different houses and Mom, Wendy and I were to stay in the car because we were told it was unsafe. As I became older I realized these places were homes of bootleggers. The County where we lived was a dry County, so Dad got his Alcohol from these spots. Oftentimes, we would witness someone fighting and stumbling to our car bleeding. It was nothing to see knifes and Guns. Being scared was a normal part of our life’s. On one of the car rides home after one of these meetings, I remember Wendy making Dad mad by leaning on his seat and he backhanded her blooding her nose.

I remember the stories Mom told of her own father being a drunk. She frequently told of the 6’5 giant of a man coming in drunk getting a knife going in after her mom. Both her and her two brothers would hide in fear of their life. The story was that he was killed one night when he was drunk, hanging out at the river with his friends, or as Mom thought, maybe his enemies as she always believed he was murdered by one of them. I never knew him, nor did I know either of Dad’s parents.

My Mom’s brother also suffered problems with alcohol and when he drank he became mean just as my grandfather had. He came to the house pounding on the door screaming that he knew we were home and to let him in. As usual, Dad generally wasn’t home so Mom would make us go sit in the corner and to be still. When my Uncle finally got exhausted after what seemed like hours of banging on the door, he would then go sit in his truck and honk the horn for hours on hours, until he either passed out or ran the battery down. This happened over and over for years, until he was ultimately found dead one day in his truck. I was secretly happy that I no longer had to be afraid of him.

I was listening to a public lecture on YouTube by Brene Brown in which she asked this question “ Do you think most people do the best that they can”? She actually did research on this inquiry and found most people responded with yes, they thought most people did do the best they could. I kind of had the same response as she did, especially thinking about my childhood. Ms. Brown’s stated that when she was first presented with this question by her therapist, her answer was “ Hell No”! In the end after finishing listening and thinking deeply about that question I came to the conclusion that in most cases maybe people do. It is sad though to think that this is their best…..

~Ginger~ 💜