Chapter 9 - Why I Shattered the Steel Ceiling & How I Did It

I kept selling, fabricating and hanging window treatments. I attended all of the AA meetings I could get to and still have the drapes done on time.  Some of the local AA members were mad at me for breaking up with #3 and would no longer speak to me.

My hypnotist called me a few days after #3 moved next door. He told me that #3 was threatening to sue him for alienation of affection, “Watch out for him!  From our conversations, he is going through some kind of dilutions.  It sounds like he may be stalking you.”

“Hell, he was doin’ that when he was still livin’ here!”

My best friend’s husband moved in with me for a few days, but both of us figured out that it was a mistake.  He moved back with his family. 

I was so embarrassed and disgusted with me. I couldn’t believe that I had done that sober!  I beat myself up emotionally. 

I hung a drape job a few days later and stopped for gas in Adel on my way home. It was like I had an out-of-the-body experience.  I walked to the beer cooler instead of just paying for the gas like usual. 

I remember thinking that I had never tasted Coors beer so I bought a six pack, got in my car and headed the six and a half miles to De Soto.  I turned around when I got there and had all of them drank by the time I got back to Adel. 

I parked in front of the bar where I usually met dad in the evening to have a Diet Pepsi. I was also making the bar owner’s drapes at the time.  I sat down on the stool next to dad, “Give me a Coors.”

He was startled, “What?”

I pointed my finger in his face, “You know better.  I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

He got up and walked out the door.

My customer, the bar owner, asked, “Are you sure Bonnie?”  I just looked at her and she gave me the beer.  I suppose I should probably remind you that I was not a real nice person when I was drinking.  People seldom argued with me.

It gets pretty blurred, but I remember the owner of the bar following me outside at one point when I was going with a biker to get some drugs, “Bonnie,” she called, “I’ll buy you a beer if you come back in.”

“Oh, okay.”

I have been told by members of AA that I went to the back room of the restaurant where we always met after the meeting for coffee.  They said I told them where they could put AA. 

The next thing I remember is a man, who went to AA meetings with me, trying to get me to go home from a different bar. Then I woke up the next morning with him standing beside the bed yelling, “If you want to be a stripper, I know where you can get a job!”

He continued yelling that he had brought me home, I had done a strip dance for him. He got me dumped in bed.  He took my car key, walked back into town, got his car and went home.  Now he was back to give me the car key. 

A couple of months later he told me that he owed his sobriety to me. He had gone into that bar to get drunk, but when he saw me drinking he stayed sober so he could get me home safe.

My customer, the bar owner, called almost immediately after he had thrown the key on the bed and stomped out of the house.  She asked me to not work on her drapes that day.  I assured her that I would not be doing anything except suffering with the worst hangover I have ever had.  She didn’t ask how I was doing.  She just hung up.

I went to the bathroom, lit a cigarette, started a pot of coffee and went to the basement to check the answering machine. I was hoping one of my AA sisters or brothers had called to see if they could help.  I definitely knew that I needed help, but there were no messages. 

Dad came down the steps and put his arm around my shoulders, “Had enough?”

“Oh yeah!  Once every five and a half years is more than sufficient!”

I regretted that statement five and a half years later because somehow it was embedded in my mind that it would be okay if I drank every five and a half years.  I had a hell of a time getting through that year sober, but so far, June 30, 1981 is my sobriety date….we always put ‘yet’ on the end of statements like that because I can only stay sober for one day - today.

Actually, I don’t remember the exact date in June that I got drunk, but my sponsor in Texas told me that I could just use the last day of the month to make sure I had it covered.

No one called to see how I was.  I was really hurt because lots of my AA sisters and brothers had told me for five years how much I had helped them when they wanted to drink or had gotten drunk.  Apparently they were not going to do the same for me.  As usual, I was on my own.

I put myself in outpatient alcohol and drug treatment. I told #3 that he could go as my concerned person if he wanted to.  He said that he would go if he could ride with me. 

From the time he got in the car there was an incessant barrage of everything that was wrong with me. After almost ten years there was a significant list.  Actually, I used his itemized list for my inventory to make sure I didn’t forget anything.

However, during group discussions the only thing he could think of that he had done wrong was that he didn’t make me pick up the pins on the basement floor. The counselor could not get him to see that it was not his job to make me do anything, “especially anything to do with her drapery business.”

#3 insisted that none of his actions might have caused any bad feelings on my part. He said that he had to watch me all of the time because, “Just like I thought, she got drunk again after she lost all of that weight.  She had a married man move in with her!”

I admitted lots of the things in those group sessions that I had done that were not in the best interest of our marriage or my sobriety. Of course, he used every one of them on our trips to and from treatment.  I knew that I was not supposed to take his inventory for him so I kept myself from spewing his wrongs like I wanted to.

He rode with me a few days before I told him, “You can keep going as my concerned person, but you can’t ride with me any more. I’m not going to listen to you trying to make me feel guilty about the divorce.  I’m going to learn how to stay sober, but I can’t do that with you constantly badgering me while I’m trying to drive.  I get so pissed by the time I get home that I want to drink again!”

#3 stopped going. I asked a couple of the men in the group to call him.  They said they tried to convince him to come back, but he refused. 

Actually, we may not have gotten divorced if he would have come back so we could have worked things out. Most of those couples in the group decided to stay together by the time we graduated. 

I would have been willing to work with #3 in group and individual sessions with the counselor as a mediator, but I was not going to continue being the only one that admitted I needed help.

The few days that he rode with me only proved to me that he was going to continue blaming me for everything wrong in our lives. I had accepted that kind of responsibility from my family of origin when I was growing up and didn’t know any better, but no more! 

I needed help dealing with the boy’s death, my feelings about my beautiful daughter’s death and my guilt about praying that mom would die so she would stop hurting me. #3 wouldn’t even allow me to speak about any of it, let alone get help.

#3 was a great guy.  The way I understand it today is that he was a sweet man who wanted to hold me captive because that is what his father did to his mother.  That is what he thought he was supposed to do to be a good husband. 

Additionally, my getting drunk scared him to death. He thought I was getting drunk every time he was not with me, but I wasn’t!  He didn’t trust me and he was suffocating me because he was so scared.

I had been locked up for over four years. I was not interested in him as my jailer.  We were divorced July 27, 1981.

He didn’t move out of my neighbor’s house after the divorce.  My neighbor told me later that he didn’t go to work.  He was obsessed with watching my house all day and night, and drove past on the highway incessantly. 

I already knew he was doing that because I had seen him numerous times, numerous nights, driving real slow back and forth in front of the house when I got up to go to the bathroom, get a glass of water and smoke a cigarette.

In fact, he waited to move until the day that I married #4. The truth be told, that is the reason I married #4.  I knew #3 would move back to Redfield and stop stalking me as soon as I got married again.

I was in Oregon driving semi over-the-road a few years later when #5 said dispatch told him that a woman in Iowa left a message for me to call her right away.  “She said that it was an emergency.”

It was an AA sister telling me that #3 was unconscious in the hospital in Des Moines.  She said that he had sat in a recliner for months, blaming me and drinking so much that he went into a coma.  She said AA members wanted me to come home and talk him out of it.

I asked her, “What am I supposed to say to him? I’m not going to give him the false hope that we might get back together.”  She hung up on me.

A few days later I was at the terminal in Bakersfield.  She called to tell me that #3 had died.  I went outside and started beating on the trailers in the yard.  #5 stopped me before I broke my hands.  He held me while I sobbed. 

Even though I didn’t want to be married to #3, I still loved him. I hated that he had suffered so much.  I’m still sad that he was never able to work the 12 Steps so he could be happy in sobriety, which might have helped us both be sober and happy together. 

It has taken me many years of processing that relationship, with the help of Al-Anon, to understand that, I didn’t cause it and I couldn’t fix it! If he had not used me as an excuse for getting drunk, there would have been someone or something else for him to blame.

I wish I could have done more to help him, but I was taught that the only person I can really help is me, and I can’t do that without the Higher Power that I believe in guiding me.

I had to become willing and teachable. Sometimes it still takes a lot of work, even after thirty plus years of sobriety, to stay positive, especially when crap happens.

I have told everyone since #3, “Don’t make me choose between you and AA because you’ll lose. If I don’t have my sobriety, I lose it all, including me.”

It is like when I am on a plane. The stewardess tells mothers to put the oxygen on themselves before they put it on their children.  If the mother passes out from lack of oxygen while she is putting it on her children, she will not be able to help any of them. 

The same is true for sobriety. I have had to walk away from many people who chose alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, etc. because I knew, sooner or later, if I stayed with them, I would join them.

KARMA- Years later I understood just how hurt #3 was. This time I was the one who was fifteen years older.  I was sick with COPD so I could not ride behind #B on his Harley.  He was not ready to be old or take care of me any more than I had been willing to stay with #3.  Today I am forced to learn how to be old by myself.

Outpatient Alcohol and drug treatment was fantastic for me. I wanted their help because I finally recognized that what I had been doing was not going to work for me to stay sober all of the time.  I didn’t want to get drunk every few years, especially after that last hangover!

It had been several weeks since that last drunk so I considered myself chemically free when I started treatment. After attending the AA meetings for so long, I had a good idea of how to ‘talk the talk’ of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I had to learn the lingo of treatment. 

I was thin after losing the hundred pounds for the second time. I was still young enough that my skin snapped back and it was nice to be able to reach my rectum and wipe after I had a bowel movement.  I couldn’t reach it when I heavy. 

I had a nice home and car, and I looked professional with my new wardrobe. However, I was still at a total loss about how to maintain continuous sobriety when things got rough.  I still didn’t know how to not do stupid shit like move my best friend’s husband in with me.  I didn’t even know who I was.  Why was I still getting involved with men?

I had to learn to trust me before I could trust anyone else. The counselor told us that meant I had to learn how to have integrity – do the right thing when no one is watching.  That took a while!  Okay, years to figure out that I feel better about me when I just do the next right thing and don’t worry about anything else. 

What really irked me was when the ‘old timers’ told me that I had to do something nice for somebody every day and not tell anybody that I had done it. That almost got me into trouble.

For instance, I had not been out of treatment very long when I was driving down the street in Des Moines.  It was raining pretty hard and there was an old woman seated at the bus stop.  I pulled over, got out of the car, grabbed her groceries and put them in my car, “get in!” 

Thinking back now, she had a scared look on her face, but I was in the process of doing something nice for her and I was not going to let her tell me anything different. She finally got in the car and told me where she was going.  I drove directly to that address, stopped, helped her out of the car and handed her the groceries.  I asked if she wanted me to help carry them.  She said “NO!” as she almost ran toward the building.  To be honest, she may not have given me her real address. 

In contrast, a few years ago I saw an older woman with grocery sacks sitting on a seat outside of a grocery store. It was really hot and she was perspiring profusely.  She was still there when I came out about twenty minutes later. 

I put the groceries in my car. I asked her if she needed help when I took my cart to the stand.  She said that she had called for a cab three times in the past hour. 

I told her, “I’ll give you a ride. My car has a real good air conditioner.”

She looked nervous, but finally, “Well, I live downtown.”

“That’s not a problem. I have plenty of time and gas.”

She finally accepted my offer after several more times of me telling her that it would not be an inconvenience.

I put her groceries in the car, but this time I didn’t just grab them. I helped her get into the car.  When she could not get the seat belt fastened, I connected it.  I drove straight to her address and helped her out of the car.  I handed her the groceries. 

She offered me money and I told her, “The people who helped me said to pay them back by helping others.”

I can see that I had made some progress in becoming the person I should have always been. I’m not quite as much of a bulldozer now.  Well, most of the time.

I was in alcohol and drug treatment with a group of people that was pretty much like me. We all thought that we knew everything.  Thank goodness we had a great counselor who was in recovery and confronted the hell out of us.  He didn’t pull any punches either.  He put everything in language that we had no trouble understanding. 

He gave us a sheet of paper where we had to read pages out of Alcoholics Anonymous, and then some more pages out of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Then we were to answer the questions on the paper so we could talk about them in group. 

Reading those passages made me realize how my behavior had affected me and those around me. It was painful making the lists of my interferences, resentments and other aspects of my life.  Reality slapped me in the face many times listening to the others share.  I had done those things to people too. 

I finally understood how the things I did had caused other people to react vehemently at times. Then I would resent their actions to get even with me.  The drama and chaos were always under the guise of a supposedly happy and loving family of origin.  We all operated in a passive-aggressive manner from the unremitting resentments that had piled up.  No wonder my life felt like a bunch of crap!  I had learned how to emotionally duck and weave, and to keep my mouth shut.

I learned that having resentments is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die (Margaret Stunt, Rashida Rowe).  The only person I was hurting with my resentments was me.  Most of the time the other person was sleeping through the night and unaware that I was mad at them.  Or if they did know, they could have cared less. 

Not too long ago I heard on television (Oprah) that forgiveness does not mean that it is okay that (fill in the blank) happened. Forgiveness means that I realize, no matter what anyone has done to me, or anything they may do to make it right, the past will always be just like it is.  I had better come to terms with that reality and figure out what lessons I can take with me from the past or it is me who will be suffering for the rest of my life, and ‘they don’t care’.

I still do things that cause a reaction from others. Then I end up resenting their reaction instead of me making an apology and amends right away.  It doesn’t take me as long to own my part as it used to.  It is called keeping my side of the street clean.

Sometimes mom’s rigidity comes out of my mouth. I wish I had a better filter.  I am continually working on it.  Other times that little girl in me comes out to play.  I still do stupid things, but as I have gotten older, and practiced making amends, it is a lot easier to admit I was w—r—o—n—g.

There is also the other side of this issue. What about the people that I make amends to over and over, but they insist on continuing to resent me?  Well, for a long time I kept making amends to them over and over again, but what I finally figured out was they were using me as a whipping post.  I was giving them the power to make me feel bad about me. 

My counselor told me, “As long as you have admitted your transgressions and offered to make it right, it is up to them to either accept or reject your effort. You have done your part.  You can’t do the impossible like turning back the clock and changing the past, so if they choose to hang on to their resentments toward you, it is no longer any of your concern.”

As long as I had made all of the amends that my counselor and sponsor said I owed, and really meant it, I adopted the concept of mentally placing them in my Higher Power’s lap: (Here is (fill in the blank). Please take care of him/her.  I want all of the good things for him/her that I want for myself.  Amen)  Then I get on with my life.

Some of us met at a restaurant after treatment each evening. Others who had already gone through treatment sometimes showed up and shared how they handled things like we were dealing with.  We talked past midnight.  Sometimes we went to late AA meetings together. 

Then I went home, grabbed some sleep, worked in the shop until it was time to change my clothes and go back to treatment.  I did that all week and went to AA meetings on the weekends.

One night a man, who had graduated from treatment right before I started, had me so turned on that I had him follow me home. The sex was better than I had experienced for years, but when it was time for sleep, he wrapped his arms and legs around me so tight that I could barely breathe.  He was not going to let me move or go, but I finally fought my way out of his death grip and sent him back to Des Moines.

I went to an AA conference in Omaha one weekend by myself.  I enjoyed it immensely and heard a speaker from California that really helped me.  He said that it had always amazed him how women came into AA, cleaned up and started acting snooty.  “I’m waitin’ for some of those old gals that I used to drink with to get here so everything isn’t so damned serious all the time.”

That remark helped me understand that I didn’t have to be a prude like I thought I would have to be in order stay sober. I could be myself.  How on earth could I ever claim to be anything except what I am each day? 

I had already found out that I did have some scruples because marriage did matter to me, even if I could not find one that worked for me personally. Thinking back to the tricks I turned in my youth, I had always wondered how they could have sex with me and then go home and crawl into bed with their wife and act like nothing had happened. 

I couldn’t do that! My husband or live-in, whichever the case was at the time, knew we were done before there was anyone else in my bed.  It’s called serial monogamy.

My counselor had me attend a grief group. I had no idea that there was such a thing as grief, let alone a way to work through it.  I had no clue that I was still grieving the loss of the childhood I should have had.  I was still grieving mom blaming me for the incest instead of making the pedophile pay for his crimes. 

How could I, as a six year old girl, have been so sexy that a grown man had to hurt me like that? What could I have possibly done?  Why had I been given shock treatments for telling mom that she could not hit me any more? 

Why did the funeral director’s wife slap me when I saw Lori’s little body lying in her tiny casket for the first time? Why could the rest of the family cry at Lori and mom’s funeral, but I was told to stop being stupid? 

Why had I been locked up for all of those years in mental hospitals and prison instead of just one person hugging me and telling me that somebody was sorry that I had to live through all of it?

Why had no one ever shown me any type of understanding about how hard all of those things had been on me? Why was I wrong to miss my beautiful daughter with every breath I take?

I also had to work my way through the grief about denying, even to myself, about the powerlessness I felt when #2’s daughter went back to her mother. I knew that she would end up back in the hospital with anemia, lice, etc. There was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

Additionally, I was still carrying around the guilt of praying that mom would die so she would stop hurting me, and feeling that the accident was my fault. I would keep that secret for numerous decades before I could even say it out loud.  Now I talk about it in meetings.

The shock and trauma of the neighbor boy’s death vaporized the gates that had been holding all of those other feelings at bay. I hope I never have to feel the naked conscious reactions that exploded into gut-wrenching snotty slobbering sobs when all of those things surged to the surface. 

I was in my bed after one of those grief groups. It felt like consecutive bursts of fireworks exploding in my head as each layer of agonizing realization bombarded me.  I collapsed in exhaustion when it finally eased. 

I couldn’t move. I felt like someone had beat the hell out of me.  My soul was oozing and there were no thoughts, just a new awareness that would have destroyed me without the help of that group. 

I must have fallen asleep, but woke while it was still dark. I was still sweating.  I was shaking.  All I did was go to the rest room, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee.  I was huddled in my recliner sucking my thumb.  I relived each mental explosion until it was time to go back to treatment. 

In a way I didn’t want to go back, but where else could I go? There was no place, nobody else to talk to.  

In time, I finally began to understand that I had to live through the first four stages of grief about each loss to get to the last stage of acceptance, and finally find some relief. Otherwise I would just kept going around and around through the other four stages [(1) denial & isolation (2) anger (3) bargaining (4) depression] like I had been doing for thirty years.  Meanwhile, new agonies were being added to my emotionally paralyzing torment. 

No wonder I was depressed or in rage all of the time. Other times I had just wanted to be left alone.  I had made everybody so miserable they stayed away so I could find oblivion in the alcohol and drugs that no longer worked to kill the pain.

I had to go back to treatment to understand that I had never played after I was six years old. I did not know what fun was.  I was being raped by my grandfather and terrorized by mom’s cycles of denial: deafening silence and rage toward me when no one was around. 

I had to find a way to live with that reality. That was my past.  For me to be able to stay sober, I had to get to acceptance about all of it, especially my actions.  That grief group helped immensely.

Almost as soon as I got out of treatment I asked my best friend to meet me for coffee so I could make amends. You know, the woman whose husband moved in with me and then back with her. 

I still don’t know where she found the strength, fortitude and acceptance that day to allow me the opportunity to tell her how much I regretted my betrayal of her. It still amazes me that she wants to continue our friendship after all these years.  She is one of the people that I hurt the most, yet she still loves me.  Today I understand that it was her grace – an unwarranted gift. 

My counselor said that I was to find time to just sit with myself every day for thirty minutes without the radio or television. I couldn’t read anything either.  I was supposed to just be aware of my breathing, my thoughts and my surroundings.  I was to work on keeping my thoughts positive, my breathing slow and even.  He told me, “Stay in today because today is all we have.”

He said that if I thought about the future, I would get scared. If I thought about the past, I would be re-feeling the pain.

He also told me to find cheap and fun (C&F) things to do by myself twice a week. He told me that I was a workaholic, “You stay busy so you don’t have to feel.”

Apparently we alcoholics find other ways to hide from our feelings when we don’t use our ‘drug of choice’, be it alcohol or something else. He had a list which included eating, gambling, shopping, sex, etc. that I could not use as a C&F.

Wow! I had done all of those things when I didn’t drink.  It took me some time to figure out that I still liked fishing, but the counselor would not let me have just one C&F activity.  I had to find more. 

The cheap part was throwing me because I had money for the shopping that gave me so much enjoyment until I got the items home where they lost the excitement of the hunt. So he was right about shopping being a way for me to ignore my feelings.

It would have been cheap for me to cook and eat, which I liked to do. Dad had a half acre garden full of veggies, there were canned tomatoes and bread and butter pickles on the shelf in the basement and a freezer full of meat, but the counselor said that didn’t work because I cooked every night for me and dad anyway.  Besides, I didn’t want to put those hundred pounds back on, so eating for enjoyment was out.

I really hated that he had sex on his list. That would have absolutely been a cheap and fun thing for me.  I couldn’t even masturbate because sex, whether it was with me or others, was a way for me to ignore what I was actually feeling.  Okay, I cheated on that one, if you count the vibrator.

Gas was a lot cheaper in the 1980s than it is today so I went driving on unfamiliar country roads as one of my C&F activities. I called it sight seeing.  I could turn on the radio and enjoy the excitement, and sometimes the serenity of finding new and beautiful places. 

One day I found myself driving around a lake north of Des Moines.  The leaves had turned beautiful fall colors.  I was really captivated by all of the different hues.  All of a sudden I found a little park with swings, a merry-go-round and one of those slides that spiraled on the way to the ground. 

I wonder what that slide feels like. They didn’t have those when I was young.

I parked the car and watched the kids. I could tell that they were having lots of fun.  I remembered how I had never gotten to do those things when I was growing up. 

Part of the reason was that recess meant that I was standing by the kitchen door eating peanut butter sandwiches and drinking chocolate milk to fill that lonely and scared part of me. My school pictures show that I gained weight every year after kindergarten. 

I know today that food was how I dealt with what grandpa was doing to me. I ate everything I could hold.  Sometimes I still do.

Also, mom was always putting us on a diet. Once it was five hundred calories a day.  They usually only lasted a couple of days because there would be either cookies or a cake when I got home from school on the third or forth day.

I watched the kids playing on that slide for a while. I decided to let the little girl out to play like my counselor told me I needed to do.  I shut off the car and got in line.  I noticed the kids were looking at me funny, but I persevered and stood my ground.  I had let the kids intimidate me when I was growing up by teasing me about how fat I was, but I was not going to let these kids do that.  I wasn’t fat any more.  Besides, I was bigger than they were so they didn’t scare me.  Well, not very much any way.

I found myself squealing with delight the first and all of the other times I went down that slide. The kids started laughing and squealing too.  We moved to the merry-go-round where I pushed it with them on it and then jumped on myself.  A couple of them pushed me on a swing after I pushed each of them.  I was not so good on the monkey bars so we went back to the slide for a while.

I have to admit that day, playing with those children, lit the spark that has grown into my little girl’s ferocity to get out and play often, but it is still work at times to figure out my personal boundaries. You see, I was taught there are no boundaries when I was growing up. 

There were lies, shunning and secrets. Those are engrained in me.  It has taken many years to find my own acceptable behavior. 

At first, I would stand still because I knew I was up against one of my personal limits and didn’t know what to do. Other times I realized that I had already gone past one and was embarrassing myself. 

Mom’s voice would be screaming in my brain that I was stupid, would never do anything right, etc. Slowly I learned to shut off the mental masturbation of mom’s tirades. 

Then I had to learn how to nurture that little girl in me so I could treat her with the love and respect that she had always deserved. She needed to emotionally grow into a happy and productive adult.  I would have to be the one to help her do that.

I would mentally take her by the hand, “Okay, let’s go across the street so you can tell them you’re sorry for breaking their window and I’ll pay to have it fixed, but the cost will be coming out of your allowance!”

That was a metaphor, to me, for the many times I have had to make my amends. One of my AA brothers says that life is a series of surrenders.  I agree. 

I also believe that my life is a series of AFGOs (Another Freaking Growth Opportunity). Life got easier when I realized that I have a choice when it comes to what happens in my life and how I understand what happens to me.  If I feel like I am being picked on, then I am depressed, but if I look at bad things as an opportunity to learn something, I am excited.

However, understanding something does not mean that I could use the information right away. I had to walk through a lot more bad choices before I figured out what good choices looked like.  It would be decades before I finally was able to start identifying what constitutes a trustworthy person, and sometimes I am still wrong.

The treatment counselor told us not to get involved in a relationship for a year, or if we were married, not to get a divorce for a year. So naturally, since I had always followed orders, I divorced #3 and married the nice man I met in treatment. 

#4 was retired military with an ex-wife and three kids. He told me they were getting his entire military pension for child support each month.  I never met them, but I only married him so #3 would move back to Redfield and stop stalking me.  I was not interested in meeting his children.

Since part of #4’s story was that he had been abusive to his family, I told him the same thing I had told everybody I got involved with after the asshole who had used me as a punching bag, “Don’t ever hit me and then go to sleep because I’ll melt a can of Crisco and dump it all over you.”

There were times I could tell he wanted to hit me, but I just looked at him. He apparently remembered what I said.  I would have done it back then too.

I continued to work in my drapery shop. Nothing much changed in my life except there was a different man in my bed.  We had dinner with dad every evening.  #4 told dad during one of those meals, “I want you to stop giving her money!”

…. Sorry, I was just sitting here trying to figure out how to write about dad’s expression. Let’s see, I guess the best description would be something about inserting items that probably would not have fit into #4. 

I knew as soon as I saw dad’s expression that there were going to be problems. #4 was trying to come between me and dad, and dad would always win. 

Mom had made me promise her that I would take care of dad if anything ever happened to her. My guilt from praying that she would die made it impossible for me to choose anyone over dad. 

Years later my shrink helped me understand that it was this ‘caustic promise syndrome’ that kept me tied to dad in an unhealthy way, but I didn’t know that at the time.

There are some who might tell you that I used to swear some. One man always said the same thing when I got to a meeting, “Oh good!  Bonnie’s here!  I haven’t heard the F-word yet today.” 

Now you know that I just had to use it around him, even though I had stopped using it most of the time because I didn’t want to let it slip in front of my customers.

I learned that rich people are not always happy. A few months before this I had made all of the window treatments for a couple’s new home in Des Moines.  I put her in contact with a friend of mine that had an upholstery business and I helped her choose coordinating fabrics for some of her furniture. 

She was ecstatic when I installed the window treatments and the furniture was delivered. Now she was calling me to bring my samples.  I knew that I had draped all of the windows in her house so I asked, “Are you unhappy with some of my work?”

“Oh no! Everything is beautiful.”

“Do your friends think something needs changed?”

“No, they think everything is gorgeous.”

I didn’t understand, but I made the appointment with her. I walked around the house with her before I brought any samples in.  I didn’t know what kind of samples she wanted to see: fabric, mini-blinds, woven-woods, etc. 

I finally asked, “What do you want to change?”

“Nothing, but there has to be something more I need.”

“All of your windows are covered.”

She looked embarrassed, “I can’t talk to my friends the way I can talk to you.”

“You don’t need to buy something from me. We can just have coffee.”

“No, I want to buy something.”

The only thing I could figure out was to put woven-woods under her bedroom drapes and sheers so it would stay dark when they wanted to sleep in. Then we had coffee in her breakfast room. 

Our conversation boiled down to her believing that she had to maintain certain decorum so she did not tarnish her husband’s reputation. He was a retired judge. 

She leaned in and almost whispered, “You saw the wallpaper in my other house. His friends would never understand.”

When we met the first time they had just been married. I had asked to use her bathroom.  I smiled when I saw the shiny silver wall paper with black icons of men and women in all types of sexual positions. 

I went back to the dining room, “Is that the kind of décor you want because I’m going to need some time to find that kind of fabric.”

She blushed, “Oh NO! That’s one of the reason we’re moving, so his friends never see that!”

Now I understand what you need from me.

We talked for a while. I helped her understand that it would only be natural for her to maintain the friendships she had before her marriage.  That way she would not feel so isolated by just talking with her husband’s friends.  In time, she might even find out that some of his friends had their own secrets like her wall paper.  She seemed to be in a better mood when I left.

I had always thought that rich people were so happy because they had lots of money, but in listening to her I discovered that they had lots of things they had to do to keep up the illusion of happiness. Things I doubted I would be willing to do.

#4 had been on a submarine in the Navy, but he was installing and maintaining X-ray equipment in a hospital when I met him in treatment. I doubt that he ever got used to the way I saluted him when he tried to order me around.  “Yes SIR!” My salute always ended with me flipping him the ‘bird’,

He had a security clearance with the government and didn’t want my criminal history to ruin it after we got married. He had me apply for my pardon from the governor.  I applied, but didn’t hear back.

He told me that he lost his job not too long after we were married, but today I am pretty sure he got fired for drinking again. He got a job interview in Mobile, Alabama, and I went with him. 

It was dark when the car stopped in the middle of nowhere along the interstate highway. A woman in a Cadillac stopped and told us to stay in the car and not open the door to anyone because people were being robbed and killed on that stretch of the road.  She said that she would call the police to come help us when she got home.  Then she drove off.

I was not real worried at first because #4 said he had his gun, but as time went by and the police didn’t show up, I started remembering what I had seen on television about the south during the 1960s. I got a little concerned, especially if there was more than one of them and they had two or three guns.  All I had was a knife and it would not work in a gun fight.

I was relieved when the sheriff’s deputy pulled up behind us. He had our car towed to Granada, Mississippi.  The deputy said he was having the car taken to a man that he trusted to fix it without charging us “an arm and a leg”.  I don’t remember what was wrong with the car, but the tow charge was more than getting the car fixed. 

We stayed that night in a motel with a sagging mattress and décor that reminded me of the motels that were rented by the hour when I was prostituting. Since there was possibly a 2-way mirror on the wall, we didn’t give them anything to look at. 

We finally got to Mobile.  He accepted the job.  Against dad’s advice I closed my drapery business and sold my house to my sister.  Dad had told me, “It ain’t hurtin’ notin’ sittin’ there”, but #4 said we needed money to move.  Although I did not realize it at the time, I am sure #4 was happy about finally getting me away from dad.

#4 went to Mobile by himself until he found a place for us to live.  He stayed in my camper by the Gulf of Mexico, started work and called when he found a house.  He didn’t tell me that it was out in the middle of nowhere.

His brother would pull the U-Haul full of my furniture, appliances and personal items. I would follow in my car.  We had CB radios so we could stay in contact on the trip.

We were packing the U-Haul getting ready for me to leave the next day when I remembered the pardon. I called the governor’s office and told them to forget it because I was moving out of the state the next day.  One of the governor’s aides called me back a few minutes later and asked if I could come to the governor’s office the next morning.  I told him that I would be there.

I got up the next morning, took a bath and put on nice clothes. I walked into the outer office at the capitol and was shown into the governor’s office. 

The governor said, “I read your record. You musta been something else!”

“I was.”

“What happened?”

I told him that I had joined AA and was learning to live sober. I told him that I had my custom drapery and decorating service in my home town for ten years, and how grateful I was to have learned how to make custom window treatments in prison.  I told him that I had helped start Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Dallas County for the past five years.  I did not, however, tell him that I had recently had to go to treatment because I got drunk after five and a half years of sobriety. 

There had been a recent news story on television about him firing a woman for being an alcoholic. I told him that I thought he should have given her another chance because treatment had helped me.  He told me that I didn’t know the whole story and I let it drop.

I don’t remember everything we said. Toward the end he just sat and looked at me for a while.  I looked back at him waiting for him to say something.  Finally he picked up the pen and signed my pardon on August 27, 1982.  We both had tears in our eyes when he handed it to me.  I thanked him and left his office.

I had no idea, at that time, what a difference that pardon would make in my life and the opportunities I would be afforded because of it. I also did not realize what it really meant to me until I was driving home. 

The pardon didn’t say that I had not committed the crime, in fact it said that I did commit a crime because I wrote the checks on my account after the money ran out, but it said that the governor of the State of Iowa thought I had changed.

He believed in me. WOW!!!  The pardon even said that I could own a firearm, which may still bother some of my ex-husbands.

I will never forget the look on dad’s face or the tears in his eyes as I read my pardon to him. I cried too.  Then I handed it to him to read again and again.  I had finally done something to make him proud of me.

I would like to tell you that my time in Mobile was great, but it was absolutely horrific and oppressive!  #4 had rented a house on a gravel road out in the boondocks.  He was driving my car after he put his car on jacks.  He said he needed to drive my car to work while his car was not running, but he was gone for days at a time.  I could no longer get to the AA meetings I had been attending.  He had me totally isolated.

There was a chain link fence around the property and a doorbell at the front gate. It rang one day.  I looked out the window and saw my sister-in-law, her oldest son and another woman standing there.  I told them to come in.  She wanted me to tell my brother to not divorce her.

“You know I’m the last person that would do that. Besides, he wouldn’t listen to me anyway.”

I told her that she was losing her mind coming to Mobile from Des Moines with some type of delusion that my brother would ever listen to me or care what I thought.  Besides, I was glad he was divorcing her, but I did what my sponsor taught me to do after they left.  I prayed that she would be given all of the good stuff I wanted for myself.

I heard later that she had married a millionaire. I told God, “Hey!!! What about me?” 

Some years later I heard that her husband had been abusive. It embarrasses me to say that there was a part of me that felt good and vindicated for all of the nasty things she had said to me for decades.  She had been so cold and calculating, but I had a few more years of working the 12 Steps by the time I found out that her dying process was extremely long and painful.  No part of me was happy about that.  I prayed for her soul to find peace.

 I spent my time in Mobile scrubbing, painting and decorating the rented house.  We ended up selling most of my furniture and all of my appliances so we could have food and cigarettes.  He was fired again and forgot to tell me.

I knew it was getting bad when I walked to the convenience store down the road and went to the beer cooler. I dropped to my knees in front of it and started sobbing, “God, you’ve got to do something!  I can’t do this!!!” 

I had stopped caring about what others thought about me. I was at my lowest point in sobriety.  #4 had me isolated hundreds of miles from home.  I stayed there and kept praying until I got myself together enough to call dad.  He paid #4’s brother to come get us and pull the camper home.

I did such a good job of decorating the rented house that the owner let us out of our contract when we moved back to Iowa.  She told me that she was able to increase the rent because the house was beautiful.

We ended up going through bankruptcy because I had nothing left and neither of us had a job until I started as a counselor for the Alcohol & Drug Assistance Agency out of Atlantic, Iowa. I was assigned to Madison and Adair counties.

I worked with the police, judges, county attorneys and county board of supervisors. I took one of the board members from each county with me so they could watch me facilitate the weekly teenage open-container group in Atlantic. 

That county made their teenagers be on probation after they were caught with an open container of alcohol in their car. They also had to attend my group and do community service on the weekends.  If they completed all of the conditions, and stayed out of trouble, their conviction was sealed.

Each board member told me that they could see how I was getting through to the kids and wanted that kind of a program in their county. They spoke to the judges and county attorneys to help me shove through a similar program in each of their counties. 

I did individual, family and teenager open-container group counseling in both of my counties. The agency director had me come to Atlantic to chaperone the alcohol free dances for the teens.  I was constantly busy and had little time for my husband. 

We were staying with dad. He was drinking openly because he had no transportation to hide it any more. He had to walk into town to buy it.  Everyone in Adel knew me and asked me what was going on with him.

I was in the kitchen when #4 walked in the back door. He had a beer in his hand and was carrying the rest of the six-pack. 

I yelled something to the effect, “Shit, you don’t even know how to drink! Let me show you!”

I grabbed one of the cans, popped the top and took a mouth full. The taste of it shocked me back to reality.  I looked at him and then spit it out in the sink, “You’re not worth it!” 

I turned the can upside down in the drain and walked away from him. I never want to come that close again!!!

I had bought his mother’s car and refused to let him drive it. He was not going to take my transportation away from me again so I couldn’t go to work and my AA meetings. 

He tried to get her to have me arrested for stealing it, but she refused. His brother and I finally signed the papers for him to be committed, but he got back out.  I told him that either he went to inpatient alcohol treatment or we were getting a divorce.

He finally went to inpatient treatment at Zion, which was run by the same agency I worked for.  He told people horrible things about me. 

As if the things I had actually done weren’t bad enough?

After he completed treatment he was offered a job in Dallas, Texas, repairing and maintaining X-ray equipment.  The only reason I agreed to go with him is that he would have a company car to drive and would not be trying to take my car away from me again.  I also told him that I was going to attend AA meetings and would leave him if he didn’t stay sober.

Dad paid for a mobile home in Arlington for us to live in.  I took some typing and business machine refresher courses.  I worked as a secretary for several companies, but ended as regional loss prevention secretary for Montgomery Ward.

The other secretary yelled at me quite a few times that she could not afford to help her own children get an education and didn’t understand why she, as a taxpayer, had to help pay for an ex-con to improve my skills to get a better job.

I have found this attitude from lots of people through the years. They resent us getting the opportunity to reform ourselves into tax payers instead of being a drain on the economy.  I consider it one of the social rivets in the steel ceiling. 

I tried to ignore her as much as possible, especially when the two regional managers (one retired) gave me glowing letters of recommendation for all I did.

Besides doing correspondence for the regional manager, I took dictation over the telephone from seven district managers and distributed their letters to all of their staff.

I got the files straightened out, presented the research that the regional managers requested at district meetings and got restitution from ex-employees who had stolen from the company. Many were mad when they paid it because, since no one had contacted them for years, they thought it had been forgotten. 

This was in the early 1980s. I believe that, if more of us had been given the opportunity to improve our skills sets, the taxpayers would not be crushed now by incarcerating the highest percentage per capita in the world.  The United States, with only five percent of the world’s population, incarcerates twenty five percent.  I heard the other day on the news that one in five people in the United States has a criminal record.

I attended AA meetings at the South Cooper club in Texas.  A woman greeted me when I first got there.  She made me feel at home.  She remembered my name and talked to me every time I walked in the door, but one day she ignored me.  I was kind of hurt, but when she did the same thing for the third day in a row, I confronted her, “I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but I haven’t done anything for you to treat me this way!”

She looked surprised, “Oh Bonnie, I’m so sorry. I just found out I have cancer.”

I felt lower than that whale shit on the bottom of the ocean that I had heard about in meetings to describe embarrassment. I was starting, ever so slowly to understand that everyone has their own life to live, which may not include me.  I was not real important to everyone….just to me because that is all I ever thought about … me and how I’m feeling …  how much I want to belong somewhere!

Trying to deal with a practicing alcoholic in the house while I stayed sober was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Thanks to my Higher Power, I met the man who spoon-fed me the 12 Steps for most of the next three years.  He saved my life and sobriety. 

He was an eighty year old grump when I met him, but he had thirty years of sobriety. He helped me understand lots of things that had never made sense to me.  I called him my sponsor.

He made me type the chapter, ‘We Agnostics’, in the Big Book because he said that I was mad at God. I had an electric typewriter.  I double spaced the lines so it would be easier for him to read.  If I made a mistake on a page, I threw that page away and retyped it until it was perfect.  I handed the perfectly typed chapter to him. 

He looked at the papers and then he looked at me, “Nope, not good enough. Do it again.”  I typed that damned chapter three times before I finally figured out that he wanted me to read the chapter!

He told me over and over that it was all right to yell at God, “He can handle it!”

He gave me permission to be the person I had evolved into, “You can only be the best that you are today. Don’t worry about trying to be anything or anybody else and tomorrow will take care of it’s self.”

The same thing happened in Dallas as it had in Mobile.  #4 did not stay sober, he was gone for days at a time and got fired again, but this time I did not let him drive my car.  I quit my job, packed a U-Haul trailer and drove back to Iowa. 

I don’t remember how many times I ran back and forth between Texas and Iowa, but there were many.  I just didn’t want to be divorced again.  #4 would call and promise that he was sober this time for good.  I would go back to Texas.  He would do the same things and I filled the U-haul again.  I ended up selling the mobile home.

I always went to the noon AA meeting and then had lunch with my sponsor before I left for Iowa.  That old man shared a lot of things with me, and let me know that life is not perfect even with thirty plus years of sobriety.

He told me that he let a couple, the man was in his forties and the woman was in her twenties, move in with him after they got married.

“I don’t know what to do Bonnie. She just wears a T-shirt around the house, sits across the room from me and spreads her legs wide open.  I’m having a heck of a time with lust.”

I have to admit that I was shocked that a man in his eighties still felt that way, but I tried to help, “I guess the only thing I can suggest is what you told me when you realized that you were taking God’s name in vain. You said that you prayed that He would remove it and, in time, you stopped doing that.”

I drove to Iowa and went back to Texas again.  I went to the noon meeting and then we had lunch.  I asked him, “Oh, how’s that lust thing going?”

“I did like you said. I prayed about it.  It’s almost gone.  Do I have to keep praying?”

I will always be grateful this man was put in my life because he showed me how to laugh at myself. Being able to laugh is a gift, especially when my laughing is at me.  After all, I am pretty silly at times!

#4 got a job in San Angelo, Texas, fixing machines in hospitals.  We filled two U-Haul trailers and moved into one half of a very nice duplex, but he still did not go to meetings, and his attitude toward me got worse. 

I kept going to meetings and really liked the people I met at the club. One night I asked #4 if he would go with me to a dance at the club after the meeting.  He threw ice tea on my white dress.  I turned around and wore my stained dress to the meeting and dance. 

My sponsor let me stay with her that night. She was a multimillionaire and had a piano and an organ in her living room.  She and one of her friends serenaded me while I went to sleep on the couch. 

The next morning I got up and went to the duplex with the intension of packing a U-hall for my final trip to Iowa, but he had changed the locks.  I called the police, but they wouldn’t let me break in because my name was not on the lease. 

I took the few clothes he had thrown on the front porch, put them in my car and headed for Iowa.  I had allowed him to successfully strip me of every nice thing I had earned for almost fifteen years.

I wanted to be mad. I kept trying because I had kept thinking, If I just try harder, in time he’ll stay sober and we can have a good life.

I really didn’t want another divorce, but what I realized driving down the street was that I had to get away from him and our toxic relationship before either of us could find that good life.  Otherwise we would just keep doing the same things and getting the same things, over and over.  I was taught that is called insanity, and it had finally gotten too much for me to bear. 

I prayed that he would get all of the good things I wanted for myself as I drove out of town. I meant it because I knew how sick he was.  He just could not stay sober. 

Oh, I also said, as I glanced toward the sky, “Please don’t forget me this time.”

It was almost Christmas and I had absolutely no money. I was embarrassed that I would not be able to buy presents, even a card for anyone.  I felt humiliated when a good friend’s two young daughters spent their allowances to get me a gift so I would feel better. 

Later I realized that it was humbling rather than humiliating. Those children helped me understand the difference between the two words, and what the ‘grace of God’ actually means.  To me it means unearned gift.  I had done nothing to deserve those little girls caring enough about me to spend their money to buy me a present.

That is how I consider my sobriety and all of my blessings. I probably don’t deserve them, but I am sure grateful to my Higher Power for them.

As my sponsor told me, it is alright for me to just be me, exactly where I am. I didn’t need to buy anyone’s love any more. 

I wish I could have held on to that lesson more, but I would continue to use money and sex to beg men to care about me. Looking back I was so needy and pitiful!!

#4 and his brother had introduced me to using the CB radio. I was asked many times on my numerous trips from Texas to Iowa and back, “Hot Air, what are you driving?”

I would always answer, “A six-wheeler working my way up to eighteen.”

I had said it so many times that it sounded pretty good by the time I got home that last time. I waited until it got warm.  I borrowed a thousand dollars from dad and went to truck driving school in West Des Moines. 

I went to the AA club in Des Moines after classes and attended meetings there.  One day #4 walked in. 

I was sitting at a table talking to friends. He said that he had brought my sewing machine and some other things of mine in his car and left them at his brother’s home.  He said that he would be staying there and not going back to Texas for a couple of days.  “I’d like to talk because we had such a good thing going!”

“Your definition of good is different than mine!”

I waited until after he said that he would be gone to call his brother. I picked up my things.  I was grateful, but it was miniscule compared to all of the good things he kept.

That marriage had cost me a drapery business, a house, a mobile home and two sets of furniture and appliances, along with many personal items. I was thirty nine years old and starting over again.

Are you going to let me get away with blaming him? Okay, in reality, I had been willing to gamble away all of those things for a chance to finally have a happy marriage, but I also knew that dad would always be there to catch me if I failed again.  He was happy when #4 paid for the divorce instead of me getting the money from him.

I had been dealing with stomach issues and getting upper GI tests for a couple of years by the time I moved back to Iowa that last time.  Dad was having his own problems and getting lower GI tests.  The doctors never could find anything wrong with either of us, but we both stopped having symptoms after I came home that last time.  Apparently nerves really do cause physical symptoms.

#4 and I were divorced on December 5, 1984. Even though the divorce papers stated that he was supposed to pay the income taxes that we had filed jointly, I ended up paying it because the Internal Revenue Service said they could not find him.  I asked them to take part of his military retirement, but they refused.

#4 called me in 2010. He said that he found me on a professional web site. 

I asked, “Are you sober?”

He laughed, “Yes, how have you been doing?”

“I’ve been very happy with my partner for six years.”            

“Oh, your profile said you are single.”

I decided that I didn’t want to waste my time and breathe talking to this man, “You have a good life.” CLICK

Sometimes the best amends we can make to those we have really hurt is to just leave them alone. I am so grateful to the Alanon program that helped me understand that it is not my responsibility!  “I didn’t cause it and I can’t fix it!” 

But what about the people I hurt that bad? I wish that mom and I would have had the opportunity to go to AA and Alanon so we could have worked our way through all of our issues.  I knew that I really owed husband #2 amends for everything I had put him though.  I told my Higher Power that I was willing to make those amends, “Thy will be done.”

I still felt justified in divorcing #3. I am grateful for getting out of that marriage instead of him resorting to killing me like I have heard about other men doing to their wife and family when there is a divorce. 

I learned in graduate counseling classes that it takes an average of seven years for an abused person to permanently leave their abuser. The actual leaving process is the most dangerous part because many abusers would rather kill the person rather than give up control over them.  That is what my hypnotist was talking about when he called to warn me that #3 was stalking me.

KARMA – Being married to #4 had shown me what I had put others through. I got to feel and understand what everybody in my path experienced while I was in the throws of my addictions. 

I had never thought about anyone else’s feelings except my own, but being married to him made me feel all of the facets of frustration and powerlessness that comes from continually being emotionally torn apart by blatant lies and lies through omission. I would not wish that on my worst enemy! 

Always run away from a man who is full of rage toward their ex-wife. That means they are not taking ownership for their part in a failed marriage. 

In the beginning, I felt that #4 had stripped away everything physical from me: my father and family, AA friends, drapery business, two homes, furniture and appliances, and many beautiful personal items. He tried to break my will, but my Higher Power and I finally won.

In actuality, I had given all of those things up for the chance to have a happy marriage. In other words I didn’t lose them, I gave them to him.