My Autobiograhy: I ate strawberries and champagne alone

By EH Marr

The book is my personal experience with paraphrenia. How it affected
what led up to the breakdown in 2019

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369412213

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 by EH Marr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/07/2023

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

856889

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 1

I was born in the fall of 1965 in Paris, Tennessee. To middle class people from Gleason Tennessee.. I was the youngest of my family with three older sisters.

Some of my earliest memories were traumatic. I remember being asleep in the backseat of the car and I heard tapping on the glass window and when I turned to look out the window, I saw a white bloody apron on a man pumping gas in the car. I started screaming and from that day forward I was terrified of men as a child. I had nightmares as a child and would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and my nose would be bleeding. My mom would come and put rags on my nose to stop the bleeding. I would have earaches frequently and momma would put warm sweet oil in my ears with a piece of cotton and rock me in the rocking chair. I would hear the neighbors dog Joe barking and drift off to sleep in my mothers’ arms. Once we went to my mom’s friend’s house and she had a standard size poodle, and I was playing in the garden when I found a doll and I picked it up. When I turned around the poodle growled at me and snatched the doll from my hands, and it scared me, and I ran screaming to my mom that the dog tried to bite me not knowing I had picked up a dog toy.

There were days I remember being locked out of the house. I would be so hungry that I looked for food to eat outside and there was a pear tree in the cow pasture I would sneak down and eat the fruit off the ground and drink water from the water hose. I played outside frequently by myself making mudpies, playing in the cut grass, and picking up clay off the side of the road and making things out of the clay. We lived not far from Old Hickory Clay company. Gleason was the clay capitol of the USA. Once I went to a motel and I remember being locked in the bathroom with a bag of candy. I saw my babysitter in her slip and a man in work clothes, but he was very nice and gave me candy to be quiet. I had a lonely childhood and played by myself or with my sister Glenda we would play paper dolls, jacks, barbie dolls and easy bake oven we would make fried pickles and French toast.

Later in life my mom told me when she was young, she was poor and didn’t have dolls and she would make dolls from the rose of Sharon flowers/ blooms and corn husks. She also told me that her dad was an alcoholic and came home drunk one night and tried to rape her and that she ran away to her grandmother’s house. My mom said her parents would fight because of the drinking and carousing but grandma stood by him. My mom had 5 sisters from this union. My grandmother would get mad when she didn’t have food in the house and her in-laws would send a ham and jug of milk by my aunt sue to feed family and she said my grandmother got mad and threw it outside in the ditch. Frequently my grandmother had these tirades of cursing and yelling but no one could change her, and the kids just lived the best they could around her. Then there were times she was nice and worked hard sewing and quilting for others to make money for her family since my grandfather was not always reliable at work.

CHAPTER 2

My earliest family memories were of my own parents arguing with each other. I remember being at the babysitters when I was maybe three and my dad was talking to babysitter, and I kept interrupting him because I needed to go pee and I went around back to try and pee outside, and I got my clothes wet and he spanked me for wetting my clothes. I didn’t know how to communicate that I was trying to get his attention when he pushed me away. I also remember him calling me a shit hook and I thought what he is talking about I don’t understand, so at an early age I was verbally abused and didn’t even know it.

My family was dysfunctional, but we had good times. Dad would cook biscuits and gravy for breakfast on the weekends and wake us up by tickling us awake. I still hear my mom’s voice saying its upy -upy time when she would wake us up for school. We would walk to school most days and if it was raining and cold, she would take us. My mom worked 3-11 shift so liked to sleep late.

I had three grandmothers and no grandfathers. My dad’s mom Grandma Roberts was very sweet and funny and had a good sense of humor. She babysat me when I was small, and I remember the smell of safeguard soap in her bathroom and eating candy orange slices. My mom’s mom was Grandma Eledge she was not as nice. She was a rough looking lady with wrinkles and her hands were rough and she smoked camel cigarettes and coughed a lot and would look at you over her glasses that slid down on her nose. She wasn’t very friendly or maternal. I remember her chopping wood for the woodstove and drawing water from the well she had no indoor plumbing. My grandma Sims was my grandma Eledge’s mom, and she was a very short 4’11" little lady with wire rimmed eyeglasses and her silver hair rolled up into a bun on her head. She would tell me stories about things in the past and show me pictures and her quilts she made, and I remember she had a soft feather bed in the living room. The water from her well was so cold and fresh she would ladle it up with a white and red dipper for me. We would go visit in the summertime the mountains of Sevierville and Gatlinburg I loved Aunt Mahailas candy store in Gatlinburg. We would go to Cades Cove and go on picnics with my aunt Sue and aunt Rhonda. This was just some of the summertime activities.

In the wintertime we would go to Grandma Eledges for Christmas, and they would hang our stockings over the woodstove and Christmas morning we would find an apple, orange, mixed nuts and chocolate drops and peppermint sticks. She always made chocolate fudge and white snowball cookies rolled in powdered sugar and nuts. We would find our Christmas gifts under a little cedar tree that was decorated with tinsel and a few ornaments. We would play all day and then at night snuggle up in bed under 3or 4 quilts to keep us warm.

Other memories I have as a young girl I was walking to the grocery store downtown Gleason and I saw a penny on the ground. I reached down and picked it up and my mother slapped it out of my hand and said don’t pick that up a nigger might have touched it. I didn’t even know what that meant. We lived in a town where there were no black people and I had never seen a black person.

My first memory of church that I remember was going to vacation bible school when I was 4 or 5 with our neighbors John and Clara he was a preacher at Ralston Baptist church. I got a book called jot in the dot. Throughout my childhood