My Life - Part III

College was a world in its own right. I fell in love with Huntingdon College when I first went through everything. It was grand. I believe that everything in the universe lined up for a reason. Walking around the school, the first person I met was my Admissions counselor and then everything seemed to fall into place. It was great and so I signed on. I got a pretty sizable scholarship to the school but it wasn't enough to cover everything so I had to find a way to pay for school. My mother didn't offer any help in the slightest at first. She didn't have any money saved up for me to go to college but I finally convinced her to cosign my student loans. But it was all on me and still is to pay for college. There wasn't going to be any help (she was also pretty mad that I turned down the other college that I got a full ride to!). But I paid for college myself and worked through every year to make it work and it did. Sure I was broke at times but what college student isn't?

While in college, I began to heal. I surrounded myself with great friends who liked me for me. It was interesting. I didn't have to hide anything with them. I remember one of my friends telling me that they never saw me cry and something must be wrong with me. I later learned that crying is not a form of weakness but a release that every person needs. While fighting with my mother in high school, I viewed tears as a sign of weakness, a sign that she had penetrated my thick skin. For the first time, shortly after, I broke down and cried. What a well of emotions came up in me but I had a friend hold me and take care of me. It was an uplifting and rewarding experience. I took the time to heal, little by little and made my way into the world.

One of the things that I also learned in college was how to have fun. I had forgotten and it was nice to have friends remind me how to do so. I went out to parties, out crusin', drinking etc. I let loose for the first time since I was ten but there was still enough inside me that I was always the one everyone counted on in a mess. It felt good to be the cool, calm me because my inside emotions had healed and I felt safe. I didn't have to go home very often so I really took the time to work on myself. But when the time came that I did have to go home, I took my new strength that I found and went. I found that each time it became easier and I didn't have to worry as much. There were still some tough times but I kept myself busy by working or going out with some high school friends and so on. But going home for holidays was the worst part of it all.

Holidays in my house are full of stress always (which is why I hate them for the most part) - everything has to be perfect in some way shape or form. Now there are times that I like things a certain way BUT this was just out of control. There was always yelling and running around before my grandparents got there and once they did, it was all smiles and fakeness. I hated it because I refused to be fake any more. The christmas that I came home from my sophomore year, it was really tense. I don't remember why but me mother started attacking me verbally in the kitchen on Christmas day, shortly after dinner. It wasn't even about something significant either, I don't even remember what it was about. But boy did she go after me and something happened. Instead of retreating into myself I began to become upset about it and I spoke back, smoothly and calmly. I remember that this ticked her off badly and she came after me even more but then my grandmother stepped in between us and told her to stop or else she would leave - and this was interesting. She told my mother she was being foolish and should just leave me alone and that I didn't do anything. (This is huge, because if you know my grandmother, she doesn't really get involved in things - she is a gracious and wise woman who is very careful with her words). I remember retreating to my room for a few moments and realizing that I was okay and that I had felt emotions about this. My emotions were there but instead of retreating from them, I dealt with them. I had discovered my emotions and it was a great thing.

Now when I talk about my emotions - you have to understand I turned them off and didn't have any for close to 8 years. I never really felt anything though I would go through the motions. I was in pain, like a scared animal, huddled in a dark corner crying. There are still times that I have to deal with my emotions and they aren't all that great. I have my days, but to have them is one of my greatest gifts. I like being able to feel things again and make sense of the world around me. Pain or pleasure, I will take them both because being numb is far worse than anything that can come my way.

So college was a time of healing and I take this time to wrap my story up. I won't take it to the present day because I am still dealing with some recent history. But I am thankful for my past, I wouldn't trade it for the world because as it is, it made me who I am today. While I know that there are some things that I am very mature about, there are other things that I am still naive about but mostly those are within me. My experiences have taught me many things and given me other things to work on. One of the things that I have to work on is my independence. I always refused to be dependent on anyone and I absolutely hate having to ask for help but there are times when I need to and I can't do it all. I also need to learn to depend on people, not be dependent but to trust them enough to do things for me. I learn more day by day and the day I don't learn, someone please shoot me.

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To be continued, day by day by day by day . . .

My Life - Part II

Oh my, I was a hormonal mess yesterday. Milton was right, this is all Eve's fault! LOL - Everything I did yesterday was some way to attack myself for something stupid and I realized that I am my worst enemy. I created everything about me yesterday - problems, conflicts, emotions, hurting people etc. Sometimes I am such an idiot that I have to laugh at myself. But luckily my friends made things better. Besides, for the first time in a while I didn't wear any make up, put my hair up in a ponytail, threw on jeans and a hoodie and walked out the door. I didn't care at all yesterday about anything but me - what a frickin stupid place to be in. Oh me, but that's over now.

So anyways, before I get to part two of my story, I need to put something out there. This story may make my parents look like horrible people but I don't mean for it to be that way at all. I love them both dearly. That being said, let's continue this journey.

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So at 13, I felt like I needed something to escape from home, but I never really found it. My friends were great but they didn't understand, they were used to doing whatever and had great parents. I wished for a long time that for one night I could have a normal dinner that I didn't have to cook or something else to do and just be a kid. But I lost the ability to do so. I felt like a 'cinderella' of sorts.

Worst of all, my mother and I fought constantly. But the worst part of it was the fact that she discovered how to get under my skin. So rather than hurting from the pain that I was caused, I shut down. I turned off my emotions, turned off me, and forgot who I was. I lived the motions and just existed. Nothing I did was ever going to be good enough. I couldn't get high enough grades, my brother and sister were smarter that I was, my cooking wasn't good enough or something like that always seemed to come up. To put it mildly, my self esteem went from decent to non-existent. I lost myself to a dark place where I shielded myself. I used God as an excuse for everything and what a thing that was.

As high school drew onward, I found myself bitter, hurt and angry. Those were the only feelings that I knew and most of them were directed towards my mother. So in between my junior and senior year of high school, I filed for emancipation from my mother to go and stay with my father. My mother knew nothing about this until she got the papers to go to court. I was a real big *itch about it, honestly. With the magistrate, we set up that I would stay up there for the summer and at the end of the summer, I would be able to come home if I wanted. I didn't think that I would want to at all but stayed open to the possibility.

And that was it, I left. Period and I thought that I was in heaven! But all that changed very quickly. living with my dad wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I had the childish expectation that it would be like we were when I was little and it wasn't in the slightest. My dad was nothing like I remembered when I was a kid, he had changed, gone colder and more cynical. He drank and drove with me in the car and smoked pot in front of me (not that I have anything against it, but I was 17 and not an adult etc. etc.). But it hit me hard that to him, I wasn't his daughter more so that I was just another adult living with him. Sure there were still some family ties and so forth but it was different. He didn't expect anything from me and I felt almost like he didn't even notice me at all.

So I felt abandoned from both sides. But after a couple conversations with my mother and some letters from my brother and sister, I came home. It's a long story but there was something said that scared me to death and I had to go home. I did but that summer taught me something very important. There was not going to be anyone to take care of me but me and I had to step up to the plate and do so. I knew that if I were ever going to do something, that I would have to make my own way or stay trapped in the situation I was in. It looked more and more like college was the answer. But unlike my classmates, I didn't want to stay in state at all and only applied to two state colleges to appease my family. I got a full ride to college in NC but didn't want to take it. I needed out, I needed to make my own path separate from what I let others choose for me previously. So I went on an adventure and moved to Montgomery, Alabama to Huntingdon College. A small liberal arts college that I found online and decided to apply to. I never knew that I would have fallen in love with it like I did.

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That's the end of part two, if it seems a little spacy unlike my last entry, please note that the next installment about college with have a few flashbacks to what I experienced in high school because college is where I started to figure everything out. Okay then, until part three.

My Life - Part I

I haven't written in two days. Quite interesting actually but something that I suppose I need to do. So it's story time, time to write this out on paper (so to speak).

While only living 23 years on this earth, I have learned far more than many others out there. I believe that everyone has their share of pain in life, some get it early and it shapes them but some get it later and they choose what it will do to them. I've had my share of pain and heartache but I wouldn't give it back for the world. I don't want to live there either though.

When I was ten, my whole world changed. At ten, I became an adult. It wasn't by choice either. Sometimes I miss the childhood that I might of had or the stupid things that I haven't done that were childish and meaningful. But that's a regret that passes quickly. At ten, my father made me an adult by sharing his feelings with me and I knew that he was going to divorce my mother before she did. I remember the long drives in the Dodge Shadow at night when he would tell me these things. The fights, the coldness, the fact that even though he wasn't physically gone - he had emotionally abandoned me. It was tough and my world was spinning. I had always been a daddy's girl and while I wanted to be there for him, I was torn. Torn to pieces actually, though I didn't know it at the time. I knew it was coming but one day, my mother brought us home from the babysitters house and all his things were packed. I still remember that day quite vividly. Everything was neatly arranged in the living room. I couldn't look at it - I ran up to my room and closed the door. My mother became hysterical and my little brother wedged himself under the table and wouldn't come out. I don't remember leaving my room that night, I didn't eat dinner. I just sat there numb with emotions that I didn't know were possible sweeping over me again and again. But the next day, I helped my dad move out. I thought that it would bring me some sort of closure. It didn't but we try to rationalize things in the only way we know how and I was ten, so it seemed like a good idea. Little did I know that it would begin to drive a wedge between my mother and I.

My mother and I seemed to barely know eachother after that. I think she hated the closeness that I had with my dad and the fact that I was his 'favorite' seemingly. So she took out her anger at everything on me. At first, it was little things. My mom is a yeller and she would yell about all the little things. The D in writing I got because I didn't want to write what the teacher wanted me to write. I didn't put the dishes away correctly or something of that nature. But it escalated into knock-down drag outs, I remember she broke a wooden spoon on me once. She also sat on me and told me things that I didn't want to hear. I felt worthless, unloved and alone. A small part of me died then.

For a while after 'counseling' where I was told that my father was then enemy and my mother was the only one who could ever be there for me, things on the surface were fine. But there were the guilt trips, the cold stares, the anger I saw in her eyes every time she looked at me. It was a private war. Publically we were the happy family and privately I was the little bitch who lived in her house. After my grandparents moved down to NC my mother followed a year later. So at 13, I was removed from all my friends and family to go down to some strange place that I knew nothing about. Honestly, that was the best move that I could have imagined but at the time, it was difficult. But something happened to me when we moved, I began to shut down. Emotionally I became a rock and a ball of self-loathing, a perfect picture of low self-esteem because I believed that I wasn't worth anything. I felt trapped by what I was and lost all direction, all drive.

One of the greatest things I had wasn't even good enough. Sure I could write, but I could also sing too. I had been taking lessons and singing not too long after my dad left and someone in church discovered my voice. I later got a scholarship to train with the same wonderful teacher. I thought I was amazing and when I sang, the world melted away and I was free. But practicing at home was never something I wanted to do. Everytime I sang, it wasn't good enough, it was nasal, I was off pitch, I couldn't sing without music and so on. This went on and on and on. I was pushed to sing more and more but it was never good enough. I didn't want to do it any more because it was just one more way that she could control me, or at least that's what I felt. So when I was 13, I not only moved but I lost my music. It became someone else's dream, not mine.

But the move to NC made me shut down and I wouldn't respond to anyone but my friends, my friends became my family. They were everything to me and I used them to escape. Home life sucked, so anything that I could do to escape it was worth it. But my mother saw that and tried to take that away too. At 13, every day, I watched my little brother and sister after school. I had to do my homework, do laundry, clean the house, and make dinner all the while dealing with two kids that were so much younger than I was. I was there all the time, mom was at work all the time. I couldn't play sports, didn't have time to sing, the only other outlet I found was church and even then, it wasn't exactly my cup of tea.

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And I have to stop here for today because if I don't then I will be writing this down all day. Consider this part one of my story, at least to whomever reads this. It's going to take a while to get out. But each day, I find this story as part of the long song I am writing with my life. It is a long one but one that I am glad to have had the experiences that it has given me and the wisdom. I don't claim to know it all but this I do know - there is nothing more important that who you are and what you choose to do with your life. There are no words that anyone can give you to define who you are or how you are supposed to live, you choose your own path and your own life.