Since my last email from the heart of Las Vegas, we have gone forward two time zones and crossed through three states, getting ready to cross into The Land of Lincoln, aka Illinois.
Some views we saw along the way while traveling through Utah. The last one is in Colorado.
(What shape do you see in the sky in this last shot? One way, I see a goldfish; going the other, I see a shark. Its jaws open, ready for attack.)
Mind you, we have covered a lot of territory since this last shot was taken, yet I have not taken one shot since getting into the Denver area. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to at some point in my story. For now, I’m continuing on where I left off…where my mom shows up after several years of being absent from my life.
You might wonder what was going through my mind upon seeing my mother. Honestly, I do not remember. I have this sense that I withdrew back into a place before she showed up. Upon hearing they were there to pick me up and take me away, to a place I had never heard of, I’m pretty certain total confusion and shock took over. Mind you, in getting out of there, I was being taken from a situation that I would keep secret for years to come, but still…it was everything and everyone I knew.
As hard as I try to remember certain details from this time of my life, I can’t. I do know I wasn’t happy. I became rebellious to some degree, and went from being a straight A student, to one who just got by.
There are three things during those next few years that I can truly say, saved me. One was music. I poured myself into playing that clarinet and being as good as I possibly could. Second, were the animals that I raised for show through the FFA program at school, and last, but certainly not least, was meeting a boy who would later become my husband. Plus, his mom also helped to fill a gap I was missing in my own life.
The one thing that almost became my undoing? My own mother. I don’t want to portray her as this horrible human being, because she wasn’t. I do wonder if there might have been some mental issues there we never knew about? Having lost a child at birth, and my brother and oldest sister later in her life, I have no doubt, affected her. To cover for some of that pain, she tried to mask it with material objects and to portray herself to the outside world as someone more than she really was. Of all her bad habits…why is it those two that that I chose to focus in on with my own life???
I was told by a professional counselor several years ago, that childhood abandonment can manifest itself in many different ways. For far too many years, those behaviors took over my way of thinking, my way of life and worst of all, my very well being.
I will save you all from going down the rabbit hole I did for the years in between. Believe me, one trip was more than enough to last me a lifetime. Instead, I’ll give you a short synopsis:
* Material objects mattered even if you really couldn’t afford them - gone was my grandparents frugal
lifestyle of only getting what you needed to survive and be comfortable.
* Portray perfection on the outside, even with the simplest of things - despite the fact, everything might have been crumbling on the inside and was anything but perfect.
* Smother and keep close - this was a huge one as it applies to relationships, be it with friends or family. I did this a lot. I had to have my thumbs on everything and everyone, coming in the form of control. Control that is directly pointed to fear of abandonment. I was afraid that if I lost control, I would lose these relationships. It happened anyway and one in particular, is one that I can point to where my course in life started to shift.
* Alcohol - mind you, I have always steered away from this because my father was an alcoholic. I was never one to partake in it during my youth, nor did I ever do drugs. However, there was a period of time, maybe a year, that I was partaking WAY too often and WAY too much. That wasn’t a good time for me. At all. The good thing is that I was able to cut it out just as easily as I had allowed it to slip into my life.
* Stress - when they say that stress can kill you, take it serious. Already under stress because of work, I added to it with all the nonsense of my own doing.
** Nonsense of my own doing, this is huge - and there was a lot of this, along with the excuses I made. As an adult, I should have been able to recognize and make corrections or adjustments. Right? But this way of living had taken over my life, my way of thinking till I finally got to a place of darkness and almost to a point of no return.
We’ve reached our destination for the day, and for now, this seems like a good place to stop. I did take a picture from today to share. Between the Missouri and Illinois state lines, a river I have crossed so many times in the last (almost) 12 years, that I’ve lost count.
The Mighty Mississippi River
ReplyForward |
No comments:
Post a Comment