I wasn’t raised this way. In fact, I was raised to doubt myself. I was raised to believe that I wasn’t smart enough, good enough, loving enough, pretty enough, frugal enough, ambitious enough or talented enough. At the hands of 2 abusive parents, one of them DEADLY when dealing out physical abuse and the other (the worst IMO) DEADLY when dealing out her emotional abuse (with a whole lot of physical abuse thrown in from her too), I managed to survive. To kill a child’s spirit is the worst sin of all. She tried, she couldn’t do it. I grew up with an amazing ability to disassociate from my surroundings and I always had HOPE that one day I would leave that place and do amazing things! I always just KNEW that God had a reason for me to be born, and to live. I knew I had a job to do in this world and I had dreams. I knew that if I could just stay alive, I’d see these dreams come true one day.
Survival became my only job. I put all my time and energy into learning how to survive and teaching my brothers how to survive. Sadly, I didn’t do my job well enough. One of my brothers died at the age of 18, just 2 days before his high school graduation. I was the oldest and I felt like more of a mother to him than I did his sister. SOMEONE needed to be his mother! I called him my “twin”. He wasn’t though, not really. I was born on April 10, 1966 at the 3 o’clock hour and my precious brother was born on April 10, 1967 at the 3 o’clock hour. Weird huh? It was like he forgot to be born on the same year. We shared a baby bed. We shared our life. We communicated without words. When he died on Memorial Day, 1985, half of my soul died with him and I’ve never been the same. It’s not like I didn’t WANT to live. I did. I just didn’t know HOW to live without him. I didn’t know how to BREATHE without him. He was my other half and we were each other’s protectors. I’ve become numb to the grief of his passing, for the most part.
Which brings me to present time…I’ve been reading a lot about a particular woman, Lesley, lately. She’s making her dreams come true and she’s doing it the hard way. She wasn’t born into money. In fact, she doesn’t have a lot of money now but she won’t take no for an answer and she ALWAYS finds a way to get what she wants. I WAS Lesley. What I mean is everything she writes about doing or wanting to do is something I’ve always felt I would do one day. It’s kind of like God meant for me to find her blog. I think he wanted me to remember the reason I was born. All the adventures I’d go on one day and all the lives I knew I would touch. I lost sight of my dreams in the midst of just trying to survive.
I’m determined, more than ever now to get that little girl back. It’s time. There’s a life out there waiting to be lived and it would be just as much of a sin to NOT live the life God had planned for me as it was a sin for my parents to try and destroy me.
If anyone’s reading, if you get nothing else out of this, please take away with you the power you have in your hands. If any of you are parents, tell your children that they can do great things. Try not to criticize and belittle. It can destroy their spirit. Build them up… don’t break them, sometimes they can’t be put back together. You have the power to lead by example. You, go out and pursue YOUR dreams… the rest will follow.
And That's All She Wrote! 