I figure I better jump on this before all my wind goes out of my sails.
I made some phone calls and sent some emails to warn people that this will not be a carbon copy of my other blog where I try to lean on humor to make the real more palatable.
I also wanted to explain to my parents that I may say things that they find hurtful, but that's not my intention.
I am actually shaking.
I got an email back from someone in my past who gave me carte blanche to spew it all. It was important to me that they know I am not [intentionally] holding back anything and that could be hurtful to them, indirectly. Her response? "It's not about me, it's about you."
I bawled. I had NO idea that receiving that permission was so important to me. I think I could be getting closer to why my body is revolting lately with so many sicknesses and such a lowered immune system. Why stress is oozing (literally) out of every pore.
Sometimes the things we THINK we have dealt with have only been stuffed down, or even folded neatly and put in the back of the closet of our minds. While it may be out of sight and even look pretty, it still takes up room and affects everything else in the closet.
SO now....here's the beginning of...me. Mandy. My autobiography.
Bear with me, please. This may happen in a succession of fits and starts. Random recollections and flat out inaccuracies as I do my best to recall a bunch of stuff that happened 30+ years ago.
I have a hard time remembering yesterday, so be prepared.
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My birth. 1977. I don't remember much of it. =)
But I'm told that it was pretty traumatic. I was 2 months early (?) My mom will have to verify that later.
I was 5 lbs, and very weak. I guess I wouldn't eat so the doctors gave up on me. I'm told I was wheeled into a small, dark room in an incubator and left alone to die. My dad said he made a deal with God and put that bottle in my mouth...and I ate! (And haven't missed a meal since!) It was decided I was going to be a fighter.
Growing up was interesting. Honestly, I don't remember much of my childhood. I think I've blocked a lot of it out. It was tumultuous. I have 2 older sisters. About 9 & 10 years older. I was the oops at the end of the line.
I grew up in the country. In a 2 bedroom trailor. My parents had a tough go of it and were finally able to get a piece of land they could call their own. So we set up camp. And I do mean camp. We had a well (a few, I think) but because we didn't have the right something or another, it didn't pump into our house. We used to get water from the neighbor's house in milk jugs and use those for drinking and bathing. I remember my sisters and I cutting through the woods to our neighbor's house to fill up these jugs using their outside spigot. Because I was so little, I could only carry one jug. That left my sisters to carry all the rest. I don't remember how many...just that there were A LOT. I remember my dad doing this too. He'd hook all the jugs together with a rope. I remember thinking how strong he was. =)
I was so little that I didn't fully realize that not having running water wasn't typical. I didn't know that not everyone waited for it to rain so they could grab a bar of soap and some shampoo and "shower" under the water leaking off the downspout.
There's one day at school that is still with me like it happened yesterday. Our school nurse would periodically line everybody up and march them to the nurse's office where she would do "head checks." She was looking for lice. She looked at my scalp once, and said, "Your head is FILTHY!" I was absolutely mortified. It was said loudly and in front of my classmates. I thought I was in trouble. I went home scared to death to tell my mom and dad. Now...looking back...I realize that no 8 or 9 year old has the ability to give themselves a bath when it involves boiling water, pouring enough of it into a basin or the bathtub and scrubbing clean. NOW I know that. But I wish I could have a word with Mrs. Moisio and tell her how her thoughtless, unkind words and harsh tone have stayed with me for over 25 years.
The realization that not everyone lived like I did didn't come until many years later.
Don't get me wrong...I never felt unloved growing up, And I'm just starting to realize that my parents really did the best they could with what they had. It wasn't always easy for me to say and believe that.
I do believe the way I am today about a lot of things is a direct result of how I grew up. For example, there was a time when I had lots of expendible cash. I was married, in a 2 income household and no kids. I liked to spoil my nieces with moderatley lavish back-to-school shopping trips. I wanted them to wear all the name brands that were in style and have new stuff. Growing up, our back to school shopping was done at the Goodwill or the Salvation Army. It was horribly embarrassing to me as a kid. I think it was to my sisters too--and even more so because they were teenagers.
It's funny though, now I LIKE to shop at the Goodwill, The Salvation Army & thrift stores. I understand the value of a dollar and making it stretch. All things that I took for granted (or didn't understand) about my parents. And now I feel bad that I made them feel bad for not being able to afford what I wanted. As a mom now of 5 kids--with a 6 year old who asks for an iPod Touch....I understand the pain of saying., "No, honey. That costs a lot of money" and feeling rotten for having to say it.
I'm realizing that instead of being bitter that I didn't grow up in a house, with a nice car, the newest clothes, and the material things that a lot of my friends did, I should be thankful that my parents cared about me and showed me in other ways that they loved me and my sisters. They cared enough to make sure we were fed, clothed, and had a roof over our heads.
That's the adult in me coming out. Finally, all the times my mom said, "You'll understand some day when you have kids" is coming true. I get it.
Anyway...school was kind of horrible growing up. We rode the bus for what seemed like a gazillion hours on dirt roads (a death trap in the winter) to a small one floor elementary school. Luckily, a lot of my classmates were in the same boat as my family, financially (maybe not to the extreme we were with no running water) but still tight if not poor. I missed enormous amounts of school every year. Like...80 days or something like that?? If I so much as said I didn't want to go, I didn't have to. I think (and this is just my vague memory) that my mom was so intent on making sure we never felt forced to go to school that she made sure we were heard when we said we didn't want to/didn't feel well enough to go to school. As a kid, she lived a miserable childhood. She was hauled off to school whether she liked it or not. Being sick was ignored. Even if she'd been on her death bed, it was an inconvenience. So, I believe that she was bound and determined that we would never feel that way. Overkill? Over correction? Probably. But I get it.
I always liked school in so far as I loved to read and found school interesting.
What I didn't like? Getting made fun of for smelling bad. Or for my teeth being crooked. Or for having a "junky" car.
My parents smoke. Unfortunately for me, that meant I did too. And I smelled of it everywhere I went.
My teeth were horribly crooked; snaggle toothed. Braces were something I dreamed of, but knew I would never be able to have. They were just expensive and not covered under our insurance. We were on government assistance and that barely covered our basic needs let alone cosmetic things like braces. That was another major embarrassment...being on Welfare. I still have a really hard time saying the word. It will always have that negative stigma attached to it. My dad waited in line for government cheese in the plain, brown box and other food from the food pantry. At the time, I either didn't fully understand or didn't care that his having to do that was probably horrifying for him. He did it though because he loved us.
Going grocery shopping was a nightmare. If anyone I knew was in the store while we checked out, I was sick with embarrassment. Literally-heat flashes. We paid using food stamps and I could just have died. Do you know how many times I hid or asked to go out to the car when it was time to pay? Do you know that it wasn't until my 20's that I didn't feel embarrassed being with someone who paid with a check? Because of the way things were for us, paying with a check always [at least in my memory] meant we'd be overdrawn. It was such a desperate situation for my parents to use a check. And I knew there was not enough money in the account (usually) to cover it. I knew it would bounce. And I thought that was the case with everyone. So, the first time I went shoppping with my guardian (for another time, the guardian story) and she paid with a check...I almost died right there because I thought FOR SURE that she was writing a rubber check.
School picture time? Another time of great anxiety. I knew we would either be getting the smallest package available or none at all. Standing in line as a kid with no envelope was likened to having two heads. I might as well have shown up to school naked for how I [felt I] was treated. The cool kids got package A (the most expensive) and if I got any, it was package D (the least expensive.) If I was lucky to have an envelope that year, I would be sure to hold it so no one saw what package I was getting. I'd hand it to the woman collecting them very carefully and try to make noise when she announced to the photographer what package it was. Did these people have no heart? Why did they have to announce it anyway?!
It's funny how our skewed perspectives can be righted and then you realize how skewed it really was.
Our car?? Oh man...my dad was forever working on every car we had. In order to afford one, it always had something wrong with it and needed work. Luckily, my dad was handy and could do most of the work himself. Unfortunately...sometimes we had patch-work cars. A door from this car, a hood form another. One car had half of a front grill. Another had a wooden front bumper. All things that mortify a young kid.
My poor dad...I used to make him drop me off 200 feet away from the school so no one saw me get out of our car. My heart breaks for him now, knowing he was providing a vehicle for us, and I was ashamed of it...and I'm sure that read that I was ashamed of him.
As an 8 year old, those are things I couldn't control. But try telling that to 30 other 8 and 9 year olds who are dying to find a kid to pick on so that they don't get picked on themselves.
I do remember my mom being a room mother most of the time. I remember my dad dressing up as the Cookie Monster one Easter and coming to the school and delivering easter eggs to my classmates and me. I do have good memories.
There are also some not-so-great memories.
Like coming home one night when it was very dark. There were NO streetlights on the dirt roads we traveled to get to our house. There was a mob of people--who my parents said were from the KKK--oout one night. I remember my dad getting his billy club out when we got home. And feeling very scared. We called the police, but by the time a cop made it to our house...everyone would be long gone.
I remember waking up at night and being terrified. Of what, I don't know. I hated living in such a remote area at night. I used to have horrible stomach aches for no reason and wake up all the time with severe anxiety. I'm sure that has traveled with me to adulthood since I sem to be having a lot of those same things now.
It's funny...as I'm writing this, I just got a feeling...it was like I was back at that trailor, in the hot summer. There's a distinct smell that I can't name. And a feeling of home. Funny. That's never happened before.
I relaize this may be a boring start. Sorry about that. I think it's worth starting at the beginning though.
If you've hung with me this long. Thanks!
