Taking a leap back to my childhood so certain parts of my story will make more sense, giving the background of my entire life.
Obviously, I don’t actually remember the day I was born, but based on stories told, it was for sure a panic for my parents.
I do remember seeing my birth photo, and I was covered in bruises. During my mother’s labor with me, code red was called. My umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, and I was turned the wrong way. Stories told me that I almost died at birth.
To be honest due to traumas I faced in life not only from childhood, but also from ending up with a mental health diagnosis, for years I thought my life was actually a mistake and God never planned for me to survive my birth. So every bad thing I have ever experienced was due to me being a mistake. Imagine living with that thought for so many years of your life?
I will say I have the memory of an elephant, which now comes in handy to be able to publish my life through this blog. I remember things from a year old that my mom was shocked I would talk about years later. I clearly remember running outside at a few years old and falling and scraping my knees, also remember my brother hiding in a coffee table cabinet in a house I was told I was too young to have any memories of. Knowing my memory is so good, I think that was for sure my gift from God to eventually tell my story.
I’d say for about 9 years I had the perfect family. My mom was super mom. She was a nurse, involved in the PTA at school, cooked and baked for us, decorated the house for all our birthdays and holidays, decorated and baked our birthday cakes, made all our Halloween costumes homemade, got us ready for dance rehearsals doing our makeup and hair. My father was also very involved, and I recall him always telling me I was his favorite. That for sure changed the older I got and my perfect white picket fence family I once had vanished in what seemed like an overnight occurrence.
Before I get into all the bad aspects of my childhood, I want to just reflect on how amazing my parents once were. Looking back on the first 9 years of my childhood, I always wonder why God chose to one day take that all away from me. I will say I am able to be more grateful for the good times I did have during my childhood, but now with age and all my lived experiences I also find gratitude in my growth and strength from all the traumas and bad parts of not only my childhood, but life as a whole. That for sure wasn’t an easy process to find blessings in my traumas, but but being in my 40’s now I can see my life as a whole with a different perspective then when I was living through all those difficulties.
When I say things went from good to bad in an instant that’s what I can remember. I went from having my mother be my mother to one day walking into her bedroom to see 3 gallon glass jugs of wine completely empty and I smelled liquor on her breath and her sleep didn’t look normal to me. I recall in that moment saying to myself I just lost my mother I once had.
My intuitions just told me she had a problem, and I felt an intense emotion that it was going to completely alter my family. That’s deep stuff to now have to face off with at the age of 9 years old.
When my dad came home from work that night, I told him mom was drunk and passed out, and I think she has a problem. That’s when the first of many cover-ups for my mothers soon to be problem with her alcoholism began. My father said it’s not a problem she sometimes drinks and just goes to watch tv or something. Everything is fine.
Obviously looking back I couldn’t have expected my father to say she has a serious problem and soon her behaviors will destroy our happy family, but I often wonder what might have been if my mothers alcoholism was dealt with in that very moment of me discussing my concerns.
Did I ever imagine the hell my life would soon become? Of course not, but I did get an intense feeling that things were never going to be the same again.
To be continued….
The Outspoken Advocate 