One of the people I work with says he writes a letter to his daughter on her birthday every year for her to read when she is older. His driving force behind this is for her to really know him should anything every happen to him. It sounds a bit macabre, but remember we are ER people who see lives change in seconds. This has been rolling around in my mind for a while and I realized that I really don't know anything about my parents as children at all. I know that my childhood has shaped me into the woman I am and I want Natalia to know me as a person, not just as a "parent". I won't allow her to read this blog until she is much, much older - like ready to move out older. Maybe this will explain some of my intensity, quirks and fierceness, if she ever goes into therapy over my mothering. Above all else, I don't want my human-ness to ever catch her by surprise. So.... Hello Natalia, my name is Shauna.
I want you to know that my childhood was very different from yours. A lot of times when I mess up as a mom, apologize and tell you "Sorry, I just don't know because I've never been a mom before." it's because I also don't really have a lot to draw from. Most of my childhood I cannot remember because there was some very unpleasantness going on and my smart little brain has blocked it out for me. That being said, it wasn't very specific with just the unpleasantries, so the good stuff took off with the bad. Now when I try and conjure up memories of my childhood when I was little I'll get these flashes of ugliness and then just as quickly everything is a blank, I feel horrible, and I move on with my day. Remember all the talks we have had about good touch/bad touch? I will drill that into you forever and a day. My dad was so shady and ambiguous about it that not only did I think it was normal for a while, but when I outed him he called me a liar and said I was misconstruing a normal father/daughter relationship. I doubted myself until you were born and I saw how your daddy treats you. My dad was wrong and inappropriate and that is why you have never met him. He does not get the honour of your presence. You are a gift that he will not spoil.
Because of this past, you can be sure that I will be constantly on guard with the people around you. I will also be on guard with the way you dress, which is why you have always worn shorts or jeans under dresses. I'm sure the disagreements between you and daddy and I will become more intense as you get older, but just know that I am older and wiser than you. No, seriously. I totally am. For every hot guy that is checking you out in that "outfit" there is some old raunchy icky man checking you out too. Yuck. I'll move on because I'm creeping myself out here.
Just so you know, you come from a family of crazy on my side. I'll regale you with details when you are older, but just trust me on this one. Since I'm writing this at 35 and feel that I have made some pretty sound judgements so far, I think I have dodged that genetic crazy bullet. When I was ten, my mom had to be hospitalized because she had a mental breakdown. To this day I don't even really know what that means, but before that she was telling me that my My Little Ponys had to be thrown away because they were satanic and that she could hear angels talking through the TV. I came home from school one day and she was gone. I don't even know what precipitated that hospitalization, but knowing what I do now, it was something big. That was pretty much the day that I lost my mom. She never fully recovered after that.
She had to be shipped off to Georgia to be with her parents and Aunt Amanda was less than a year old and went with her. A couple of months later I was sent out there to visit, told that my parents were getting a divorce and that I wasn't going back. I have to admit that I was happy and ended up trying to tell my mom about my dad and what had been going on. I ended up chickening out when she tried to talk about it later because I was too embarrassed. Anyway, that is how I ended up in Georgia. Grandma Eddins was very sick then and I ended up helping her in a way that children shouldn't help adults. A child should never have to sit outside their parent's bathroom to ask them to come out and not hurt themselves. I never should have had to help raise my sisters because the man she chose to be with and stay with (second husband) was an abusive alcoholic/heroin addict. He was a real charmer and would spontaneously freak out for no reason by screaming and throwing things. Once he threw an entire pot of rice that I had made for dinner against the wall because I didn't fluff it with a fork before placing it on the table. I don't like him at all. I would try not to giggle because as he was yelling at me and calling me names his dentures were popping out of his mouth and he was pushing them back in. That's right - dentures and he was 32 years old. If you like your teeth, don't do drugs. Okay, back to the story....It's around this time that Grandma Eddins started relying on me to be her support system when she felt like she was crumbling emotionally. This is why I can be your friend, but you cannot be mine. I will never burden you with troubles that I have not already solved in my own mind. I may tell you what is troubling me, but I will never lay my woes at your feet. My feet are ready for your woes, your feet should be ready for your kids, and so on.
Ahhh money. I guess when I was small, money was fine. Like I said before, my memory has been swiss cheesed so I really wouldn't know about then. I'll tell you what money was like after my parent's divorce - it was scary. Like, I don't know if we are going to have a place to live scary. How did I know this? Ah, woes at my feet from my mom because her husband at the time was a total tool. By the way; I had begged her not to marry him because I saw right through him. We will talk about men in a minute. My clothing came from hand me down church donations and our food came from the church food pantry. How embarrassing for a teenager to pull around to the back of the church every Sunday to load up on groceries for the week. Not only that, but since my mom met her husband at church, everyone knew that the reason we had no money was because he decided to by a horse that week. Aren't addicts hilarious? It was pretty much a decade before I could eat rotisserie chicken again after that era. When college stuff came around I actually had a scholarship to any school in Georgia, but I was in such a hurry to escape that I wanted to go out of state. That was one of the worst decisions I have ever made. I ended up costing myself $40,000 in student loan debt by the time I was done and daddy has had to share that burden with me. I can tell you that I would make the same mistake all over again if it was my only way to crawl out of poverty. It's because of this that I will hound you like an apocolyptic horseman to get an education and a real job with insurance. Never live a life that you cannot afford on your own. My theory on men is this: they are like a pair of diamond earrings. They are beautiful and should make you feel special, but your life should be just fine if you don't have them.
That brings me to my last thoughts which are on men. Please, please, please find someone like daddy. Seriously. Take a good long look and study how he treats me because that is what it should be like. Is it perfect? No. Do we always get along and treat each other like we should? No. Is it a miracle that I snagged him? Oh, yeah and I'll tell you why. So I guess by the time you read this you are going to see girls around you who constantly gravitate to garbage men. Not the occupation, the inner personality. Statistically I am supposed to be a poverty level single mother with multiple children by multiple fathers who is uneducated and has addiction problems. Obviously I chose another path for myself. I'll get to that at the end too. Thankfully, through all that insane growing up I payed attention and was able to decipher what I didn't want. In true mommy form I actually made a list. Daddy hit all of them but one. I was hoping I would marry a Christian man, but he's working on it and He's working on it, so I'll stay out of it. Some of the stuff was silly, like how I wanted someone who could physically pick me up (I dated some short guys) and the guy had to have more that four letters to his name, but most of it was real. I didn't want someone who called me names, or yelled at me. I didn't want someone who hit or intimidated me. I didn't want someone who made me cry. I wanted someone who was a good kisser and told me how much he loves me. These men are out there, you just have to be aware of the garbage men. If you aren't sure, ask daddy. He'll tell you if this one is a good guy or not. The toughest part is will you trust us. Remember, we will always be wiser than you until our dementia sets in.
Alright, I'll wrap this up because the rest you can just ask me about I guess. What I really want you to know is that I have never let my past be an excuse for my present. What that means is that I made a decision that I wanted what I thought was a cookie cutter life and I went out and got it. That cookie cutter is going to be a different shape for everyone, but you have to work hard for it. No one bought SAT books for me to study so I could get into a good college. No one researched colleges with me or filled out applications with me. No one told me how to get financial aid, but I figured it out. I decided I wanted to be a nurse, so I jumped schools, navigated downtown Atlanta (which I had been petrified of doing) and did what I needed to do to get where I needed to go. Once I graduated I had you and I have been heart set on being a ferociously good and conscientious mother to you. I have a lot of junk stored up inside that I will have to rake through from time to time. Daddy knows all about me and loves me inside and out. Even the yucky parts. Because he is the real deal Holyfield, I will put my relationship with him first because I want to teach you about marriage too. My hope is that you won't have to find your guy blindly like I did. You will know what true love looks and feels like because you have known it all your life. My hope is that by reading this you will get me and love me that much deeper because you know me that much more. You are a wonderful and loving girl who I cherish and will always protect because you are my gracious gift. I hope that you someday understand that I worked hard to give you a happy childhood full of silly memories and a loving family. I think of my life before as early payment for my joy that I have now.
No comments:
Post a Comment