There are a lot of things I feel guilty for putting my mother through when I was growing up, things I can't imagine having to go through with my own child one day.
I could never accept any advice she gave me, always having to try things on my own, which never worked out for me. I don't think it gave her any pleasure to have me slink home with my tail between my legs (didn't know about the tail, did you?) muttering a sullen "you were right". I'm sure she wished I had just listened to her in the first place.
I have many memories I like to keep shut up in a box in my brain labelled "Too Embarassing To Think of EVER AGAIN". It's a pretty big box. And I don't mean embarassing like getting your skirt tucked in your panties or farting during silent reading time. I LIKE to remember those things.
No. I mean embarssing like letting life turn you into someone you never wanted to be. I moved away from home for the first time at 17. I was all on my own, in a strange town, and turned to a man for company, a man who ended up raping me. I didn't tell anyone for over a year because I was sure it was my fault... sure I'd led him on somehow. After that, I had such a skewed view of men that that I wasted two years of my life on a manic-depressive, physically abusive jerk. I totally lost myself in that relationship; lost my mental health, my ability to find the good in any situation, lost the core of who I was and what was important to me. I became a very sad shell of a person, and when he eventually broke up with me (that's right, HE broke up with ME) I went even crazier, turning into this drunken, promiscuous... thing.
I don't like to remember some of the things I did, but I did them and will never be able to take them back. The worst part of it all is that my mum, my beautiful, wonderful mother, had to watch it all go down with much crying and hand wringing and wondering why she couldn't help me, why I couldn't help myself.
It was a rough few years (to say the least) and if I could go back and do it all differently... well... I'm actually not sure I would. Which sounds crazy, right? Absolutely batshit-fucking-nuts, I know. I would definitely try to shield my family and friends from all the absurdity, all the pain and worry that I know I caused. But I think I needed those hard times. I needed to know how absolutely shit life can get, how heart-breakingly terrible the world can be, and just how badly people can treat you. I needed to sink that low so that when I reached this place, this wonderful place I am now, I would know how very lucky I am.
Maybe I would have known it anyway, even if nothing bad had ever happened to me, but I don't know that I could have appreciated it as I do now. I wanted to write about this, to write about my past and all those bad years because maybe someone out there is going through the same thing. And I want them to know that it can, it does, it will get better. You can take what has happened to you and let it keep you down, or you can look at it, learn from it, and grow. My life now is so different from what I let it become.
It is amazing, overwhelmingly wonderful to wake up every morning with someone who respects you, loves you, and wants nothing more than to see you smile.
It lights my heart knowing what I have to go home to.
And every bad day, every hard experience is lightened because of that person holding my hand, helping me through it. I am a better person today because of what I've been through and what I've found. And if all of those bad things needed to happen to bring me here today, then I would have endured twice as much, three times as much, any amount more.
So I guess, what I'm trying to say is thank you, Jonathan, for helping me turn my life around. You'll never realise how thoroughly you saved me, but trust me, my mother is eternally grateful... and so am I.
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