Happy Birthday

Released from a life of regular beatings at eighteen, I wanted the pain to stop. Welcome to adulthood, you’re out of the house. With other teens, I celebrated by drinking and drugging.

Nobody will ever hit me again, my fiery resolve reverberated in every cell; I still feel the resolve, but minus fire. The law was finally on my side, I had recourse if my father hit me again.

That should have felt better, but it didn’t because every hit on my baby body stored a rotten energy ready to rebound in fury. I could have been beaten into submission, but I drew a defiant resolve to survive.

The hurt and betrayal a child feels at the hands of parents tilts how you feel about the world. I believed everyone would hurt me sooner or later. Of course, that’s true, but there are limits and we can all be assholes at one time or another, but pretty much we can forgive and move on in different directions or make up.

Lucky for me, I met a man who loved me truly, held on tight and never let go. I wish life would have been simple; no, actually dealing with childhood issues became the foundation of my adult dysfunctions. S.N.A.F.U.

I’d pedal upstream like crazy, trying to bring positive things into my life only to be pulled under. I developed a hyper-spastic duodenum; that’s part of my small intestine. Life swung back and forth between good and horseshit. Did I get better?

Oh, hell no, by twenty-five, I had what they called a nervous breakdown. The out of control feeling that goes with falling apart made me think I was losing my mind. Thinking about going insane really made me crazy if you know what I mean.

In a nervous breakdown, days end by crying yourself to an exhausted sleep only to awaken to more crying. Pull it together to go to work, cry on the drive to the office, check face in the mirror before exiting the vehicle, and life goes on like normal. I remember how miserable I felt and only knew worse the day my husband died.

He told me straight out that he didn’t understand people who treated their children like that, but he held me through many tears. With him, I learned to appreciate the beauty in even a bad day.

Life punches and jabs, but then there are the moments with your head in someone’s lap and they’re stroking your face. To appreciate the strokes, I’ve had to give up focusing on the jabs. Do you have any idea how long that takes? I’ll let you know when I arrive.

Joy inhabits a day focused on even the smallest positive details; eventually, it overrides the pain. That may be one of the biggest lessons of my life; it’s a favorite. I like healing a lot.

Today, San Juan here I come with plans to go to a dog show. It’s funny but, when I told a friend at the gym, she rolled her eyes to say, “Who would want to do that?”

I would to celebrate my birthday. For years I didn’t celebrate; how sad is it when your birthday doesn’t make you happy? I hear it from others all the time, so it’s not just me.

During his life, I treated my husband to dinner or parties and gave the best gifts, including our first Rottweiler; or we went to a resort. Good God, I love that man.

Since his passing, my goal is to love myself as well as I loved him.

A lifetime of repairing self-worth follows a shamed child. What I’ve done in my lifetime says who I am; wow, who’d have thought it? I’m proud of me. Happy birthday.