Just start out screwed up and you’re fucked for
life; there’s no denying it. In his last week of life my husband sat in his
wheelchair by the bed where I laid reading; he raised his hand to stroke a hair
out of my face. I ducked. With sadness etched in his face my darling said,
“Your dad had you eighteen years; I’ve had you a lifetime and you still duck.” He
rolled out of the room while inside I cried, come back, touch me again, I won’t duck.
When your shrink tells you that you’re normal,
which mine did after years of therapy, what that means is you’re normally
messed up for a person with your issues. I always thought everyone else had it
together more than I did; now, I know we’re all shades of messed up.
Everybody has their poor baby story. If you tell yours,
you’ll hear theirs’ in a tone that says, if
you think your story was bad, listen to this. Empathy, no, its declaration
is to get you to drop your pity party. In my life I’ve only met one person who
has said, “Wow, I’m sorry about that; I had a great childhood.” I enjoyed
hearing that.
A messed up childhood doesn’t mean you can’t have a
great life. Lord knows when I get to the pearly gates, I’ll be saying thank you
for all the cool things I got to do as an adult. The thing is that it’s kind of
like healthy skin growing over an abscess. That’s the rub; it’s always there.
I find that at this juncture dealing with the loss
of the love of my life requires me to realize that my parents were messed up
people, who acted like messed up people. For me forgiving them has been a long
process. I yearn to forgive and forget; why won’t that just come?
Myopia, that’s short sightedness; I could be the
poster child. It was only yesterday that I had the monumental duh moment of
realizing that my particular screwed up was because I suffer from PTSD from all
the beatings. I’m familiar with PTSD as it relates to others. It never occurred
to me; that’s funny.
My crescendo years I wish to be filled with love,
beauty, and abundance of life. I will not be fucked for life.
