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January 27, 2011 · 10:39 am

The First Time I Felt Truly Loved

Growing up I thought I lived in a normal household, with a normal family.  My parents had their respective ‘favorite’ child/ren and the rest that they were not too fond of.  Only as I grew older and could understand what was going on in my normal family did I realise my parents were in an unhappy marriage for over 30 years.  Being the youngest child, I was the one to blame for them ‘having to stay together’. I’m not assuming this, I was told this many times by both my parents throughout my childhood and teenage years.

I knew I was not a favorite to either of them, since I was told that I am impossible to love, that I was an accident.

Only now, as an adult do I understand how my parents’ attitude to me influenced me emotionally and spiritually.

I spent most of my life pretty messed up really, looking for love in all the wrong places and becoming depressed when I find it was not what I thought it was. Finding such comfort in self-destructive behaviour and then, doing it all over again.  Over and over and over.

Only at age 30, after so long of needing to be loved so desperately, after being beaten and  broken down, did I find that I had grown up in a way.

That I did not need another cheater or abusive man in my life, I really didn’t even need my parents’ love anymore.  I was ok. I was ok, on my own.

 

There was nothing wrong with me.  The very first time I felt truly loved, it was by me. And as the corny line goes, no one else will love you if you don’t love yourself, a few months later I found someone who makes me feel, for the second time in my life, that I am truly loved.

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January 21, 2011 · 9:30 am

The First Time I Was Thankful For My Challenges

My father died when I was seven, too young to really understand what an impact that would be for me. When you’re seven you don’t think “who is going to baptize me?” or “who will give me away at my wedding?” No, that comes later.

We didn’t eat for weeks. And neighbours brought oodles of food to us. All most all of it went bad. But little miracles helped us though the really tough parts. Once we came home and the house smelled of him. We just came in and sat down; we fell asleep huddled like puppies on the living room couch. And a few others that are a little too personal to share (even anonymously).

Flash forward three months.

My grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. He lived for four months. And at the tender age of eight, I had to find myself. I know women now that are much older that I, that have no idea who they are. But when you are confronted with challenge after challenge, it becomes necessary.

Now flash another two years.

We moved in with my grandmother (who is diabetic) and my grandfather (who is disabled and in a wheelchair). Between the two of them, we had to call an ambulance at least six times in the first year! It is scary to live with older people.

But through all of the challenges that I have had I know that they were meant for me. That I needed to learn from them. And that the people around me needed to learn something too.

I would even go as far as to say that I am lucky. I have an amazing family that loves me, and great religious leaders that guide me in the right direction and even better friends. I am lucky because I have found a testimony of god, time and time again. I am lucky because I can’t hold a grudge, my uncle still blames the doctor for my father’s death. But I am lucky because I know that there was nothing that he could have done and I know that God needed him more that I did.

I could go on and on about little things that happened to me, but I would rather focus on the good. I am thankful for my challenges, because they make me stronger.

Now, I am a healthy 15 year old that has her whole life in front of her. And I can’t wait to face it head on!

 

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January 5, 2011 · 10:46 am

The First Time I Realized I Did Not Miss My Mother

I am a product of a broken home. The typical story of the philandering Father and the strong Mother who does all in her capability to keep her children alive? That’s ours. Father left us after barely four years of marriage, had two children with his lover – and my Mother flew out of the country to work as an overseas contract worker in a desperate bid at giving us a normal life.

My childhood was a hazy blur of weekend visits to Grandma and Grandpa, being bullied by my schoolmates, finding solace in the library and sporadic phone calls from my Mother. I was six or seven at this point. Various relatives were taking care of my brother and I, and they didn’t really do a good job of it. Father would rarely show up and was horrible at paying the bills. More than once, we had our electricity cut off. It also wasn’t unusual for me to be sent out during examination times because my tuition fee hadn’t been paid. Weekdays were my own personal hell, and I just drifted through them, not really caring what happened.  I only came alive whenever it was time to go to my G’parents’ place for the weekends.

Throughout this whole time, I tried to live a semblance of normality – you know, laugh when you’re happy, take what you’re given. I didn’t know that other children lived differently from the way I did. I though everybody’s Fathers didn’t go home to their house either, and that Mothers weren’t around all the time. I was naïve, and maybe it was that naivety that saved me from emotional breakdown. I just managed to compartmentalize everything into neat boxes.

Then came the time when Mom decided that my brother and I would be taken to the province to live with her relatives. We were taken to live with my Aunt, my Mother’s sister. We stayed there for ten years. It was at that period that I hit my rocky teenage years – and had a huge fight with my Mom about her being abroad while we were here. I told her that I didn’t care if I had to go to a public school and not have good things, I just wanted her there. It was a long nightmare of a phone call, with hurtful words spoken by a confused teenager to a very hurt mother. I can be bitchy if I feel like it. And that night, I was.

After that phone conversation, I swore never to talk about our situation ever again. It hurt too much. And so I just kept on with my life – the high school bullying, the first crushes, the first period, first Prom, pretty much all my firsts, Mother wasn’t there. It was just a fact of life. Yes, I missed her, but there was nothing I could do about it.

When I started University, I came in touch with a lot of other students in the same situation as I was. Long-distance parenting sucks, we understood that, but by now, we preferred it that way. It was easier to look forward to phone calls than to go home to them every night. Then one evening in my Junior year while I was on Y!M chatting with a couple of my friends, my phone rang. It was my Mother, who had by this time developed a routine of calling me nightly. Instead of a happy anticipation that I’d be talking to her, I just felt highly annoyed that she would be diverting my attention from my friends towards our conversation.

And that was the first time I realized, I didn’t miss my Mother. Not one tiny little bit.

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