and other birthday ramblings!

The day has come– I’m turning 60 and I know it’s cliche to say it, but I sure don’t feel like 60. When I was growing up, I knew few 60 year olds in the community I lived in. Farmers tend to farm until their 80’s and back then most women living on farms would the farm with their husband’s or raised children. It seems strange to say it, but I didn’t know any women who worked outside the home. So, I never really heard about someone retiring unless it was a school teacher. I don’t recall any of my teachers retiring, but, I’m certain they eventually did. Sixty years old was the age of a lot of people for becoming grandparents. I guess that is how we determined “old” back then. Well, I’m not a grandparent and I never will be one, so–except for my birth date, I have nothing in my life making me feel my age or “old.” Except, of course, society begins to remind you of how old you are and those notices from AARP and hearing aids (ahem) begin to arrive.

I laugh sometimes at the sheer craziness of being sixty. The other day my husband and I traveled to Madison Wisconsin to start my birthday week with a nice meal and some light shopping. We visited a beautiful neighborhood in Madison that I could definitely see us retiring in. A couple of times I pointed toward people I thought were interesting and suddenly I thought–OMG, those people are my age. One was having a hard time with their walker and so my husband stepped up and lent quick assistance and all was well. Another person was having a hard time with an elevator and so we stepped up and held the elevator door open until she could wheel into the elevator. We are often handy like that having both worked, side by side, in a nursing home. It didn’t hit me at the time, but seconds later I said out loud “I’m the new old” and my husband slowly nodded. Which of course to me meant that the people I was helping were in my age range. Either one of them could have been me. Now I know 60 isn’t that old, but consider this–out of all the people I’ve known in my life—friends, boyfriends, co-workers, and acquaintances, over 1/2 of them have passed away. My childhood/teen/young adult friend passed away almost 20 years ago, and several friends of mine, younger than me, have passed away, along with many co-workers that I’ve had over the years. I’ve lost three “best friends” over the past thirty years. All gone way too soon. There isn’t a year that goes by that I don’t wonder what any one of them would look like or how their life would look had they been given more time on this earth.

So, what are the things that I would have told my younger self if I could?

Here’s what I would have told her– stop worrying because in one week or one month everything is going to change again. Listen when someone tells you everything will look better in the morning, because it does. Don’t give all of yourself to people who are just in your life for a season or a chapter–because when they walk away, seemingly without a care, they leave a great big void in your heart and soul. If it doesn’t feel right don’t do it. Respond don’t react and don’t let emotions control important decisions. Use your head and not your heart most times. Don’t believe for one-minute material possessions can fill a void. Unconditional love fills you up not things you buy or think you need.  Be frugal. Moderation in all things no matter what we’re talking about. Stay away from people who don’t want the best for you. Stay away from people who hold grudges, or don’t appreciate you, or judge you without knowing you.  Accept you will be rejected by people simply to be rejected but it’s not the end of the world. Be yourself and when people walk away from you, because of who you are, consider that a blessing. Take better care of yourself. See a future for yourself. Don’t give up. Don’t stop trying. Believe in yourself even when no one else does. Take risks. Travel everywhere you can afford to travel. Choose jobs or a career that makes you happy and that you enjoy doing every day. Thrive vs. Survive.  Surround yourself with good people and walk away from the bad.  Don’t leave the door open, even a slight crack, for toxic people to crawl back into your life. Sometimes you have to walk away from someone in your life in order to protect them from the truth. Learn how to say no. Learn when to walk away. Learn when to stay.

Know that some things you do are going to be perceived as something else entirely by someone else or everyone else. Maybe you will never have your say? You will learn to accept that and move on. Looking back has never done anyone any good. 

I wish that I could have warned my younger self to just walk away. Walk away from people showing me who they really are. When it’s crystal clear that I’m not loved or wanted. There are many examples of things that have happened in my life where I should have just walked away, drawn a line through it, and never, ever looked back. It’s hard for me to believe that I ever hated myself so much that I continued to let people mistreat me. But, I did, and for years and years…

Here’s an example from which I should have learned from years ago, unfortunately, it continued to be something very hard for my head and my heart to process. I was disowned by my entire family at 17 (at 17, I was still considered a minor/child). I was disowned because a 30 year old married man, who had been my Sunday school teacher, confirmation instructor, neighbor for two years, +employer, man who groomed me, and took my virginity at 15, abandoned his family after a summer trip to Alaska. As far as me and what I was doing that summer? I had graduated high school, been accepted into a private school, had saved money and found an apartment, and if that doesn’t sound like a lot for a 17 year old–secured a job as a policy proofreader at an insurance company in downtown Minneapolis. This man took a trip with friends to Alaska and then stopped off in Minneapolis to “see” me on the way home to his wife and kids. But, how did he find me? Well, somewhere between his ex-wife and my mom he learned my whereabouts. They were the ones that had located the apartment that I’d be paying for and living in. The real story would become clear to me once I called home. Apparently he had failed to return home after his trip to Alaska and in the last couple of days, after he’d turned up at my apartment, had made most believe he was staying put. This caused his wife to seek a divorce and my family, without ever calling me and asking me about what was really going on, to disown me. The only person not given the true story and being caught totally off guard (and somewhere in the middle of a big mess), was me.

Throughout the course of the next few days, he prohibited me from going to work and also from attending my first days at school. He used the same tactic as he used on me in the early stages of grooming. “If you leave, I’ll hurt myself.” So, I missed work, missed school. I became a prisoner in my own apartment–there to satisfy his every sexual whim because that is all I was to him. Me being on my way to adulthood, grown woman, career woman, traveling the U.S., making my own $, did not suit him. He saw me as a little girl, solely dependent on him, and totally submissive to his every need. I was not allowed to have my own mind, voice, or life unless he gave me permission. Before I lost my job, I called and explained to my boss that there was a situation going on and I needed time. She gave me a week off to get things straightened out. After that week, I returned to work, and when I came home he was gone. He had packed up his duffle bag, drained my bank account, ran up my phone bill to over $400–leaving me no note, no nothing. I later discovered that he’d done about the only thing left for himself to do to save face and that was claim he had a mental breakdown and check into the local VA.

Once out he was right back to stalking and harassing me. Playing games, guilt trips, manipulation–you name it. Eventually, because I thought so little of myself and my family had closed the door on me, I began a “relationship” with him. It lasted about six months and then he threw me out and he moved on. When I moved on, back he’d come threatening whoever I was with or intimidating them and all sorts of things. He didn’t want me and he didn’t want anyone else to want me. At 18, I had a tubal pregnancy, and nearly bled to death, he disappeared. At 19, I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks, in large part because he was relentlessly showing up at my door badgering me, brow beating me, and forcing me to have an abortion. I miscarried and had to be hospitalized. At 21, I was pregnant again and this time, while I was getting out of the shower, he threw me back through the glass shower door/over the tub and I miscarried at 16 weeks and had to be hospitalized. Each time doctors refused to tie my tubes. Why all the pregnancies? Well, he wanted to have sex with me all the time. He refused to wear condoms. I had been to doctors and tried to get on birth control pills, but, because I suffered from anemia they would not prescribe them. No idea if things are still this way today? I then turned to sponge’s and foams–but foreign objects etc. caused me infections so no IUD’s either.. If I didn’t agree to have sex with him, he just took it. I was threatened that if I ever called the cops or filed a report–he’d kill me. At 22, I became pregnant again and this time did not know it until I was five months along. Once he found out he began the usual threats, gaslighting etc. We weren’t even living together–I had my own home and was making my own money, but he could not handle his sex toy becoming a mother and would go off the deep end. I ended up going into labor early and delivered a 1# 1 oz. daughter all alone; after three days on IV drugs to stop labor, named Julie Ann. He, of course, was no where to be found. You may wonder, who on earth paid for all these pregnancies, miscarriages, and medical care. My first ectopic was paid for– unknowing to my parents at the time, by my parents under their health insurance. I was after all still legally covered by them at age 18. All other medical services and bills were paid by me via the three jobs that I worked from the time I was 19 until I turned 23.

For four years we lived in the same area, but lived apart, until I was 23 and he decided to relocate. I wanted out of the job that I had been working for four years, so, I quit, sold my trailer home, and moved to where he was moving. You might ask, but why? You had your chance to be free of him. It was my belief that I never would be. It was my belief that this man, who had stalked me since I was 15, would never, ever stop stalking me. I had more freedom with him then I’d ever had living on my own away from him. Even when we lived 1-1/2 hours away from one another, he’d travel in the middle of the night to catch me sleeping with someone else. We ended up living in an upper apartment and I took a job in a nursing home. I decorated the entire apartment with things that I bought with money that I got for selling my trailer home. I continued to pay him money that helped him make child support payments, buy his kids new shoes every month, and pay for every sports fee/expenses that one or the other of his kids incurred. Without my assistance, him and his ex would have been back in court every month getting a child support adjustment. I worked hours and hours of OT to help him make his payments at that time –he paid a lot of child support (even by today’s standards it would be considered HIGH). But, I did it to keep the peace and because I felt guilty and responsible for their dad leaving them for me. One day, on my way to work, I drove past fire trucks speeding past me and I felt this strange feeling in my gut, and once I got to work, I called home. Yes, the fire trucks were at our apartment, it was burning down. Thankfully he’s gotten out, our cat was safe, my very expensive engagement ring was safe, all his uniforms, textbooks, photo albums, and memorabilia were safe. Unfortunately, all the letters he’d written me, all the photos of me, photos of him and me, receipts, journals, diaries that I’d kept, negligees, and items that I’d bought for the apartment–all burned up.

I never did hear what caused that fire. He told me it was my dropping ash into a bucket of ash that was kept in the basement– we had done that many times. But, when I looked into it years later, nothing was concluded. It wasn’t the ash–the fire didn’t originate in the basement. It was suspected it might be wiring, but not concluded. Thankfully, the people who lived downstairs from us happened to be away for the week, otherwise they or their pets may have been lost in this fire. As it was, they lost everything, which still saddens me to this day. No one, neither occupant, had renter’s insurance. After this experience, we lived together another year and I moved out. I moved out to help my sister get through a divorce, to support her, take care of her child, and pay all the bills. She sat at home with my niece and I went out everyday and worked and paid for everything. I got her on food stamps, helped her with child support, put a roof over her head for two years. She got her divorce and then proceeded to move on to the next relationship. I became babysitter and taxi service for her when I was working two jobs.

At 25, I began a relationship with a man that I loved. Not a nineteen year old, not a 42 year old, a man my age. A very handsome and fun man to be around. A man that I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with. A confident man that would have never given my stalker the time of day. One special night together late April of 1989 we solidified our relationship. I then drove home–maybe happier than I’d ever been in my life up to this point. Once home, I was met by my stalker who just wanted to talk to me. I got in his vehicle and he then decided, “we should talk at his home.” To which, I was expected to have sex with him after not being around him for months. We were no longer together. Our relationship had severed when I moved in with my sister. We remained civil, but we both went on with our lives, separately. When I said no, he said “that’s o.k.” and he raped me. Seven months later, I found out I was pregnant. From that very moment, I loved my child. I could see my child, feel my child, and I wanted my child. I believe every child to be a gift. Personally, I felt the entire time that I was pregnant that she was mine and the man that I loved and had been in a relationship with in April. She might even have been the child of another man that I was with soon after the one with the man that I loved ended. I didn’t care. Even if she belonged to my stalker, she belonged to me and was mine. But even when I made it clear that I wasn’t going to ask for support, all I kept hearing from him were threats to steal the child, hide the child from me, abandon me with the child out in the middle of nowhere, take us to Alaska and leave us in the Alaskan bush, and on and on. Threatening me with legal actions, threatening to take my child through the court systems, anything and everything, unless I submitted to a late-term abortion. That I didn’t miscarry this child is a miracle. Her surviving my constant stress was a miracle.

Thankfully, even though all of this was upsetting, I had a home to go home to that he wasn’t living in. I continued to work and support my sister and carry on. I will admit, that his threats, his belittling, his constant talk about how I would fail as a mother, and what he would do to this child concerned me. The conclusion that I finally came to was that I had to give her up for adoption. I wanted her to have a happy and safe home. I wanted her as far away from this man as possible. He was clearly a threat to both her and myself. Since he wasn’t taking any responsibility for her, I should be able to put her up for adoption without issue. He solved any worries that I had about his parental rights when he told me to lie to human services and say that I didn’t know who the father was. He, essentially, was no longer legally in the picture.

Prior to my giving birth, things began to unfold that should have forewarned me about my support system. My sister suddenly and unexpectedly made a decision to apply for housing assistance and live separately from me. Then once I was in the hospital delivering my daughter, my sister made the decision to invite my mother. Who I had expressly stated I didn’t want there. When my daughter was born and my mother saw that she wasn’t black (yes, she is racist), she told me that if I gave up this beautiful baby she wouldn’t never speak to me again. To be honest, she hadn’t been speaking to me at all for years.

I was in about the most vulnerable position a woman can ever be in–and I heard that. To me it sounded like my mom loved me and would love me more if I kept my child. I don’t know why it sounded like that to me, but it did. So, without thinking anything through, I did what my mom wanted me to do, and I kept my daughter. My first struggle would happen when I went back to work. My sister, who I’d helped so generously, was too busy breaking up another marriage, to be able to babysit.

My parents, who, of course, had promised support, babysitting, anything, were no where to be found. My mother told me during one of my phone calls to her “grow up, you’ve made your bed, now lie in it.” It wasn’t until I had to quit my job and a family member –who had hired me for that job, contacted her, that my parents finally came to my apartment and asked how they could help. It was too late by that time as I’d checked out. I’d been on an experimental drug–Prozac, and literally checked out. I handed my child over to them and said “I would be able to take better care of my daughter and myself once I got off Prozac and on some kind of assistance.”They then took my daughter and for almost seven years refused to give her back unless I fought them in court. First they promised me that I would lose her because they could say that I abandoned her–there was no proof that I hadn’t, second they were going to use the fact that I had no job and was an alcoholic, and third they had money to take care of her and give her a GREAT life and I had nothing. I called home a lot in those first few days which led to weeks and was told–“she’s so happy, she’s so healthy, she’s taken care of, we love her, she’s our daughter.” “You aren’t mother material, you have nothing, you could never be a mother, and still I tried. But emotionally, mentally, I was destroyed. I sought help for my drinking, but the state of WI gave me tests that proved to them–I wasn’t an alcoholic at all. So, I would receive no assistance from them.

My life became darker and darker and the possibility of my ever getting my daughter back slipping away. In one of our phone calls, I was told if I settled down and married, I would get her back right away. Eventually, I found a nice man, fell in love, and got married. Nope, that wasn’t good enough. Then it was I needed to provide her a home and not an apartment. So, we bought a home. Then it was have a stable good paying job and have it be flexible enough so we could go to school things, drop her off, pick her up, stay home with her if she was sick. Done. Still she would not work things out with us so that I could have my daughter back. Everytime she visited us my mother would call, pretend crying, so bad that she would ask us to take her home. A tug of war, essentially, grandma who preferred to be called mom by her, couldn’t handle me stepping back in. After my step-father died, my mother contacted me to say “Now that I finally have a life and am able to travel wherever I want, I’ll be dropping your daughter off to you whenever I want, and pick her back up when my traveling is over.” To which I said “I cannot drop working/stop working on a dime and whim every time you want to travel.” To which she said “then you better get your checkbook out.” She wouldn’t call me again for a year or two–no apologies, no exceptions. She just needed someone to talk to because her favorite brother had died and my brother’s wife had had a miscarriage. After she bent my ear with that, she quietly hung up and I’ve never heard from her again. I would continue to call and she would continue to hang up. I wrote letters that would never receive an answer. My husband and I held onto the home we bought for 13 years and then sold it and started over.

You might wonder why on earth I never took my parents to court and fought for my daughter. Well, they beat me down is the easiest answer. Between her father and them they convinced me that my child would be better off without me. Secondly, even though most people felt that I would have won, at what cost? It was clear that my daughter was attached to them. They didn’t seek shared custody. They legally didn’t have paperwork for custody at all. But I hadn’t done anything related to fighting for custody, fighting them etc. so indeed it did look to strangers /outsiders that I had abandoned my child and stuck her with my parents. When the truth was, I was told numerous times that if I took her away from my step-father he’d have nothing to live for. I was told numerous times to do this and do that and if you do–we won’t fight you in court. In the end, I have a lot of regrets. I’m not that person anymore. I stopped being the rug everyone could walk on years and years ago. The person that I am today, whom I’m proud of, would be a complete stranger to the people that were once a part of my life. If I could tell my younger self anything it would be–once you start saying no and setting boundaries–the people who used you, the people who mistreated you will have meltdowns. Toxic people don’t like the word no. Wishing that I could have been then who I am now is fruitless. The fact is that I wasn’t and the way I was–insecure, lacked confidence, timid, took abuse, took being mistreated, took being bullied and lied to, no longer exists, but when that person did, she made countless bad decisions and some of them I still regret.

So in 2008, Christmas, family members “found me” on FB. As I sat there shocked listening to the spokeswoman for the family talk, all I could hear was “we need you now” “you have to” “right now” demands right off the bat. I also heard how all of them were so close, had been so happy, bonded, closer than any one can be, cozy, stable, a part of each other’s life, and now they were giving me a special invite into their secret sisterhood. Would I come? Right now? I was promised–“we won’t bring up your awful past or mistakes or life.” “We’ve forgiven you.” All I could think, after hearing all this was, “same old same old–toxic as ever.” I mean? Forgive me for what? Why would you paint such a beautiful picture of your life without me? Why?

When I asked for a minute to process what was happening–members of this “family” began blocking me on FB. Mid message to one of them, I got the little page user cannot be found. When I messaged the family member who’d begun this entire FB “we found you”, I was informed the only reason that they had never contacted me, returned my regularly sent letters, answered my voice messages, or visited me at my known address was because they thought me dead. They thought me dead because otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to go on with their lives…after they abandoned me. When I asked this family member to never contact me again and broke off communications, she continued to stalk me for six more years. About once a year, I’d get this off the wall email from her trying to manipulate me to respond back to her. Eventually she sent me a letter in the mail. In it she apologized for having to have a cop friend of hers investigate me in order to locate our address. I then threatened her with contacting the police if she ever did this again. That was the end of it until 2018.

I didn’t realize at the time how much being told by “family” that they’d had to “pretend I was dead” had really hurt and bothered me. For years I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept. I still can’t. I’ve asked therapists why someone would need to say this or even feel this and all I get is head shaking. All that I can come up with is –toxic and cruel people just naturally say toxic and cruel things.

I wish I could get back the years that I mourned over the loss of this family. Before I learned to love and value myself, I had been mourning a family that had forced themselves to believe I was dead so that they could have fun lives together.

In 2005, I started seeing a therapist (I was being treated for PTSD/Anxiety), and many things began being discussed that painted a dark picture of a very neglected and abused young child. It’s sad to me to think that I’d never considered this before, even when others pointed it out, or ever attributed it to my poor health when I was younger, or lifetime of dark depression, or inability to carry children to term, or years of unhappiness and feelings of low self worth.

Let me be clear, even though I felt unloved throughout my childhood, I never once considered that what my mother was doing to me was neglect and abuse. But, it very clearly was. I made excuse after excuse to myself and others for her treatment toward me— and in the end everything she did to me was exactly that –abuse and neglect.

At four, my mother had tried to give me away to a strange man in Zeller’s dept store. She had taken me by the hand, left her other child with someone she knew, and we got into a cab and drove to the department store. It was spring and we met a man over by the children’s bike section. My mother told me to say hi to the man and then they exchanged information as to where I would live, would he be good to me, could he buy me one of the bikes I was looking at etc. He kept asking about two girls and she would say “only this one, not the other one.” When we were about to leave she told me the nice man was going to buy me one of the bikes soon. She told me that in a few days, I would go live with him and then I would be given my new bike to ride. She asked “how does that sound?” I asked, “Can Chrissy come with?” A reference to my younger sister…Next, I remember her grabbing my hand roughly and we were back in the cab. We drove a little ways and then were back in front of the house we lived in (she was a live-in housekeeper). She asked the cab to stop and she began crying and saying over and over—“you’ll be good, you better be good, you better listen to me and never talk back, do year hear me?” And then garbled stuff about it being too late to give me away because “Chrissy would remember me, would ask about me, needed someone to play with.”

For the rest of my childhood my mother would remind me of the sacrifice that she made not giving me away. Throughout my childhood she kept me at arms length, constantly making references toward me being just like my father (a man that she really hated), reminding me that I reminded her of someone that she hated. When I was 4.5, I was sexually abused by her boss. Her solution was to lock me in our room and not let me out unless I needed to use the bathroom. She wasn’t able to feed both my sister and I. I was losing weight –all I was being fed was Campbell’s tomato soup. My sister was being fed oatmeal and coffee and toast. Fearing she’d get in some kind of trouble, she talked with the school (K-1 was run by nuns) and I was let in at 4.5 years of age. I would get a free breakfast and lunch for two years. But, as soon as I was done with school for the day, I’d be locked back in our room. On weekends, that was my prison. Sometimes my sisters was in there with me. Otherwise, I was in there and she was out in the kitchen with mom eating toast and having sips of coffee. This would go on until she briefly met a man then married him and we moved to the states. We wouldn’t have a Christmas or a birthday or an Easter until I was almost 9 years old. I am certain we didn’t even realize what we were missing because she wouldn’t even announce it was our birthday or Christmas or Easter or even give me (not sure about my sister) a special hug, even a birthday greeting. Nothing, nothing at all.

Eventually my mother remarried and we moved to the U.S. There I became a farm hand for my step-father and eventually started my own babysitting business at 12 to get out of the house and away from my sister and mother. With the money that I earned I was expected to share whatever I bought with my sister. When I wouldn’t I was considered a selfish brat–just like my father… I eventually graduated high school, weighing 92#, to which my mother often responded “she’s such a picky eater.” When I left home for college, apparently free rein was given to all I had left behind for safe-keeping. When I returned home six months later to retrieve it, it had all been destroyed by a barefoot and pregnant sister.

In 2018, I was completely blindsided by this “sister”. As I sat in an ER waiting room–I started receiving DMS full of nasty texts. Initially, I didn’t realize who they were from. Then, I was informed that someone was texting me on behalf of my “daughter”. I didn’t know what to believe or who this person was and I couldn’t think straight because, YES, I was in the ER.

The next day I put a blurb on my FB that I would appreciate it if drunk “family” members would leave me out of their drunken texts from this point on..

That didn’t go over well. Because soon I started getting dozens of pictures of my “daughter” sitting on my old stalkers lap –apparently at her wedding. When I threatened to call the police if they didn’t stop– and when I say barrage–they sent dozens of pictures very quickly, I was told by my “sister” — “it’s good that we never reconnected with you because we’ve all just about forgotten you ever existed.”

For three years, I spent every day just dialing it in. I felt nothing. I was numb. It was clear to me that I had to get a grip if I was ever to live again and enjoy the life I’d been given. What was done to me was the cruelest thing that I’ve ever had done and as I’ve shared it with others–the cruelest thing they’ve ever heard people who consider themselves your “family” have ever done. It was part cruel, part resentment, part hate, part bitterness, part hate (did I say that already?) laced with a lot of booze. It triggered me and I went to a place I cannot describe. I prayed every day to escape the numbness and not fall off the wagon. I never did. I maintained my sobriety 100%. I prayed some more and then I began the long process of ridding myself of lifetime demons, healing myself, and learning how to deal and to better cope with life and life’s happening without falling into a dark place ever again.

As much as I wish that I would have done some things differently. Once I began healing ; facing my demons and for the first time feeling confident and emotionally stronger, I didn’t want to invite people back into my life who hated me. Simple as that.

Since then I’ve learned that I have the more serious kind of PTSD called CPTSD (complex PTSD) which is virtually, almost impossible to treat. This kind of post-traumatic stress disorder comes from repeated childhood traumas + continuous trauma events as an adult. It’s hard-wired, which makes it very, very hard to heal. In Wisconsin, in the area that I live in there isn’t anyone that is able to treat it or even provide therapy for it. Thankfully, I have a network of friends and a devoted husband and different therapies that I’ve tried and I’m doing fabulous.

So as I approach the wonderful day of my birth I must say–I am glad I made it. I am sad that friends that I was close to as a young adult are no longer here to share old age with. We spoke often of how we would all look in our sixties and what we’d be up to. The things that make me the happiest are the simplest things in life. Ironically as a teen, I wanted nothing more than to get away from country/farm life and travel the world. Yet for most of the last twenty years I have lived in or near farmland. It’s impossible for me to think I could ever live anywhere except a place where there are fields of hay and cows a mooing.

I fully admit at 60 that there are a few things I should have done better. I regret that when I made choices I didn’t consider myself in the choice.  I did too many things for others–people that could never and have never appreciated a thing. So many things in my life would have been different if I’d been stronger and not been afraid to hurt people’s feelings to get what I wanted. I regret that throughout my life I may have helped and been far too generous to people that wouldn’t have even given me a glass of water if I was dying of thirst. I regret not being good at the things that should have come naturally to me like motherhood. It took me until I was in my forties to see that what I’d needed most in my twenties was love and support.

I don’t know how anyone else’s life worked out. I haven’t heard, nor would I, what any of the “family” who found me in 2008 is even up to. I don’t look, I don’t know, and quite honestly, I don’t care. Besides the 2018 retaliation dms because I called them all out for being drunks, I haven’t heard a thing about any of them since 2011. I’m dead to them and I’m cool with that. It doesn’t hurt me anymore. Words can’t hurt unless you let them.

Last but no least, some thing that I would tell my younger self is that you ultimately, as an adult, make your own bed. So you need to be careful how you go about doing that. Your parents are responsible only up to a certain point for how things turn out in your life. There comes a point where you must figure out who you are and what you want in life. You can’t spend what time you have left of your life being haunted by ghosts from your past, or blaming others for your unhappiness, or traveling down memory lane regurgitating your past. You’ve made mistakes–and you’ll need to own them. Your life isn’t perfect, but it’s  your life. The road to happiness is often paved with lots of tears, but you can find happiness and peace. You can find contentment and joy despite having had to make some regrettable mistakes. Last but never least in all things have a plan b because life is unpredictable.

xoxo