Hello World
As I look back at my teen years, there are so many odds and ends to reflect on. I shared a bathroom with brothers, had no sisters but had some amazing sister-friends along the way. I've had several friends I grew up with tell me now-later that they knew/saw all that was happening. I had another friend, tell me to write a book....because no one would believe all the things that were happening to me. And yet, another friend tell me she is continually amazed that I have become the person I have become.
I can honestly say that I retreated to my room in joy as it was the only place in the house that was all mine. I sat and read books, listened to music, sang, drew pictures, played with hair and makeup and dreamt of the life I prayed would someday would hopefully come my way. I do not lie when I say, I somewhat lived in believing the fantasy of Disney, princesses & their princes, fairies, lands of love. Yes my mother consistently yelled that I had to face reality and get out of my dream world, but considering that my reality consisted of daily humiliation, verbal & physical abuse; any escape was an escape. I read many books of damsels being rescued by a dashing prince which my mom said were untrue. I read that the little ugly duckling would become a swan....and I so, wanted to feel pretty, be pretty. My brother half jokingly said once, "You have the face only a mother would love but funny thing is she doesn't" ...that was my world.
I feel most girls dream of who their prince will be? What will he look like? What will he do? Will he completely love me as I am, when my own family cannot see 'me' or accept the 'me' I am? Again like other young teens we have crushes on the people we admire on TV, movies or in our music. Teen Beat was a must for me. To see smiling faces & pretty faces was confirmation that there was happiness out there somewhere. I wasn't pretty & even today have issues with that. But I was something: funny - outgoing - creative - athletic and good too. What all that got me was popularity and great friends. Somehow the person I was a little bit awesome. Little by little I learned to 'switch gears' - the school & friend me vs the home me. I actually spent more time at school than home. Slowly my mom noticed that I was happy to be at school, happy to be away at friends, happy to leave for summer camps, happy to be anywhere but home. That realization only became another reason for confrontation & more battles......
That will be the next installment.......confrontations, battles, & bruises....
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
More to Understand
Hello World,
To more understand, we must go to the beginning of her life. My mom was born in 1941 while her father was serving our country abroad. There are two pics of my mom at about age 1- 1.5, one in a dress & one in overalls. I never got a clear answer to why there were two pictures from her except that my grandmother had to send my grandfather a picture of his child and he had wanted a boy but got a girl - so both poses were taken. Why? Who knows? Surely when he came back he would've seen she was a girl, so why the overall picture? I also found out later that when he did return, my grandmother did get pregnant again but loss the baby early on. So what if? & Why didn't they try again? I can only assume due to lack of money.
My grandparents from what I remember were kind, amiable, funny people but strict and strong in their faith. People in the community loved them, especially my grandmother. She was greatly loved by all that knew her all the days of her life. My grandfather died when 1986 and my grandmother passed in 1993. I obviously not witness to her early growing up but I did see how they treated my mother for what I can remember from age 5 - 25. What I remember was my grandfather was a bit tough with his teasing of her. I know from she told me "he was mean & teased her" about weight, looks, and grades. He pressed to her that she had to be thin and always look her best - which apparently he told her she was "not that pretty" most of the time. As for weight, as most Hispanic men, they want their women to stay thin, but ironically my grandmother was a full figured woman who was a wondrous cook. As for brains, my mother quickly figured out that being smart was her ticket out of her poverty life . However, I always found it amazing that my grandparents would remind her that although she was 'book smart' she was not so smart to be better than her parents.
The more I remember and now know as an adult was that my mother was/is a very insecure person and as prickly as they come. She had/has no sense of humor so any 'teasing' was seen as cruel or taken to heart as true. By making herself accomplished, married with wealth around her, I think she thought that would fill her soul & better herself in everyone's eyes. I do remember the last 2-3 years before my grandmother passed away, they would have so many fights. My grandmother at times would try to step in but many times shut down by my mother. She also would remind my mother to 'lighten-up' but that never happened either. I think no matter how much my mother surrounded her with stuff....my grandmother still saw through it and knocked her down. (I know that feeling).
It may be mean to say but I have to say I enjoyed sometimes seeing my grandmother shoot my mom's arrogance down from time to time. And although she couldn't retaliate against his own mother, she could strike me down for trying to do it too. I from a very young age, have had a 'sarcastic' sense of humor but all just in good jest. My mom saw it as rude & disrespectful. I quickly learned to 'bite my tongue'. I was to some degree 'two' people. Carefree & silly at school with friends and then reserve & distant at home.
This was my life from a very early age into adulthood, I didn't fit into my own family & home.
To more understand, we must go to the beginning of her life. My mom was born in 1941 while her father was serving our country abroad. There are two pics of my mom at about age 1- 1.5, one in a dress & one in overalls. I never got a clear answer to why there were two pictures from her except that my grandmother had to send my grandfather a picture of his child and he had wanted a boy but got a girl - so both poses were taken. Why? Who knows? Surely when he came back he would've seen she was a girl, so why the overall picture? I also found out later that when he did return, my grandmother did get pregnant again but loss the baby early on. So what if? & Why didn't they try again? I can only assume due to lack of money.
My grandparents from what I remember were kind, amiable, funny people but strict and strong in their faith. People in the community loved them, especially my grandmother. She was greatly loved by all that knew her all the days of her life. My grandfather died when 1986 and my grandmother passed in 1993. I obviously not witness to her early growing up but I did see how they treated my mother for what I can remember from age 5 - 25. What I remember was my grandfather was a bit tough with his teasing of her. I know from she told me "he was mean & teased her" about weight, looks, and grades. He pressed to her that she had to be thin and always look her best - which apparently he told her she was "not that pretty" most of the time. As for weight, as most Hispanic men, they want their women to stay thin, but ironically my grandmother was a full figured woman who was a wondrous cook. As for brains, my mother quickly figured out that being smart was her ticket out of her poverty life . However, I always found it amazing that my grandparents would remind her that although she was 'book smart' she was not so smart to be better than her parents.
The more I remember and now know as an adult was that my mother was/is a very insecure person and as prickly as they come. She had/has no sense of humor so any 'teasing' was seen as cruel or taken to heart as true. By making herself accomplished, married with wealth around her, I think she thought that would fill her soul & better herself in everyone's eyes. I do remember the last 2-3 years before my grandmother passed away, they would have so many fights. My grandmother at times would try to step in but many times shut down by my mother. She also would remind my mother to 'lighten-up' but that never happened either. I think no matter how much my mother surrounded her with stuff....my grandmother still saw through it and knocked her down. (I know that feeling).
It may be mean to say but I have to say I enjoyed sometimes seeing my grandmother shoot my mom's arrogance down from time to time. And although she couldn't retaliate against his own mother, she could strike me down for trying to do it too. I from a very young age, have had a 'sarcastic' sense of humor but all just in good jest. My mom saw it as rude & disrespectful. I quickly learned to 'bite my tongue'. I was to some degree 'two' people. Carefree & silly at school with friends and then reserve & distant at home.
This was my life from a very early age into adulthood, I didn't fit into my own family & home.
A Way to Understand
Hello World
To understand my life is to understand first, my mother & her life. She was born mid 1940's with a father off at war who wanted a boy. He came home to a girl and that was the only child he had. My grandparents were kind, funny, full of life but somehow that did not pass on to my mother. My grandfather was a taxi driver & grandmother a seamstress and made due with what they had. With only one child they put a lot of hope & pressure? on her to be more than they had been. By grace of God, although not born with a dime to her name, she was born with beauty & brains and took full advantage of them both to get what she wanted. When she realized all she could get either by earning it or using manipulation, she became very, very good at getting what she wanted. Unfortunately she later believed she was owned back for all her suffrage from everyone & especially those who held her back, or prohibited her to being more, having more. She once told me sons are good - they become something and always love their mothers, you are nothing but a silly girl, who won't amount to anything.
Girls are useless....and yes, the fact that she too was/is a girl never made sense...but there begins the insanity of my mother....believing that she was better than all women & should've been born a man. All women are stupid, over sensitive, gossiping useless beings who do no more than waste time & bother others. She truly believed that NO women were to be trusted. There was NO SUCH THING as 'best friends' , sisterly bonding, friendship, etc.....She also believed all women had EVIL MOTIVES for everything!!! & I mean everything....her paranoia was equally crazy. However, since she truly believed the world revolved around her, people are naturally evil & conniving, and no one is too be trusted - ever! This incessant unhappiness in her own life poured over to us, her family, but more so-me, her only daughter.
To live with this much negativity was difficult but more so for me. I have to say, God has a sense of humor because he gave me to her. I think his thought was to help her soften as a person or mother/women & for me to be a stronger independent woman, like her but the sad thing is I was/ nor am anything like her! I can see how I was a 'disappointment' I was to her. My passions were the arts. I was a good student for the most part but I had no drive for academics. In my mom's ever demanding goal to be thin & 'resentable' she put me me in ballet which I actually did love to do. From there I went into cheerleading & hip hop dance. Throughout all this I found much joy with friends and even school as an escape from every day life. I had several good friends who let me be 'who I was' and liked me. If I told my mom I had to be 'differnt' when I was home or around her, she only got more paranoid and cruel in thinking I was being ungrateful and disgraceful daughter. She laughed when I would say 'I just wanted to be be myself'. She found humor in this because she would get in my face & say "'how stupid are you? to believe your friends like you?? they really don't! They tell you that so you will tell them more about our life & they mock us because they are jeaulous of us' This is how daily crazy my world would be.....No friend was really mine, no trust was real, no friendship was real...she was the only real person I was supposed to love & trust....Somehow deep down in my heart, I knew that was false.
To understand my life is to understand first, my mother & her life. She was born mid 1940's with a father off at war who wanted a boy. He came home to a girl and that was the only child he had. My grandparents were kind, funny, full of life but somehow that did not pass on to my mother. My grandfather was a taxi driver & grandmother a seamstress and made due with what they had. With only one child they put a lot of hope & pressure? on her to be more than they had been. By grace of God, although not born with a dime to her name, she was born with beauty & brains and took full advantage of them both to get what she wanted. When she realized all she could get either by earning it or using manipulation, she became very, very good at getting what she wanted. Unfortunately she later believed she was owned back for all her suffrage from everyone & especially those who held her back, or prohibited her to being more, having more. She once told me sons are good - they become something and always love their mothers, you are nothing but a silly girl, who won't amount to anything.
Girls are useless....and yes, the fact that she too was/is a girl never made sense...but there begins the insanity of my mother....believing that she was better than all women & should've been born a man. All women are stupid, over sensitive, gossiping useless beings who do no more than waste time & bother others. She truly believed that NO women were to be trusted. There was NO SUCH THING as 'best friends' , sisterly bonding, friendship, etc.....She also believed all women had EVIL MOTIVES for everything!!! & I mean everything....her paranoia was equally crazy. However, since she truly believed the world revolved around her, people are naturally evil & conniving, and no one is too be trusted - ever! This incessant unhappiness in her own life poured over to us, her family, but more so-me, her only daughter.
To live with this much negativity was difficult but more so for me. I have to say, God has a sense of humor because he gave me to her. I think his thought was to help her soften as a person or mother/women & for me to be a stronger independent woman, like her but the sad thing is I was/ nor am anything like her! I can see how I was a 'disappointment' I was to her. My passions were the arts. I was a good student for the most part but I had no drive for academics. In my mom's ever demanding goal to be thin & 'resentable' she put me me in ballet which I actually did love to do. From there I went into cheerleading & hip hop dance. Throughout all this I found much joy with friends and even school as an escape from every day life. I had several good friends who let me be 'who I was' and liked me. If I told my mom I had to be 'differnt' when I was home or around her, she only got more paranoid and cruel in thinking I was being ungrateful and disgraceful daughter. She laughed when I would say 'I just wanted to be be myself'. She found humor in this because she would get in my face & say "'how stupid are you? to believe your friends like you?? they really don't! They tell you that so you will tell them more about our life & they mock us because they are jeaulous of us' This is how daily crazy my world would be.....No friend was really mine, no trust was real, no friendship was real...she was the only real person I was supposed to love & trust....Somehow deep down in my heart, I knew that was false.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Early Events of my life
Hello World
Things I remember are scattered by still stand true in my memory. As early as 1st grade, I feared my mother and wished her death. I find that very hard to read as a mother now myself but it is true. As a little girl, I was the youngest of three with two older brothers and just knew I didn't fit. I never fit in the family. Once my brother told me I was left on the door step by gypsies and I wasn't really a part of the family. I somehow found comfort in that explanation, because it fit. Another time, same brother told me, 'yours is the face only a mother could love, and she doesn't so ha ha ha'.... yes that's what he said.
So let's start with what I do remember. I grew up in a home to two working parents, which was the beginning of that time I guess. Many moms stayed at home during the mid-sixties but not my mom. She was proud of her degree & education and rightly so. I'll give her that, rightly so. She relished in having a job and was empowered by it as well.
Due to her work, we had a live-in maid who was there on Sunday at nine and left Friday about the same time. She washed, cleaned, ironed, cooked & cared for my family. We had a maid from birth to my senior year of high school. I knew no different. I clearly remember our first maid, Mary clearly. She was kind and my only ally. We only had two TVs in my home....one in by parent's room and the other out in the living room. Needless to say my parents watched one and my brothers the other. I spend most nights in Mary's bedroom with her and watch television on a tiny 10inch black/white TV. I watched many entertaining shows and learned a great deal of Spanish along the way. Between Cepillin, El Chavo del Ocho, and Topo Gigio, I was quite versed in Spanish television but that was ok because it was an enjoyable time. Mary was kind to me and loved me & even as a child, I knew I should've been getting that type of love from my mother & wasn't. She left us when I was 9 and I cried & cried. She left to get married and told me she would always remember me as her 'little girl'. It broke my heart for her to go but I knew she wanted to have her own family. I just wished she could've taken me with her. We went through several different maids for about four years, and then got Francesca. She was a sweet girl but at the time I thought she was older. It was my junior year in high school when it dawned on me to ask her age and when I found out she was just two years older than me, it broke my heart. That was the beginning of me being more aware of those around me and understanding the world 'was not about me'.
I tired to run away about age 8 or 9. Looking back & a mother myself now, the idea of a child trying to run away at that young age, would be a big red flag. I remember distinctly taking my baby doll carriage, and filling it with my piggy bank, a blanket, my favorite doll, some canned soup & oreos. How crazy was that? As I walked out my brothers laughed at me wished me well & goodbye. As I walked & cried the sidewalk of our neighborhood, my thoughts were not of my care, my well being or where I was going. It didn't matter.... I was out! Sadly as I turned the corner, my mother's car came into view. She slowed down, rolled down the window and asked where I was going. I told her "I'm running away!". She said, "That's fine but try to be home for dinner" and drove away. I stood there stunned for a bit and wondered what to do. It dawned on me that I had no where to go or no one to go to. I HAD to go back home. I knew it but I didn't HAVE to like it. I promised myself that as soon as I could leave, I would & never turn back. It was shortly after that when my oldest brother came into my bedroom when I was crying....doesn't matter now why I was crying but I remember more importantly his advice that day. I hear those words still each day: "You don't have to love her, just do as she says. Don't look at her as 'mom' but only as the woman who gave birth to you...That's what I do."
Things I remember are scattered by still stand true in my memory. As early as 1st grade, I feared my mother and wished her death. I find that very hard to read as a mother now myself but it is true. As a little girl, I was the youngest of three with two older brothers and just knew I didn't fit. I never fit in the family. Once my brother told me I was left on the door step by gypsies and I wasn't really a part of the family. I somehow found comfort in that explanation, because it fit. Another time, same brother told me, 'yours is the face only a mother could love, and she doesn't so ha ha ha'.... yes that's what he said.
So let's start with what I do remember. I grew up in a home to two working parents, which was the beginning of that time I guess. Many moms stayed at home during the mid-sixties but not my mom. She was proud of her degree & education and rightly so. I'll give her that, rightly so. She relished in having a job and was empowered by it as well.
Due to her work, we had a live-in maid who was there on Sunday at nine and left Friday about the same time. She washed, cleaned, ironed, cooked & cared for my family. We had a maid from birth to my senior year of high school. I knew no different. I clearly remember our first maid, Mary clearly. She was kind and my only ally. We only had two TVs in my home....one in by parent's room and the other out in the living room. Needless to say my parents watched one and my brothers the other. I spend most nights in Mary's bedroom with her and watch television on a tiny 10inch black/white TV. I watched many entertaining shows and learned a great deal of Spanish along the way. Between Cepillin, El Chavo del Ocho, and Topo Gigio, I was quite versed in Spanish television but that was ok because it was an enjoyable time. Mary was kind to me and loved me & even as a child, I knew I should've been getting that type of love from my mother & wasn't. She left us when I was 9 and I cried & cried. She left to get married and told me she would always remember me as her 'little girl'. It broke my heart for her to go but I knew she wanted to have her own family. I just wished she could've taken me with her. We went through several different maids for about four years, and then got Francesca. She was a sweet girl but at the time I thought she was older. It was my junior year in high school when it dawned on me to ask her age and when I found out she was just two years older than me, it broke my heart. That was the beginning of me being more aware of those around me and understanding the world 'was not about me'.
I tired to run away about age 8 or 9. Looking back & a mother myself now, the idea of a child trying to run away at that young age, would be a big red flag. I remember distinctly taking my baby doll carriage, and filling it with my piggy bank, a blanket, my favorite doll, some canned soup & oreos. How crazy was that? As I walked out my brothers laughed at me wished me well & goodbye. As I walked & cried the sidewalk of our neighborhood, my thoughts were not of my care, my well being or where I was going. It didn't matter.... I was out! Sadly as I turned the corner, my mother's car came into view. She slowed down, rolled down the window and asked where I was going. I told her "I'm running away!". She said, "That's fine but try to be home for dinner" and drove away. I stood there stunned for a bit and wondered what to do. It dawned on me that I had no where to go or no one to go to. I HAD to go back home. I knew it but I didn't HAVE to like it. I promised myself that as soon as I could leave, I would & never turn back. It was shortly after that when my oldest brother came into my bedroom when I was crying....doesn't matter now why I was crying but I remember more importantly his advice that day. I hear those words still each day: "You don't have to love her, just do as she says. Don't look at her as 'mom' but only as the woman who gave birth to you...That's what I do."
Sunday, June 9, 2013
The beginning
Hello World
I've always imagined writing a book but life is too busy & crazy so this is my way. I have a degree in Literature so I know story telling is way of coping with many things for many people. One of my dearest, dearest friends has said for years that I should write 'my story' down: 1. to help myself & cope, 2. no one can make up the things I've gone through, & 3. maybe I can help someone else.
So here it goes. I remember many things about my childhood, some good, most not but the most important fact I have learned about my life & my beginning is that I was an unwanted child. That is so hard to type & harder to read, but in my heart I believe it to be true and now as a mother myself, the more I know it is true.
An Unwanted Child can mean many different things & can be dealt with in many different ways as well. Let's start with first A Wanted Child: long awaited, dreamt of, hoped for, anticipated with great joy, named & nursed from day one: these are all terms that can be used for a wanted child. So now back to the unwanted child. I believe there are 3 kinds. The first kind is the aborted - quickly averted & abandoned. The second kind is given the gift of adoption - that way although unwanted, the child is given the hope of being wanted by others. An adopted child may at times feel 'unwanted' by their birth parents - but they can have some redemption in knowing that the parents who raised them wanted them from the moment they were held. The last kind is the truly unwanted - unwanted & unloved from the moment of conception & birth, seen always as 'a pebble in a shoe' of life. When I heard that term in the movie "Ever After", I was blown away that that one phrase was a summation of my life. I knew it, I felt it, and I finally understood that I was the pebble in my mother's shoe and always had been.
Do I wish I had been aborted or adopted? Aborted - no, Adopted - don't know but probably no to that too.
That is all for today.
I've always imagined writing a book but life is too busy & crazy so this is my way. I have a degree in Literature so I know story telling is way of coping with many things for many people. One of my dearest, dearest friends has said for years that I should write 'my story' down: 1. to help myself & cope, 2. no one can make up the things I've gone through, & 3. maybe I can help someone else.
So here it goes. I remember many things about my childhood, some good, most not but the most important fact I have learned about my life & my beginning is that I was an unwanted child. That is so hard to type & harder to read, but in my heart I believe it to be true and now as a mother myself, the more I know it is true.
An Unwanted Child can mean many different things & can be dealt with in many different ways as well. Let's start with first A Wanted Child: long awaited, dreamt of, hoped for, anticipated with great joy, named & nursed from day one: these are all terms that can be used for a wanted child. So now back to the unwanted child. I believe there are 3 kinds. The first kind is the aborted - quickly averted & abandoned. The second kind is given the gift of adoption - that way although unwanted, the child is given the hope of being wanted by others. An adopted child may at times feel 'unwanted' by their birth parents - but they can have some redemption in knowing that the parents who raised them wanted them from the moment they were held. The last kind is the truly unwanted - unwanted & unloved from the moment of conception & birth, seen always as 'a pebble in a shoe' of life. When I heard that term in the movie "Ever After", I was blown away that that one phrase was a summation of my life. I knew it, I felt it, and I finally understood that I was the pebble in my mother's shoe and always had been.
Do I wish I had been aborted or adopted? Aborted - no, Adopted - don't know but probably no to that too.
That is all for today.
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