Vulnerable

Tonight I feel vulnerable.  I sit in the darkness and let the memories unfold layer by layer.  They whisper of days gone by.  Most of the memories have a scent or sound associated with them…playing under the dark firs that lined the college football field.  Dad took my brother and me to practices when he was coaching to get us out of mom’s hair.  I hear the sound of young men challenging others…the grunts of pain…the shouts of victory when something works right.  I don’t understand the game at all.  I’m only seven or eight.  But I know the sound of doing something right.  I also smell the decaying leaves and the dirt under the trees in the shadows.  The shadows are not a good place to be.  Dad can’t see us there so he doesn’t know.  The woods are a scary place too.  Things happen to little girls in the woods that shouldn’t happen to little girls.  Little boys can be mean.  This is a lesson learned early in life.

I have to be a good girl.  It’s hard to be a good girl.  When anything happens that’s not good, there’s no one to tell because I have to be the good girl.  I have to be the big girl.  I have to do the right thing.  The only time I feel happy is when I’m singing…or reading.  There’s music in my soul that wants out.  I escape into the music…into the books that take me to safe places where good things happen.  In the books you can make a mistake and still be good.  In the books life doesn’t seem so hard.  In the music there’s happiness and my heart smiles. 

I remember my transistor radio.  It was mine.  It was a birthday present.  But I didn’t share it so they took it away almost immediately.  But it was mine.  I think I learned early that nothing was really mine and that I may as well just give it away because someone was going to take it or I was going to get in trouble for not sharing it and either way what was mine was never really mine.  Nothing.  Maybe that’s why I never fit in…because nothing was mine.

Even when I did do something right, or something good, I still didn’t get any praise.  I remember when I wanted to be a cheerleader and I tried out and made the cheerleading squad in the 5^th grade and would cheer for my brother’s football team.  I couldn’t be a cheerleader because there wasn’t any money for me to get a uniform.  I look back now and remember that my brother did get to play football.  I wonder where the money came from for his uniform.

I was good in debate…very good at times.  But debate was bad for me…it made me argumentative with my parents.  Actually…I think I was already argumentative and that’s what made me good at debate.  It doesn’t really matter.  I was never encouraged to succeed.   I wonder sometimes what would have happened to me if I’d been encouraged to pursue my dreams.  Was there a lawyer somewhere inside my heart…someone who would stand up and speak for those who fall through the cracks?  Was there a politician there who could have made a difference in society?  Was there a teacher who was ready to train others how to stand up and present themselves professionally?  We’ll never know…because there was no one there to encourage me.  My mother was busy encouraging all her students…my father busy encouraging all his church members.  So I kept struggling and struggling and hoping I wouldn’t completely mess up my life on my own.

Then I stumbled into early adulthood.  What a mess!  I wanted to fit in, but had no social skills to help with that.  No preparation for adulthood.  My own parents held me back and kept me from fitting in (no makeup…different clothes…different behaviors) … and then didn’t understand why I wasn’t fitting in and finding my own way.

It sounds like I’m blaming my parents for all of this.  But if I look at all of this, the truth of it is…I’m amazed at me.  Somehow, through the thick and thin (mostly thin) of life, I held it together enough to move on…to find love…to give birth…to raise children…to leave it all behind and move towards something instead of away from things.

I found the strength to carry on when the marriage fell apart…I found the strength to stand up to my son’s betrayal of faith in God and the horrible guilt I felt for failing him and for failing God.  I found love again…and then incredible pain through the horror of another abusive man in my life (not my husband).  I found the strength to step up to the plate and finish college and get a Master’s Degree.  I found the courage to show the world the right way to handle an unplanned pregnancy and fall from man’s expectations (not a fall from grace…I recently heard the phrase “a fall into grace” and realized that’s what really happened to my beautiful daughter).   I found the fight in me to conquer cancer.  I found the gift of being a grandmother.  I found the soul in me to sit with my mother…to hold her hand…to cradle her in my arms in her bed when she was afraid.  I buried her less than one year from burying dad. 

And it was the burial that caused the memories to slip back into place.  All that had been hidden to protect them?  Or was I really protecting me?  Why did I feel the need to protect when in truth there was no protection when I needed it?  And my hiding it all these years seemed to make the story suspect now.  Should I have been so surprised that people didn’t accept it?  Should I have been surprised that once again I felt unprotected, rejected…and no longer able to fit in?

When I visit all the pain in my past I want to scream.  I want to mourn for the rest of my life for the little girl who never got to be.  For the teen who never fit in.  For the young adult that struggled so to become.  For the adult who has been judged by people who haven’t got a clue where my heart is and why I do what I do. 

I want to hurt men…men who have abused me since childhood…men who have neglected my needs…men who have tried to keep me a second-class citizen because I’m female…men who have used me.

So instead of very often visiting the pain, I will do what I’ve always done to help me survive.  I’ll look to the God Who has loved me unconditionally (thank goodness…there’s certainly not been much to love).  I’ll place my focus on Him and His will for my life.  I will not let men tell me what I can and cannot do for God…I will let God tell me.  I will love the Lord with ALL my heart, soul, mind and strength.  And when the whispers come in the dark…when the tears lie just behind my eyelids and the lump rises in my throat and I have to swallow the pain…I will curl up in my Father’s hands.  Hands that will not allow anything to snatch me away.  And I’ll let Him hold me and hold my pain and bottle up all my tears.  And I’ll thank Him for taking the punishment for all my failures…and leaving me with a true Love that no one else may ever understand.