Who teaches you to be a daughter or son? Who teaches you to be a mother or father, sister or brother? No one teaches you how to be any of these things. You either learn by being one or by watching one, but what if you never were any of them or you never saw any of them. At least not a good example anyways. Then how do you learn? How do you just "be"?
It seems like a very silly thing to ask, but for me it is a question that I am still searching for the answer. I was the biological child of my parents, but I was no one's daughter. I had a biological mother and father, but no mom or dad. My "father" was/is an alcoholic and drug addict. He was abusive to both my mother and myself. I learned very early on that the slightest thing could set either of them off. I learned what to say, how to say it, and when to say nothing at all. I learned how to read people. I learned that by saying or doing what my "parents" wanted then more often than not I didn't get yelled at or hit.
Without realizing it, I became programmed. It became second nature to me. Instantly reading someone and saying exactly what they wanted to hear. Even if they didn't know themselves that is what they wanted to hear, but I could tell what the best reply would be. What would bring praise and not anger. I became so good at this that I didn't even know I was doing it. I was in survival mode. I have lived the majority of my life in this survival mode.
Even today, when there is really no reason to, I still do this. My husband can see though it. He can read me so well and he knows when I am just saying what I think he wants to hear. He gets so angry and frustrated with me because he doesn't care if I don't like something. He doesn't mind if I ask him to bring me something, but he hates when I reply with a "lie". To him by doing this I am lying and being fake. He just wants me to be me, but how can I be something that I don't even know what it is?
It is not something I do intentionally with malice in order to gain something from others. Majority of the time I am doing the total opposite of what I truly want or like but it is something that will bring joy or betterment to the other person. That is why my husband gets so frustrated with me. He isn't like the people I was with before him. He can't understand why I can't just tell him the "truth", but how can you tell someone the "truth" when you don't even know what the truth is? I have changed and grown so much since I married him. He has given me the strength and stability that my life was so lacking before. He has given me the chance to thrive. A chance I thought I would never have. I so wish that I could just "forget" my past and just "BE", but I can't.
My past has forever altered me and I have to make due the best I can with the person I am today. I have to work at making this person that I have become into the best that it can be. I don't know what person I would have been if I had received help the first time I was hospitalized. If just one person had realized that I wasn't better, that I was just saying what I thought they wanted to hear. Even if the first time no one noticed, then maybe the second or third time. If just one person had realized I wasn't taking my meds. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't "better". My life would be so different today and the lives of all of those around me would be so different today, but no one noticed.
I have to accept that I cannot change the past. It is what it is, and I have to live with it. I have to move forward from where I am now. I am so blessed to have a loving caring husband. It is so much more than I ever thought I would have. I can't dwell on what if's or should'va could'va would'va's. I have to move forward from this point. From this moment. I have to let go of that little girl who never had a chance to grow up. Who never got the chance to become the person she was suppose to be. I have been grieving for her for a very long time, but now it's time that I got on with my life because that is what she would have wanted me to do.
I have to live not only for me but for her. So for the next two minutes I will mourn her. I will honor her memory, and then I will bury her. This post will stand as her grave, and whenever I want to remember her, I can visit this and read these words. This will be her memorial. I will carry her memory with me forever because she is me, and by living, she will also live.
