By Now....

Author's notes:

By now you may have made the connection, maybe not. It’s hard to follow my family tree sometimes. It’s a lifetime commitment and it’s debilitating. I mentioned my mother’s oldest daughter in “Time.” I also mention her in “The First Puzzle Piece.” She’s had it hard. All my aunts and uncles have. When the youngest sister passed, at the funeral, the oldest sister declared that she would be next, as she stood next to the tree she is now buried under- she was the next to die. My father was the first boy to die and the third of the six; stay with me.

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My father was recent, and most memorable, of course. His life time and choices ate away at him until he couldn’t hang on anymore and can I blame him? I imagine the terror they must have endured, all of them. Not that I have endured anything remotely close to it... that I can remember. I was protected, I was blessed. As a child I never understood my father. I was so angry. But now as a mother, it brings me to tears to think of the terror my mother, grandmother, their mother, felt having to watch this and feel so helpless- so alone. And any mother or father will tell you: you look at your kids and feel their fear and pain- comes with these mixed crazy innate feelings that overcome and overwhelm you. Your senses heighten and your heart races. What happens when you have to witness the terror in your child’s eyes and sit there helpless? I can’t even imagine. How scared all of them were- constantly in a state of alert.

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I could say if it were me I would have done it differently. But I’m not her. She did the best she could, the best she knew how. With that same logic I think of my aunts and uncles, and my father. What made them so similar? What made them so different? What made my father the way he was with me, or my biological mother? I contemplate the age old debate of nature vs. nurture and I search for the answers for the sake of my own children. Writing our story out, some behaviors seem obvious. Nurture- their environment led to addiction, abuse, risky behavior and lack of self-care. But then others seem like an anomaly- so maybe it’s nature, we each have inherited the genetics capable of all these tendencies, some more than others. Maybe a mix of both? What about each of them led to where they ended or are now?

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I dig and write to reveal their stories, my history, like I need it for my own sanity. Writing it all out feels like I find another piece of myself, this is where I have come from. Not to mold me but as testimony to the mercy and grace that exists outside of my own reality. To show that I have been brought this far. The truth that is laid out with each revelation makes me confident in my strengths and aware of my weaknesses. Somehow, I have been brought from a dark beginning to my mother’s arms; the mother who in the pits of her despair, having lost her youngest daughter, her fighter, seemed to have just enough love and strength to spare for a 3 year old. Somehow my life has been a series of ordered events, destined if you will. Events that led me to be sitting here- pouring out each moment, each tragedy, each destined encounter on an endless web.

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However my writing is very spontaneous, I can’t follow an order. I don’t want to. It comes out as I think and with fingers to keyboard each word and sentence is formed, much like the way I live my life just a perpetual array of moments hard to make sense of. And in there lays the irony. It just feels like a whole lotta fast paced living and sometimes aimless trotting, but I refuse to believe that my life wasn’t destined. That the moments I could’ve just been given up to the wrong hands, killed, molested, sold, and wasn’t- was just by chance.... Because then what really made me so lucky? I wasn’t lucky, I was blessed. And with that comes a whole set of other thoughts and self-reflection with humility.

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Survivors’ guilt creeps in, for reasons you will fully understand as I continue to post my stories. Why was I chosen and cared for and not my brother? Why did he end up adopted and then abused like so many others? Why was he so broken and incapacitated for the rest of his life? Why him and not me? As I write I’ll take breaks like this one and pour out an author’s note. Hopefully, as I go deeper, I can connect the dots between stories and give insight to my personal views and feelings of these stories because, well, this is my journey- no one said it would be easy.

Welcome!