Growing up, my parents fought and argued a lot. This fighting extended to families on both sides. I rarely saw any expression of love amongst the grownups. The funny thing is though, I remember not feeling anything. I wasn’t necessarily upset; I was just so good at shutting off that part of my life. However, at times it would get extreme. This one time, my mother decided that she can't take life with my Dad anymore and she simply wanted to die. She said that she would do this by starving herself as any other means would be sinful. I remember begging her to eat after watching her starve for a day or two. I didn't get why in the world she would do something like that back then. I understand now though. She didn't want to die, she loved us too much. She loved me even more. She really needed her husband to care. She was getting sick and frail. The new business they had opened was consuming her health and she was turning into skin and bone working day and night. Her already fragile health was deteriorating right in front of our eyes. My Dad was a workaholic, very well respected medical professional in the community, but did not have it in him to understand my mother's pain. Most nights he'd stay out at night drinking and smoking and numerous times my mom has had to go out looking for him in the bars/streets. She's my hero for pulling through all of that and for having successfully ingrained the importance of family in my Dad's head. She is so strong. I wonder sometimes if I should have spoken up and told her to leave him, but times were different back then and I was in denial about any of what was happening. I started thinking about what happened during my childhood a lot more recently. I needed to dig deeper to explain to myself why I was not like my friends. I was never insecure about anything growing up. I looked good enough for me, I did great in school and I had no trouble making friends. I wasn't caring at all though, especially to people who were not immediately related to me or very close to me. Showing care felt like undressing a burn where the gauze would stay stuck to the wound while you try to remove it. It was very painful, It felt physically impossible to do, I couldn't even fake it. It's not like that anymore though. After several toxic relationships where the men were never really with me or cared really all that much about me, which made me crazy mad of course and led to fights which felt like home, I finally figured it out. Once I made the connection, I was reborn. I cared, in fact I cared enormously. I cared about everyone. It didn't matter whether I knew them or not. I cared about them and I cared about their story. It's a much better world to live in when we care about eachother:)
This process led to so many good things in my life. One of which was finding the man of my dreams. I can't imagine life without him. I have a great relationship with my family and friends I've gotten to know during my journey. I'm not all better, but knowing the root of my problems has helped me to actively fight it and do better. I do not have the greatest health condition. I've inherited my mother's systemic disease and got another life long condition as well that gives me pain all the time. I rarely focus on it though, which is why I don't tell people about it. I focus on how to manage it so as to improve my life.
Write to me! I hope this glimpse of my journey was a bit interesting to some of you.
Dinah
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