What defines me?




Last night I went searching for the perfect picture to place on my blog. I wanted it to be from my younger years as that is what the blog was pertaining to at the time. As I went on my quest pulling out the photo albums I had just been given no more than a couple years prior it was almost instantly painful. Most of the pictures I have aren't with my parents. Most of my memories aren't either. There were pictures of me with my Aunt and Uncle who I believe I lived with for some time as a child. I remember being there often but the memory is vague to if I lived there or was just always there. As a single mom I know my mother was often at work and had not had time for me. I remember that I spent far less time with my aunt and uncle after they had finally been able to conceive on their own.  Conception was a struggle for them and I think I was there to fill the void until they finally succeeded. The pictures fade as do the memories after my cousin was born. I even remember holding antomocity to her because she was taking my place. I remember visits being far different for me after. I can't imagine the jealousy struggles I must have felt being so young. I have heard stories of how they wish they had kept me. How my life would have been different if they had. When I was handed the photo albums it was clear I was a bigger part of their life then I myself remember being. I remember living with my paternal grandma often. She had her own struggles with trying to put me into school. She was unable to do so since she had no legal rights to me. I had made the mistake of telling the office I had moved with her. It got me kicked out of school as I no longer resided in the district. It ultimately made me unable to stay with her. I had been there the entire summer before hand. I remember the tears that flowed when my grandma had to tell me she herself had to send me back too. Without being able to enroll me into a school she feared legal ramifications. I lived with another aunt as a teenager for a summer. The summer after I had been with my biological father. Man was a an unruly teen then. I burnt that bridge speaking of the christianity she held near to her heart in a manner unbecoming of my character. I am not sure what made me so unhappy their that I burnt the bridge. Maybe I just couldn't find my place. I remember I went to camp that summer thinking that I would return to be handed to the juvenile detention center as I was unwanted by basically everyone by then. I can't count how many times I found myself in the bed of a man simply because I felt there was nowhere else to go. I lived on a front porch at 16 years old with a boy named aaron pailing. He wasn't even the boy I was dating just my friends lover at the time. We crammed the three of us onto a twin sized mattress on an unheated porch in the middle of the winter. Never at any time did I feel I had an option to go home to my parent's. I never thought I was wanted by anyone anywhere. I was unlovable. After marrying my first husband we came to live in a duplex in stevensville. The other half of my home resided a women who had claimed to have lived with me as a toddler. She said her and my mother had been close friends back in those days. She often shared horrific stories of the big tears I would have in my baby blues. I tried hard to avoid those stories as I had no memory of her or her daughter or the days she tried to recollect with me. As a mother of 8 children I can't imagine letting my children feel as though coming home isn't an option. I can't imagine letting them feel like they were not wanted. My children can't burn a bridge with me and there is not a single thing that would make them as kids unable to come home. As their behavior is simply a reflection of my parenting is it not? My childhood pictures of me with my parents are scarce. I wish that I had more memories to understand why I was left to feel so passed around and unwanted. I wish I could figure out the flaws that made time with me so undesirable. At some point everyone passed me on.......