TED Talk

I don't know about you, but i thought that "getting healthy" emotionally was like vanquishing this inner demon and having this huge amount of success, but in reality it's just giving broken pieces of yourself soft hugs while sitting in the junk drawer of your own existence.

Here we go with another blog post where I am a real human.

The apartment is shaping up to be something I think I could live in forever.  Slowly learning the city and the little side streets and the tricks to avoiding the shitty traffic.  Door Dash is a wonderful invention.  Both kids are still home.  Things would most likely go much smoother and I would be done unpacking in under a century if, big if, my dear daughter would stop moving everything that I unpacked because she didn't like how I set it up.  

I feel like both children deserve their own posts sometime soon.  I have been working on that carefully. It's a lot.

This past Sunday, in an effort to hunker down and get something accomplished that was going to make my life a little more functional, I made myself focus on my bedroom.  I'm pretty excited.  I didn't get everything that needs to be taken care of done, but "don't let perfect get in the way of better" has been the motto of my anxiety.  Just before I moved, we got hit with a rain storm and it caused my old basement to flood.  Unfortunately in my effort to downsize prior to moving, I sold some of my storage shelves and my son had put some stuff on the floor and that included a box of what appeared to be old letters and things my mom saved that she left after coming to get the remainder of her stuff that she stored there.  They got wet, but I just put them up on another high shelf.  I almost threw them out when I was cleaning, but something (Nana) told me to go through them to see if something was worth keeping.  I decided that I was going to take the time to go through those boxes.  I found a bunch of stuff that my siblings and I made.  Some things were ruined, but not as much as I was expecting.  I also found a bunch of letters between my parents when they were in school along with some things that my siblings and I created when we were little that she kept.  

Wait for it.......

I found a letter, written by my mother in January 1980, meaning she was 15 years old.

She was upset that she started her period, because she didn't know how else to show my dad that she loved him other than to give him a baby and it's all she wants.

Wait for it......

My mother.  Who had me a week after turning 17.

The bitch who made my life hell until I cut ties.  

Who every time she got mad at me as a kid told me, that I, a child, was a mistake.  The one that I would bend over backwards to please no matter what it did to me because I was convinced that it was me who was the crazy one.

The person that I was sad about not having to talk to when I need a mom.  Because that's truly the thing that I have needed more than anything, or at least it feels that way because I didn't have her and yet, somehow managed to survive without.

Let that sink in.  I sure have.  And it was all I will ever need again to remember that cutting ties with someone, regardless of why and who they are, if they are not bringing you peace, then peace the fuck out.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.