You'll have to forgive me if I'm sentimental tonight, three beers will do that to a lightweight. But seriously, I have had thoughts bubbling at the top of my mind all day, really, all week since I came home from visiting with my sister in Texas.
Some of my loyal followers have known me since the seventh grade. Ok, like two of my followers have known me that long. And because I am a bit fearful of opening up and being judged probably most of my remaining followers are complete strangers- I haven't really shared my blog with people that know me in person.
So for the benefit of the strangers I will share an intimate secret with you, and this is pretty deep. This could be a dark post, so disclaimer- if you are only interested in reading about fertility please exit now.
I am not a victim.
I tell myself that all the time. I am, however, a child of an alcoholic. So the fact that I am a serious Type A is compounded by the fact that I have always been adamant that my child will not be raised in the same environment that I was. Now, again, I am not a victim. I had (have) a good life. But my life has been spotted by sadness, and that, beyond all other things, is the one thing that keeps me moving daily to make sure that my baby girl never NEVER experiences the same.
You may see this blog take a different direction. I enjoy reporting on the trials and tribulations of motherhood. But along with those experiences comes the line of reasoning. Why do I make the decisions I do? Why do I do what I do?
After spending time with my sister and observing her as a mother I find that old wounds have been opened. I see so much of my mother in my sister. My mother is the most amazing person I know. Not that she and I have always agreed, or gotten along. But I always wondered where she got her strength. There were times my mother wouldn't have a new pair of shoes for two years- but we had new ones every fall and Easter. There were times that I know she brought work home and worked after we went to bed into the middle of the night just to get her job done and bring home a paycheck. We barely made ends meet as my father was sometimes unemployed for long periods of time. There were times I gave up my babysitting money to buy milk and bread for the family.
But I am not a victim. True, the circumstances of my life have shaped me. But instead of living out a vicious cycle and reasoning it off as the child of an alcoholic I have chosen to make a difference. I chose to start working at fifteen years old. I chose to go to college after high school. I chose to work sixty hours a week just to make my own ends meet, and to pursue every single career move I could just to become the person I am today.
I was also deathly afraid of becoming an alcoholic. The odds are that one in four children of an alcoholic will become one. There were four of us. I lived in fear that one drink would turn me into an alcoholic and didn't drink until my sophomore year in college. (still not of legal drinking age, but well beyond the high school years where many kids experiment)
I so desperately wanted a "family" in the dictionary sense of the word. I could have been married at least four times before I met my husband, just because I was so anxious to find a stable male figure in my life.
But the truth is, again, I am not a victim. I love my father despite his illness, but I have come to terms with the fact that he may only live five more years, maybe two, maybe ten.
I love and respect my mother. I know that much of what I do as a mother is based upon the things I have seen her do. I want Hayley to learn how to be strong, but without the adversity and heartache that I learned from. I want her to experience a real family, not the disfunctional family life that is all I know. I want her to know, REALLY KNOW, her father.
Am I overprotective? Probably. But my heart hurts just as I sit here thinking of the things I endured during my childhood. I have tears just imagining what it would do to Hayley to go through that. I cannot protect her forever, but as her mother, and as my mother did before me, I can do my best to shield her from the worst of it. I can teach her how to make her own decisions, how to grow from each and every bad experience she has.
The first time she comes home crying because her friends have treated her badly I am going to cry with her, I just know it. But I hope, I pray, that I have the strength my mother had to help her through those tough times. To teach her that although sometimes life isn't fair she is the only one that can make a difference for herself. I hope that I can be as strong as my mother. I am thankful every single day that I do not live with the same challenges that my mother lived with, and then I also think to myself that she made her own choices and I make mine.
I grew up way too fast, and although I can't imagine life any other way I also sometimes do wonder if I would have been a different person had I been given a chance to be a baby, be a kid just a little longer. I never want to doubt that Hayley had that chance.
