I Defined Myself

Warning: This post comes from the mind of someone that should be sound asleep. Therefore, any insanity (real or imagined) perceived during the reading of this post should be ignored completely. Also, all bets are off when it comes to spelling, language use, grammar, and whatever else I fuck up.

Also-someone asked if I let Chicken read my blog, especially when I am talking about my dead boyfriend. Or something like that? Yes and No. It is not accessible from his computer, so if I want to share a post with him I do. I do not share things like dead boyfriends with him at this point, because he is 11. I share things from my life when I feel they are relevant in his world. He thinks Kurt Cobain died from a drug overdose. I'll not correct him, and he'll eventually learn otherwise. To sum it up, I protect my child from the very things that my mother FAILED to protect me from over and over again.

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For many, many years I defined myself by the tragedies that I had endured. It was a checklist that I went over in my head, sometimes noting that I had not suffered a house fire. But abuse at the hands of my mother? Check. Abuse at the hands of her boyfriends? Check. Run-in with random douchebag child molester? Check. Rape(s)? Check. Alcoholics in the house? Check. Drug addicts living in the house? Check. Divorced parents-the least of my worries? Check. Distant father for most of my life? Check. Emotionally devoid mother? Check. Emotionally battered by my peers? Check. Dead boyfriend? Check. Unintended pregnancy? Check. Almost everyone deserts me because pregnant chicks are not hot? Check. Bad marriages? Check. Bad divorces? Check. Out of control drug habit? Check. Reckless consumption of everything to drown out the pain? Check.

I could go on, but I'd likely just bore you all. The point is that I felt that I was these tragedies. They defined me. It was like I was at the bottom of a well that was built brick-by-brick with my sorrowful life. One could not get to me without first having to pass by all the pain and the damage it did to my psyche. Recently, while having dinner with my real life friend LD2, she mentioned that she did not know that I had given a child up for adoption until she read it on the blog. At first I was embarrassed, because I have known her for years. But then later I thought about it more deeply. And realized that I had grown.

Now, it is as if there are small buildings that carry my memories of the bad times. They are within reach, but unless I call upon them they are silent and invisible. They are rooted to the solid ground of my being, but they do not define me. They are a small part of who I am today, what makes me "Sam." I may be quirky and anti-social, foul-mouthed and verbose, but I am not what happened to me anymore. And that feels so good.

I believe the therapy that I have recently begun has awakened that knowledge within me. I believe that the act of sitting down once a week and thinking and talking only about me, and what is inside of me had lead me to continue to probe when I am not on the couch. This is the benefit of therapy for me. It makes me stop and look at myself. And I am proud of what I see.