(Originally published 02/18/08)
I've been promising y'all the How I Got to Be Me series and here is where I started. The real mindbenders come down the road.
I was a strange, mischievous, bright little girl who asked too many questions, talked too much, got into everything and liked to listen to the grown-ups talk when I didn't have my nose buried in a book or magazine. Neither of my parents really understood me. My mother wanted perfect children: straight A report cards and perfect behavior were her goal. The grades came easily mostly (but I still hate and have a hard time with math to this day); the behavior did not. On the occasions when my grades fell a bit you can bet I was going to be chastised and probably spanked when dad saw my report card. He was the only parent I ever heard of who could look at a straight A report card and say that it could be better despite that in the schools I attended was no such thing as an A plus.
I've always had a tendency to cry easily. Other people scream and shout -- I cry and it bugs the hell out of men in my life. They seem to think I enjoy it -- I don't. I bruise easily both physically and emotionally and have had my share of both. As I've grown older, I tend to just shut down or hide when I'm hurting. I suspect that has cost me more than a couple relationships including the latest one. I still cry a lot at times. I'm guessing that I've fought depression since childhood.
I've always felt like a square peg in a round hole. I've never been shy -- despite with being what my kids would have called nerdy. On the whole, I'm a friendly, intelligent person with good manners and I like people mostly even if I don't understand them and don't really fit in too well.
My daughter told me a few years ago, "Mom, you think everyone is like you -- they aren't! You like everybody and you trust everybody. Mom, you can't do that!" It turns out that she is right and now she is one of the ones I can't trust anymore and that is probably due to her father's input. And no, I don't like everybody but I do cut people a lot of slack because we all bring our history to the table as it's part and parcel of who we are. I wish others would at least extend the same courtesy to me.
My parents' marriage didn't help. Between my hell raising, hard-drinking dad's hair-trigger temper and my mother's straight-laced Old Country upbringing, they were an ill-suited couple but somehow I do think they loved each other. Neither ever forgave the other for their bitter divorce when I was in high school. It's one of many ways I know I'm different from both. I can put the past behind me and I am a forgiving sort mostly and I can't waste energy hating anyone or staying angry for eons. My mother who remarried and stayed that way over 30 years is still consumed by past injustices and I'm still not perfect enough in her eyes. I find that not being perfect enough is why I don't do well in relationships.
Both my parents were abusive albeit differently. My mother demanded perfect behavior and specialized in guilt and hyper-criticism. My dad needed anger management training badly and I have borne the scars -- emotionally and physically -- from both. Fortunately, I've let go of most of that baggage but there are moments when I'm still the frightened little girl who never seemed to measure up to her parents' yardstick. They did their best within the parameters of their experience and backgrounds. As a result of my upbringing I am a decent, well-educated, well-mannered and responsible person and I thank them for that.
I learned as a mother myself that no one teaches you to be a parent -- all you have to go on is how your parents raised you and, if you're a thinking person at all, you keep the good stuff and work very hard to keep the bad stuff at bay. I'd like to think I did that but now I wonder despite that the people who watched me raise my kids tell me I did a great job – probably too great. I take comfort in that they are decent, responsible, independent adults despite their distancing themselves from me in recent years -- I have many friends who can't say that about theirs children.
Going away to college was a big change. I won a full academic scholarship to Kent State. I was also accepted and awarded scholarships at a couple small, excellent schools but they were further away and when my mother let me go to Kent, neither of us was aware that she was sending me to one of the better party schools around. My best advice to anyone who has raised their child in a close-knit, protected environment is not to send them to such a school -- a smaller school is better for such a child. Yes, they do cost more but their aid packages pretty much offset the difference as I learned with the Dynamic Duo when it was time for them to leave the nest.
I had a great time at KSU but after two years, I realized that I wasn't accomplishing my goals and having entirely too much fun. My grades were less than stellar as well. Oh, hell! I realized that I really didn't have a goal (everyone thought I should be a teacher -- a nice profession for a girl) so I came home, got a secretarial job (also a nice job for a girl) and went to school part-time.
A year later I got engaged and moved away to be close to the man of the moment. I was fairly happy in my life on the East coast but not with my fiancé. I got to travel a bit in my work and fell in love with San Francisco. When I broke my engagement, instead of heading out there, I ran home to my unsympathetic mama. I got a job again and moved out of her house and went back to my hell-raising ways (and had life-changing experience #1) the whole time trying to figure out what I wanted to be when (or if) I grew up. I fell in love a couple times, did some traveling, and eventually met my husband.
When out of the blue, he asked me to marry him, it was a sort of a Holly Golightly (Breakfast at Tiffany's) moment: "Of course I'll marry you. I've never been married before." I didn't use that line from the movie but I may as well have. So I settled down into super suburban wife mode with bridge, women's club, volunteering, etc. My son arrived about two years after our wedding with my daughter born two years later and I was mostly pretty content and enjoyed my role as a stay-at-home mom.
Okay! That's it for today -- mostly. Next week I'll get to the first of the truly pivotal episodes in my life that got me where I am today.
Happy Blogging!!!!!!
Kay
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