Before we'd moved from Grandma's house I'd started high school. I was so painfully shy and introverted then… (Yes, hard to believe huh... *wink*) I had a few friends who quite honestly if it weren't for them I don't know how I would have made it through that time in my life. It's probably why those who I choose to call my friends are so valuable to me to this day. But still I had no self worth so I'd often ask them why they were my friends because I saw no value in myself. How much could you have if your parent is always telling you how worthless you are or how I was a waste of time and effort. It was during this time that I had a wonderful teacher who found that I had a knack for writing and encouraged me to do so. He also made me smile and took great pleasure in making me blush so I'd turn that lovely magenta shade a few may have seen on occasion. (Yes, I still blush rather easily – comes from being a born redhead I think.) It was also during this time that I met Rodney. He was two years ahead of me and flirted with me outrageously. Something that took me by great surprise because I just didn't get that kind of attention from guys ever! Looking back I can also see that I was so incredibly vulnerable; that I was starved for any positive attention. We became very good friends and we were strictly that for the first five years that we knew each other. Ah but he was a huge bone of contention between me and my mother… She'd been sadly influenced by her father, my grandfather, who had been an official card carrying member of the KKK. But even through my own lack of self worth I started to recognize that my mother wasn't the ultimate authority on all things right and wrong despite her attitude to the contrary. I think we all start our own evolution when we begin to question those who've had authority in our life. There are also times when we realize that those same people are somehow stunted in their development and we recognize when we have surpassed all they are able to be. There's a sense of freedom in that knowledge, that somehow we've cut at least one of the major invisible threads that tethers us to the burden of their limitations...
We moved to the small isolated town of ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />New Carlisle. Did you know that Carlisle means city within walls? Well it sure felt like that to me to be sure! I felt imprisoned there. Not only because it was so small but because now I didn't have that circle of supportive friends. As I said, I was expected and did give up my teen age years to raise my brother and sister while mom worked. She was a master manipulator and made me feel guilty for wanting more than what I had in my "duty to the family." (Another ideal that was engrained into me that I can't manage to extricate myself from to this day) My escape was writing and I filled volumes with my journals. Writing was my reasoning tool, my exorcist, my sanity and my best friend. Through it I tore myself to pieces and restructured myself, finding not only value but real worth and I'll also admit to a bit of arrogance in my own ability for tolerance. For all that I was discovering about myself I still had a long way to go… Even now, decades later, I find that sometimes when I'm feeling out of control and vulnerable I feel like that same lost girl, doubting myself all over again. But in understanding myself I became even more intuitive to others. Some said that I had an uncanny ability to know what was going on in others minds, which was why they came to me when they wanted advice or were trying to understand a situation and to make sense of the actions of others.
With time I made friends, both male and female, (I've always had friends of both sexes, believe they can be such and actually prefer male friends to female, I just seem to be able to relate to them more easily) But I was always the one they came to with their troubles. I wanted my friends to be happy so I did my best to be there for them. I look back now though and see how one sided some of those tended to be but I really don't mind. I only have my self to answer for in life ultimately so as long as I am being the person I feel I need to be then that's all I can do but it did teach me another lesson on people, not everyone defines things the same as you might. What I considered was my role as a friend may not be the same as what someone else sees it as being. That was a concept that took some adjusting to as well and I think we all struggle with it even more as we get older and less tolerant of differences. But anyway… the guys only saw me as a friend, (I didn't mature in my attitude or my physical appearance until more recent years. Oh my breasts were always there, wore a size 36C in as early as fifth grade, but it was a bit annoying to me then that guys seemed to be so attracted to only that aspect of me so I dressed to cover that up and was very plain in my appearance) This left me always on the outside of the social interactions of teen life. Again, that might not be a very bad thing since it meant that I wasn't out doing the things my other friends were doing and finding themselves in trouble for because they weren't making the best choices for their life at that time. Please don't think though that I'm under any delusion that I was immune to making bad choices. I had my share although a vast majority of them were squeezed into my 'late rebellion.' More on that later… Anyway, not being overly social gave me more of a chance to watch and study the interactions of my friends and others. So with my own mistakes and paying close attention to others I learned that ultimately the best way to learn a lesson in what choices not to make is to see those who have chosen wrong and are living with the consequences. Ah, and yes there was the RP… I can look on it now and see that it probably kept me from doing some of the more foolish things that my friends did and most likely kept me safer because I wasn't able to be out running around like they could. It also isolated me even more. Well, there was that and my mom keeping me under a leash to my 'obligations.' But the RP also made me again choose friends that I could literally put my life in their hands and trust to look out for me. My visual fields were pretty normal then but I've always been night-blind so I never drove at night, though my night vision then wasn't nearly as bad as now, but I did have to have friends who didn't mind looking out for me, guiding me around if I needed it.
Now onto that late rebellion… I was about 19 when it happened and Lord knows how I managed to make it through in one piece! It began when mom finally got her way and Rodney caved to the pressure… We had started seeing each other more seriously, by then I was 18 but she was still determined to protect me from the ills of facing the wrath of society by being entangled with a black man. (Right, like that was the only reason I ever heard…) Rodney called for me one night and mom took the call, explaining to him that if he didn't stop seeing me she would disown me and put me out on the street. He knew that she'd been threatening to put me out for one reason or another most of my life as a means of controlling me so I knew that it had just been easier for him to cut all ties than keep dealing with her drama. Gee, that made me feel great knowing I'd not been worth fighting for with him. But it was not bloody likely she was ever going to follow through since I was keeping her home intact but Rodney wasn't as steadfast in our relationship as I was so he bailed. Oh I remember that night, the night my mother dug the knife so deep I thought I'd never stop bleeding from the pain of it. Rebellion exploded in me as I told her how much I hated her and walked out the door to die inside. The sad part is that I was tied to my family, I couldn't leave. My absolute knowledge of what my mother truly was made me stay for the sake of my brother and sister. I stayed because as I saw it I was all they had even if I didn't believe that was much, it was still more than mom could be for them. I still looked out for my brother and sister; we had realized that we only had each other to rely on so we'd grown together for the most part. Anyway, I started running around more with friends, sneaking out to run around in fast cars, spending as much time as I could away from home, hiking around state parks where I couldn't see an inch in front of my face at night trusting friends not to get me killed, partying and generally making up for lost time. As I said, I was very lucky. A particular incident comes to mind… Including one night where I'd gone out with a couple of my guy 'friends' who picked up more guy friends and bought a bunch of alcohol... Beer and early male testosterone brain lock doesn't improve any situation. After a bit they thought I was to be their treat for the night. That idea was squashed right quick when I forcefully informed them that the first idiot willing to risk his life was going to get a beer bottle smashed upside his head and the rest I would beat the hell out of if they tried to touch me. Thankfully this all occurred while we were all still sitting in the car so none of them had any leverage and I was in the middle of the front seat so I had a definite advantage. They were to take me home and never darken my step again. There is a definite advantage to not being a small woman. They knew I was serious so they took me home and the next time I saw any of them they apologized. Just the same I put distance between myself and them. Make no mistake, it scared the hell out of me and I never made the mistake of allowing myself to get into a similar situation again.
Oh and driving… One of my all time favorite freedoms… It ranked right up there with water and sun for me. And baby was I ever a lead foot! One of my best claims to fame was that Scott had gone to a vocational high school where he'd taken auto mechanics. (He had a natural talent with anything mechanical and fast) So most of his friends were big motor heads. He would brag that his sister, me, could outdrive any of them anytime and I could too! I loved driving and I loved driving fast! (I did slow down a bit when I flipped and rolled one car into a 6 foot ditch off the side of a country road and managed to walk away with nothing more than some very nasty bruises and minor stitches. Those kinds of things happen pretty easily when you're driving a Vega wagon with may pops and you hit fresh tar and gravel on a country road doing almost 70mph and the front right tire blows! Nose in first, flipped it back over front and then rolled it sideways three times. No seat belt and during one roll my head went out the side passenger window into the only damned mud puddle in the ditch but bounced back in before the roof of the car rolled down to crush my head… Yes, life wasn't ready to let me go just yet…
) The partying was limited. I never acquired a taste for beer or the hard stuff, though I did get quit wasted a couple times on it, made me horribly sick but five cent whiskey and cokes, even if they are weak, will do that after about 14 of them... YUCK! What a horrid night and whole next day that had been! My saving grace was since I'd never been able to see of drive at night I always had someone else who had to be the designated driver! It's still that way today. I found that I was allergic to pot, never really liked the feeling anyway. (It was a control thing I guess, I always have to be aware of what's going on around me and be able to remember it the next day) Discovered wine and dancing the night away at clubs. My friends and I had a system for letting me know, since I could see very little in those dark clubs, who I should and shouldn't dance with when they asked. (Can you even imagine the hilarity of it to have a guy walk up and tell you that he's noticed you watching him during the evening when you're in a place where every one just looks like a black silhouette against the neon beer signs and you'd be lucky just to see your own hand in front of your face because it's so dark and you're night blind as it is?) I also added to my sexual partner list, another area I didn't go overboard on because quite frankly I wouldn't have known what the hell to do with them. For all the information I thought I had I was naïve about sex and still not confident enough to embrace the education or the lessons… (Gee how time has changed me! Now my issue is my deep desire to expand my horizons and not having a partner with the imagination or ability to do so. Life can be so damned cruel!) Besides, I was still gun shy. I'd already been hurt once and I wasn't willing to jump in too deep again. Funny how important something or someone becomes to others when they no longer have it. Apparently that's what happened to Rodney. It took him a couple years but he decided I was what he wanted in his life. Oh and I was not going to be an easy catch. He'd hurt me deeply and that hadn't healed. I couldn't trust him as completely as I had before. As beneficial as I can see that break up was after the fact, in that it broke that illusion of the untarnished first love, even once we got back together I still withheld a part of myself from him. Self preservation I'm sure… (He's since had other occasions to make me reserve myself as well over our life.) He'd been laid off from where he'd worked during the great Reagan military build up and went into the Army. Not long after joining he asked me to marry him. I did love him and I saw it as finally having someone in my life that would be there for me and love me back so I said yes. At that time I was still living at home, my brother and sister were old enough to take care of themselves and that time around I never let mom know that I was seeing Rodney again. It was my life and I'd be damned if I was going to allow her to dictate the rest of it for me. About two years after he'd joined the Army he came home one weekend and we got married… ok, eloped. No big wedding, just me, him, the minister (a former air force chaplain that we found via the same air force base where I'd been born who could do it on the spur of the moment), and his wife in the tiny white country church out in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say our families were very surprised. We were married June 1 1984 and he was gone back to his base June 2 1984. We spent all of thirty days together that first year and they weren't consecutive… See, he was based at Fort Jackson, SC and all his 'friends' kept telling him that it wouldn't be a good idea for him to bring me down there being the kind of couple that we were and again, I wasn't his top priority, I waited and begged for a year for him to bring me there before he actually did. Of course mom took every opportunity to add her poisoned two cents. "Well if he really loved you then he'd want to have you with him no matter what…" And in the back of my mind I was sad that I had to agree to a point. (Another tell tale I should have seen for what it was but didn't) Eventually he did find us a place, with my doing most of the searching from Ohio, (before the internet I might add), and he came back to get me. Now, a very funny thing happened between me and my mother when I was actually leaving. She said, "You're not really going to leave us to go with him are you?" I told her that yes, he was my husband and I was finally going to be where he was. She was actually upset with me for leaving when she'd done nothing my whole life but threaten to make me go… First she threatened the children's home when I was younger, the juvenile home as I got older and then the streets when I got to be 18 and over. At the time leaving home was hard because it had been all I knew but I was ready to go, ready for something new – my own life.
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