I believe we must all walk through fire in our time on Earth to get to the other side!
Some of those fires are small, do no harm and give light and warmth on our dark paths we are traveling while others rage out of control and cause destruction to everything they touch. Some are ignited by others in an attempt to deflect what's really going on around them as they sit back in the darkness and watch the exhausting efforts of others trying to bring them back under control. Some we start and feed ourselves.
I often got tired of hearing people say "there is no instruction book for raising children", "no class to teach what to do". I would sit back at ponder those statements as if there were a challenging puzzle that required deep thought and dedication to understand why that was so. After all, there are so many "bad" parents born to children who did not deserve the torture and neglect wrought onto them by people unable to care about anything but themselves. I used to think that God made a mistake. How could someone be capable of making a whole wide world but be so wrong about my parents and their inability to love and nurture!
One time to many times, I heard another of my family members make that statement to defend an act of violence on his child. It was at that very moment it struck me. There is an instruction booklet for raising children! It is called "CHILDHOOD". God in his infinite wisdom makes you a child first! How better for you to know beyond any doubt what truly hurts a child. What they take and pack and store from their parents bad behaviors and choices. What hurts for a minute but, then lasts for a lifetime in the mind and spirit of a child's heart? There are the things you think will scar them forever and they get over easily and then there are things you think would do no harm that end up doing the most damage! I say again, funny what you hold onto!
Children plant and toil in the dark, rich soil of the gardens of self esteem. They play and delight in a soft garden light filtered in by God's love beams. Plant pretty little rows of hopes and dreams and encourage their gardens to grow. Then they drown their budding babies with a toxic mix from parents that they will never really know.
By seventeen years old..it was clear to me my destiny was set to be miserable, lost and lonely. No one person had the ability to make me feel worthy or likable or special in any sort of way. I could stand in an cavern filled with interesting people and feel as if I was the only one there. Like a uncomfortable piece of furniture neither pretty to look at nor comfortable to utilize. After all, if you are not wanted by the very people that brought you here into this world, why then would anyone else see any value that if your own parents refused to acknowledge it? A twisted but valid perspective.
After years of watching my parents tear into each other with the fierceness of warrior soldiers, it finally came to pass they would divorce. Although my father had not been kind to me for many years ironically, it was me he came to when he found himself alone. I was in beauty school and struggling with my own personal issues but wanted his love so much I took him in. I wanted so desperately for him to like me, need me as I did him. There was a point where one of my brother's said to me "he never liked you before so why now"? Silly rabbit, I knew that but, now in the newly begotten freedom for him from under "her " rule, I was at least willing, no desperate to try.
Everyday at beauty school, I would get a call from him threatening to kill himself. I was so confused! You want to be with me to just kill yourself? Had I not suffered enough of your selfish acts and twisted thinking. I remember thinking after many times of trying to talk him down, I was becoming exhausted at the work and the struggle to keep someone alive so hell bent on not living. I was weak in this department. I had tried it myself many times by now so knew how he must feel inside. It is a desperately dark and lonely place and as much as you do not want to live anymore, you will give anything for someone to give you a reason to stay. Acting out in this way is a definite cry for help but you can not see at the time that there is really nothing anyone can say or do that will make a difference. You are the one that is broken. You know you are losing your will but do not reason it is you that is keeping you there. You find it necessary to try to put that balme on someone else, but you are your own worst enemy. Someone else's fault you are miserable, their fault you are lonely, their fault you do not feel loved. In reality, it is you who has applied your own shackles and then hide the key so that even if they wanted to they can not release you from your own misery.
One particular day, I just snapped when he called the school. I was embarrassed that he would do this to me, put my goals in jeopardy and undermine what little order I had in my life. I did nothing to deserve this madness, I left school to meet him head on. I literally flew home, blind with anger, hurt from his obvious using of me for his act to play out. He was essentially begging me to care for him in a way he had forced me to do without. I met him in his bedroom, drunk and weeping. Gathering all the pills and liquor I could find I threw them on the bed and told him to "DO IT NOW". I was daring him, it takes guts to do this, to take that step that may very well end your life. I prayed that he would and was yet frozen in fear that he might just do it. I was angry at myself that I could not think of anything else to do. I turned around and went back to school. The day was desperately cold and uncomfortable. I was right, he may have been a bully for much of my life but now I could see him as he really was, weak and broken too. I had spent a lifetime afraid of this weak and empty man.
Five months into our roommate trial, I was offered a chance to run. A man I knew was being shipped to Fayetteville N.C. and for whatever reason that seemed like as good a place as any to run to. I had no intentions when we left. I had not thought about hurting myself or ending my life but within 24 hours of arriving and being put up in a hotel room (alone), I took 2 full prescriptions and washed them down with a bottle of scotch while I composed the perfect mudslinging letter to my mother. If I was going to go, I would not go without being heard. I wanted to hurt her as much if not more than she had done to me. By the time I finished the letter, I was already on the verge of passing out. I remember I was afraid to cross the street to mail it, I was afraid of getting hit by a car! I never mailed that letter. Go figure!
By the time I was found, I was in deep trouble. I had successfully taken enough meds to kill me then enhanced it with alcohol. I had laid for hours losing consciousness. Treatment was difficult as they had no idea what was wrong with me at first. I will never know what made that gentle man come back to check on me. I remained in a coma for 30 days. North Carolina did not have laws that allowed for the disconnecting of life support. They called my mother after finding out who I was and where I came from on day 27, and told her to draw up the papers and bring them back with her. She wasted no time and did it that same day, my 30th day! "EEG showed diminishing brain waves" and even if I survived, I would be a "vegetable" they said to her. That was good enough for her, it had to be done. Her flight would leave that evening. My sister, not knowing what to do, took all my young brothers and ended up in a Catholic church. We were not Catholic but, it was the only church open that evening. Spending hours praying for my recovery before mom got on that plane with those papers, she knew there was not much hope.
I am somewhere floating on the ceiling! I am watching from up above. No bright lights or life flashing before my eyes, just floating. I see the nurses, see the room, even hear them talk to me and about me, but I am also still in the bed and appear to be sleeping. It was as clear as anything I had ever witnessed. I floated there for quite some time, felt like hours. Next thing I remember, I am being aroused by those nurses. I can hear my name they are calling me to wake up, time to wake up! And I do!
Within seconds I am surrounded by an entire room of people. Dr.'s and nurses and equipment being brought into the room. There was a flurry of activity all around me. A few days later, I am in an office listening to a Dr.
"Suicide is against the law in this state, punishable with jail time"! What? You save my life to put me in jail? North Carolina was cruel, I thought. He went on to state that I would be returned to my mother, back to California the next day. I was every bit as intact as the day I did that dastardly deed. I will say here there has been a miracle in my life more than once, though I did not, could not see it then.
I left N.C. with the thought that, I would never do this again! First, I obviously was not good at it and secondly, I felt like I "wanted" to live for the first time since I was 12! Although I have no explaination for it, I never did make another attempt to hurt myself. Over time, I learned to face adversity head on, have faith it would be OK and not take it personally. I learned to plant my own garden again, make my own rainbows and water it with forgiveness and love for myself.
I had finally learned how to amend my soil in the Garden of good and evil!
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