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Adana, Turkey
I think I was maybe 2 when I got Paratyphoid or was it Salmonella. My temperature got up to 105. The doctors at the hospital on base said that was impossible. Mom had used 2 different thermometers and they used one themselves. Not so impossible after all. ((Pretty sure it broke my internal thermostat.)) It took over 3 hours, in a tub of lukewarm water, to get my temp down to 103. My veins were so little, they had a hard time getting the IV to stay in. They tried everywhere, hands, arms, feet, even my head, but it kept popping out. That poor Pediatrician, here was this extremely sick little girl, cussing him up one side and down the other… in Turkish.
~Scary thing, I shouldn’t have survived.~
Clovis, New Mexico
Mom tried to make me a ‘Barbie princess cake’ for my 4th birthday. You know, the ones where the doll stood up and the cake was its dress. Yeah, major fail. So she just made a rectangle cake with yellow and white frosting and sat the doll on the cake. The thing I remember most about this event, was when they began to sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ I got up and actually walked out of the room. To this day I hate being sung to.
~Mom does it anyway, very fast, so I can’t escape. Shows she still loves me.~
Kishaba Terrace, Okinawa
I had just learned to ride a bike. I felt so accomplished, like I could do anything. So of course, my brother and I did exactly what Mom told us NOT to do. We decided to ride double on the bike to school. And we crashed, hard. ((Word of warning, don’t wear shorts while riding a bike over gravel roads.)) But fearful of mom, and closer to the school then home, we picked ourselves up and limped onward. It wasn’t as if I could hide it from Mom, since I came home with spectacular bandages up both legs, on my elbows, etc. Boy did we get in trouble.
~There are reasons our parents tell us NOT to do something.~
Charleston, South Carolina
I attended church, I believe, for the first time here. Brother and Sister West would pick up my neighbor Christina and I, and we would attend services, then they would drop us off. Nothing out of the norm you might think. But then imagine a little blonde girl, dressed in her Sunday best, in an all-black Southern Baptist Church. Yeah… it got some frowns from other neighbors. But I loved it.
~I have yet to find another church half as joyful and alive as that one.~
RAF Lakenheath, England
English AFB air show. What a memory. The smells, the sounds, the crowds were epic. I had eaten just a little too much junk food that day. Add the heat of being in the sun for too long to the massive stomach ache starting. Yeah, I was miserable, and slightly green. I held it in all the way home. But once we got home, all bets were off. I hurled big time, in the hall, up the bathroom door, all over the bathroom itself. Good thing mom loves me, I’m not sure if I even made it to the toilet.
~No more junk food binges and or prolonged exposure to sun.~
San Jose, California
The bullying started here, right as I entered 6th grade. Everything you could think of. From name calling to having songs like “looks that kill” dedicated to me in the school paper. The worse, for me, was in middle school. A guy burned my hair on the school bus. Right in the middle of the back of my head, a little more than an inch across and to a length of about 2 inches. I got off the bus, went to the office, called mom. He got chewed out, not only by the principle, but by my mother, spent 1 day in Juvie, and I got a very short haircut. Oh yeah, and I started taking public transit to school. His reason, “You’re weird.”
~When is that even a valid excuse to hurt someone? Like, ever.~
It never gets easier to deal with all that negativity. More than once I thought about ‘removing myself from the equation,” but felt it would be a betrayal to my family and the love they always showed me. So I built up a tougher exterior, a shell to protect myself from their words and their deeds. I rarely let anybody in, emotionally. That changed after graduation, when I found others like myself, the outcasts, the misfits, the socially invisible at Rocky of all places. And they became my family too.
~I also learned to like, if not, love myself, “weirdness” and all.~
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
I’m 27 years’ old, and the mother of 2 little boys, aged 3 and 1. I’ve just left my abusive husband. Hell, we didn’t even make it to 4 years. My parents are so awesome, taking us in like this. I’m sad, weary, and yeah…depressed. I know I need to be here for my boys, it’s just so hard at the moment. Sometimes I feel so lost, like I’m alone in a crowd, and I’m so angry. All I want to do is sleep, or maybe crawl down the rabbit hole and never return. But I try not to show it.
~Yeah, I’m one of those.~
But all that stress, anger, and pent up frustration has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? So I use a needle… carve lines into the tops of my breasts. Hoping the pain and lingering sting will ground me, make me more, I don’t know… present. I do it for months and nobody knows. Then one day, words came to my mind. “You are stronger than this.” “Those boys need you.” “It’s time… you need to get up.”
And I got up. And continue to get up. I still deal with all my various issues daily, and yeah, I’m not at 100%.
~But I’m still here.~