Let's go back to your childhood...

An old friend and I got together this weekend. As we sat over a glass of wine and talked about what was going on in our lives. I brought up how I feel I'm stuck at a road block I've been sailing through for so long with no direction that I've just let time take over. I'm going from one day to the next just hoping to get through. That's not to say that I don't have great days, I do, but I'm not doing anything about the things that make me unhappy. I feel like I'm just stuck, and this is where I'm going to stay until circumstances change.

She mentioned how that is so out of character for me and how a few years back, I really seemed to have it all. Not true, about ten years ago I really felt like I had control of my own destiny, I was going to school and had a promising career, but it was short-lived. I let money problems get in my way, not to mention family problems, relationship problems and the problems of my friends at the time. Somewhere along the way I let all the problems and obstacles take control and I never got over that hump.

Having grown up together, Jan and I started talking about our childhood, things we loved, things we missed and things we wish we could go back and change. Together, we discovered a lot about ourselves and how we let our past effect our lives now and our future.

I mentioned how I have been thinking about places we used to go, places that really seem to bring back happy memories, places I wish I could go back to. I realized that most of my childhood was incomplete. This is not a theory where I'm placing blame, its a theory on how I came in to my current thinking habits.

We went back in time to when we met in elementary school. I had switched to a public school and Jan was in my class. At the same time my mom had to go get a job to supplement the family income. I would say about that time she, my mom that is, became depressed. My whole life changed. I was in the fifth grade. I can remember my mom being extremely moody with us. I would walk to school in tears because she would lay in bed and yell at us in the morning and didn't pay us much attention after school.

She worked nights and left at 4:00, a couple of hours after my sisters and I got home. Dad wouldn't be home until 6:00, or so. There was never any mention of homework, so of course I never did any. Our routine was a couple of chores such as setting the table, vacuuming and after eating, washing dishes. Mom gave up on cleaning house when she found a job. We had to stay inside or in the backyard until dad got home. Which meant no friends. I never understood why and took it personally, when my mom allowed my older sister to have the girl across the street over. That was the rule, Jane and only Jane was allowed over.

When dad got home he sat in front of the TV all night, not ignoring us, but his evenings were filled with not much more than evening sitcoms.

I started to get embarrased at school because my homework was never done. I would try to fake it handing it in half done or early morning scribbles done on the playground waiting for the bell to ring. A note home from my teacher, had me sitting at the kitchen table in the evenings for a while, but with no help when needed or no one checking it for me I quickly got out of that. I had to quit the little league baseball team over summer vacation I loved so much, because my mom would go out drinking after work and couldn't get up to drive me in the morning.

In junior high things only got worse. Mom and dad weren't getting along. When mom was home she was on the phone with her friends, complaining about my dad and would go out and drink after work. Dad resented having to do the housework and we were always yelled at for not doing a good enough job. We had lists of chores to do and worked hard at everyone one of them, yet it never seemed to be good enough. After school and during summer vacation, mom volunteered us for babysitting jobs so we had no free time or time with our friends. I had to quit the school band after my parents refused to buy me an instrument because they didn't think it was important. I was first chair and my teacher loaned me the instrument for one semester because I was doing so well. When that gig was up so were my days in band class.

I started out my freshmen year in high school being pretty involved in extra curricular and sports. But as always, all good things must come to an end. My mom actually became jealous of my life. (My older sister once quoted my mom saying that to her.) I always thought my mom would be proud of me. In junior high, I made the mistake of haging out with the wrong crowd for a while. I never had the chance to do anything wrong myself, but my friends weren't the type your parents would want you to hang with. So in high school my friends consisted of my teammates from volleyball, baseball and members of the student council, truly great kids.

My phone calls from friends after school ended with my mom picking up the phone and cutting in on our conversations with rude remarks or her yelling at them when they called saying if they just saw me a few hours ago at school there was no reason for them to call met at home. I think at this time she started having an affair. She would race to the phone when it rang and hide the the bathroom while talking on it. On the occasions I did answer a man would ask for her. Family life was getting really rough.

On the week of my sixteenth birthday, she made me get a job. It was a job I had to walk three miles to, which meant getting home from school, changing and start on my walk to work. I was not allowed in friends cars at the time. (The old family car was given to my older sister and I was told I could work and save up for one if I needed one.) What made it worse was, after work I would have to wait until 1:00 in the morining for my sister to come by and pick me up after she got off work. I now had to quit the volleyball and baseball teams because I could not make the practices or games.

By the time I was a senior in high school I didn't have a single friend left, not one. I was an outcast. I used to throw up or skip class on the days that we had class assembly because I knew in that crowd of 350 kids or so, I would be sitting there all by myself. Everyone grouped with their friends having a good time and I would just sit there, my face hurting from holding back the tears; I wanted to dissappear.

I decided after high school my life would be different. I started working for a good company as a secretary, enrolled in the community college and worked a coouple of nights a week to pay for it all and still be able to put some money in the bank. Still my mom never failed to ride me, she sent me off the work crying more times than I can count. Putting me down for going to college and not just finding a husband and settling down. She invited old boyfriends over to drinkwith her and I hid in my room and did my homework. I wasn't going to let her control me forever.

I soon started making enough money and had a nice little saving and got myself an apartment. Of course, mom hated it. She strolled down my walkway cursing and telling me how awful it was. I knew I wouldn't have to listen to that much longer. I pretty much cut myself off from my family for a while. My sisters seemed content living at home working for fast food restrants and looking for husbands. My mom was so pleased with them.

Working two jobs got the best of me and I quit my night job. I still had school two to three nights a week, but soon found I could no longer afford it. Still, my day job was pretty promising, payed the bills and I really enjoyed the work. I was making new friends and really learning a lot.

Seven years with the same company and my boss decided he was going to close the doors and move across the country. Since then I've had a series of dissapointing jobs, layoffs and supplemental night jobs to make ends meet.

Skip to the present day and here I am. Still struggleing with my family relations and desperatly wanting to go back and re-live some past moments. I know I can't go back and that its time for me to give it everything I've got and move forward, but I'm stuck. Money is tight and so is my time. I'm tired and trying to muster up the enegy to get going again. I seriously don't want my life end with the same dissapointment it started with.