My Own Personal Battlefield

This was me in 6th grade.

The other day I was looking at an old photo album,
and from first to sixth grade while I may not have
been the thinnest kid, I don't think I was at a bad
weight, at all.

I share this because I remember my grandmother
at one point making me feel ashamed and self
conscious me by talking about shopping in the
"chubby kid's department."


I have felt like my "whole life" I have had a weight problem.  Looking back
at these images, it is clear to me that it has NOT been my WHOLE life.  I can't
help but wonder if somehow a seed was planted that I was fat, and ultimately
my body caught up to it.

I am not sure what to do with this information at the moment.

I look at the image and see my hair, and can't help but wonder when my hair
changed to the curl it had until recently (although back then I was trying
desperately to make it straight). I also can't help but wonder how my hair
will be when it grows back.

I am emotional looking at this image, thinking back to what my life was like
then.  At a young age I had to be responsible.  I lived with my grandparents,
and they needed my help.  I did the laundry, I cooked, I grocery shopped,
and I went to school.  They depended on me.

At the time I felt good about what I was doing.  I even remember my
grandmother laughing when I thought about when I got older and would
still be taking care of them.  I couldn't imagine what life would be without
them.  In many ways they were my parents.

I loved my grandparents.  I look back through the perspective of time, and
with the eyes of an adult, and I see the cracks.  I see how I was manipulated.
I see the unhappiness in their faces and eyes in pictures of them.  I see things
that I couldn't have possibly have seen back then.

I see these things, but then I am not sure what to do with them.  There is a
mixture of emotion.  A part of me doesn't want to tarnish the feelings I
grew up with.  A part of me doesn't think it is right to think anything
negative after all that they did for me.

I don't know what life would have been like without them.  My mom says
she did what she was told was best.  Funny how I have always thought my
mother wasn't ready to be a mother.  SHE never told me that, so I am not
sure where that came from.  Although I could certainly guess.

There are so many issues that I have in my head about my mom.  I could
say about my parents, but my father was absent from the picture.  I suppose
there are issues about him, too, it is just that the issues come more from
what wasn't my experience with him, rather than what was - as in my
experience with my mother:  my mother was "available," while he was not.

I wrote a whole long blog entry about my mom, but that was the one that
just *poof* disappeared a bit ago.  Funny, as I type that, and remember
that I was going to start writing differently (writing somewhere else, and
then transferring it here) I got a message that there was an error, and my
post was unable to be saved.

And I am still typing in the
editor for the blog, and not
somewhere else.

Funny animals, humans.

At least THIS human.

At the moment my friend is out and about, having some solo adventures.
I look forward to his return.  His presence has been a wonderful
distraction from what has become my life.

At some point I will need to revisit this more. There are so many emotional
touch points.  It is clear there needs to be a clearing out.

Some people say cells have memory.  If that is true, the unconscious hurts
and pains and wounds that I have likely still reside somewhere in me.  I
find it interesting that chemo has an effect on cells.  Maybe this is an
opportunity for me to purge the cells in more ways than one.

I am sitting here emotional, and thinking I need to stop writing and need
to do a few things.  My conscious mind says that.  I wonder if it is a way
to distract me from this way of thinking, or if I am "just" being practical.

It doesn't really matter, though, as I really don't feel like doing anything,
regardless of what is causing that feeling.  Of course, it is not like I am
doing nothing, as I am writing this.  Somehow, though, writing when it
flows as this seems to be, never feels like I am DOING anything.

Yesterday I was touring a national battlefield.

Today I am travelling through my own personal one.