Category: Memoir Publisher: Columbia County PC Incorporated
ISBN-10: 9780984453665
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 252
Copyright: July 1, 2010
This is a written and pictorial journey through my life as I have lived, worked and traveled through every state in the us, on over 30 military bases, and gone around the world. I am on my ninth career and working toward my next goal.
My life is a work in progress. This is not just any story but many stories. Journey with me and share some of my serious and silly events. Draw your own conclusion as to whether I am broad-minded or open-minded or even a little of both. There may be times you will cry and others in which you will laugh or smile, and then sometime you will simply just wonder, just as I have. This is an adventure where you will see my sense of humor and sometimes, the tragic comedy of errors, and even the misadventures I managed to live through. Travel with me, and learn along with me, about people, places, and life.
With any luck, you will learn as I did that life is full of choices and perspectives.
As I take you on this journey through my life, we will also share the last trip I took around the world. The trip was a desperate act of survival or quite possibly foolhardy. Nonetheless, I did it, and it was the best thing in the world I could have done.
I will share not only my story, but also pictures, that I took along the way. With any luck, they are labeled - correctly, and are not offensive to anyone. With few exceptions, you will not see pictures of individuals or personal items or property. The pictures, as a rule will not be typical touristy pictures. I hope you enjoy them.
What you are going to read is what I saw, and lived through, from my perspective. There can be no right, wrong, correct, or incorrect. These stories are as I saw them and remember them.
In order to understand the person we become, and put into perspective our future, we have to know, and come to terms with the past.
My family was, or is typical, of any dysfunctional family. You are going to read what my family life was, or is like. This revelation will not be new to anyone who knows me - or to the members of my family.
The dysfunction started long before I was born so I do not get to take any credit for it initially, and will leave it for you to decide how much I contributed. Like it or not, this is the hand dealt me, and it has influenced every choice I have made.
Excerpt
The four of us siblings do not even think as siblings. We left home, and went our separate ways, without much thought for each other. We made our own independent lives, and really did not maintain any contact. What have we to talk about - we have no common denominator. When strangers meet, they can generally make some type of small talk. We do not even try.
The man I now know daddy to have been, I can say I love him and miss him - I miss not knowing him as a father. He was an 18-year-old young man, who left the basketball court, and went to war, completely unprepared for the atrocities of life.
Do not get me wrong. In comparison to some men I have met, I would say daddy was a good father because he was not abusive, and he was a good provider. He was an absentee father and did not show love, affection, or any emotional or physical support. He gave me the one lesson; and I have always remembered and lived by it. He told me to "get up and take care of my responsibilities".
I think that is what he did. He was not happy with his life, but he had responsibilities that had to be taken care of. The bills were always paid, and there was food on the table. That is all he was capable of providing.
Everyone has his or her own opinion as to what is a healthy, well-balanced, family life. I do not know what that is. At the time, I did not know what I was living through was not normal - I was surviving. Life was not a happy experience, and it was definitely violent and abusive. I had never spent time around any other family so; I had no idea that at the age of nine I was not supposed to be a surrogate mother to two babies, and working as a maid. Trust me; I had no notion that I was my mother's slave. The term pedophile was not in my vocabulary. All I knew was I did not like it when my grandfather was putting is hands on me.
It never occurred to me to tell anyone what was going on in our house, or that it was not acceptable behavior. For us, this was our normal life.
My family or extended family is large by some standards. I have not met everyone, and have no desire to do so. There are eight step siblings, brothers, and sisters. I confess to knowing or remembering the name of only two, and one of those is deceased.
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She never felt safe at home as a young girl, and didn't understand why when she finally escaped she wasn't safe in the big wide world either ...effectively jumping out of the frying pan into the fire!
