As far back as I remember I have felt a deep pain. The pain is so hard to describe it starts in my chest and comes up through my throat and produces tears. Just thinking about it brings on the pain and tears.
I can remember as far back as like maybe four or five years old. I remember not spending a lot of time with my mother or father. They were both in the home, but I was raised by a 16 year old Nannie. She was a wonderful person, but she wasn’t my mom or dad.
My parents never took me or my sister to the park or sat and talked and asked us how our day was, or helped with homework, but we had the nicest material things. My dad owned his own hair salon and my mom was a career chaser with the IRS. I don’t want to come off as faulting my parents because they did what they learned from their parents, but it doesn’t take away the need for my sister and I to feel wanted or loved.
My mom was not raised by her mom or dad. Her dad was a hustler/gambler who couldn’t or wouldn’t hold a steady job. Her mom was too busy chasing men and women and working three jobs at a time to keep up with the “Jones.” My mom was actually adopted by her fathers family. A family that could not read or write. While living in this household my mom was molested by her adoptive brothers.
My dad grew up in the deep south. Dirt roads no street lights and didn’t even go to a doctor or dentist until he moved to DC at the age of 20. My dads father was abusive verbally and physically to my father and his five brothers, he was a man’s man and he ruled his home with an iron fist, literally. So, again I don’t blame them for their lack of parenting it doesn’t come with a manual, but I do blame them for not seeing the impact that THEIR childhoods had on them and breaking the cycle for their children.
I didn’t hear the beautiful words that all children want and need to hear from their parents “I love you” until I was sixteen years old. I remember it like it was yesterday. My dad came upstairs one of very few nights to turn off my TV and on the way down the stairs I heard him say I love you. I think he thought I was asleep, but I heard him and that memory has stayed with me since. That was the one and only time in my 37 years I have heard those words uttered. My dad liked to drink his Manischewitz or Jack Daniels and I knew that when he started drinking he would get drunk and become mean making me feel very uncomfortable. Yes, he was and still is an alcoholic…………………
