Through the Looking glass : Childhood friends

 

I was that toddler who made mud pies and gave them to my dad and various family members to "eat".

Rumor has it, I used to eat mud, but I'm not sure about that. The other rumor was a mud pie was shoved in my face, so which one was true I have no clue. Honestly, I really don't. lol

As I got older around 10, I started to dream about what I wanted to be when I grew up. My best friend at the time was going to be a mommy like me and we were going to live in houses next door to each other. We were going to share a yard and our husbands were going to be best friends and raise our kids together.

She moved away to Texas, and we lost touch. That dream died for me, and I was forced to try to make another one. I just couldn't think of anything. I did want to get married and have kids, but it just wasn't the same without my best friend living next door to me.

I found another best friend who didn't dream the same dream that I did. She didn't have one at all. I guess you could say, she was just floating by the seat of her pants. I had to move to NY at 17 and my friends all grew up to have babies of their own. 

Here I am at 52 and my dreams have long gone. I'm too old to have babies and I've long given up on a successful love life. I'm just here floating by the seat of my pants wondering what life would have been like if I followed that dream, I had at 10 years old.

Through the Looking glass : Depression, Anxiety, Suicide

TRIGGER ALERT... Depression, Anxiety, Suicide

With each birthday that I move through I am constantly reminded that at 17 years old I really had no desire to reach 20. I honestly didn't expect to reach 19 years old. I literally just wanted to sleep and never wake up. I wanted to be lost wandering through the darkness in my dreams forever. I didn't want to ever wake up.

My English teacher in my senior year {1988} was constantly asking me if I was ok after I would turn in some pretty dark writings to her. It's not every day that a 17-year-old turns in a creative writing paper about tearing one's flesh off their bones to see if their heart was still there. I'm not sure if she ever spoke to my parents like she kept saying she was going to. I think not because they never spoke to me about the darkness, I was dwelling in.

Growing up I literally hated myself. I was always overweight as a teen, and still am, and constantly trying to lose it. I tried diets, exercising, weight loss pills, etc... it just didn't work out for me. I was bullied about my weight all the time. After we moved from Oklahoma to NY, I tried to commit suicide... a few times, the knife was ready, lines drawn on my arm, etc. I just couldn't do it. Every time I tried, I thought about my siblings. I didn't want to leave them so I couldn't do it.

Now at 52, the weight is being lost slowly and I'm walking the border between the light and darkness. I have my moments where I just want to crawl under my blankets and not interact with anyone and then I'll be a chatterbox and talk thy ears off.

~ I've accepted my weight and I know that I will continue to lose it every day.

~ I've accepted my path between the light and darkness... without the darkness we can't see the stars.

~ I've accepted that I have to take care of MYSELF before I can care for others.

~ I have accepted that I'm not going to be model skinny and will never look like the ladies in the magazines.

~ I have accepted that I am so flawed that my heart is permanently broken and when I think of the reasons as to why I just want to cry.

I am not perfect, perfectly imperfect is more my style, but I am VERY happy to be alive. 

Through the Looking glass : Random memories about my wisdom teeth removal.

I was around 14 or 15 when I had all 4 of my wisdom teeth pulled. I was in surgery for around 6 hours I believe. I was terrified when I literally woke up in the middle of the surgery to find the doctor literally straddling my chest. He noticed me looking at him and he was like "Oh shit she woke up!" Then I was out again.

I'm not sure as to how much time passed after that, but I woke up in the recovery room and my dad was standing next to me, he was holding my hand. I saw him and I swear I was about to burst into tears. I said "Daddy I had a weird dream, I dreamed that a man was sitting on my chest."

The doc kinda chuckled a bit and said yeah that was him and I wasn't supposed to have woken up so soon. Needless to say I was drugged up and very confused when I told him to get a chair. 

Come to find out he was trying everything he could to get my wisdom teeth out. See the roots of my wisdom teeth were literally wrapped around my jaw bones so they literally had to shatter my teeth in order to remove to them. It was either that or break my jaws to get the teeth out. He opted to use my chest as a chair to pull them out and after I found out about the possible jaw breaking... I was ok with my chest being used as a chair.

2 Random wisdom teeth facts..
1. Did you know that your adult wisdom teeth are actually your third set of molars and your last ones?

2. Did you know that your wisdom teeth usually show up between the ages of 17 & 25 and that there are some lucky folks who never get them!

So yeah let's just say I've been there. I can remember those days like it was literally yesterday. My mom and dad both worked and I was home alone for the first few days, one of them would usually come home and check on me at lunch time. 

I don't remember what drug they gave me, but it was a seriously loopy time. I was literally seeing black shadows moving around me, darting from door to door and peeking around the corners at me. I was laying on the couch when I saw one looking around the corner at me. I screamed and ran into my brothers room and grabbed his baseball bat and slept with it. 

My Wisdom Teeth Recovery tips

~ I was always drinking water or a glass of orange juice. I always had a glass sitting next to the couch next to me. Hydration is key not only when your in the healing process, but it's an everyday essential.

~ I was putting ice on my cheeks to numb them once or twice a day. The cold on my cheeks made them feel so much better and helped with the swelling. My cheeks were so swollen I inherited the name Chip from the cartoon Chip n Dale. lol

~ I ate a lot of pudding, ice cream and warm soups. The ice cream would have to get a bit soft for me because if it was too hard then it would hurt like crazy. I ate a lot of Jell-O as well. 

~ The worst part is that I wasn't able to chew anything. It's like you're supposed to chew on the side of the mouth where you didn't have an extraction.. but I had teeth pulled from the 4 corners of my mouth! So my liquid diet lasted a couple weeks. I did find that I could chew just a little after I iced my cheeks and numbed my mouth.   

I was out of school for over 3 weeks because of this and the day I went back to school was the day when class picture's were being taken.. they wouldn't let me take them at a later day so there I sat with my puffy cheeks and trying to smile and hide the pain from trying to smile for said photo. 

I would post a photo, but I honestly ripped them all up and threw them away, I looked really bad. 

Through the Looking glass : Daddy's scent

As I sit here looking at pictures of my Dad from my childhood, the memories of the day begin to surface. Along with those memories are smells.

~  I can still remember the smell of Dads Old Spice cologne.

~ The smell of his jacket that I used to curl up under when laying on the couch after having a bad dream.

~ The buttered pop corn he used to make after all 9 of us kids went to bed. I used to go out and sit with him in his chair and cuddle.

~ The smell of sawdust when I stayed home "sick" and had to go to work with him. 

Really I wasn't sick, I just wanted to spend the day with him. 

~ As I got older and started drinking coffee, we used to sit at the table drinking coffee. 

Me eating cereal and him with his coffee and the newspaper. 

My coffee had milk and sugar in it, he drank his black.

What smells and memories do you remember from your childhood?

Through the Looking glass : Drive Ins

 

I can remember very vividly going to the drive in movies with my siblings and parents. Those were some amazing time's, I really wish drive in theaters were a permanent thing instead of a memory from the past.

After dinner we would all load up in the truck in our pajama's and pillows and blankets. We siblings were laying in the camper on the back of the truck and our parents sat in front.

If it was nice out then we would meet aunts and uncles there and we would all sit on lawn chairs or on blankets and watch while munching on pop corn and chili dogs or pizza slices. 

Through the Looking glass : Where do the angels live?

When I was little I used to think that Angel's lived and danced among the clouds. I thought there was an enormous Angel city up there. When someone passed away they went up to the Angel city and watched over their loved ones on earth. If they wanted to see each other they would simply fly from one cloud to another and visit while they watched over their loved ones down below.