Not being a drag

May has always been a difficult month for me.  I didn't realize this until many years had passed.  Things just always seemed to blow up all over my life in the month of May.  In my early years this was directly linked to my mother having a difficult time in the month of May.  Could have been her inability to deal with her birthday each year....I'm not sure, I never asked her.  I don't believe I would have gotten a straight answer from her about it.

Whenever I was placed in foster homes it was in the month of May.  A few years I didn't finish my grade because, well, it was so close to the end of the year and after all, I was a smart student.  I was thrust into another home, another family, another situation. 

The month of May, when the air is warm and the flowers are in bloom and the possibility of bad weather has usually passed, that is when I would gain yet another situation, survive another upheavel. 

Memorial Day weekend especially holds memories of drawing lines between me and those that would harm me.....of preserving myself against all odds....of no longer being someone's victim. 

Some cotton type webbing must have coccooned me from the depth of pain and truth that I only now have begun to realize.  I was so happy to be out of certain situations and I was so sure that the future could ONLY hold great, shiney things, that I had no idea what had actually happened to me. 

I believed there was a love waiting just for me.....a home that I would be secure within, friends that I would love and nurture......and music that would play through all of the joyous bliss that would be my life because I had survived. 

I am not as bitter as this reads....I need you to know that.  I am so much inside my own head that I just keep turning it all around from yet another angle to look at.  Life didn't turn out the way I had dreamed because I wasn't really living in my reality.  I had no idea how incapable I really was of having anything close to normal.  I pushed away and pretended that everything was all right and most of all, that I was whole....complete...and not fractured.

Someone recently told me, and not in a nice way, that I think too much and that I am such a 'fucking drag'.  As much as I don't like some of reality, I need to stay closer to it than some that I've known.  I learned at a very young age that playing and being carefree wasn't a safe place for me.  As misfortunate as this may be, I can be playful and loving but only when I feel safe.  Ignore making me feel safe and you'll never see that side of me.  I am not going to apologize for needing that to be in place.  I used to feel bad for what I needed and why I needed it.  If someone won't understand than move along and play somewhere else.  I have enough to deal with as it is.

I still believe in many beautiful things....every afternoon when the sun hits my crystals just right, the rainbows that dance across my room fill me with delight and pleasure.  My plants that surround me, growing and thriving reassure me that I am in touch with something outside of myself that is in fact, good.  My children and grandson's laughter and intelligence continue to delight and astound me.  My feet are planted as firmly as they need to be, and there is yet a spark within my heart of hope that a happy ending or at least an interlude exists for me.