I was just sitting here starting to read the novel “East of Eden” and he’s starting out remembering childhood, “secret names of flowers”, and it made me remember mine. I didn’t have any secret names for the flowers that I can remember, but there was this pond behind the houses between the houses and the golf course were we would play. It was all over grown and brushy, a good place to hide from golfers as we’d duck out steal their balls and run back into the brush. (I’m not positive that we did do that, but I do recall saying I used to, so maybe I did. *Shrugs*)

I was just thinking to myself that “Yes I did have fun in my childhood”. I remember riding bikes out late in the summer because it was still light outside. And than with these happy times, maybe carefree is a better word, I had the blink of the stress that was going on at the time in my life. I had a step father who was an alcholic, I say was because he is dead. He died of complications from drinking I believe many years after my mother divorced him.

Anyway, in just that minute or maybe two when I was thinking all this as the memories and feelings flashed I realized that my life seems to have had these moments of “carefreeness” (not sure if that’s a word) and than there is stress, upheavel, betrayal, disappointment. I suppose everyone’s life is that way, but I guess somewhere I finally stopped being able to enjoy or recognizes those moments of being “carefree”. I’ve shut my self down or off to much of anything. I still go to counseling once a week, I still stay up all night long (Yep I haven’t slept yet and its about 4:30am in the morning) I’m not sure why I do this, but it has killed me in a way. I don’t live my life and I am “alive”, I go through it day by day as a passenger that doesn’t even realize at the very least that there are windows on this ride even if I’m not willing/able/capable of taking the drivers seat. The people I’m on the rode with, my husband and children want me to stop and enjoy the destinations along the way, but since I am just riding along I don’t stop.

I have been racking my brain for probably a year now trying to quit this staying up all night thing and I can’t stop. It is a habit now I guess, my couselor said that at one point it served a purpose for me, but now it doesn’t. I KNOW that I should be in bed, I KNOW I shouldn’t eat that late at night but I do. I hide and I sadly feel “numb” which is in some ways better than how I normally feel. I feel guilty most all the rest of the time…guilty, selfish, worthless, ugly, fat, etc… I used to think I was the most thoughtful person, I used to get into trouble in away because “I would give someone the shirt off my back if they needed it” my Mom used to say.

Why do I stay up all night and why can’t I just choose to get in the drivers seat. This is my life, this is my children’s lives. They only get one chance at childhood and here they have a Mom that is “checked out”. I don’t want to be “not living” anymore. I am at the point where I push everyone away and don’t let anyone in most of the time.

I was watching Oprah the other day and it was about these mother’s who pretty much have taken their childhood stuff and it has now been reflected even worse to them through their daughters. I do not want my issues to be my children’s. Another show I watched was about self hatred, and I can’t really say that I hate myself, but I can say I don’t like myself, I don’t know myself, or maybe the negative feelings about myself go so deeply that I don’t know how I feel about myself just that whowever I am is not worth anything. I look at my children though and think I MUST be worth something they are such wonderful kids. Did anyone think I was wonderful when I was a child? Was I ever truely loved.

Maybe I’m feeling extra down or something because it’s almost that time of the month. I don’t know, but I need to find someway to love myself and to want to live MY life, this is my one chance and I am 36 years old!!!! and I have wasted soooooo much time already. I feel like a worthless waste, but I need to find some worth somewhere inside myself. My husband seems to see it, my kids, why can’t I see it? I remember times as a kid just repeating that phrase “I know I’m somebody ’cause God don’t make no junk”, over and over and over again. I also remember specifically praying “Please help me see myself the way others see me.” I think I prayed that though so I could see what was so wrong with me that everyone else seemed to see I think. There was a time when I believed I had “worth”, I know I did, but I fought for it and fought for it. I finally gave up. I can’t seem to enjoy what I have because I don’t believe I deserve it and that if I feel thankful and happy and “CAREFREE” someone will come and take it away from me.

I want to have joy and peace with in myself about my life and WORTH. I want to be remembered in a good way not in a bad way. Not “she never did anything with us, or she was always sleeping or up all night, on the computer or in a book” I want to believe that this is “My life and I deserve to live it, and that it is ok to be happy.”