I Have a Boo Boo

I met a great therapist yesterday and she was telling me her analogy of how therapy is like cleaning out a dirty boo boo. Imagine a little kid falling down and scraping their knee. They don't know better and don't clean it out so the skin heals over it but all the dirt and rocks are still inside so it never heals properly. Therapy, Dr. H says, is opening up that wound and cleaning it out piece by piece so that it can finally heal properly and be healthy.

So yesterday we opened up my boo boo to see what was inside. It seems that when I fell down I was walking in a gravel pit, my boo boo is big and full of dirt.

You don't realize how messed up your life has been until someone starts asking questions about every segment of your life; birth, early childhood, school, high school, college, etc. What I realized yesterday is I've been messed up from the beginning. Wait, let me take that back, I'm not messed up but things about my life have been messed up.

My mom went back to work 2 weeks after giving birth to me. My dad, an alcoholic, worked nights and "watched" us during the day. He tells stories about how he was so tired he used to put one of us on his chest and tie his hands together so he wouldn't drop us while he slept. He was in rehab a few times before I was 10.

My early memories are littered with things that never happened thanks to the paranoid schizophrenic that is my father.

We moved a few times and every time we moved I had fewer and fewer friends and my weight problem grew.

In high school I was left to live on my own for a while at the end of my senior year b/c my mom got a new job the next state (8 hours) away. I had to keep the house clean for showings and take care of two dogs. It was the first time I had to deal with utility companies.

In college I fell in love with a woman and my parents cut me off financially and my father did not attend our wedding.

When I was pregnant with my first my partner cheated on me with my best friend and co-teacher. Shortly after my first son's birth my partner told me she was leaving me b/c she wasn't getting enough attention.

Aiden's first birthday was overshadowed by my father's "crazy" and shortly after that is the traumatic event that has forever changed my life.

When all was said and done who was there for me during all of this????? That's right , no one.

So basically I've had a life full of....err.......stuff. My therapist thinks this boo boo will take years, yes years, to heal.

I'm amazed I'm not more messed up than I am. I have some anxiety, an anxious depression, a little OCD but seriously, not bad considering the circumstances. Listing it all out like that makes me proud of myself and proud of who I am. I could be curled up in a ball in the corner high out of my mind on some drug or strapped to a bed in a mental facility. Instead I have not let these things define me and I have overcome. I have issues I need to deal with and I am, just me and Dr. H.