Freedom For My Inner Child

I did something tonight that I have needed to do for a very long time. I gave myself permission to say what I have not wanted to say and possibly never wanted to admit. I gained freedom! I confronted my past, I said my peace, admitted my resentment, and have now let it go. I have let her go. I have put my fears out there and broken ties I don't think I can ever fix, and actually if it means it would be painful to fix them, I don't want them at all.

I always feared that saying something to her would hurt her, but I never stopped to think of what it was doing to me inside all that time. I don't think I really realized the tremendous amount of hurt that was there, the pain I have been holding on to that kept me a prisoner in my own past.

Tonight, I let my inner child have her peace. My inner child finally said the things she needed to say to her mother, even if it did have to come out of the mouth of a 41 year old woman. And even if it did hurt her mother. I was not looking for nor did not need an apology because that can never fix the things that happened in my childhood. I just needed to be heard for once.

A child can not understand the mind of an adult, no matter how much they try. A parent is there to protect and love a child, not abandon it and allow it to be abused by others. My inner child will never understand why her mother left her to go into a mental institution and was not there to protect her from the evils that happened while she was gone. That same inner child will never understand why her mother never talked to her, but rather cried all day instead. My 11 year old inner child cannot understand why her mother would allow a predator into their home and never warn her of the dangers of him.

As an adult woman, I can understand that my mother had a mental breakdown, needed to be institutionalized for a while and battled depression the best she could. She was so busy trying to keep her sanity that her 5 year old daughter was just one more obligation in her life she could not deal with. Put on top of that an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy during her depression, an unhappy and dare I say emotionally abusive marriage and someone is bound to get hurt there.

As an adult, I can forgive her, but as a child full of feelings of abandonment and feeling unloved, the pain was still there and was not going away.

There are somethings I will never understand about my mother and the decisions she made in her life. And some people would say I don't have the right to judge her decisions anyway. Some people would be right, but I guess what I came to realize tonight is that I do have the right to be heard when those decisions impacted my life. Keeping secrets only makes you sicker, and as I confronted my mother tonight, her secrets made my life difficult and 'sick'.

I know that God has a plan for me and I am keenly aware that He uses my trials in life to help others. These trials have given me compassion for others in similar situations, and in turn have given me the strength to help those around me while healing my own wounds.

That can't be right...

After putting off my mammogram for as long as I could, I called Tuesday and was given an appointment for THURSDAY. They felt the lump in my right breast was cause enough to get me in ASAP. So, after gulping at their urgency, I accepted the appointment and was told, beforehand, that the appointment may take several hours if they found the lump I claimed to have.

I arrived at the hospital this morning just before my appointment time, already unhappy with the self-inflicted torture I was about to endure. I said a prayer before leaving the car, downed 2 Advil's and walked slowly to the door of the radiology unit.

Every employee I met was supremely pleasant and upbeat, though I felt uncomfortable with all of the "Pink" paraphernalia surrounding Breast Cancer Awareness EVERYWHERE. Guess what colors the walls were? You got it...pink! The pictures? Of Susan G Komen walks, ribbons and survivors. Yes, I know what a mammogram is used for...breast cancer detection, but darn if I wasn't scared just from the appearance of the place!

When it was my turn for my mammogram, I was asked to remove my top garments and to change into a robe that tied in the front. I was then taken into a pink room with the "Dreaded Mammogram Machine of Death" (it's not really called that but that's all I could think of it) where the technician picked out a few plates to 'pancake' me with. She asked about the lump, the pain, and where it was located. She told me that she was planning to do a regular mammogram, meaning take films of both breasts, then focus on the sore right breast for a few more films.

When she finished with the films she had taken, she asked me to wait in the waiting area while the doctor took a look at them. She explained that this was common and that sometimes they need to redo the films if they did not develop correctly. That's fine. A few minutes later, she asked me to come back in and take a few more films, but this time they were on my left breast. I asked her if she was sure, since it was my RIGHT that was giving me the trouble, and unfortunately she said the doctor had seen something on the LEFT side instead of the right. I shrugged my shoulders and prepared for more teeth-clenching torture. Did I mention that a mammogram REALLY, REALLY hurts? Especially when they want to get a better look, which means a tighter boob squeeze...OUCH! And back out to the waiting area I went, nearly in tears over the pain.

Another half and hour later, the technician returned to the waiting area to say the doctor wanted to do an ultrasound and took me back to that office. The ultrasound technician 'gel-ed up' and scanned my right breast like crazy. She even had to ask me to point out the painful right lump since it was not showing up on the screen. She moved over to the left breast and sure enough, she found something there. As she paused the scanner to take some photos, I blurted out "That can't be right. Are you SURE you have the correct breast?" She said there was a mass that looked suspicious and she wanted to go get the doctor to look at it herself. There I lay, confused and annoyed waiting for the doctor. I was just sure they, um, well I wasn't sure what they thought they saw, but I didn't feel anything outright on my left side. And then I did. I felt a pea-sized thing in my left breast. Not a lump like the one I feel on the right side, but more like a pea sized rock.

I think the ultrasound technician was gone a total of five minutes when I made this discovery and panic set in. When the tech and the doctor returned, the doctor looked at the screen and said they had ordered copies of my last mammogram to compare the new films to. She explained that while they could not find a lump in my right breast, they did find what looked like a nodule in my left breast. Once they receive the previous mammogram reports/films to compare this to, she assured me, they would contact my own doctor and go from there. Did I mention today is Thursday, my previous mammogram was done at a different facility and that the weekend was just a day away? I do not anticipate hearing back from my own doctor before Tuesday with any results, so it's going to be a long weekend.

I cannot say I am scared that it's cancer. I beat cancer before, I've had other cancer scares, and if it's not a spider, I don't scare easily. I guess we'll see what the future holds for lumpy, bumpy booby me.

Upper Lower Class

I've usually considered my family (Paul and I) to be more middle class than anything. Not too poor to lack electric, telephone or standard cable service, but not wealthy enough to have all those bills paid up at one time. I am now starting to rethink my classification of our family.

As I sat the the local Social Services office waiting for an interview for my food stamp application recently, I looked around and found that most of us in there all looked about the same. Ok, maybe there was an exception or two, but mostly, we were all in the same boat; poor. I keep wondering just how I got in this boat and just who did I need to talk to, to get out of the boat before the darn thing goes down like the Titanic? I don't remember choosing this boat and I really don't want to stay in it. I could jump ship and swim, but out in the middle of nowhere I am clueless as to which way to swim toward. I used to be a very good swimmer, lifeguard even, but now I'm sure time has taken a toll on my abilities and I might sink. Arugh!

I think back to the times when we both worked or when one of worked while the other went to school. In some ways I romanticized it as our 'tough times' that someday we would look back on and laugh at all the ramen soup we ate and somehow survived. Those were the days when I dreamed of being older and wiser, living in a large home of our own with children and no financial worries. I imagined I'd be about 40 and all those dreams would be realities. I thought for sure all of this suffering and hard work would pay off toward the future. Paul would have a great job in the IT field and I would have a great career, raise a family and do charity work for good causes. It would be so perfect, except.

Paul had difficulties, I had difficulties and down went our financial house of cards. The IT market became swamped with more graduates than it had jobs for, a recession hit, and sometime in there I became too ill to continue working. I've sold nearly every shred of evidence that I ever had been more than upper lower class. Gone are the Gucci handbags, business suits, expensive shoes, and gold jewelry. At 41, I'm trying to figure out how much I can mange to arrange with the electric company to keep the juices flowing for another month. And sadly, I think we're more poor now financially, than we ever were before. Ramen soup is still a staple in our home unfortunately out of necessity rather than nostalgia.

It's been a month and a half that Paul has been unemployed. The pantry is getting thin and there is $40 left in our bank account. Rent, electric, gas, phone, water, and my health insurance premium are all due now. I have shut off notices for the telephone and electric bills hanging on my refrigerator door to remind me that payment must be made by Friday to avoid 'interruption of my service'. And as for my food stamp application, I have a strong feeling I'll be denied because somehow we make too much money. Or at least we did make too much money when I applied.

Sorry this is not one of those feel good posts, but I am trying to find the humor in my own suffering. I'm too rich to be poor and too poor to be rich. I just need to let that out.

On a final note: POVERTY SUCKS!