Who Am I? : the early years

This is a question that everyone asks themselves at one point or another and often. The question should be a simple one to answer and yet, is not. Who am I? I am “Me”. I am a unique individual and there is no one just like me anywhere else in this world. That is the simple answer. Yet, defining what is “me” is not so easy. So much of “who we are” is shaped by the environment; the people we interact with; and the events that have taken place. We are constantly shifting in our environment. We grow and learn from out mistakes. We will push ourselves to be the person we believe we should be. Sometimes we change without really wanting to, shaped by events that we wish would change or shaped events that did not happen. Everything that surrounds us impacts us in some way whether we realize it or not.

Back to the question at hand: Who am I?

I am the product of all the experiences, people and places that I have encountered since the day that I was born. I am also the product of every emotion I have felt, every action I have done, and every word I have spoken. So what does this amount? Well, truth be told, I am not sure. The simple response is that it has at this moment of time amounted to the words you are now reading. It has also amounted to the other words on this blog, yet as I said, we are in a constant state of growth or change.

A word on growth: Some of our growth is good and healthy. This makes us stronger. Some of the growth is not so good and really not so healthy. In a sense atrophy grows instead of is pushed back. Either way, something inside of us growing whether it is positive or not.

Who am I?

Well, I suppose I shall start at the beginning. Fast Forward using the scroll bars, but that would basically defeat the purpose of this post, now wouldn’t?

I was born in Livingston, NJ and spent my early months living off the beach in Bayonne, NJ back in Dec of 1982. For my parents this was their second shot at marriage. They had both been divorced once before. My father had just been divorced around the time he met my mother. I believe about ten or eleven months after they met I was born. So, essentially, they made short work of things. At the time of my birth, my parents were not married. At this juncture at time the reasons for this are not important. However, it is something that has affected and will continually affect my life.

See, since my parents were not married and due some of those reasons that I am not sharing, my father’s name does not appear on my birth certificate. I was given my mother’s maiden name. Sounds like no big deal, right? Well, it sort of is. I didn’t know that the name that I had been using on my documents all through school and such was not my legal name filed before the government until I was asking to get my permit to drive. This was months before my 16th birthday. At the time I wanted very much to drive, but I was not allowed to get my permit until my mother could take me to get my name legal changed to my fathers, however, she refused to take me. It also has created issues with official paperwork because I have to remember that I had to legal change my name at 19 in order to actually get my permit.

Bad me, I have jumped ahead in time. I basically spent my early years bouncing around the state of NJ and NY because my parents were in the military. My mother left her military position before my one sister was born in 1985. During that time my two older half-brothers lived with us. They are both at least 10 years my senior. The elder of the two ditched our family to live with his mother. Thus, I have not seen or heard from him since before I was 4. I have a few scattered memories of him.

When I was 5, my family moved out of NJ to PA. I spent the next 14 years living in one place. For a child who had gotten used to moving around a lot it was a bit bothersome staying in one location. Since we never lived in one place long enough, I was never put into a preschool program or a playgroup. I only had my two older half-brothers and my little sister for company beyond my parents and my mom’s parents. There were no other people in my world until I went school.

I was a good child. I sat and played in a corner by myself. I could stay for hours. I was never a child who needed to be entertained. Not only could I entertain myself, but by the time I was three I could tell vivid stories with logical progression from my imagination. I have always been a writer and storyteller. I did not really see a child my own age until I entered Kindergarten. I could already read and write my letters and bunch of the things taught in that era of schooling before entering Kindergarten. I did not know how to interact socially with children my own age.

In a sense this has been something I have struggled with all my life. Because I only ever had people in those early years that were way older than me or younger than my one sister, I never interacted or experimented with peers until after my peers were well beyond me in this facet. Also, it sort of didn’t help that I already knew a great deal of stuff that was taught in Kindergarten, so that made fitting in that much more difficult.

Now you are probably saying: what does this have to do with anything? It has a great deal to do. It is the rocky foundation that has tinted my whole life. Those early years are the ones that tend to shape our personalities and will dictate much of our second nature responses as we grow up and later in life.

In truth, I can chronicle everything that has happened to me growing, but that would not get us any closer to defining who I am. So, I am going to fast-forward for you and give you the end results.

I was a good student with amazing potential that was never supported. A grade lower than a B would get me in trouble. Heck, even a B would get me in trouble. There was not room for failure or mistakes. I was not pushed academically to succeed beyond the minimum. I generally wanted good grades, but I was never rewarded for them. I just liked them. I liked to be able to say that I was, actually, still am a good, well-rounded student.

My spelling sucks. Frankly, so does my vocab. I was just never pushed in these fields, which is surprising given my writing skill. My mother was jealous of my ability. She had a dream of being a writer, but never pursued it or was just not good enough. For as much as she encouraged me or I thought she was in encouraged me, she held me back. Now, I struggle to learn something I should have learned when it would have been much, much easier.

I have always been a writer. There is not a time that I can think of that I haven’t had a story or a poem brewing in my head. I used to write songs too. I was also a storyteller for as long as I could talk. I entertained my mother and everyone else shopping with stories complete with plot from my imagination. People thought my mother was crazy because the details were so vivid.

I have crafty side. If it means creating something from a pile of stuff, well, I am almost always game. I have sort of learned to knit. I can paint. I can sew. There is also embroidery, counted cross-stitch, jewelry making, stamping, scrap booking, origami, and a bunch of other things I can do with paper, string, fabric, paint, beads and so forth.

I was a creative child. I was also an active child. I could essentially keep up with the boys. I could run and out ride on my bike many of those in the neighborhood. I had no qualms about getting dirty, tackling or playing sports. My clothes always had grass stains and mud marks. I was skinny kid.

I suppose you are all wondering what happen. MEH!

My world shattered when I was 12 and I was forever changed. That is what happened.

In general, I was a happy child. I could easily entertain myself. Socially, I could not get along with girls. I was a tomboy through and through. Frankly, I enjoyed running around and playing with the guys outside instead of being inside with the girls playing with dolls. At home, I was a girly girl. I played with my dolls, Barbies and my little ponies. My mother sent me to school until third grade in dresses except on gym days. She complained about the holes in my stockings, but I always shrugged that off for the most part. I was taught a ton of arts and crafts, which was my mother’s hobby. I started helping at the library and was apart of a storytelling group. I became one of the younger volunteers to work at the library. Again this is something I did because it was one of my mother’s interests.

There were good things. There were bad things. Bad things like my grandmother dying when I was seven. I was taught my numbers and basic math through card games. At five, I beat my mother and my grandmother. There was no cheating involved. It was another gift that was overlooked and frankly, suppressed by my mother.

My happy little world or I should stay what I thought was a happy, stable world ended abruptly at the age of 12. The events that happened that year changed me drastically and irreversibly. It wasn't until more recently that upon looking back, that what looked to be stable and ahppy was far from it. What I thought was normal, well, it was not the norm. However, this is a discussion for another time.

Fallen Angel