Shortly after I turned 50 the ground beneath my feet was torn away. Like an explosion that left me shell-shocked. The gravity shifted and time warped because I was suddenly 9 years old again. The lost little girl trying to convince everyone around her that life was good, everything was okay. The child frozen in time, not engaged in reality, not speaking, not sleeping, not eating, just stuck.
I lived in fear of my husband making sure everything was perfect for decades. It was never enough. I would clean the entire house and he would point out the one thing I missed rather than the rest of the spotless house. He exasperated my childhood trauma by continuing abuse verbally and emotionally. Every time in my life I wanted to converse, embrace social events comfortably, intelligently, I got knocked down. Later in life the song “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba became my mantra, “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you are never gonna keep me down.” My slogan was, “Life’s a Bitch then you die,“ which was soon replaced with a more upbeat mantra: “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” I read the book, “Still Life with Woodpecker,” by Tom Robbins and it was the last line in the book. A review about the book includes “… more than anything else, it is about CHOICE. About using it, about the freedom it offers, and about being willing to accept the consequences for exerting it.“ Another wrote, “I swear that in reading that book, I could pick myself up, dust myself off, and start over again.” The irony stings because I meant the happy childhood part literally and totally missed the CHOICE message. I didn’t grow up until I turned 50; my childhood was stolen from me and I never had the opportunity to fix it.
I changed my mantra again: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” That didn’t stick either. I gave up on slogans because I never listened to their significance or practiced what I preached. It wasn’t real.