What if I told you that every day, I lost my sense of security in the world that I knew. The family I knew was crumbling and I just lost to the house? Right? I don’t think people wanted to remember. I could be haunting them. Me, Dianne, our Mom.

Dianne would never see anything beyond being twenty two years old. She would never make a lot of firsts for herself. While many were out of the way, life can be long.

Our Mom saw my age, she just couldn’t participate in it. She was a body and mind trapped. She couldn’t escape. And I wanted to rescue her. I felt like I had failed my mom. I couldn’t help her.  I would hope my Mom would be proud of me now. It’s taken a lot of survival. And not the kind that’s shown on television.

A deeper, more brutal, more internal toxicity. Bourne a dynamic that I couldn’t and would never fit into. Conforming was not me. Well, cabbage patch kids, sugar, new kids on the block… But in many of the other ways, I didn’t want to fit into the mold set before me for generations. I wanted to be myself. I could be brutally honest, but understood. I would understand my tone being, non combative… Sensitive… Open dialogue. This is part of who I am. I’m thinking of a way to put this.

Imagine this. The image is this.

You see on page, a woman running behind a vehicle.  Woman is tethered behind the vehicle. Woman running, tether, vehicle in motion carrying a sign atop the roof Arrow pointing towards tethered woman running. Sign says, I suck.

The tethered person running is me. I’m trying to adapt in a world I had no idea how to be. If they’re not us, they’re different, lack of diversity, isolated, very little external exposure except our own bubble. I failed in education on my own. I know that. I was also not aided in helping me. Talk to me. Spend time with me.

I may as well have been in solitary confinement. I didn’t have actual legal confinement. Nothing so awful. I had a nice room with basic accommodations. That’s all I needed. Really. I wasn’t particularly extravagant. Nor was our family. I even loved/hated the carpet squares. They didn’t match. It was a mishmash of colors. It was funky. It also made our house different. I guess I could see things, differently. I just didn’t fit. The expected temperament for near impossible mental conditions. A therapy session scheduled way too late in adolescence to do a thing. Otherwise, no one asked me how I was doing and actually wanted to know. Or they knew, but were hoping for an easy exit.

It’s why it’s taken me 29 years to see myself as anything other than a burden. Why I isolate myself. I’ve seen the harsh reality of exclusion. Whether or not it was properly intended. I feel like some of my feelings were just that. I didn’t understand my family. I didn’t have that opportunity or mental bandwidth to retain the information. I was just mentally overwhelmed. I saw my mother every day not being able to be my active mother. Not that she chose this and not that my father intended anything like this. No matter what, just put lipstick on. It’ll be fine.