Freedom

The morning dew was shimmering.
I walked with a new step through a soundless thrill.
Would I? Yes, with boundless joy.

“How many years must some people exist before they’re allowed to be free.”
That was me, but now I’m free. From a time when I first remember, I was plagued with guilt and shame. It came about because of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder I was suffering from.

The children still loved their father. Paul was very demonstrative of that, besides being conflicted. I am very sad about the whole thing.
One of the reasons I feel so much guilt is because people in my life try so hard to make me feel guilty. It’s a mystery as to why they do it to me.
Not only was I mentally ill like my grandmother, I was alcoholic like my father. The illness started at age 18. The alcohol started at age 19 when I came out of the long term facility.
I asked my mother, “What shall I do now?” and reached into her kitchen cabinet for the gin and made a gin and tonic like my mother always did in secret. She didn’t stop me or say anything, but later on she told her friends in front of me that I drink like a fish. They were looking at each other in askance. My mother used to be catty. I should have said , “Don’t be so catty mother, it doesn’t become you.” Ian would have been indignant yelling, “Disrespecting my wife, I can be bloody annoyed.” Instead I would yell some other time at her for never telling the truth. My behavior was always outrageous.

When I left home at the end of Susan’s pregnancy. I had been totally shut out. I left all my belongings. My mother didn’t keep them for me but doled them out to my sisters. I don’t understand why she totally rejected me at age 16. I remember the silent hurt. Later on I must have decided I would reject her, which was an afterthought. Was it only my anger at her when I was sent away to boarding school? She never knew I was being bullied-humiliated. She never tried to understand. While I was in boarding school, she took everything away from me. First of all, she deliberately sent me to a boarding school I did not like. I had wanted to go to another one that taught modern dance which I had become proficient in. She even said too late that I could apply again.
She took over my ceramics and even asked my teacher for her glaze secrets. She proclaimed that I had no talent so that she could paint without any competition. I had to pursue all my ambition in secret.

I became free of her but she took over my son. indeed my whole family did.