Here I Am

I've had other blogs before, one I even kept regularly for about 2 years. A lot of my writing was fueled by frustration or anxiety or dissatisfaction. Then, I got married, and within a year was able to go back to school full time. A lot of the unhappiness was associated with my actual job, and more of it with the fact that I was in a place I didn't want to be forever, but didn't see a way out. There was also a ton of stuff from my past. My parents did foster care, specifically for children with mental or physical challenges from the time I was 4 until I was 9. Ironically, most people think that this is the traumatic part, but it wasn't. Those years contained some of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. And some of the most wonderful and difficult. It's not something I would change for the anything. When I was 9, my whole world changed abruptly. My grandfather committed suicide, my foster-sister Shannon died, we stopped fostering, we moved in with my dad's best friend, Larry, I hit puberty, and had to change schools for the first time. Living with Larry was supposed to be short-term, but it wasn't. There were control issues from the beginning; everything had to be just so to please him, but... I guess we all kind of went along with it because it, hey, it is his house, after all. There was what I can now identify as verbal abuse almost from the start, and definite psychological warfare. I'm sure I'll detail it at some point. We (all) moved to a new place, out in the country where our nearest neighbor was 1/4 mile away, when I was 14. And that Christmas is when the sexual abuse started. I was never raped, but an awful lot of things happened that never should have. I escaped to college when I graduated, and found, strangely, that I was more depressed than I'd ever been. I had (many) moments where I thought it would be easier if I were simply dead, but I never had a plan. Between self-destructive impulses and the death of a friend, I failed every class my second semester at college. So I escaped to California "for the summer", theoretically to earn tuition money so I could go back to school. I ended up meeting the man who is now my husband, meeting God, falling in love with both, and deciding to move out here. I told my family out here what had happened, and many things that hadn't--so that what I told them sounded as horrible as I felt. It blew up, went back to my parents and Larry who denied that anything inappropriate had happened. There is far more to that than I feel like getting into at the moment. There were many bumps along the way, and I blogged through a lot of that. But then we got most things straightened out. I got married, and went back to school full time. I wasn't so anxious, unhappy, or frustrated. I didn't feel the need to have an outlet, and I just sort of stopped. Now, though, it's not that I'm anxious, or unhappy, or frustrated, but simply that I liked the clarity of thought blogging gave me. So, here I am, sorting through my emotions about... life.