I was laying on the floor in the library, looking up into the skylight, playing with the Gracie the cat… and in a flash the thought “I shouldn’t be here, this isn’t my life” hit me.
I’m not the only person here who grew up in hand-me-down clothes. I back to school shopped every year of elementary school at good-will (before ‘retro-shopping’ was cool) and started working as young as I could to augment school supplies and clothing so I didn’t stand out so much, I also helped with household expenses. We had little money, we got evicted routinely from our homes, I didn’t get to do many of the things my peers took for granted.
I DID have everything I needed, I was never homeless, there wasn’t a ton of food, but there was enough, but that was about it.
As a child I always had the expectation that the situation would remain the same into my adulthood and my children would be raised in a similar set of circumstances.
In fact, in the early years, it was.
I married early, had kids young… divorced for independence and started a life that was much harder than I thought it would be. The kids and I lived in low-income housing with a welfare check and food stamps… I worked occasionally but made far less over-all because of childcare costs and always ended back up where I started. It seemed hopeless for a long while.
I couldn’t afford a car, but the low-income apartments I lived in at the time was next to a community college and I discovered that financial aid paid better than welfare, so I went to nursing school… it was my only chance to get out and be able to be self sufficient.
Anyway tonight, I lay in my house and look around at all of the “wants” I have… and in that moment I was truly humbled. All of my needs are met, I have most of my ‘wants’, I have a husband who loves me and 5 children who have grown up to be amazing adults, each in their own way.
It would be easy to be boastful and say that it was a lot of hard work and determination (and it was).
But in that quiet moment I felt that I have so much more than I deserve. When I look at my life through the eyes of “my child self” it’s overwhelming, sometimes I think I’m living a life that is so much more than the life I was really meant to live.
Blog Project 365-09 #194
