A funny thing happens when you sit down to write the story of your life up \u2019til now, you actually have to think about your life up \u2019til now.\u00a0 You have to examine your own bad behavior, stare it square in the eye ball, and that of the people who impacted your life for the good and the bad.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing what happens when you add in the perspective of 20-something years, you gain a bit of insight.<\/p>\n
The villains don\u2019t look so villain-y (is that a word?) any longer.\u00a0 They look like women whose lives I never knew or understood.\u00a0 My mean and bossy aunt who swooped into my life in a time of turmoil, reproached me for being emotional, and demanded maturity and work from a spoiled 14 year old (I hated <\/i>her), I now realize was just the no-nonsense mother of a passel of boys.\u00a0 Her life of farming, rodeo and football didn\u2019t prepare her for the emotional neediness of a frightened teenage girl.\u00a0 Her life philosophy of \u201csuck it up and move on\u201d is one I now can relate to so well.\u00a0 It makes me a little sorry that I spent all that time being offended and not even a little bit learning her tenacity.<\/p>\n
The grandmother I thought had abandoned me, who advised me to drop out of school and \u201cjust take care of my men\u201d was not evil, she was speaking from her own life.\u00a0 She had stopped school halfway through the 3rd grade to work in the cotton fields because her family needed the additional income, it did not seem unreasonable to her for a girl-child to stop school in the 9th to keep house.\u00a0 What did a diploma mean to someone who was just going to get married and have babies?\u00a0 (No way!\u00a0 I was going to be an Egyptologist.)<\/p>\n
Then there was the hero.\u00a0 I\u2019ll admit to taking her actions for granted at the time, of course there would be someone to save me;\u00a0 I just never expected that she would be the one to do it.\u00a0 Glamorous and fun, never married and with no children of her own, I was a bit in awe of my father\u2019s sister.\u00a0 When we saw her on holidays and birthdays, she would swoop into our house of sensible brown as a splash of vibrant color accented with sparkling laughter.\u00a0 Her presents were easy to spot on Christmas morning, covered in bows and glitter and done up with fantastic papers, they were a child\u2019s fantasy of how presents should always be. <\/p>\n
When my life was at its bleakest, its scariest and most desperate, she took me in.\u00a0 At the time, I never thought of the sacrifice it must have been.\u00a0 She cleaned out her guest room and made space in her life for an angry, nasty 15 year old me.\u00a0 Her friends must have advised her against it, and it must have been terribly hard, but she never showed it to me.\u00a0 Instead, she taught me all she knew about life.\u00a0 Important lessons about jewelry (big), hair (it\u2019s Texas, baby, tease it a bit higher there), stopping the mad rush of life for a mental health day, cheese dip makes a decent breakfast, walls should be a color<\/i>, houses should be decorated deliberately not just happenstance, life should be fun, family should be fun, friends should be loyal and fun, and people should laugh.\u00a0 I had forgotten how to laugh.\u00a0 She reminded what it was to be a girl.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s funny what 20 years perspective will do for you.\u00a0 It smooths out the ruffled feathers which were a might bit too ruffled in the first place, and shines light on the quiet heroics that I wasn\u2019t mature enough to fully comprehend.\u00a0 My only regret is that I didn\u2019t have 20 years worth of hindsight 20 years ago.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A funny thing happens when you sit down to write the story of your life up \u2019til now, you actually have to think about your life up \u2019til now.\u00a0 You have to examine your own bad behavior, stare it square in the eye ball, and that of the people who impacted your life for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n