Sheri
Even after everything I’ve been through and the trust issues that accompany my childhood, I really do believe that people are generally well-meaning. They want to be there for their friends and family emotionally, but when there is a true rift between life experiences sometimes it’s hard for them to really grasp what another is feeling. This has been my experience. Until joining Take Root recently, I had never spoken to another person, other than my brother, who truly understood the ghosts that haunt me on a daily basis. Even the most well meaning of friends and family have always seemed to have the unasked (and oftentimes actually asked) questions of, “It’s over now. It’s been over for 20 years. Why can’t you get over it? Why does this still bother you?” What they don’t understand is what I had to give up just to be who I am and with the family I was supposed to be with. Essentially, I gave up childhood. At 10 years old I was told, “This is it. That part of your life is done. Move on to your new life now.” Kind of sounds like what a normal person does when they move from childhood to their adult life, right? So, basically that’s what I did. Don’t get me wrong. . . I still DID things kids were supposed to do, had fun, broke rules, drove my dad crazy, but that carefree childhood that everyone is entitled to was taken away from me and adult emotions were left in it’s place. I gave up an entire lineage. I adore my Dad and my family, but most people have TWO sides to their family. I have no mother. She’s dead to me, but still alive. My daughter will grow up without that grandmother just as I’ve grown up without a mother. To date I’ve still lost my younger half-brother (although I will never give up hope on that one). I have NO IDEA who my family even is on that side. I’ve never even met anyone on my mother’s side of the family. I can’t even completely fill out a medical record when I go to a new doctor when it asks for family history. I gave up MY history. I didn’t have a bad childhood with my abducting parent. Granted, I didn’t have an actual relationship with HER that I can really remember, but my relationship with my stepfather (or my “daddy”) was better than most little girls get with their real dads. I adored and despised my brothers alternately, just like any little girl is supposed to do. As an adult I see what my mother’s emotional abuse did to me and how it warped my perception of myself and others, but as a child . . . Quite honestly I just wasn’t THAT self aware. The point is, I thought we were happy. I thought I had a wonderful family. But now I can’t even look back at what really were happy times without being incredibly sad, because that time and that family and that little girl are gone. And because I know how much my Dad and that part of my family had to give up for me to have those times, which makes me feel guilty for even considering them happy times at all. And so I bury them. I bury them along with the Sheri that died in Canton, GA in November 1989. “Sheri, I’m not your father.” . . . Those are the words that killed her. This was after my Daddy drove down the road to get away from all the cop cars that were taking up our yard when we came home from dinner that night. Five words and one little...
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When I was three and a half years old, two men in black coats and hats lifted me up by the arms off the front lawn of our home. . .
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