Though the Road Be Long and Weary, It is But GOOD

Someone reached out to me today whom I have not spoken to in nearly 20 years. It feels very weird to say that. As if incomprehensible that in my days of living, I could have somehow amassed a time-span to fill two decades, and here we are. I have and it is. 

This got me reflecting as one often will do. Looking at the path my road had taken since ours had separated ways after high school, how very different and unpredictable things have been from whence they came. I am sure the picture people saw of me at school, was far far different than anyone could have imagined things to be at home. How could they know that I grew up in what I would later understand was a flop house? How could they know that my parents were addicts who also sold drugs. How could they know of things like raids and home visits from Child Protective Services?? Those were not things you would see if you looked at me. 

I was an honor roll student. I was shy and quiet. I preferred books over my peers and often would block out all social goings-on with a best friend in paperback. My escape, my altered reality, my preferred dimension. 

It seems weird to me that there was so much that people did not know of me, yet how could they? It is not as if I let them. It is not as if I could if I wanted to. You don't exactly broadcast to all of your peers that there were illegal happenings going on at home, or that you were disciplined with a 2x4 until you fell to your knees. These were things that your peers, mere children, would never understand. And the risk of outing the truth was far greater than enduring the things that you knew to be not quite right at home. 

It's not as if D.A.R.E. classes did not educate me that my parents were 'criminals'. I knew I did not want to grow up to be like them...and yet... somehow at age 18, all of those things became a rite of passage. I didn't repel attachment to my parents. I grew up as a child starved for it and so, when they offered some attention, I consumed every morsel that I was doled. (Even if it meant that I was rolling it up in some papers and allowing them the honored first hit). 

It did not take long for me to form my own connections and find different strains of pot and things to bring to the table and school my parents  in their own trade. Providing offerings of different names watching them explore through smell and taste tests, made me feel like I had made it in this world. 

How far I had fallen from the woman I had always wanted to be, with so far to fall further. I remained lost in this world for quite some time before I found myself again. A path like that can derail you for a while. 

SO naturally, when revisiting the times with someone who has virtually been a stranger to me over the past couple decades, I gloss over all of these things and communicate my niceties making small talk. You can't just dive in with things like these. What's happened with me these past 20 years? Well, wouldn't you like to know?!? Buckle up buddy, the ride gets wild! 

I present a watered down version of things that feels so inauthentic it reminds me of online dating. Short of meeting me in real life, growing to know my heart, I don't know that anyone could fully understand all that is encompassed in my sharing the twists and turns of the last 20 years. 

Kind of you to think of me, I hope that time has treated you well. But oh, how I long for real conversations of meaning where I can show my true self, free of judgment, where I am seen and can be appreciated for what I offer in human value, instead of my assets, wealth, or property. I am a woman of little and meager means, but I am worth so very, very much more.