A lost childhood

"I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

― Jonathan Safran Foer

Nailed it!

Going through my sad phase now, channeling Lois.  Or maybe Dorothy.  Mom's mom.  The one who raised me with so many quirks and old time moralities that I am an anachronism in my own life.   She who lost the love of her life and had a very drunk daughter.  She of the Taylor clan, a large conglomeration of sisters and brothers who came to our house each Friday night for a Sabbath dinner and laughed and played cards while my mother slept it off and I, like a house cat, ran in and out of their legs seeking a kind hand or word.  I wanted to be part of that family and not the mom and dad I was born to.  I often wished I was an orphan.  Or that I had lost my whole family and was being raised by a kindly old spinster who would love me unconditionally.  Dorothy came close to that unconditional love, but, like my parents, would withhold affection if I misbehaved (there must be a thousand better ways to discipline a child).  So I rarely misbehaved.  I was still a problem, chronically unhappy as a child, always wanting to be held, but not by my mother who reeked of bourbon.  And if I "misbehaved", as all children do, my behavior was held against me and not used as a teachable moment.  I was so afraid of having my actions misunderstood that I learned to feel less and less each day.  I was the perfect yet fuxed up child, afraid of love, afraid of people, afraid of happiness, as that could always be taken away in a fit of misunderstanding.  I joke now that I am that "good person" my family wanted me to be, because I got hit if I wasn't good.  That is not too far from the truth.  Maybe not hit physically, but emotionally and in much more harmful ways.

Okay.  Still apparently channeling Lois (Leah being her Hebrew name and the one she was buried with).  I am now trying to create (what has yet to be created), which is a life for myself before the time runs out.  Will the new house by my ultimate happy place?  Stay tuned.