It wasn't until later in life that I came to understand that not all of those around me will accept and appreciate the things of my heart. I learned over time that if someone can't appreciate me as I am then I shouldn't worry about them. But by then I had been scarred very deeply.

Somewhere in my childhood, I went from desperately craving acceptance to closing my self off from others. This was done in a variety of ways. First, I withdrew into a world where art, letters, nature and fantasy became a fortress which enclosed my soul. Later, in adulthood, I learned to chose to have relationships with people who could not be intimate, sabotage a relationship that scared me, and walled myself off with several clothing sizes worth of body fat. Only if you could see the real me in my art, live through my emotional hurdles and accept my body as it was were you worthy to approach my soul. Emotional intimacy was a gift given to very few, and those who tried and were denied walked away confused and frustrated. It was, in it's infancy, not a conscious decision, though it gradually became one.

While my emotional and spiritual self was protectively corralled, my mind naturally ran free and I never attempted to put a leash on it. I read voraciously. I could never read enough to fill the intellectual vortex inside my head, and my mind waded through every emotion, fact or ideal presented to it through educational media of any sort. I could become easily entangled in different ideas, questions or philosophies. Poetry moved me. I was frequently lost to reality at the hands of a novel. The workings of the human soul, the great questions, the great plots and great ideas were the stuff of life to me. Inside both my head and my heart there was not enough room for all of this once it was digested. I consumed volumes and felt compelled to create just as much. Endless sketches and writings flowed out of the deep recesses of my person. I had to, if i didn't...I was sure that I would explode or die. By the time I was 20 I was the proverbial tortured artist soul headed headlong into mental suicide.

My life has not been easy, it has been one of great pain and one of continual loss. It�s marked by rejection and isolation in every period of my existence and the struggle to preserve my dignity and personal worth caused me to be what I am today. I have cried a lot, I have stood on the edge of suicide and walked away from it, I have looked the demon of sexual abuse and assault in the face, I have been kicked around emotionally and physically and I have watched how alcohol and mental weakness nearly tore apart my family as a child. I buried a child and miscarried another. I watched as my husband chose another over the family he had. I have had to file bankruptcy, I have gone for almost two years without a steady job. I have wondered where meals would come from and worn shoes with holes in the soles.

I could mourn these events and in their own time I did. I could allow myself to feel hated and unappreciated, as I have done back in time. But in the end, if God does not allow it to kill you, He takes it and makes you strong with it. That is what he has done with me. I hope that my experiences help someone else make sense of their own.

You can click on the links below to learn what lies I learned due to my experiences and then the truths which eventually were revealed. Or you can simply see how I have changed by clicking on the last link.

Injuries
Betrayals
Loss
The Stand-Alone

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