Milk Carton

Have You Seen Me?

Some days I feel like my picture should be on the back of the preverbal milk carton with the words  in big black letters “Have You Seen Me?”

Not the me as I am now, but the me that could have been and in some ways should have been. The me before the demoralizing verbal attacks from my father, before the car accident and the me before the string of men who never really loved me but readily took what was freely given and the self destructive behavior sought in the comfort of cutting men and narcotics.

Me, the child in pig tails, scraped knees, the tomboy who knew nothing about the world and its eagerness to chew up your innocence and spit it out in front of you. The child who thought that her parents would live forever and that death had only 1 meaning, and not the million little deaths that happen every day and that sometimes death means you still go on living.

The awkward and painfully shy tween who was never part of the cool kid club but always wanting so much to be included even if being included was at her own expense. Attention , positive or negative it didn’t matter, was doled out by kids with no concept of life better than her own and instinctively knowing that she would accept anything they did or said (intentional or not) because of her need to belong.

Now the late blooming pretty teen who finally found acceptance with a small group of, in their own way, outcasts like herself. The tiny teenager who couldn’t believe these people were really her friends and she had finally been accepted with no price other than her friendship. Watch as she wakes up one day to have that cozy comfort that her friends provided, ripped away by alcohol bad decision making and a man with a car.

A few yrs later the child bride at age 17 who married a man who was equal if not more so verbally abusive as her father, knowing that she didn’t love him but felt god had done his best to point out that she deserved nothing better that’s why he had taken so much from her so that she didn’t forget her place.

Flash forward to the divorced woman at age 19 who had accepted her place in the world and that was to seek comfort in any one who was willing to provide it be it temporary and fleeting to anything that would help her forget the mental and physical pain she felt.   The woman on the outside who appeared a successful college grad, but on the inside a girl who couldn’t ever quite get her shit together and who had learned to master the art of isolation and how to emotionally shut down if someone was getting to close emotionally and could hurt her. Again and seeking that longed for comfort and acceptance in so many self destructive ways sometimes being her own worst enemy.

Watch as she drifts through nights of nameless men, alcohol and narcotics and the feelings of shame and worthlessness that the light of day never failed to bring and the long dark nights that she would never share with anyone, not even herself.

Slipping into today to the woman that she is. One who has finally learned that there is a small acceptable risk in letting a man and a very small list of people close to her and learning to trust again, something that she knew so easily as a child but rejected over the course of her life, and just when she lets her guard down just the tinniest bit, God or whatever the case maybe pops up again as if to say:

“Hey there, remember me?  Seems to me you have forgotten the lesson I thought you had learned, you know the one about knowing your place? So looks like I’m going to have to give you a crash course, and yes there will be a test so take notes”
It goes on to tell her “I took your childhood and replaced it with a barrage of verbal abuse, I took your friends, your grandmother, who I know was sometimes closer to you than your mother, and now since you and your father have started to rebuild the burnt bridges, I’m going to take him from you as well just so you don’t forget again”.

So in a never ending maze of innocence, acceptance and loss I return to the Milk carton and ask once again “Have You Seen Me?” Because if you have could you please return me so maybe I could still be the person I maybe could have been