Shattered Glass

I’ve been wanting to write and I just didn’t really know what to write about till I read this one imparticular thing and its not even related to stuff I’ve been going through…. well maybe a little it is.. It would be more for my past than anything. I’ve been reading this book called “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom if you haven’t read it I highly suggest it. It so interesting. Anyways there something I read that caught my eye in it. And I use to have this notebook that if something like this did that I wrote it down. But I can’t see to write on lines. But I just have to share it and share my thoughts on it.
“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack and few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
I find this to be very true. Though I don’t think it just stops at childhood. I believe it goes on. I think our entire lives are like glass and it isn’t just our parents who do the cracking either. It’s the world we live. Girls trying to be the perfect size, guys wanting to be the biggest guy on the team. The pressure starts when we are little. I know some people who have the smudges are very lucky. The cracks are safe. The people who have had their life shattered are some of the strongest people you will ever meet. My whole life seems to be in nothing but shards of glass every where. Starting with my home life, going through friends, guys, health and deaths. It seems once I start picking up the pieces and putting it back together something happens and shatters those pieces. So I try all over again. -
The one person in my life that shattered my life was my mom. She started the cracks before I was even 2. Many people know my history with my mom and some don’t. Some think we have a good relationhip but honestly it’s not that great. When I was little she gave me up to my dad because she was on drugs. Which is that best thing she could have done for me. From then on out she was in and out of my life. She lived in Columbia for a while and then moved back up here. Once again getting hooked back on drugs. Growing up I wasn’t a dumb child when it came to that stuff. They would talk about it around me thinking I wouldn’t figure it out or smoke it in another part of the house and tell me it was somethiung else. Like I said I wasn’t stupid. I even went looking for it one day. And if she had had a phone I would of call the cops. I don’t remember how I was when she finally admitted to me about smoking weed but I do remember her words to me. “One day you will come to me asking me for a dime bag cause you are getting more and more like me every day and I smoke a joint every day,” from that day forward I promised I wo uld never touch anything like that.
My mom was prone to disappearing all the time and stealing from my grandparents. Somewhere around my 9^th grade year she took a friend and I to a crack house. We both felt so uneasy and knew something was wrong with that place. And come to find out later she had taken me to another one before too. Well one day she had taken off in my grandma’s car. We went looking for her, basically went straight to her. I’ll never forget her appearance. She came out looking all wired up in a white shirt with black smudges all over it where she had been smoking all night. The next day she showed up wanting to talk and I wouldn’t speak to her. I didn’t want to. She wanted to get help. Eventually I did talk to her and she went into the hospital and ended up in Patrick B. Harris for 12 weeks I believe.
She eventually got out of there and moved back to Columbia where she was doing so well at least I thought she was. The next year my grandpa died from cancer. On the day the passed, she dropped me off at school and said she would be back to pick me up when school was over.(which at the time he had not passed yet). She never returned to pick me up. I never saw her till the next day. She did call and came up with the story of being carjacked and raped and had to drive the person to Charleston and no one believed her. We knew what she had done. After that it was just crazy. Anyways I’m trying not to make this too incredibly long. In the end (which I’m not saying it is all her fault other things played in there too) I tried to overdose on pills. There were multiple factors in there. But my dad and I went through family therapy and she came to ONE session. She was in jail when I graduated because of back child support and that August we got in this argument, where everything was finally let out. It escaladed to the point of where she had me back against the stove and her hand raised threatening me. I remember pushing her. The cops where called and I was so scared because I was 18 and I technically put my hands on her first I was going to jail. Chuck Wright, before he was sheriff told her the threat was more than enough.
She clean now or so I think. And we do have a relationhip. But not the typical mother/daughter relationhip. If I need to talk or need something it’s my dad, my grandma or even Rosemary (Charlie’s mom) that I go to first. That glass of hers was shattered a long time ago and it will never be put back together fully and even it was there will always be chips in it and one wrong move the whole thing can crumble. She says she knows and she regrets what she did and she will take what I give her. But she tries. I guess I can’t blame her. To me she tries too much and tries to make her out to this person that does all this stuff for me or cares but she may now but where was she when I needed her. I’m 27 I needed her growing up. But I am thankful for the people I do have. I’m so glad I had a dad like I did and people llike Rosemary who are willing to be my “other” mom when I need it.