Hump Day...

It's Wednesday following Labor Day. One would think that hump day would provide a sense of "whew" almost the weekend but it doesn't, not in my mind anyway. It is torture working here at InHel when there is nothing to do and I do mean nothing...what a waste of my time and their money. Oh, I need to work, and I continue to seek out other opportunities, so I am putting in my hours and getting poorly paid to do things like read fiction, read my personal email, create a blog site and now post to it! Great work if you can find it....however, I would prefer to fill my days doing meaningful work that relieves suffering or hardship for others.

What's been on my mind lately is my biological age. I remember as a young girl how much I wanted to 'grow up' aka - get to 16, 18 or even 21! Markers for sure, although the markers were only part of that transition. When I turned 16 I thought it would mean I could then 'date'. However, by the time I did turn 16 I was overweight, wore thick glasses and had the hair of someone who had juststuck their fingers into a electric outlet...oh, yeah attrative - NOT! So dating became the illusion that it always had been, saved for the prettier, smarter, funnier girls that attended my school. I hated being 16...hell, I hated being me most of my teen years. (The whys of all that is another story - which I will save for another time)

18 meant freedom...or so I thought. I wasn't earning enough to actually move away and college wasn't in my future at that time, but once I started working for the plane factory (Boeing) I moved out and away from the crazy people. I also got married within months of that move....dumb, dumb, dumb - but you couldn't have told me that then!

21 just meant I could drink openly and legally...something I had been doing for years at that point, along with the recreational drugs I was using, 21 just made some of it easier to acquire. Nevermind that I preferred to share whatever 'you' had...I was so self centered and consumed with whatever was going on at the time.

It wasn't until i was 30 that i realized I was really a mess. I had lost years in there...early childhood trauma. Recently my therapist noted that I was probably a victim of PTST - post traumatic stress - that certainly explains the lost years. More on this subject another day.

I had a writing class last winter where the professor kept telling me I had so much life to write about..."years of experience" to put down. If that's true why is it so difficult for me to do? I feel inside, waiting for me to throw up the words so they will magically fall into the right pattern, the perfect pattern which is also known as a book. Maybe short stories to start, definitely not the poetic type - it's in there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for what-I-have-not-a-clue.
But I digress....

Now that I am in my mid-fifties and the mirror continues to trump me with that information each day, I look, and I look at the woman looking back and sometimes I see the most beautiful face and wonder where oh where was she for so long. Today I know that I am smart, damn smart - a feat that I accomplished during the last four years of my life. Starting college and making the National Honor Society, both Dean & Presidents Lists at PCC and PSU only stregthened my self-confidence and my self-esteem. It's comforting to know that my parents were wrong....I am smart, strong and beautiful and I did it all by myself.