The first ever cassette tape I bought was Whitney Houston. I had to hide it from my mother behind some books on my bookshelf because you know…Satan…”worldly music”…religious Pentecostal things. I cried for a month when I discovered it gone and knew my mother found it. She didn’t say anything to me about it. And I certainly wasn’t going to ask her about it. I later discovered what happened to it in a journal entry she made when she left one of her many journals on a table. She burned it in the backyard burn pile. This was my childhood. Constantly paranoid that simply being me and liking what I liked would trigger some sort of hard to understand reaction. I shut down because of it sometime around early middle school. I was very talkative when I was young. Very outgoing. Then I discovered if I just shut up…and stopped being me…I got in trouble less. I became extremely shy. My voice got quieter. Uncertain about saying anything anymore to anyone.
I forgave my mother in my 30s. She was indoctrinated by a religion and not well so I mean of course in her mind she was protecting her child from Satan. I understand why she did what she did..even if it was messed up. She had a rough life. She naturally gravitated to a church who told her they would be her family. And she was loyal. She went full on into anything she did. She never did anything half ass. I understand that. I can relate to that. I find the good in who she was because there was a lot of good and it wasn’t her fault she was born with the brain she had. In those days there was no such thing as bipolar. She went years not being treated. I let go of feeling angry about my childhood. Mostly because I had to…to move forward.
You Had To Be There… 