Nachi's pointless rants and recollections

I know my mother must have been scared to death, I know my father must have been even more scared given his situation.

That's not what I mean of course, I mean, where they actually aware of the responsibility a baby meant? Maybe my father did somewhat since he already had one child and another on the way. Even though it was my step-mother raising his children, my father must have had some sort of advantage over my mother where parenting is concerned.

So that brings me back to her, my mother, not even 18 years old yet, harboring new life in her belly. I wonder if it ever occurred t her that every decision from the moment she found out I existed, would my life in ways nobody could have imagined.

I can't blame my mother for her bad decisions, not after becoming a parent myself of course.

We are thrown into this role so rapidly, no amount of reading and preparing will actually make you ready for every single problem that may arise during raising a child. It's just no possible. So I imagine her, young, beautiful, full of life, her future intact, now having to care for a baby, on her own too. She had my grand-parents of course and after the initial shock I'm sure they offered to help her out. But the question in my mind is, where is my father?

I grew up without him, he had his own life and I was raised by my mother who for the most part worked 24/7 it seems.

I know that she did what she thought best at the time. In order to give me everything she could and more, she worked non-stop, she traveled looking for better opportunities, she had me placed with different relatives each school year who knows why. My childhood was spent moving, one year I was with an aunt, the other I was with a cousin. Little by little, no matter how hard I tried to hold on to her, my mother was slipping away from me. I had my grand-parents though. They were my center, my rock, my sense of home. My grand-father died when I was six, my grand-mother died when I was 19.

I felt like an orphan for a while. I had my father and my step-mother and my brothers and my sister, but I never felt like I fit in completely. I know they loved me, but I felt like I was extension to their family mechanics.

I had my mother in Peru too, but she had her partner and two other daughters. They too had formed something I felt alien to. So who did I have left?

Nobody.

So this brings me back to the whole reason of this blog post, were my parents really aware of the damage they were causing? Were they really trying to give me a better future by bouncing me back and forth to better things? Would it have been better to just keep me in one place and enjoy my life as much as I could as a normal child?

I struggle with these issues a lot, almost most of the time I feel like I'm trapped, like I need to move to another place to feel free again.

I have insane trust issues, I have bitterness in my heart, for those who toyed with my life without stopping to think of how it would affect me. I wish with the strongest of devotions that I would have been given a chance to just live a normal, non-disruptive life as a child. To let me go to school in a familiar place, to come home to my grand-mother's food, to go to sleep in my bed where my grand-father built a closet that I claimed as a my secret hiding place.

Above all, I wish they would have understood that keeping me with the people I loved the most, was even more important than having "a better future."

I've learned from them though, I've learned from their mistakes. I've decided a long time ago that separating my child from me is only something I would consider as a last resort. Even then, I would have to be close to death for me to let him go. Because for me, family, unity, love, is more important than having more money, a better education, or a bigger place to live.

Again, I don't blame them, it can't be easy for my mother knowing that our relationship is flawed. That even though she gave birth to me, I will never see her as my mother, she's just a person I love dearly, but not my mother. It can't be easy for my father either, knowing I was his first daughter but was never there for me, that I grew up missing him first, hating him later, and forgiving him in the end. Still, in my heart, he is not my father.

I don't pity them either, they made their decisions and made their life the way they knew how. I on the other hand struggled and tried to survive. I fought against my own demons, betrayal, abandonment, sorrow, and depression. At six years old I already knew what all of these things meant, but nobody bothered to think twice about it. I was just a child who could never understand, but I was already broken. I've carried that with me until now, I cant' shake it off. I will always be broken, flawed, but I have hope.

Life has given me a chance to re-write everything. It has given me an opportunity to be happy, to love, to be loved in return. To have people who will not abandon me. I have the chance to tech this to my child and to my future children. Love is more important than anything.

When someone like me looks back at their life, they will not remember how much or little amount of food they had in the table, or how many different outfits they had to last them the week. They'll remember the people that loved them, the ones who cared for them when they were sick, the ones that comforted them at night when they had a nightmare.

They'll remember the love above everything else.