Growing Up

I grew up in a small town called Coronado, in California.  It was an island in which a man made peninsula connected it with Imperial Beach.  It was a quiet small town, that was was a big Navy town.  The people who lived on the Island had money since a lot of the houses were over a million dollars.  It is where surfers met the beautiful town with great ocean waves.  In the town we are most famous for the Hotel Del.  A picturesque hotel which I swear the Grand Floridian Hotel at Disney World is an exact copy cat.  It was also in several films like Some Like It Hot, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and 10 other movies.  At a young age, my friends would pretend we stayed there.  To this day, I do really want to stay there, maybe one of these days.


As I describe my growing up, I am not blaming my parents for any issues. I feel very blessed to go through the issues that I had to grow through because it brings me to who I am today.  But I did grow up in a dysfunctional family.  I am the youngest of three, my sister is 10 years older than me and my brother is 8 years older.  My dad was an alcoholic which I like to believe came about from doing tours in the Vietnam war, but maybe he was just that way before.  He was EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal), which means he got rid of bombs which also means he knew how to make them.  In that job, you also trained with the SEALs.  The Navy SEALs is their Sea, Air, and Land Forces.  They are an elite group, which many of you have heard about it.  I was able at one time to catch a glimpse of what it was like during the war, just think about always looking over your shoulder 24 hours a day.  Always on edge knowing that you could be killed at any time.  We are lucky, most of us will never encounter that type of stress in our lives.  Then the countless lives you would have to take as soldier.  I just can't imaging living through something like that and not wanting to drink.

I hated my Dad for many years for leaving us when I was age 5 when I didn't know better.  That was probably the hardest thing that he could of done.  Also very hard for my Mom to give him an ultimatum to leave.  Then my mom was left raising 3 kids on her own on a nurses' salary.  My Dad did pay child support but still didn't feel like enough.  Maybe it was because my Mom wanted to protect us in the small town of Coronado, that we all lived there until I was 15.  I loved living there at times and other times, it held a lot of painful memories.  There were a lot of fights with everyone, I have to admit it but I was not an easy child.  I was so confused, growing up in a place I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I would never realize how poor we were at times until my adulthood.  I never felt that we were poor, I knew we could not afford anything that I wanted, but at times we barely had enough money for food. 

School was tough for me.  I was held back in the first grade because I was doing well and thought it was great idea.  That made it really tough to see my friends be able to go into another grade but I was not.  Then I had to take special classes, which made me feel even more stupid.  Even with all those classes, I still didn't feel that I had gained much knowledge.  But what do I know, I was young, just didn't want to feel different. The only good thing was the speech language pathologist, Mr. Welch.  He would let us pick out figurines when we went to see him.  Back then, the biggest thing was Star Wars, so getting Star Wars figurines at that age was the bomb.  I remember the last day I had him, I pleaded not to let me go because I could not even pronounce my Mom's name, Gloria.  He helped me pronounce it correct, which I did after several tries.

I would get home from school, my mom had to leave to go work.  She worked at the local hospital as the nursing supervisor on the evening shift.  I would plop myself in front of the TV and start watching shows all afternoon.  I had wished for a better life like I saw on the Brady Bunch, or fun friends like Three's Company, or to find romance on the Love Boat.   I wanted to be somewhere else and TV took me there.  My sister and brother were left to take care of me while my mom worked.  We all learned to grow up fast with taking care of the house, making meals, and taking care of one another.  We all did the best we could with the resources we had.  I think all trials that went on in our life brought us all together even more.  My Mom made sure of that.  She rarely spoke of a bad word about Dad even though he pulled a lot of shit.  I am not sure if she ever truly forgave my Dad, but she taught us how to forgive.

Make sure you get notified of new posts by clicking in the box, "Notify Me." I guess this all for this week.  Let me know what you think or if you have similar experience growing up.  This is journey we are on together, would love to hear from you.

Background

The reason I am starting this blog is to share my story.  I am not unique, but I am like you.  Searching for answers in this world.  We may even share similar stories.  Someone suggested for me to write a book but that was a little overwhelming.  It was suggested by my nephew, Michael to start a blog.  I wasn't thrilled by the idea but I thought I would give it a try, maybe someday it will turn into a book. I am not much of a writer.  Every time I write a journal, I am so critical of my writing, that I stop writing.  I am hoping that using this platform, that I won't let my perfectionism show through.

So here I am, a 47 year old woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Doesn't seem as scary as it once did when I was first diagnosed.  But here I am on the other side, in remission for the past 6 months.  I never thought this would ever happen to me, but who does?  This is going to be story of my life, the ups, the downs.  Please feel free to share my story.  I want my blog to go viral so that no one is alone.  It isn't going to be all about my cancer diagnosis but some of it will.  This is about one human getting through life with the ups and downs.   You may not be able to relate to my full story but I am sure you can relate to the humanity of life. 

The reason why the blog is called "Love Wins" is because my sister gave me a bracelet with those very words to raise awareness of breast cancer.  It is a poetic statement about my breast cancer journey.  The reason I am posting as scissors is that I had saved a name of my book or new blog on my phone under notes.  Which I thought was going to be so fantastic, but when I look back in my notes, the only thing that I found was a note with one word, scissors.  I am sure you have done that, thought that technology was going to work for you and it doesn't.  Plus my memory is stuck on a channel that is blank, no clue why I wrote that word.  I don't need any new scissors for the house, have plenty.  I thought about that word, it reminded me of the day I cut my hair short so I didn't have to see my long strands of my beautiful hair fall out.  Sorry, getting a head of myself.  This is will be in a later blog.

So sit back and relax.  This should be a interesting journey about how Love Wins.  I hope you enjoy the journey.  Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.  The next chapter will be on the start of my life.  Some of you know me today, a happy go lucky full of love type of woman.  Well, I wasn't always like that.  Stay tuned.