So what do you say when someone looks at you and says, "Wow, you've been through a lot." and you know that they only know half the story?

I saw a therapist yesterday for the first time. Well, not really. I tried a few times to see one but the topic of my past either was to difficult to articulate or wound up consuming most of the session the first time we went through counseling twenty years ago. At least I had written out what I needed to say so I could just hand her the paper and she could get an idea of what had happened. The sad thing is I had originally written this out a few months back for my husband and when the therapist asked me what my husband's reaction was after he read it and I had to say that he didn't say anything to me. So what does that mean? Does he think I'm some kind of a freak or psycho because of what I experienced during my childhood? It probably wasn't fair to him that I never told him any of these things prior, but in my mind I didn't want my past to have any influence on my relationship. It was a mistake on my part to think this and if I could hit the pause and rewind button I would but it's too late.

I've always had this sense that my father didn't know what to do with me after my mother died. He had very little to do with my childhood except for the occasional trip to the amusement park or racetrack but apart from that I remember little. As much as he and my mother didn't get along he kept their bedroom exactly the same as if she were alive. Weird I know, but I never asked him about it because you just didn't talk about anything back then. My sister came home to live with us for awhile and then we had a housekeeper that came when I got home from school. Some things I just don't remember and maybe it's my mind just trying to forget them. I just remember the feeling that I was different from my classmates and that they all knew that my mother had died. Divorce wasn't a popular thing back in the seventies so to be living in a single parent household was not common. I felt like I was just going through the motions and tried to avoid any situation where I would have to say that my mother died. I couldn't even mention it without completely falling apart. The problem with that was you didn't show any emotion in my house now that my father was in charge, especially crying, and that's all I wanted to do. As much as my mother subjected me to her verbal abuse I was completely stunned when she died, like the rug was pulled out from under me.

So I went through the motions, I hated school and all I could think about was going to the barn so I could ride and escape life. Thank God I found horses because otherwise my life would have been a disaster. I wanted attention and if getting in trouble got me attention then so be it. The only thing that kept me from following that path was if I screwed up I wasn't getting to go to the barn and that was the worst punishment I could imagine.

Funny how the one thing that really got me through my childhood and adolescence was the one thing my husband couldn't stand. He knew I rode and was serious about riding when I met him but maybe he thought I shouldn't need the horses since I had him.

I never realized how much our past affects our present and how those past behaviors manifest themselves in our relationships with our own children.