Fear: my first memory and my lifetime Ghost

Its been a full life so far, but going back, the first memory I have is of Fear. I am looking out of my playpen at my biological father...wearing a Frankenstein mask. I remember he used to wear it every Halloween and go trick or treating door to door with a shot glass. Yes the man was/is an alcoholic. He was a mean drunk. He knocked us kids around when he chose to, and nothing was ever good enough. This is where it all began. I call him my biological father (JM) because my daddy, the man who later raised me (even though I was already a teen) has passed on many years ago now...but he was my daddy. This early relationship with fear set the stage for a lifetime of always thinking i was "not good enough" a failure, useless, and just here to be used and abused. Sound familiar? if so, you are not reading this by any accident but by a stroke of fate. Yes, I do believe in fate and destiny. I believe our lives are mapped out long before any choices we make. Some things we miss along the way, and others no matter how we try to avoid them or make choices that would lead us into another direction, still come to find us. 


This relationship with fear and failure is also what led me to fight with everything in me against any relationship with God, my Father. They say you are the way He made you and he loves you in spite of yourself, and this while it sounds retarded for lack of a better word... is of course right on! Everyone chooses whether or not to have a personal relationship with Him, so jump right in, some are raised to believe, some like me, while raised Roman Catholic...knew there was something, but it was never personal, just something you had to do. This cold distant God... the one they teach you is enormous and everywhere... was always out of reach. Seemed you were always told to go somewhere else but never directly to Him. Confessionals with a Priest... disciplined by the nuns... but never a true relationship...so of course.. i figured I wasn't good enough for Him either. This struggle is what has changed the last 17 years of my life. I am now a born again christian... and in a loving, relationship with my "daddy". It took till I was a 40 year old woman to understand the concept of "daddy's little girl", but in my Gods eyes, that is exactly who I am.


Growing up a survivor of child abuse, both mentally and physically, the scars are deep. Lets call it what is was... i was messed up. my teen years were spent being sexually promiscuous simply to find any type of "love". Sex to me was boring, but if it made you feel anything even for a little bit... I did it. Great way to screw up my marriages too. I can honestly say now that I know what it means to really love someone... of all 5 marriages, I really only love my first husband and my current and happy to say last husband. The first man I loved, (DL)I married, but he was married to his career. So guess what... yep, in spite of our children, again feelings of I am not good enough... he would rather be at work than at home with us...when he was home, it was beer and books that kept his attention. So I married him at the age of 18. We buried our first born within that first year, and 2 more children later... divorced at 22. My current husband (RA) is my best friend and I believe my soul mate. we are extensions of the other and connected on levels I could never begin to explain. I know I would never have found him had I not struggled and gone through all the other crap first. Before I say anything else... yes, I still battle my fear demons, but I know I am worth much and loved completely. I don't think we stop fighting until we die.


There are those who argue about what makes us who we are... 'NATURE OR NURTURE" genetics or how we are raised... never quite figured out the truth. Its both. while you can not use either to excuse your behavior... how you are raised does lay a powerful foundation. FEAR, my foundation. abuse, neglect, pain, loneliness, more fear...this is pretty much all I remember growing up. 


I learned a few days after it happened that when I was about 12, dear old dad, in one of his many drunk states... had a butcher knife in each hand and stabbed into my mattress on either side of me. I was told later by my mom that if I wouldn't have been such a heavy sleeper I would be dead. YEA.... see how much I was loved? Yes I believe alcoholism is a disease... but in the case of my father, it was an excuse to blame when he did his horrible things. He was always sober before the abuse... got drunk afterwards...so many nights I prayed he would die...nope, as far as I know he is a lonely and pathetic old man with no family... but still living. At least I know he was still alive 5+ years ago when we buried my mom. My uncle contacted him, but he couldn't be bothered to come to the funeral. Big surprise there.


Fear can be replaced. Love can overcome. You just need to believe. You need to fight and you need to accept that you are "good enough" and not always a failure. 


***NOTE:***  This is the full explicit version, while i tried to put in the clean version... its the video that adds to the song. Not intended to offend anyone by the language...so don't let it play in front of little ears.

I will add a song or 2 to each of my stories because that's my heart. Music is how God reaches me, even today. 


I am ME! Like me or hate me...it is irrelevant. I am content with who I have become, and while I still have my personal struggles, I am perfect in the eyes of my Heavenly Father, and that's "good enough" for me. Fear was my foundation, but God has built my house of Love.