A Journey

Chapter 3

Everyone is born with a gift; something that they can do very well.Whether you’re a great listener, have an easy way with people, or maybe it’s pretty special that just by smiling, you always seem to make those around you feel at ease, don’t you think? I’ve actually heard people say, "I don’t have a gift, there’s nothing I can do that’s special."

Getting to know yourself is very important, because if you don’t really know, love, and appreciate who you are, then how can you expect someone to come into your life and accept you for you? Get to know and love yourself first.

So many of us let other people define who we are. We hear things like, "You are so stupid! Why can’t you do anything right?" or "You’re just like your mother, or exactly like your father, no good… for anything, really stupid... fat, a toothpick… ugly, dummy!!, That’s what you are, a scrawny ugly liver face that makes me want to throw up when I look at you...ugggggghhh!"

People can cut you to threads if you let them, so when you are a little kid and someone throws a remark like this your way, it plays a good number on your self esteem, and doubly so if a comment like one of these comes from someone you love or admire.

You might have heard one or two of these quite few times in your life, and probably soaked it up like I did, when my grandma told me I’d never be satisfied, or when that young man standing behind me in the movie lineup called me a liver face when I smiled at him, and then pretended to throw up because of it. You took it all in like I did and said to yourself, "Yes, it’s true that’s me!! They (must) know what they’re talking about, because they are older and smarter, and I don’t deserve good things because grandma knows me better than anyone, and that guy could see how ugly I am, because I have painful disgusting skin that hurts and makes me feel so sick inside..."

The person you’d see in the mirror was everything they said you were because this is what you would see and believe. Thoughts are real to you and you can be pretty hard on yourself when you believe it is so.

How very heavy the baggage is we carry on our shoulders that has been put there by other people, and some of us carry the burden for years and years not realizing that it never belonged to us in the first place.

If this happens to you, throw it away! Nobody had the right to define you as a person, and neither do they have the right to tell you who or what God is and how you fit or don’t fit in life.

It is so incredibly wonderful when you realize just how great and unique a person you really are, and let go of those heavy labels you were given from such ignorant comments, by people who should have known better.

If you can just begin to smile, even when you don’t feel like it, then stand in front of the mirror, look yourself straight in the eyes and say "You are a great person Paulette, or Susie, or Billy Jo… I love you!" And if you felt like it, you could blow yourself a kiss and give yourself a hug. But it would be better to do so with no one else around, because you’d most likely look like a very conceited person if someone were to see you, and would probably want to know what’s up with the crazy antics. Or they just might want to elbow you aside and tell themselves how great they are also, and then you would both get a great laugh out of it, and also a great boost in good feelings about yourselves. For what is life without playful childish laughter and joy in the moment?

It’s a beginning…

Of course if you are anything like me, the first few times you try to do this you will probably feel very awkward.

Silly isn’t it… to be shy in front of yourself? What does this say about us?

For most of us, it’s a long journey to reach a point where we are comfortable telling ourselves we love "Me" and really mean it… but it will happen, I promise. Just go hide in the bathroom for a few minutes with the door closed, and tell yourself what a great person you really are. Think of your good points or something you did very well lately, and tell yourself how great it was and that you are proud of you. Why not? No doubt you will leave the bathroom or walk in closet with a sheepish grin on your face, but this will be the start of something big in your life, because you will get to really love the most important person in your life...YOU! The resulting positive feelings will radiate and shine outward, and people will naturally gravitate towards you and your life will start to fall into place.

Fortunately, I was born with a few natural gifts. One is a good singing voice, the other, a creative mind. I love to paint, draw, and have started writing poetry a few years ago. These are my passions, and with these tools I have come into this life. Like everyone else on this earth, I was born to live life, with all its heaviness and pains, going through life’s ordeals, and learning what I can about living in the physical realm. We learn by skinning our knees once in a while in these lessons… hopefully without knowingly or maliciously hurting anyone along the way. Then at the end of it all, we go home to the Other Side knowing we are much more than flesh and blood.

I have worn many hats, some I still wear... a daughter, a girlfriend, a friend, a wife, a mom, a granddaughter, a love, a schoolgirl, a cosmetician, a saleslady, a cleaning lady, a door to door cosmetic salesperson, a novitiate in a beautiful spirituality, a Gnostic, an artist, a poet, a writer, and a grandmother... a teacher… hum… maybe? Life is a great teacher. Time is a great teacher by the way.

I was talking, singing and drawing at a very early age and was reading the newspaper with my dad before I started school. I didn’t walk till after my second birthday, not because I couldn’t, but because until I was 2 years old I was carried everywhere like a little doll, and so the very first time I was left with my mother’s sister for a few hours, and as soon as my parents were out of sight, she quickly took off my shoes and socks and set me free outside in her back yard in my little dress and diaper, and watched me play in the mud for the first time.

When mom and dad returned, they were amazed that I had walked my first steps without them, and horrified at how dirty I was.. I have a picture of that day for you on the next page.

I’m wondering as I’m writing this if it could be why I can’t stand sand between my toes, or mud, or anything gritty or sticky on my hands. Maybe I was given a sloppy jam sandwich when I was out there and a fly landed on it while I was playing in the mess.

I remember if one would land on me, I’d feel as if I’d just been attacked by a monster. I would get hysterical and to this day I still shiver when I see one headed in my direction.

I don’t like insects, but these days I’m certainly not a nervous wreck at the site of one, although I do get the creeps if one lands on me or if I see a worm. Maybe there were worms in that mud.

If I were to go fishing with you, you’d have to put the worm on my hook and cast it out while I looked the other way.Yuk!! And I can’t even talk about how a little minnow can look you in the eyes when you stab him in the stomach… Maybe we won’t go fishing huh?

I am especially wary of spiders also. They’re intelligent, because I swear I can feel one staring at me before I even see it, and have I ever got a story for you about cockroaches, but I’ll save it for later.

Singing and drawing has played a big role in my life, and by the time I started first grade, the teachers knew they had a singer and an artist on their hands.

My first year in school was quite memorable. My teacher actually went to my mother and asked her if she would let her adopt me. Mom couldn’t get over how this woman could come right out and assume that just because she had lots of children she could spare one for her. "The nerve of that woman", she told us all at the supper table that night.

Madame H. felt that since we were poor, she could give me more advantages in life than they could, and that I would lack nothing if I went and lived with her and her family. I guess she had it all figured out. She would see to it that I went to the best schools, get a university education and that I would have all the music lessons she could provide, because money was not a problem for her and she would of course, "let you visit her whenever you want to". She only had one child, she told my mother, and this daughter had a brain tumor and was afraid of loosing her, so "would you consider it please?"

Mom showed her the door, and told her she loved all of us equally and wouldn’t part with any one of her children. No one could push my mom around. She couldn’t be bought, that’s for sure. I liked Mrs. H., but I don’t think I would have wanted to go live with her, because even at that age I knew I would be made to sing even more than at home. And so I became teacher’s pet right from the start. A big hug before class and another big hug and sloppy kiss after school, day in day out every day for the whole school year and the next one also because she taught both grades.

My friends couldn’t figure out why I was getting so much attention all the time, and I wasn’t about to tell, because she was very nice and I was a pretty shy kid, so I really couldn’t put into word how I felt about the whole thing. I was six years old and did what I was told and never made waves.

We had festivals and concerts, and I was the one entered in the singing competitions, and so was again put on stage and won a good many medals, but I was so nervous. It would make me sick to sing in front of relatives or friends.The thought of singing in front of a big audience… well I was a nervous wreck.

A little nun came to me the day before one of my performances and gave me a raw egg to drink with a little bit of tomato juice in it, "to smooth the voice" she said. Uggghh! Yes I drank it. I probably would have drank poison in those days if a nun or a priest would have told me to.

One day in grade 2, Mrs H. informed us a missionary was coming to our school from Africa and she told us that she wanted everyone to give as much as they could and as she was speaking, her eyes fell on me and so she scooped me up in her arms and stood me on her desk and said, "ok, see Paulette here? We all know her, but if you look at her arms (she raised my arm) and see how bony they are", and she lifted my dress to show my scrawny legs, "and look at her knees and the tiny little legs here" and down went the hem of my dress. "The little children in Africa look just like this. See the big eyes?", she remarked as I distinctly heard a "Wow ya!!" from somewhere in the crowd of faces that were staring up at me, and looking at them she remarked with satisfaction at having put her point across, "So then when the basket is passed around tomorrow morning I want to see everyone putting at least a dime in it ." I think she might have said thank you as she put me on the floor and I was told to go back to my seat. Amazing what a 6 or 7 year old will remember isn’t it?

I don’t recall how the collection went, but I sure remember how it felt to be paraded on that day. I felt like such a freak, an ugly person that looked like she was starving to death. And I hated myself so much for looking this way. I wish I could remember this episode without feeling any of it but I suppose there are so many things in me that are trying to resolve themselves and this is an especially hard one to stomach. My eyes fill up for that poor little thing that was me, because on that day my self esteem took one of the biggest nose dives it ever had. I was sure that everybody thought the same way about me as I did, so I locked the hurt up inside myself and didn’t tell for a long time. It made me so angry, and for a long time I carried quite a bit of bubbling resentment for being so powerless to do anything about any of it.

Through the teenage years from the age of twelve onwards I had developed a bad case of acne that grew from the top of my head down my back to my buttocks and both upper arms. I would get huge blind pimples that would throb like toothaches and keep me up at night with the pain and most were blind pimples that would turn purple and fester under the skin. My heart bleeds for children that have had to go through this horror. In those days there really wasn’t all that much a person could do, although when it got really bad mom, dad and I took a trip to a dermatologist out of town that did the best he could with ray treatments and hormone pills and antibiotics in very low dosages. The acne continued to plague me till my early twenties.

This was a gift? Well yes it was, but I wasn’t grown yet. I had to grow into it. I grew up eventually and became pleasing to look at with nice skin and no scars and not a toothpick anymore (Darn!!).

Being called "liver face" when you are a 15 years old in a lineup at the movies from a cute guy that you don’t even know, is earth shattering to a girl that already feels less than others, so I guess I might have been an ugly duckling in those days, but like so many things in life we grow, we overcome, and get on with living.

Concerts and school parties are still regular activities in schools. I have sat through such cutie pies singing and parading with their classes at Christmas time and have swelled with pride to see my own children and grandchildren sing their songs and act in plays. I am amazed that one of my grandsons can actually get up and ham it up in front of a crowd so easily. It just comes naturally for him. I asked him once if it made him nervous, and he said"Oh no memere, it’s fun!" and my stomach had been doing flip flops for him the whole time he was performing. He is so talented. All three of my grandsons are, but one of these days maybe you will see that for yourselves, because who knows they just might get famous someday.

.

"Fun", he said. I have to laugh when I think of it now. I could have had a blast if I hadn’t been so full of self loathing at his age.

Grade three or was it four? It was Christmas time at school and a week of fun with lots of planned activities. I suppose it could have percolated in the teacher’s cafeteria because I overheard Mrs H. and another teacher say, "Why don’t we have Paulette sing for the school in each class. She can even go to the English side and sing for them too when she’s finished on the French side of the school" So I sang a solo in every class during the week till I had done them all, while I fought the vomit and lose bowels that were threatening to embarrass me. Fun indeed! I had learned that my saying no meant a big fat yes, because I was told that it was my duty to share my gift.

Singing for me is a prayer. Something I do very well when I’m alone. It’s almost a soul cry… an expression of who I am. I have used this to soothe myself and to let go of emotions and hurts that threatened to break me completely.

I had so much resentment for being used like this, that I felt like a robot that just went through the motions, and then when it was over I could just go hide somewhere in the backyard when I would finally come home after school, and for the rest of the day till it was bedtime I could blend with all the others in my family.

When I see mothers parading their little fashion model, actors, actresses, beauty pageant children around like little dolls I get so upset. Chances are, those smiling little girls and boys are not smiling inside, believe me. Maybe the parents have convinced them that this is what she or he wants, but it’s way to much for a little one to handle. Let them be children… no spot lights please.

I was so angry for so many years and in my late teens and early twenties, even into my thirties and forties when there were get togethers at my parents’ home and someone would say, "Come on Paulette, you remember that song… SING!" I would feel sick to my stomach and say "Absolutely not. I don’t feel like it" and no amount of cajoling would get me to perform again for them or anybody else. My siblings continued to sing on command for years and actually enjoyed the get togethers with their guitars, but I would sit there with a rock in the pit of my stomach and a huge lump in my heart and a wave of sadness would settle over me for not being able to let go of it and share in good times with them.

This is something I have to work through, for it runs very deep and I feel it was necessary to explain my deepest hurts about this part of myself with you.

I truly feel from the bottom of my heart that God gives everyone a gift. It can even be more than one, and the person that holds this gift is the one that should have the power to use it as they so choose. It is a release valve, something that makes them special inside that can be given to another as a little present from you to someone else in your own unique special way.

When the world around you blunders and uses that special part of a child to their own end, camouflaging it in love and admiration or whatever, is like stealing a part of that person and is somewhat like a rape.

If I could give a person advice in rearing their children, I would ask them not to push them to perform what you might think is cute and easy for them to do. Ask, and if they say no, let them be. Be sensitive to their feelings by putting yourself in their shoes. You were a child once, remember?

And if you were a child like myself then do your best to forgive them, because they didn’t know any better.

Most of the stupid things we go through, when you get right down to it, were done to us by well meaning people who really didn’t know any better.

Just pick up the pieces and get to love yourself a little more because you deserve better.

You went through the fires of childhood and came out of it still hanging onto the gifts that God gave you in the beginning, and now that you are all grown up, those gifts are just the icing on the cake of the wonderful, grown up caring person you turned out to be.