The prompt for the week is:
Your Year
The Brief:
- Think back over your life. Which year was “your year” in terms of happy, special and treasured events?
- Think back over your life. Which year was absolutely not “your year”
-
Thing in terms of health, wealth, happiness or a degree of sadness,
back luck and years when you simply wish you could go back and relive or
redo something.
Good Year/s verus
Bad Year/s
This is an interesting topic for this post. I've had a few "your years" which were times of happy and good things that happened. When good years happen, I usually try and make the most of them, because these have been pretty rare in my life.When bad years happen, there is always more of them in my life unfortunately. However, that's why savoring the good years is all that more important.
Good Year - My birth
A good year, was the year I was born. I wasn't a wanted baby, but the drama that my birth caused, as people have told me over the years, seems pretty funny. It was a cold and rainy night and my mother
goes into labor in
Newburgh, NY. My father is in active service and is out to sea in the US Navy. My sisters and brother stay home and my older sister watches the others. My mother then calls my grandmother, Jean, to come pick her up and drive her to West Point because she was in labor.
My grandmother who was all of 4 foot 10 inches arrives in her bright blue charger type of car. My mother gets into the passenger seat and my grandmother in the driver seat and away they go. Apparently, the trip was very eventful from what I've been told.
I was born just after 11pm that night.
Bad Years - My birth & early years
Of course, when I was born, they found I had birth defects. One of the main problems was my heart murmur, which I was shuffled in and out of various doctor offices for the first 4 years of my life. Between my heart murmur, I also was pigeon toed and needed various braces over my early years. I also had a malformed ear.
Between getting shuffled around to see heart doctors, I also had to deal with the various braces and metal inserts in my shoes. Talk about being looked at differently by many outsiders.
Bad Years - Learning Disability and Vision
As if being looked at differently to the start of your life wasn't the only thing, but then when things settle down, you are one of the few that are of divorced parents and people judged me on that, but then during tests when I was in grade 1, they noticed I had a comprehension problem.
Each year I would be taken away from all the other kids at school, kept in a room with a few others, retested and be made to do different activities to the other kids. After about 3 years, the school then split up kids based upon their levels, and I was always put with the "slower" and subjects that were not as complex as the other kids. I always felt different and like I had a huge scarlet X on my back or something. People and kids even got to call me names - slow and stupid being just a few of the nicer ones.
Then in the 5th grade, the teacher, Mr McGinnis, noticed I was squinting my eyes to read the
chalkboard (yes we had chalkboards back then!). He then wrote a note home to my mother about it and off we went to Vision City in Newburgh. They told me I needed glasses for distance and that's how I had to wear them. However, I was told by both the teacher and then the next doctor at Vision City that no matter what I MUST wear them all the time. In doing this, I screwed up my eyes and need bifocals now. For years, it just added to the names and being so different. Again, I was even further distanced by people.
Bad Year - Paternal Grandmother's death in 1988
I hadn't seen my grandmother since Christmas in 1987, and missed her. However, I do know she was then living with my uncle and aunt, so I couldn't go and stay like I normally would with her. What I would normally do, would be to spend about 2 weeks of the summer holidays with her and we would do things together. However, since she moved into my uncle and aunt's house, we all just felt really weird going there to spend time overnight, and my mother could never find the time to take me over for the day, so I "lost" the last few years with her.
Before she passed, she had some health problems I was told. I did go and visit her when she was in the hospital, even though my mother didn't want to take me and I forced the issue, and it was interesting. She would skip from one language to another. The only one I spoke was English and felt bad. Soon thereafter, she passed away.
I wasn't allowed to go to the viewings, but was able to go to the church and grave site ceremony. It was a hot and rainy day. I remember standing there by myself as everyone else was at the grave and no one spoke to me, offered a hand - nothing. After the service was done, I turned and walked away. I was almost at the car where my mother's boyfriend was waiting, when I was called to by my stepmother. She told me that she thought my grandmother would want me to have this and handed me an umbrella. Then ran back to the rest of the people. I then went home as I didn't know about families getting together afterwards and I was never asked to come along. I went home and dealt with it by myself as no one asked me about it or talked about it afterwards.
Bad Year -1989
Eventually I found a boyfriend, or what I considered to be a boyfriend. It was great - we had many same interests, hung out with the same friends, and enjoyed being together. However, what I found out was he was also a friend's boyfriend too. I found out after I heard one friend tell another one about her boyfriend and how they were expecting a child together. This not only hurt because of him being unfaithful, but he was sleeping with me as well, and they had a child on the way. Needless to say, I broke it off with him and stayed away as much as I could (basically isolated myself) and never let his other girlfriend know. True, he wrote me a letter about how he was using me and never cared for me, but that was just the topping on what I overheard. There was no way I was going to break up a "family", so I had to let it go. To this day, the other girlfriend doesn't know and I've only just reestablished contact although its a very distant type of relationship compared to when we were growing up.
Bad Years - 1990/1991
My sister and nieces all had problems in these years. My mother and I were trying to keep things pretty much somewhat normal as much as we could. However, things happened with my nieces which should never have happened and my sister had plenty of problems on her own. I was trying to keep my grades up, drive up to upstate (near the Canadian border) every weekend to see my nieces and spend time with them and then back down to where we lived in time for school. Add to that, I was working, trying to hang out with my friends, go to trade school and keep my grades up and I was one very busy person.
Add this to 1991 being the year my mother kicked her boyfriend out after about 10 years and that meant things just got that much harder for us with bills and such. There was nothing extra there for anything. We had to scrape and stretch the money to make it, but we did end up getting that done but we didn't have anything left over.
Good Year - 1991
I did end up graduating from high school and trade school. It was also great to find out I made honor societies in both school's as well. I made honor roll for most of my high school years, but I never
heard of an honor society at all. I didn't know what they were and for the most part I still don't understand them because I was only inducted right before graduation. Then when I graduated I was handed cords so I could wear them at graduation too. One of the biggest fights was because of the levels I as in because of my learning disability and if I should still be able to be on them because of it. Talk about kicking someone when they are down...
I won an award for 5th in State of NY for Financial Information Processing. A group of us through the trade school went away and competed against others within NY state in various testing. I was shocked because I actually won something. It was the first time anyone my trade school had ever won an award at one of these things.
I did end up going to my senior prom with my boyfriend. Being together without his mother and nieces/nephew was very rare so I was looking forward to it. Only to spend the night with him sitting there like a lump.
I also one an award at my trade school for Outstanding Student for the whole course. I was shocked because I never knew about this award before.
After graduation, I was able to go and get office work so I could help bring in some much needed money into the house.
Good Year 1994
I then went to Orange County Community College (OCCC) and graduated in 1994. It was the first time anyone in my immediate family ever did this. My uncle and aunt graduated, but they were the only ones.
I finally felt like I was on my way and I could finally go out and get a good job and we could get ahead instead of just making it.
Bad Year 1994After graduation from OCCC, I could get temporary jobs, but nothing beyond basics like reception and filing and things along that line. I wanted something I studied in - programming was a real goal but I was finding that no one wanted to hire me because I didn't have even a higher degree, which was disappointing.
I also broke up with my boyfriend because I couldn't handle where he classified our relationship compared to everyone else, so I eventually had enough and moved on.
Good Year 1995
I met my husband online and we started to talk and get to know each other. We talked on the phone, talked over the internet, and sent emails and snail mail. We later, in 1996, met in real life, spent physical time together, got engaged and I visited Australia.
Good Year 1997
I migrated to Australia and married my husband. True we had a fire which we needed to regroup and go forward, but we did and we are stronger because of it.
Good Year 2000
We bought our home where we are now living.
Good & Bad Year 2004
After trying for over 5 years, we finally became pregnant. However, it was short lived and later we "lost" the baby due to it being in my tube. In fact, I was told I was lucky because I could have died before it was discovered.
Since I met my husband, its been more good years than bad as you can see. The way I live life is you can sit there and be upset because something didn't work or you can say well that didn't work or doesn't work and go a different direction. Most of the time, you can look at things and if you try hard enough you can find something positive about what's happened.
Check back for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.
