Hey Y’all! It’s me again. I’ve been thinking about the “Knight in shining armor” rescue and often wondered why it/he never came. So here’s the thing – after my mom divorced my father I saw him one time (that I can remember) when I was about 7, 8 ish – can’t remember exactly the age. I do remember he came over right before we moved to Texas and took lots of pictures of me and gave me a doll. But after that I never saw him again.

As a younger child I would lay in bed at night crying and longing for him to come take me from this place. I wanted him to hug me and tell me he loved me and that he would never let anyone hurt me again. It. Never. Happened. I have no idea if he knew anything about me after we left. I have no idea if he talked to family members to check on me or if he ever even called my mom to check on me. I don’t know why visitation wasn’t set up, I don’t know why he never tried to see me for holidays or birthdays. He just ceased to exist in my world.

What I do know is that the man I called dad was an extremely jealous, possessive and controlling man. So what part did he play in this situation? Did he threaten him not to see me? Was he so jealous that he didn’t want him around my mom? Did he not want him to know what he was doing to his child? These are legitimate questions. BUT, as I stated before – we didn’t talk about these things. In fact we didn’t talk about anything. The generation of silence and secrets strikes again.

I have since found out some things about my biological father. He re-married and had two more children that I got to meet as an adult. Unfortunately I did not get to see him because he passed away when I was 18. Still lots of unanswered questions.

They say that girls marry their father so as I began to date, the kind of guys I was attracted to varied. I was looking for my saviour so I was attracted to the nice guys and although they treated me well they did not make the cut.  The guys who took advantage of me and treated me not so good were the ones I gravitated towards. WHY IS THAT??? I don’t/didn’t want to be treated as though I am not important. I want to be treated like I am the only girl in the world and I want to be loved and respected. Most of all RESPECTED. But because I did not get that at home I guess I thought I didn’t deserve it. What does that word even mean? The only thing we were taught to respect were the rules. Rules didn’t come with love and understanding they were just demanded. So how do you demand respect? You don’t! Respect is earned. Period. I had to learn to respect myself before I could ever expect anyone else to. And boy, that took a long, long time. Well into my adulthood I learned the lesson of respecting myself. As I became a parent I tried to teach my children the value and definition of respect. I hope I did that.