as neurotic as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs

I don't handle change well. I think it comes from having a very lovely life in Hawaii, and then one day having that life abruptly come to an end. All of a sudden my dad was no longer a soldier, and we were no longer living in Hawaii. We were trapped in a car for hours, on the road, travelling across the country and back to a cold, horrid place in New Jersey. I was away from my friends, who, even at an early age, were the buffer between me and my insane family.

I had to cope with my family's craziness. And it didn't work all that well. How well can a 4 year old cope?

I don't think I've ever got over that, and now, when good or bad things come my way, I'm like a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs--jumping out of my skin at the slightest creek. I am hyper-aware, worrying about what I'm saying and doing. Feeling like I'm blind, bumping around in the dark, thinking I'm going to say and do the exact wrong thing that will push everyone away from me.

I guess the child in me thought I did something wrong for me to lose all my friends. And I didn't know how nuts my family was because I always had somewhere else to go and somene else to be around.

Then, making friends in NJ was hard. There weren't too many kids around during the day--most were older than me. And of the ones that were around, my mother told me I couldn't play with, or I was told awful things about their mothers. Early on, I knew one woman was a terrible housekeeper, and how another was "fooling around" with some real-estate guy.

As if I cared. When I did have friends, and they had to go home, I would get hysterical. Wouldn't you if you were in my small shoes?

Some part of me wants to pick up, right now, and go back to Hawaii. Go native. Maybe that's where I belong...where the weather is warm and the palm trees whisper sweetly. Where pointsettias are native and I don't have to worry about high heating costs. Maybe I want to be where I left part of me so many years ago. Maybe that will make it all better.

photo courtesy of AllPosters.com