I'm not dirty. partI

The first time I realized I was different was in kindergarten.  I had been told, up until this point, that I was beautiful.  My mom thought I was pretty and my dad thought I was adorable.  Aunts, uncles, grandparents... you could ask anyone... I was amazing in every way.  Until kindergarten.  Until mean little five year olds and ignorant teachers.  Little kids started calling me dirty.  Then a teacher asked if my mother ever bathed me... in front of EVERYONE.  When my mom came to pick me up that day the teacher was feverishly trying to scrub the "dirt" off my face.  She failed.  Because I'm not dirty. I just have a birthmark.  A big. brown. birthmark. on my face.

I became sickened by my looks.  I became withdrawn and shy.  I started believing that standing out and being different were shameful, dirty things.  I would watch with envy as groups of little kids would huddle together and play and laugh and run.  On the rare occasion that I would get a little brave in me and approach the other kids I would be shown quickly where my place was and it wasn't with them.  My place was in the shadows.  My place was alone.

I used to plead and make deals with God.  If only He would take away this abomination on my face I would never say another bad word, I would listen to my mom, I would be a good girl.  All I wanted in the pit of my being was to be liked and validated and this birthmark was in the way of both.

My deals with God changed nothing.  I thought maybe there was no God and if there was he was mean.

I was "you know the girl with the birthmark".  That was my name, my identity and my shame.

This shame followed me into high school.  There I became a desperate love seeker.  I would do anything to be liked.  Smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, doing drugs, popping pills and giving away parts my soul to boys who didn't even know my name.

In elementary school I was dirty because of my looks but in high school I was dirty because of my reputation.  I sunk deeper and deeper into depression.  I didn't know what was wrong with me.  My mind was my worst enemy.  My thoughts would spit venom at me: You are ugly.  You are stupid.  No one loves you.  You are worthless.  You.don't.matter.

This self hatred coupled with self pity continued into my young adult years as well.  I would seek and find people to abuse me.  People who would help me prove to myself that I was worthy of ridicule and punishment.  Friends who would tell me how weird I was, date my boyfriends (proving they were much prettier than me), tell me I wasn't as pretty as their other friends, use me and eventually abandon me.  Boyfriends who would sleep with my friends, call me dirty, call me ugly, put their hands on me, blame me, say I deserved it, call me crazy and push me to my breaking point.

I was....
      broken.

The straw that broke the camels back was when a good friend of mine was killed in a car accident while serving in Iraq.

I couldn't cope.

Life was cruel.

I started day drinking at this point.  I would go to work drunk.  I had two states of being: drunk and sleeping.

I lost weight.  a.lot.of.weight.  I was 85 lbs by the time my dad and step mom decided I needed to see a therapist.

I went but my heart wasn't in it.  I was dead inside.  I was a shell of a human.

I reverted back to men.  Men were really good at making me feel loved and worthy.  Even if it was only for a moment.  It always amazed me how two people could be so intimate and close, as if their very souls were joined together.  But, once the act is over it's as if you're strangers (which we were) and I would feel a physical chill in my heart as if my body had been emptied of it's life source.  I've never felt more regret in my life than in those lonely minutes on my side of the bed.

I was a harlot.  I was a drunk.  I was empty.  I was dead.

I met Brandon this way.  It's the truth.  I'm not proud of it but it's the truth.

I left his dark bedroom the next morning without knowing his name.  I never thought I would see him again but he tracked me down.

We have a very backwards story (clearly.)  But, I love our story because it's ours.

Somewhere in the craziness of those drunken nights I became pregnant.

I remember standing in my pajamas, hung over, looking down at a positive pregnancy test in one shaky hand and a lit cigarette in the other and thinking "what the hell do I do now?"

I called my step mom and she met me at the local med stop.  I brought the pregnancy test with me and begged the nurse to tell me it was not really positive.  She told me she could give me another test but it would be $40 and the chances of a false positive were almost impossible (and my test was clearly positive).

I was going to be a mom.