Reviewing the Past

Today I started the project that I have wanted to do for years and for one reason or another it has never made it to the top of my priority list.  Those reasons could fall into the normal excuses of not having time, the kids keep me too busy, there aren't enough hours in a day, I am involved in too many other projects, when I finish scrapbooking I'll do it, but the plain and simple truth of the matter is that I wasn't sure what would happen when I faced this project.

The project is recording all the letters and correspondence between  my mother and myself since she left me when I was only 14 years old.  I think a part of me died that day - they day she just left our family and took one of my sisters with her.  I've had buried it for so many years, and then she passed away 20 years ago.

Well, about 4 years ago it all started to creep back into my life as I found that my children had or were soon reaching the age when my world turned upside down.  Everything I had buried and ignored, thought was dead and gone came out every once in a while with a, "you only have a few chores, when I was your age I had to … because I had no mother to take care of me."  Followed by an, "oops, didn't mean to say that - where did that come from?"

Well, today I started with letters from 1980 - the year she left me.  They are sad and I feel her pain as I read each one.  I guess I didn't write her much, but as I read each one, I find myself saying, "Yah, well you left me."  I really don't want to revisit that time in my life.  I hated it (and there are few things I hate).  It was the darkest, most depressing time I've ever felt.  It was extremely painful for me as a young teenage girl, and I had forgotten most of it, moved on, so they say; but I don't want to forget it, I just want to overcome it…and so the adventure into the past begins...