The One where I Just Ramble While I Work Things Out

I just got off the phone with my older step-sister. We talked for an hour. This is huge....HUGE!!! We have never talked that long. Even if you put the two of us in the same room and held a gun to our heads, we would STILL have to work at filling an hour of time. In the psychology world we call this a "breakthrough".

My step-sister and I found ourselves living under the same roof when her father and my mother decided to get married. Her Tragedy Timeline is a bit different, but for me my parents' divorce was finalized on my eighth birthday (Literally. My father was served the papers for signature right as I blew out my candles) and each parent was remarried to a different person before my ninth birthday (Mom was Jan 13 and Dad was Jan 31...I stood up in both). It was a helluva year for this little broken hearted girl. Moving on...

My step-father was (is) a 'good' Evangelical which means he's white, he believes in "spare the rod, spoil the child", and votes Republican.....always, forever and ever amen. My father was (is) a narcissistic, immature man that was (is) unable to relate to anyone outside of his head...aka young, heartbroken daughters. Both men were (are) angry. Both men felt (feel) slighted. Both men were born without the 'compassion' and 'empathy' chips. And mostly, both men were (are) inept at raising children.

Que Serra, Serra. Too bad, so sad. Get over it and move on, right? Nope....not for girls. For some reason, little girls have been designed to be almost completely dependent on their fathers in order to form healthy and coherent self-images. (I'm not making this up, pick up ANY psych book printed since 1990. This is cold hard fact. Girls need Dads. Plain and simple.)

So suddenly here were two little girls only nine months apart now forced to relate to one another as sisters. In the Blaine household, the word "step" was NEVER to be uttered. Not in reference to siblings and especially not in reference to parents. As for the other halves of our families that we were no longer to identify ourselves with....well, I didn't have a Dad and a step-dad, I now had a Dad and an "Other" Dad (referring to the man who had been with my Mother the day I came home from the hospital). Amanda (older step-sis) didn't have a mother and a step-mother, she had a Mom and an "Other Mom" (referring to the woman who carried her for nine months and spent 19 hours in labor with her). That was our new life. We were to like it. We were to move on. (Apparently The Brady Bunch seemed like a realistic standard for my parents.)

So fast forward for a bit. Mandy will be finished with grad school in May. She has had a 4.0 GPA since they first start figuring out GPA's in middle school. Her younger sister is the social butterfly. I'm smart, but I'm pretty, I flirt and I enjoy the attention of guys. (Do you see where this is going?) Our parents ALWAYS compared us to each other. "Why can't you settle down and get good grades like your sister?"; "Why don't you have as many friends as your sister?"; "You are never going to achieve the things your sister will."; "You need to be more like your sister."

Needless to say. We decided to manage our heartache in different ways as we got older. Mandy became the youngest, full-time, college level debate coach in the history of Large State University. Cassie became the partying, drinking, teenage mother and placed her baby for adoption. Cassie flitted from one relationship to another without so much as an emotional scratch and Mandy fell in love with her high school sweetheart, broke up with him when he left for college and hasn't forgiven herself since. Mandy decided that she couldn't the attention of her father with her grades and since he never told her she was pretty, she started eating and doubled her weight in 3 years time. Cassie decided that she couldn't get the attention of her father with her grades and since he never told her she was pretty, she started having one night stands at the age of 16. Here's the story of two lovely ladies...

Where am I going with this? Well just today I had a one hour conversation with Amanda when she called telling me that she thought she was losing her mind because she finally contacted that long lost high school sweetheart that she hasn't moved on from.

Over the course of this hour I was able to tell her how beautiful, strong, capable, incredible, lovable, courageous, independent, and faithful she is. She cried. I cried. Her heart was so happy to finally hear all the things she needed to hear as a little girl. I didn't lie to her! She is all of those things....and MORE!! I just wish she could see that. (I wish we both could see who we truly are.)
There is still a grieving, scared, heart broken little girl inside both of us. Lame? Maybe. The truth? Absolutely. And you know what, I have learned that there is a grieving, scared, heart broken little girl inside some of the most beautiful, strongest, most capable, incredible, lovable, courageous, independent, and faithful women I know.

I realize now that because of all I've been through and have been able to overcome, I now have a burden for these women. I want to find every hurting, unloved, scared, abused and discarded woman in the world and let her know that she is precious. She is so indcredibly amazing merely because.....she is a woman!








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UPDATE: At the time of publication (aka the moment I pushed the Publish button), my Mother called having a melt-down about things going on in HER life. Screw the 'I want to find hurting women' scenario. I'm just gonna get my Master's in Counseling Psych and start charging my family $100 an hour. I'll be a millionaire before I'm 30.