Dreams and Delusions

Oprah Winfrey fascinates me. I'm not a huge fan and I don't agree with everything she does, but I do respect her drive. Based on what she has shared about her personal life and childhood, we have similar backgrounds. From the time she was a little girl, she had big dreams and grew up to work hard to achieve them. She has said that she always "knew" that she would be successful. No matter how hard I try, I can not remember ever having any dreams for my future. I remember things like wanting a bicycle, but life was just getting through each day, completing what needed to be done and not thinking much beyond that. I expected to graduate high school, to get married and to have children. I had absolutely no concept of seeing myself as a successful individual, especially with money. I'm sure that growing up in the House of Horrors at Dysfunction Junction had some influence on that. Our abusive father told us on a daily basis that we were basically too stupid and ugly to live. I do have some vague memories of him knocking down anything positive in us, so I suppose that he gave me the idea that if I had any dreams, they were delusions. I was the oldest and our mother's "heart was in the right place" when she told me that nothing I did was ever good enough. It was her way of pushing me to my potential, and I did eventually become the first in the entire family to attend college and to attain a Master's degree.

It took many years to get past all of this, but not until I had managed to get myself into and out of an abusive marriage and a long string of other mistakes. When I went to college, I was a single mother with three kids and no child support. It did seem that every time I got ahead, something happened to knock me back down, including a health problem that has been and still is a big factor. I've known for a long time that although these early experiences may have influenced my personality and my choices, I don't have to hang on to them. I love Carl Jung's quote, "I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become." At 57, I am far more secure and confident than I was thirty years ago, but I still struggle with a fear of failure. Or maybe it's a fear of success. Or maybe they're the same thing.

Looking back at when my marriage ended, I realize that I did have one dream that I held on to until it became a delusion. I didn't grieve the loss of my husband although he was my first love. What I did grieve was that my dream of giving my kids a healthy, normal family was not going to happen. Ever.

My boys grew up just fine, and I'm proud of all of them. I have more hopes and dreams for them and my grandchildren than I do for myself. I really have a hard time identifying what I want for myself.

When I was in school, I always got very high grades on my written work. I do wish that one of my teachers would have planted the idea in my head that I could have made a living at writing. I truly had no idea that I could do that! No one in our family, at least the ones who wanted anything to do with us, had their own business or were anything remotely like professional writers or artists. We just expected to grow up and work for someone else like our parents and not move past the working class. Now it seems like it's too late.

I suppose I'd like to quit my day job but one of the disappointments I struggle with is that I need the hilarious little paycheck. Living in a rural area and working for a small company, I'm making less than half of what I should be making with my degree. There's currently an opportunity available to me that the CEO told me to take off and run with. The project is to establish a non-profit charitable organization. This is what I went to school for and have never been in a job where I could use what I learned. I graduated sixteen years ago and it scares me to death! but I'm going to make a stab at it. I'm not getting much support from co-workers, but I have to remember that none of them have the education and training that I have, although they may have some skills. They're probably just as nervous as I am.

So there, I wrote something that I'm going to let people read. I actually made a start, Go Me. Someone here has done more than they realize to make up for those teachers and college advisors who dropped the ball. On January 1st, 2014, I received a notification that an anonymous member had gifted me an upgraded membership. It's a fabulous start to the new year. All week long, I've had words tumbling around in my head, trying to come up with some way to express just what that person did for me. I'm still at a loss. I can only say that they have no idea how much it means to me that someone thought that my writing was worth investing in. I intend to pay this forward by helping someone else as soon as I can, but I also want to repay this person by getting myself back into writing as a way to thank them.

I've always told myself that for every negative person, there are a thousand positive ones. It's so nice to see this manifested, especially online where people can be so crazy and mean. I just realized that I may have found this site by clicking through some links in Oprah Winfrey's newsletter. Isn't that a hoot?