#mayblogaday

3. How has your place in your family shaped you?

I am the oldest of five... unless you count the half sister none of us ever met from our father.  But from my parents, I am the oldest of five.

I have three sisters and a brother.  My sisters are 2 years, 10 years and 14 years younger than I am. My brother is 5 years younger.

We always have a laugh because I’m the one that tested and tried our parents’s patience and temper about every way possible, paving the way and making them all look ‘better’. I was a holy fucking terror apparently. :) 

Also I’m the one that my siblings turn to, look to.. look UP to.  When my father passed, I was the one they watched, to see how I would handle it, the one they leaned on.  

Being the one to lead... I have tried to always take that leadership pretty seriously.  It was ingrained into me my role, and my responsibility as the oldest.  When I got the others into trouble I was also sometimes the one made example of... the one punished because ‘as the oldest I should know better’. 

Now, I am the one my siblings call in crisis, to lean on, ask for advice, and to help them through.   

It wasn’t always so. We had a falling out for a while, over a lot of things, but we’ve come through and we are stronger for it, and now going through this with my mum, our bonds are being put to the test again. 

When Mom’s second marriage ended (with us leaving with nearly nothing, despite the fact that the house had been contributed to by both), we moved into an apartment on the other end of Main Street. It was 1982; I was in 9th grade. It was the beginning of my teenage years and the beginning of the MTV era. My bedroom was wallpapered with Def Leppard and Duran Duran.

Music was my thing; I wanted to go to every show that came to town and there were plenty - we lived between the Civic Center in Baltimore and the outdoor amphitheater in Columbia, with DC just an hour down 95. Each show came with a shirt, maybe a program, and usually something to eat and drink.

Something you say all the time followed by your favorite gif

goddamnit

2. Home is..

Home to me has more than one meaning.  

I go home, every night to the house where I sleep, where I eat my meals, where I get my mail, and ‘live’. 

Yet it is not the place that feels like ‘home’ feels to me... 

For me I have experienced ‘home’ in both a place and a person. 

In a place it’s somewhere I feel free to be entirely myself, feel like it is not just a physical thing, but a spiritual thing.  It is somewhere that I feel entirely safe, and within my element. I had this feeling about New Orleans when I lived there.  I think that I could possibly feel that way about a few places if I ever get to them. 

I have also experienced ‘home’ in a person.  To find someone you feel so in tune with, so comfortable with, safe, and entirely loved, good bad and in between.... that you can confide in, trust entirely, and feel like you’ve known forever, and probably have lived multiple lives together (if you believe in that as I do), a true soul mate... that is ‘home’ in the ultimate sense of the word and it makes where ever you are with them home enough. 

I have had that once... and I don’t know that I will ever have it again, but one can hope. 

And to make me laugh, my little niece Miya, asked what I was writing and so I read it to her, and she says “you just wrote about me.”  :) 

The patriarchy

The "free market"

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Never married and no kids; SPOILED

School smart; street stupid