I don’t like to force ideas to write about, and I’ve been dealing with some health issues, so sometimes I write one or two days apart, and sometimes it’s one or two months apart.

I’m starting to flesh out my life story. It is easier for me to write about my life in a just the facts kind of way to avoid feeling all the pain I felt during the hard times. But it is time. So I started with the event I remember the best. It happened when I was around eight, and for years I couldn’t understand why this event was seared into my memories. It has come to my mind unbidden at least weekly for the last 40 years.

I decided to flesh out these stories long-hand with a pencil. It seems more intimate, and I need all the help I can get to reconnect with my emotions during these times. So as I wrote out the story, I started to remember the joy I had with my sister that day. It was one of the only times, as a child, I remember being alone with her – interacting in a big sister/little sister kind of way. She taught me how to make little cakes, and we went ice skating on the pond behind her house. And then I began to remember coming home and having my spirit crushed by my step-mom. She screamed, ranted, and raved about me wanting to spend time alone with my sister. How ungrateful I was to her. I was eight and wanted some quality time with my sister, who lived in another house, and who I never got to see.

I suddenly realized this moment imprinted the feeling or even knowing that when something good happens in my life, the “other shoe” will drop and stomp all the joy and good feelings away. After experiencing so much joy, feeling like it was the best day of my life, and then coming home to my step-mom crushing my spirit, this has affected me my entire life.

We live in California, and through God’s grace, we are able to rent this amazing apartment where the ocean is 100 feet from us. The timing was perfect, and the price, relatively speaking, is doable. I have not been able to fully appreciate my view in these ten years because I live in fear of it being taken away. I try so hard to experience the beauty and awe of it in the present, but my core reaction is to wonder how or when it will all end. I love living by the ocean so much that it feels like I would be destroyed if I had to leave it, but I can’t enjoy it like I should because of my core reaction of – when will it end.

Now that I know the moment this feeling was solidified in my person, the moment this became my core reaction, I can lift the wounded little girl in me to God for healing. I can truly work on forgiveness. And hopefully, more fully enjoy the beauty of the moment.