Getting to know me: Part 2

(Thanks to Jared for prompting me to continue...)

I don't remember exactly when I realized we were poor. It may have been when I began to notice the difference between my home and the homes of some of my friends. I remember watching "The Brady Bunch" and other TV shows and thinking how rich those familys were...because they lived in homes that were clean and had real, unbroken furniture. Understand, we weren't exactly dirt-poor. I always had clothing, food, and such. But our house had one bathroom, no closets, no AC, no central heat, etc. It was very hot in the summer and mostly cold in the winter.

My brother and sisters were mostly cyphers to me. The age difference was a generational wall. My brother and oldest sister were both married before I turned six. Another sister married not long after that. Time created a wall between us that I still haven't really been able to breach. We get along, but "family" seems a bit strong for what we are.

When I started school, I remember thinking, "Ok twelve years of school and then I can go back to playing all the time." I watched a lot of TV.

Somewhere in my youth, I began to lie. I'm not sure when or why. My life wasn't that bad, but it was bad enough so that I felt the need to enhance the truth. It would be a very long time before I came to terms with my lying. I still have to make an effort to stick to reality.

Part of that (I assume) has to do with my self-esteem issues. I can't say why, but I've always thought that no one would really want to know me, be my friend, or love me if they knew who I really was...what I was really like. As a kid, I was shy and that shyness often manifested itself as being stuck-up. I certainly wasn't an easy person to like.

In school, I would never have more than one or two friends. Often just one best friend. Often it would be a new kid..someone with whom I had no history. Having friends meant sometimes having them over to your house. That was hard for me as my house was a dump. I had to like someone an awful lot and trust them to ask them over.