The Quest Begins

Being a military brat we moved a lot. This meant I was exposed to many cultures, many different styles of living and all the different classes of people. I liked that it was one giant melting pot growing up. After seeing what was out there, or so I thought, I knew what I wanted Prince Charming to look like. My picture was of him having dark hair, dark eyes, most likely European or Mediterranean and of course, the perfect body. Its amazing how when we are young, the only thing we think about is the physical part of others. For all I knew Prince could be dumb as dirt but as long as he was “hot” and relatively wealthy I wouldn’t have cared. I was not a patient person. Mom tried all she could to teach that to me but I couldn’t be asked to slow down for a lesson. I didn’t want to wait for Prince to find me so I set out to find him.

I was not the most graceful of children and this followed me into my teen years. I was a member of a church youth group (yes, I know many who know me are splitting their sides laughing now) and we were at a skating party. I am left handed and had broken my right wrist a few weeks before from falling down the steps. I was looking forward to getting the cast off in a couple weeks when the skating event came up. The night was going well until someone made a fast stop in front of me. What followed resembled a twenty one car pileup. My little brother was involved in the crash and landed on top of my left wrist with his skate. He broke his leg when someone else fell on him. The trip to the hospital was not fun for my mom. We arrived at the hospital where S.D. worked. Sure enough my wrist was broken so now I was going to have casts on BOTH of my wrists. My brother got a cast on his leg and some of the nurses in the ER were looking at mom like she was some sort of monster. She was in shock by how bad we looked and wanted to put both of us in a rubber room so we couldn’t possible do anymore damage. She threatened to make us wear t-shirts that said “my mom did not do this to us”. The scary part to this is when we were in Japan we had a “sew lady” that made some of the coolest clothes for us, so we knew if she was serious, we would have had the shirts at anytime.

At the hospital, the dreamiest man I had ever seen came in to take the x-ray of my wrist. He was perfect. He had all the physical attributes I was looking for and a career in medicine meant he could support me in a lifestyle to which I could become accustomed. I was a total flirt then trying everything to get his attention. It helped that I looked older than my age. I couldn’t lie about it because he had my medical chart in front of him but I was too cute for being fourteen years old. He wasn’t that old and still new to the military so easily intimidated. S.D. told him he could see me but if he touched me, he would wind up in some horrible tour of duty like Midway Island or Guam. It was a short lived relationship because mom was still protecting me from myself and watched me like a hawk. He could come over and watch TV but I wasn’t allowed to really “date”. I just knew it was totally unfair. I was a complete drama queen back then and had regular fits when I thought things were unfair. Like a Shakespearean tragedy I just knew she was trying to sabotage my future. I had found the perfect man and she didn’t like it. She must have been right though because today, I can’t remember the name of my Dr. Dreamy.

I dated a lot of other boys in school while we were overseas. Most of them made my parents insane. If they hated him, he became that much more attractive to me. He could have had horns growing out of his head or a third eye, but if he made my mom’s brow sweat, I was “in love”. I was extremely shallow as a teenager. I would break up with a guy if his dad wasn’t high enough rank, if he didn’t show me complete attention or even something as trivial as not remembering a one month anniversary. I was a princess after all and demanded to be treated like one. My mirror was my best friend. My makeup had to be perfect; I had to have the best clothes and shoes. It would be safe to say I was the poster child for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I was a material girl in every sense of the word.

Living on Okinawa, the weather was always wonderful so we would go to the beach a lot. It was a lot like California to me with the exception of the occasional Typhoon. As with any paradise, you can’t stay forever and it was time to head out for the next adventure. Our tour of Asia was over and it was time to return to the USA. I was not thrilled we were not going to Europe or California. I had seen all I was going to be able to see in Asia and I wanted desperately to go to Europe, but at least California still had beaches and lots of sun.

Mom was excited that S.D was retiring after twenty years in. She was tired of traveling and wanted to set roots for us in her home state of New Mexico. I had a complete fit. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why the hell they would want to disrupt my life by sticking me in a state with no beach, no base and no chance of moving. What made matters worse, this strange place we were going to, would have this white powdery substance they called snow. I experienced snow on a shopping trip to Korea once and figured out rather quickly I didn’t like it. I was used to moving, traveling and making new adventures, sun and fun, this felt like I was sentenced to death row and wasn’t sure what my crime was.

We got to New Mexico and got very lucky. We moved into the house with GG and my grandparents. My cousin and her family also moved in to be closer to GG. Their house was being built next door and not ready yet. GG was saying she wanted the family closer together but I don’t think this is quite what she planned on. Wasn’t long before she figured out the meaning behind “be careful what you wish for because you just may get it”. I broke out with Chicken Pox three days after we got there. If I would have broke out on the plane, or even right before we left, I could have been placed in quarantine until it was determined I didn’t have more than a childhood disease. Now I look like Typhoid Mary bringing some tropical disease into the house. All the kids got it so we were like little terrorists, completely miserable and demanding attention. This was not what GG was used to either. I don’t think she could have foreseen three sick kids and too many adults invading her small farmhouse. We kids didn’t have a problem with it, but the stress on the adults was not hard to see.

I couldn’t start school right away because of the chicken pox. Even when they were healing over I refused to go till my face was clear. How was I to make a good impression if I looked like a pizza face? When it finally cleared I found myself in a whole new world. With all my other schools, we all had one thing in common, we were all military brats. In this civilian jungle they dropped me in, I was all alone. This was foreign territory to me and I didn’t navigate it well. No one dressed like me; no one talked like me and most looked at me like I was a circus freak. The name on their butt was Wrangler where the one on mine said Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt. For me, traveling was normal, for them, it was unheard of. Most of the girls didn’t like me because they thought I was stuck up. I was, but it’s just how I was. The boys liked me but I think it was because to them, I was fresh DNA to be added to the gene pool as well as a glimmer of hope that they wouldn’t have to take their cousin to prom.

New Mexico was not my idea of a great place to live. Most of the boys were cute enough but most had all been raised where they were born and had no intention of getting out and seeing the world. It reminded me of a southwestern version of Deliverance. Roswell was cowboy country and my grandparents were living in the country. Everyone seemed to know everyone and all their business. I was indeed scared to death I was going to be stuck in this dust bowl for the rest of my life. S.D. decided he wanted to go to this smaller town called Portales so he could continue his education. Fine with me, we were moving again, so maybe the light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t the train coming to run me over. I was wrong of course but the ignorant bliss was a safe place to be.

We get to Portales and sure enough, it was smaller than Roswell. It had a college so S.D. could begin the first of his many mid life crises. My mom decided she wanted to do something with her life more than being a mommy. She got her real estate license and took a job outside the home. I started a new school and it was even worse than the other. These kids were mean, and were not at all excepting of an outsider. I understood that there were clicks in schools, even military schools had them, but this was the first time I didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere at all. I felt trapped like an animal in a cage. I was fifteen years old and trying to figure out who I was. As if raging hormones were not bad enough, I didn’t fit in, had no friends and stuck in a place with no beach. Again I thought why is everything changing? I was used to change but this was insane. At least the change before had a common theme. We were all “the new kid” at some point. These kids had known each other since preschool. It was impossible to break into that and belong.

Dating boys in school became impossible. I knew there had to be a better way. Prince Charming wasn’t going to find me in this Podunk town and two years till graduation felt like a lifetime. Mom was married at 17 and at this rate I was going to be an old maid in my mind.

I transferred to an even smaller school because I was constantly getting into fights with the other girls. They didn’t like when I saw their ex boyfriends and because I was an outsider, I was an easy target. The new school was in the country. My class was small to say the least. I made number eleven. I also disrupted the balance. We now had six girls and five boys in the class. All I could think was someone kill me now please. There was no way I could date any of these boys. They were already paired up and had been since kindergarten. I still lived in the same town and drove myself to school in my 1971 Ford Pinto. I’m sure Ralph Nader is somewhere cringing right about now. It wasn’t the sexiest car to say the least but it was mine. Mom decided to try to teach me the value of money. She wouldn’t just buy me one, but said I needed to earn the money since I had a job. I thought to myself I really needed to find the prince because if I had to do this on my own, I was going to drive crap cars forever and that was completely unacceptable.

The good part to going to this school was it was closed on Mondays. A four day school week, what more could a kid want. Working also gave me access to seeing more men. Being in a college town there were plenty of college boys to look at. They were cute, had potential and cars. The problem with them is they were so much older than me. I was developing nicely so it wasn’t hard to turn the heads of the ones I was interested in. Mom was still protective even though she had a job and getting anything past her was like trying to sneak a t-bone steak past a Doberman.

Experience is a wonderful thing, it enables you to recognize a mistake when you're doing it again. As I reflect on past marriages, relationships and "other" things I have done, I think of how differently we see things at different stages and ages of our life. My next post will be painful, but a necessary evil to move out of the pain and into the light. It is an open letter to my daughters in hopes of saving them from some of the landmines life has in store.