a quote by John Greenleaf Whittier
Looking backwards for a perspective is interesting.
Some times we venture off the hill to see other things...
When we do it has to be for a decent reason.
Yesterday I was asked to take some photographs for Channel 7 for the Sunrise Show. An assignment I thought and I was immediately excited about the prospect of helping in some way. I grabbed the camera and jumped in the car hurriedly. I was excited to be doing this finally.
Taking photographs is something I have been doing forever it seems. It is a long time ago now when I started this and its consistent as its never stopped.
Taking Photographs started for me when I was about seven years old and I had my first 126 Kodak cartridge film camera. I purchased this camera with coins I had saved from bottle collecting. Why did I want to take photographs? When I was little I wanted to be a photographer but Edith said awful things about photographers and she said such things as "they wouldn't work in an iron lung". I knew not to be one of these or I would never be loved. That was bothersome because really I loved it so much. No one else in my class had a camera at that time. Why did I want one so bad. I was torn between this feeling and the sense of responsibility that I had to do or be something that someone would be happy with. I had to do this so that I was loved.
I wanted to work in a shop just like Kay,. I thought if I am like Kay then I will be loved. I wasn't though. I was treated with great contempt at as many opportunities possible instead. Sometimes, when I was small I thought that I was surely going to just burst because I felt just so bad. I felt very alone and I didn't feel any love the way the other kids did or talked about in their lives.
I woke up quite sad last night and these were some of the things that were bothering me. This and my abandoned cat from when I was 7 years old. I still cry.
I must be grateful as I was fed and clothed and had a dry warm bed to sleep in. Physical pain became something I was accustomed to well as I was dished up my serving of floggings for the day. Three at least if not more each day. It would leave marks and bruises and welts on my body for days and days. I am sure that the kids these days would think they had had their throats cut... they would not deal with it.
I should not have had to deal with this either as a human being. My kids seem to think it was acceptable cause I am old now. They seem to think everyone was treated this way in my day! No they were not. Other children who were my peers were very well treated by their parents and I longed to be loved so much like they were.
I always felt so damn different though. Like as if I wasn't part of this thing what ever the thing was. I felt separate and different. Not better than them. Oh no! Totally to the contrary. I felt very little in any importance compared to these other people who I knew and was in class with and went to church with. I felt very very strange about it all and I had to keep this trussed up inside of me because there wasn't anyone to tell really. No one cared.
Children were not respected very well when I was young. The old saying goes only a mother could love it. Well that is what they used to say about me like I was some kind of weirdo or something. I should have been drowned at birth and that I was a child only a mother could love. I had no mother so that meant I would be loved by no one. Children think like this and considering most of the dark thoughts about myself were formed in my per-operational state when I was very very young it is no wonder its tough to change my thinking.
Then to be shoved into an institution to live after this was all but too much and I tried to take my life when I was 13 years old. I wanted to die. I really didn't think I could feel any worse and I really didn't think I could handle it. Well how wrong was I. Life just went from bad to worse but we are not telling the life story here just the fact that taking photos was frowned upon and I funded the entire exercise myself with collecting used bottles for cash. Even my own brothers and sisters abandoned me thinking I was spoiled .. oh my God, how wrong were they.
Image by Mezza - Antique wares at Urunga Antiques.. very beautiful
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