A girl

I got to be a bachelorette for over 48 hours and it was wonderful....now if I could have 48 more I would.......want 48 more and so on. I guess time alone, really alone; helps you realize how burnt out you are and……who you are. Now, according to life in this society, and the far from the center-like existence of my everyday life, I am JUST a stay at home mom who used to be a dancer for many years and did a short gig as an R.N. Better yet, a Christian-stay-at home-mom with the proverbs 31 woman and home schooling for Jesus banner imposed on my ambivilent identity. But I am none of that……..really.

Inside, I am still a girl.......a little girl who gets morosely sad when she sees a dead bird and when her mother won't give her a good-bye kiss before she goes to school. Little Heidi Page who still calls the Navy Base as often as she can to ask when her daddy's ship will come home....even though when it does come home, her daddy is emotionally as far away as when he was at sea, drinks too much and slaps his wife in the face a lot after a nice day at the zoo and black cherry ice cream.

The little girl with the over active imagination that requires her sister’s confidential clarification to the teachers that think we have a baby sister who is walking around with only one eyeball because of the tragic accident we don’t speak of. I am still the little girl who knocks on stranger's doors to use their bathroom because my mom has locked me out for the day to sleep away undiagnosed depression. A little girl who could, if she had a hankering for a Slurpee and a bag of penny candy from the 7-11, come up with the best scam to go door to door collecting money for some good cause of her imagination.

I am still the fiercely jealous tag-along-of-a sister who can't believe her only sister would want to play with anyone but her. The straw haired imp with freckles who dresses up in her mothers cocktail dresses when no one’s home and sings to her fans, Frank Sinatra’s, “I’ve got you under my skin,” smoking Kent cigarettes left by a meaty German woman who attended her mother's sad attempt at a Tupperware party.

I'm the nervous little girl who is sitting on her principal’s green leather sofa in a pink turtle neck because I've pushed another girl down to see what it would feel like, while all the teachers with coffee breath and Aqua Net hairdo's wring their hands and say….,
"Heidi is so intelligent……so capable if she would only apply herself and stop..... talking….talking......talking." I am still the girl who rolls up Bazooka Joe bubble gum and sticks it on her ears and tells everyone they ARE real earrings, twirling around so her dirndl dress will fly up and the boys can see her under wear ( especially Mitchell).

I am still her, walking around the many California summers barefoot, strolling her doll in an old buggy from Salvation Army until the late evening hours......... the little girl who had her innocence taken away by a stranger ……the little girl who is being redeemed by the Man on a cross she saw while sitting in a Sunday school class she was invited to .........the Man she thought was beautiful and really sad but good.

I guess I will never become who I am supposed to be until I accept and embrace who I still am.