I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates. - TS Eliott

So I must be frozen in time at around age 20. This is the image summoned in my head according to Eliott's wisdom in his poetic works.

Groovin The Moo Banner

 I don't think that I will ever really grow up. I will always have a young mind. Part of the reason for this is that I presume I am subconsciously waiting for my mother to come and get me. She has passed from this Earth some fourteen years ago. But, still my body waits for her just as it has done from the beginning when I was a baby of four months old.  
Apparently I just refused to take any nourishment at all and was on the point of starvation and hospitalised due to malnutrition due this blatant emotional standoff.  I wasn't even 12 months old and I was trying to fight for my life in the only ways I had at my disposal.  I fought on my instinctual level because I was a baby.  I was subconsciously waiting for my mother.   I guess the doctors and Edith didn't have any understanding  that a baby has feelings.   My feelings were strong indeed.

I have vivid memories that go back to when I was approximately 9 months of age. This has been fully confirmed.   It was a shock for others to discover that my memories of this  time in my life were so vivid.   I could remember clothing and colours of clothing and where furniture was placed at the time.  I suppose not many people do remember very much before their first birthday. Trust me to have to be saddled with this as well!

I hated the blue restraint they tied me up in and walked me like a dog. It was blue plastic vinyl patent horrid thing .  I hated it!  It was said of me though ; if I didn't have this attached to me they feared greatly for my life. I would surely be dead they told me.   I used to just run. As a two year old I would take off and run  as far as I could run.  I wonder where I was running to?  My mother perhaps?

Funny thing is when life gets too much for me emotionally now, and even in the middle of the night I run.  I have to run and if I don't run I feel I cannot breath and I am being held under.  I run for my life but I don't know why. Is it something inside of me left over  from the trauma of missing my mother?  I am almost sure it is.

The Groovin Banner above  serves to remind me that while ever there is breath I will probably love the things that young people do. Why?  Because I will always be young in my head and I need to be part of something  this age group is part of.  For me to live I need to fit where I fit comfortably  for the myriad of reasons I have said.  This age group may not want me  to fit in either, this could be a problem. So that would render me with  no place and what is new?  I had a huge time at Groovin'.  I wish I could do it all over again.  Festivals are expensive though , petrol and food costs soar these days.

When I look back over my life I sometimes wish things had turned out different. But I really never thought any of these sort of thoughts until I lost my children. Before then I took it all as a learning curve.  Its very different now.  I feel I have lost them due to an inability  in them to understand me. My son for instance calls all of what happened to me in care and later a "FANCIFUL STORY".  This is an unforgivable situation given the circumstances I have been put under and the abuse I suffered just at the hands of the department alone and the sicko's they employed.

I need my son's love so much.   When I needed him the most he abandoned me also. I re-lived all of the pain and fear feelings the original abandonment situation did when I was four months old.  

I have had many times during my life where this situation has replayed.  It is  like someone hit the repeat button. --- "Here is another abandonment for you Mary, you are obviously well qualified to experience this now". Shivers!  I think others would surely die if they had to belly up to what I have to each day on an emotional level when my eyes open and I feel the despair so deep as I do each day when I awake from sleep.

I love my children and I miss them so terribly but I do not own them.   They have their own lives and I hope they are all happy.  That is all a mother can ask for her children.   Sometimes the situation is so surreal it is as if I never gave birth to them. I don't know them anymore.  My body looks like I never gave birth at all. Is this a dream I can wake up from? Oh Lord I wish it were. If I could I would never sleep again..... if I could keep them here in this reality.

Image by Mezza - Groovin the Moo Banners at the Maitland Show in May 2012