Validation

Now, due to my mother's personality, I was reared to NEED validation...it is as important as air, more important than food, water, or shelter...I sifted my environment for her happiness like a whale gathering plankton, spent every breath grasping for her approval, and held onto her kind words like an oasis in the Mojave.

This is not a matter of butt kissing, because it is simply bigger than that. This is a voice that grows with each year, that keeps driving you to please the people around you above all else...that tells you only with their happiness shall you truly be real.

My mother also instilled me with a need to be perfect...her particular Achilles heel was sweet tea...I have always and shall forever make the best sweet tea she has ever drank...it was something I strived for and a crown I shall not relinquish at any cost. Sad, but true.

In those molding years of my pubescence, my middle school time, my transition, she alternated between ignoring, deploring, condemning, and bringing the wrath of daddy upon me...this has resulted in wretched fear of being ignored, coupled with a desperate. all-consumimg NEED to avoid conflict. I want to stand up for myself, and talk a good talk, but am often powerless in the moment.

I strived to be the best at everything, and my high school teachers became replacements for the parental validation that simply was not forthcoming...each essay presented me with the NEED to outdo myself...I spent 60 hrs a wk at school between rehearsals, (I went to a performing arts magnet school) and classes, then another 3-6 hrs a night on homework. Mama had always said that the only way to make anything of yourself was through a college education, and we did not have enough money to "send" me to school, so I would have to do it on my own.

I started being solicited by schools in my sophomore year of high school, by my senior year I had received 150-200 solicitations...I had narrowed my desires down to 2 schools, Loyola Univ. in New Orleans, (to study music as I had focused on throughout high school) and Sarah Lawrence College in NY, (the only college in the country that offered a degree in creative writing at the time).

I spent countless hours on the applications and essays, of course I did, this was my future...I clearly recall finishing the essay for Loyola about 3am on a school night, then placing it on Mama's desk and telling her about it the next day.

I needed her signature on my apps because I was under 18. Larger than that though, I needed to file a FAFSA, Federal Application for Student Aid...this required my parent's tax information since I was under 18 and still living at home.

I assumed Mama had taken care of all this, although I did ask her also and she said she had. I went on to graduate 8th in my class with a 3.80 GPA and nearly 300 community service hours...I was an honors and AP student and Natl Honor Society Member. I was already a published poet and stage performer.

I discovered, (when the acceptance letters that I was waiting for never arrived) that my mom had never sent in the apps or the FAFSA...I had pulled all-nighters, tutored, and generally worked my butt off, for nothing.

(to be continued, again)