Part 20
After foster care, I
did what I could to become a responsible citizen. I promised myself I would
never be like my mother. I worked three jobs, and took fully loaded semesters
at school. Through the good fortune of befriending my Linguistics professor, I started
teaching the English language to those who hadn’t yet learned it but needed to.
I taught classes at a college, I taught in Myanmar, South of China. I spent
time in Italy. I learned to speak another language. I rode my bike through the
mountains and swam in the Mediterranean Sea.
Have
you ever burned your legs in the Mediterranean Sea? The salt is healing for
your wounds and I had a million I didn’t even realize until I stepped foot in
to those healing waters. I sat on a rock and let the water wash over every last
one.
But my
insides were broken. I was damaged and as I laid my head down in the water and
tasted the salt on my lips, I wished that I could drink it in like a healing
elixir. Something to make all of those jagged little edges smooth—the way rocks
are whittled down and crafted over time.
Italy was a healing balm—a place of respite. I stood on the
Alps on the Italy-Switzerland border and listened to the gentle whisper that the
Bible speaks of. I heard it. I’ve heard it a time or two since, but I don’t
think as loudly as I did that day. The only thing I felt, heard, saw and knew
was that I was alive and my life was a work or art in the making.
I
graduated with honors in English. I was becoming the girl that no one expected
me to become having grown up the way I did. I did my hair and make-up perfectly
and I dressed modestly. I smiled broadly and became the girl people question
how she turned out as well as she did coming from her type of background. And that made me feel good. Because I was
what people refer to as trailer trash. And I was a survivor. And the perfection
was burning me from the outside in.
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