Dream a Little Dream

Let’s talk about dreams a bit. I’ve always had very vivid dreams and some of my dreams come true. Usually I know when I’ve dreamed about something when I get that déjà vu feeling. Thank God not all of my dreams come true. I’ve had some pretty nasty nightmares in my lifetime and I wouldn’t want to have to live through those.

When I was seven or eight I had a dream that I still remember. I was in a room that was all white and I was dressed in a white nightgown. It felt like a nice safe place. The only thing that was strange to me was that I had darker hair in the dream. When I was younger, I had strawberry blonde hair. It wasn’t until I was older that my hair started to get darker.

I don’t remember seeing a door, but there were windows that were high up on the wall.

I heard someone calling my name. I had to jump on the bed to see out the window. I saw one of my brothers and my mother’s second husband outside in a park we used to go to all the time. They were both calling my name and looking for me.

I’ve wondered what that dream meant all these years and the meaning finally came to me a few days ago.

My mother’s second husband and my brother made my life hell. They both abused me in different ways and in similar ways for years. After my mother divorced her husband, my brother continued the abuse for many more years. It was like they were both trying to destroy me. But there was a part of me that was always safe in that room. There was a part of me that God protected all those years.

The Bible says that we suffer so that we can help others who have also suffered. Maybe that is true. Through the years I’ve met others who have suffered some of the things that I have gone through and I pray that I was some comfort to them.

I thank God that he kept that part of me safe. If he hadn’t, I don’t know what would have happened to me.

(To be continued...)

© Pamela Sawyer, 2011

Deep in the Heart of Texas

I dived into life in Texas head first and I had some of the best times of my life while I was living there.

My life changed so much, it is hard to pinpoint any one thing that made it so much better.

One of those things was that I made friends and for the first time in my life I felt loved. Never in my life did I feel that kind of love from my family. It was one of the first times that I felt unconditional love. People loved me as I was. What a shocker. My family was always telling me what was wrong with me while the people I met in Texas accepted me as I was.

Love healed me but I also started to make changes of my own. I had been writing poetry since I was in high school and I wrote a short little song that I used to sing to myself after I had been in Texas for about a year. The title was “I’m Going to Be Happy No Matter What the World Does.” Writing that song was my first glimpse in how we can shape our world with our attitude. Happiness is a choice.

When I was in high school, I also found a passion for learning new things. My main passion was studying religion and philosophy. I found a used bookstore and spent hours in the religion, philosophy and self-help sections. I can’t remember all the books I read, but it helped to shape me into the person that I was becoming; a person that I liked to be with.

I was raised a Christian but we stopped going to church when I was very young. I went to different churches through the years with friends and family, but there was something nagging at me. I kept asking God, “What is the truth.”

I spent many years studying there. I couldn’t seem to get enough information. It was like I was starving. I also felt like it was the first time that I felt God was leading me in a direction that wasn’t on the beaten path.

I finally got frustrated with all the claims of absolute truth but I found that the main and most important truth that I found in each religion is that we should love one another and we should help those who can’t help themselves.

Another thing I started doing while I was in Texas was to start collecting heroes that I wanted to make my life after. Jesus was one of the first. Some of my other heroes were Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Mahatma Gandhi.

I still had moments of sadness. I felt a lot of guilt about my sister’s death and it seemed at times that my happiness wasn’t right if she wasn’t here. It took me years to let go of that guilt.

One of the funny things I found while I was making changes to my life and myself was that sometimes people, who think they really know us, don’t like to see these changes. I had an accident one night and I was laughing about it. My brother was upset because I wasn’t “upset enough” about what had happened. What? So he not only wanted to tell me how I should live my life, but he also wanted to tell me how I should feel and react to the things that happened in my life.

Life was going great. I had a great apartment. I had a great car. I had a great job. Then life stepped in and decided to throw me a curve.

One day, I wrecked my car. I was upset, but I was okay physically and my friends helped me out.

I called in to work the next morning and told them that I wouldn’t be in because I had had a car accident the night before. I was told that if I didn’t go to work, I wouldn’t have a job. I didn’t go to work. So, there goes the job.

I was looking for a job, but at that time the economy in Texas wasn’t like it had been when I had first arrived.

A friend of mine owned a bar and she asked me to work for her part-time. It was a fun job, but it wasn’t enough to pay all my bills. I barely made enough to keep myself fed.

I couldn’t pay my rent, so one day I arrived at my apartment and found an eviction notice. My sister-in-law came over and helped me move some of my stuff out and I stayed with my brother and his wife for a few weeks. That didn’t work out very well. My brother wasn’t very hospitable with me this time around. So, I moved in with the daughter of my friend who owned the bar.

While all this was going on, I didn’t feel upset. I think that also drove my brother crazy. I just went with the flow of things.

While I was working at the bar, I met another guy who I thought was Mr. Wonderful. He was from New York City. The first time I met him, I asked him where he was from. He told me that he was from New York and I told him that I wouldn’t be caught dead in that place. So far that statement is still true, thank God. I still haven't been "caught dead."

Well, I was talking to my friends about Mr. Wonderful and the possibility of my moving to New York. For years I had fantasized about living in New York, but I never thought it would happen. My friends were all for it. One of my friends in particular kept telling me that I should go and that I would love it.

Mr. Wonderful was working at a job in Texas that ended a few weeks after we had met. We talked constantly on the phone and we kept talking about my plans.

I was trying to put together the money that I needed to move to New York. That wasn’t going very well. The bar that I was working in had been busy almost every night when I first started working there. When everyone found out that I was thinking about moving to New York, the crowd disappeared quickly. There was one guy who kept coming by though and he spoke some magic words to me one night. He told me, “You’ll never go to New York and if you do go, you will never stay.”

I still didn’t have much money. I talked to Mr. Wonderful and he told me not to wait, to just come. So I sold the car that I had bought with money my mother had loaned me. I think I got about $150 for it. It wasn’t much of a car.

I was trying to sell whatever I could. The friend of mine who owned the bar gave me another $100 and her daughter bought my vacuum cleaner for about $20.

I found an ad for something called “drive away” in the paper. There was a couple who needed someone to drive their van to Ventnor City, New Jersey. I had to pay a $150 deposit which would be returned when I arrived in New Jersey and delivered the van. All I had to do was pay for the gas.

So, two weeks after the magic words were spoken by my customer in the bar. I was on the road again. I had $120 cash and a heart full of dreams.

(To be continued....)

© Pamela Sawyer, 2011

My Great Escape

 I was 24 years old when I finally ran away from home and I stayed away. The first time I tried to run away from home, I was 4 years old. It only took me 20 years to finally accomplish it.

I packed my bags and headed for Texas after two hours of deliberation. My house mate's comment that I would "never" go to Texas got me moving. Another factor that had a lot to do with my decision to take off for Texas was that I had been thinking that maybe being with my ex-boyfriend would be better than being alone. I still wasn't having any luck finding Mr. Wonderful.

I drove south and stopped in to see my mom to say goodbye. She told me that my ex-boyfriend had called and told her to tell me that I better call him when I got there. My response was, "Yeah right, like that's going to happen."

After leaving moms, I went over to my grandmother's. God love her, she fed me some of her fantastic homemade chicken and noodles before I left.

Many years after I left Iowa, I saw a comedian on television that was also from Iowa. He had moved to San Francisco. He said that he was shocked to find that there was no one at the border to stop him from leaving. I could relate to that. I hated living in Iowa, but at times it felt that I couldn't leave.

I was on the road by 9:00 p.m. and the only time I stopped along the way was to get gas and junk food to keep me going on my trip. I drove 20 hours straight. When I got to the border of Oklahoma and Texas, I thought, "Thank God, I'm almost there." Wrong. I had no idea how big Texas was.

When I got to Waco, I asked the man in the gas station I stopped at, "Where is San Antonio." He laughed and told me that I still had about 180 more miles to go. During those 20 hours, 12 hours was spent driving through Texas.

I arrived at the city limits for San Antonio at about 5 p.m. the next day. When I saw the population was over a million people, I couldn't believe it. This was the biggest city I had ever been in during in my life.

When I left Iowa the temperature was in the 30s. When I arrived in Texas, the temperature was in the 80s. There was a pool at the apartment complex where my brother and his wife lived. I decided to take a dip one day. I went out and dived in head first and came up out of the water yelling, "Holy Shit!" There was a guy up on a balcony above the pool. He found my dive into the pool and my response very funny. I didn't know that the pool wasn't heated and the water was very cold.

A new chapter of my life was beginning and I dived into it like I dived into that water. I didn't check the temperature; I just dived in head first.

Living in Texas was my first taste of real freedom in my life. I figured a few things out during my years there. One of those things was that I could take care of myself. My family had me convinced that I needed someone to take care of me. My brother actually told me that one day. I don't know where he got his ideas and I took great delight in proving him and others in my family wrong.

(To be continued...)

© Pamela Sawyer, 2011

Moving Forward

So, my sister died and I decided that I couldn't take my own life because of the pain that it caused my family. However, there are many ways to die. Some people choose one or more every day. We eat too much, drink too much, smoke too much, take drugs (pharmaceutical and illegal) or we take risks that are just plain stupid.

I was also majorly po'd at God. I had prayed for him to help my sister. He let her die, but he made me stay here. I took that very personally.

In the era that I was growing up in, women weren't encouraged to get an education and have a career. We were supposed to go out and find ourselves a husband. That is what I was doing and I was doing it the only way I knew how at the time. I was hanging out in bars looking for Mr. Wonderful.

I was a regular party animal. I would go out drinking and take any drug anyone offered me. I didn't care. I thought I was having a good time, but I know now I was just heading down another road to my own destruction.

One night I had a dream. I was lying on a stainless steel table like they have in a morgue. Someone was trying to get me to do something. I said, "I can't!" Then, poof, my sister is in the dream and she said, "Yeah, she can't. She's stuck in a speed trap."

That dream was a bit of a wakeup call for me. I quit the drugs but I kept on searching for Mr. Wonderful and drinking way too much, thinking I was having a grand old time.

I had a few brief relationships in this period. Most of them were the "wham bam, thank you ma'am" type of brief encounters. Then I met a man who I thought was "the one". We moved in together and a new drama began in my life.

I met him in a bar and we both were pretty hammered that night. After I met him, I thought we would settle down into domestic bliss. I would show him what a wonderful person I was and then we would get married and have kids and the whole nine yards.

After I moved in with him, he became Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When we were out in public or visiting my family or his family, he was as sweet as can be. Everyone just thought he was the greatest guy. When we were alone, things changed. He was never physically abusive but the verbal and psychological abuse was there most of the time. He loved to tell me things like, "If you were smart, you would go out and find someone who really loves you."

I lived with him and put up with his abuse for 15 months. Then, one day, it was like I woke up from another bad dream. I walked out and went to the bus stop. Then I took a bus down to the town where my mother was still living and stayed with a friend of mine for a few days. She helped me to get a car so I would have more freedom of movement, then she went with me back to the city I had been living in and helped me to move my stuff out of the apartment I had been sharing with Mr. Wonderful.

I moved into a house that I was sharing with 6 other people that was located outside of the city. I loved sharing my life with these people. There were 4 women and 2 guys sharing the house and the landlord also became a friend. We had some great times together.

So, I started my life again and I started looking for Mr. Wonderful, again. I went out dancing and drinking with some of my house mates and I thought I was really living it up.

Then I lost my job. I wasn't particularly unhappy about it. To me, it was just a job. I started looking for another job and kept on partying with my friends.

One day, I called one of my brothers in San Antonio, Texas to wish him a happy birthday. He asked what I was up to. I told him that I was looking for a job. He said, "Come down to Texas. You should be able to find a job here."

I made all the same old lame excuses for why I couldn't leave Iowa. He told me to think about it and then we hung up.

I started talking about Texas with one of my male house mates. He told me, "You'll hate it. They have bugs down there that are huge! You'll never go to Texas."

Oh no....no one tells me that I will never do something. This has been ingrained in my personality since I was very young. If someone tells me that I "can't, won't or shouldn't" do something, I will do it just to prove that I can, will and should.

God knows how to get me motivated and those words from my house mate got me moving. I went downstairs and packed my bags. I then called my brother back and told him that I was coming to Texas. He asked, "When?" and I said, "Now!"

I think it was about 6 p.m. in the evening when I loaded my bags into my car and headed south on one of the biggest adventures that I had experienced in my life and it was amazing.

(To be continued.......)


© Pamela Sawyer, 2011

Why I Choose to Live

Life can be hard and painful at times. I don't know anyone who has a perfect life. That only exists in the movies and on television.

So, why go on? I think that was the main question I had when I was 17 years old. All I could see was pain. Pain in the world around me, pain in my family and I felt the pain that was inside of me.

From the time I was 17 to 23, I tried to kill myself a few different ways. Needless to say, I was a non-fatality. I survived every time and today I can truly say that I'm glad I'm still here. Then, I wasn't so glad.

When I was feeling like I wanted to die, I felt trapped. Trapped by pain. Trapped by my circumstances in life. Trapped by all the pain in the world. I also felt like there was no one who understood what I was going through.

What saved me? A few things. The grace of God, Allah or whatever you want to call him; writing things down in journals and writing poetry; friends; and the death of my sister from suicide when I was 23 years old.

When I was 23, I was once again thinking about ways to end my life.

One day my sister came to see me. She told me that she was going to kill herself the following Sunday and I could come over to my mother's house and take any of her belongings that I wanted.

On Sunday, I went to my mother's house and I told her what my sister had told me. There was lots of drama and the sheriff was called and my sister was taken out to the mental health facility that was in our town.

I used to go visit my sister in the hospital. The last time I visited her she told me, "If you and mom really loved me, you would let me die."

My sister was released from the hospital after about 30 days. The hospital told my mother that my sister was okay and there was nothing else they could do for her.

My sister came to see me a few days after she was released from the hospital. I could see the pain in her eyes. I knew she wasn't okay. As soon as she left, I called my mother and told her that my sister wasn't okay, that she needed to go to a place where they could help her. My mother told me to wait and see how she is.

Four days later, my sister was dead. I can still remember exactly what I was doing when my grandfather and my stepfather came to my apartment to tell me what had happened.

The whole process of grief, planning the funeral and gathering the family together was too surreal. It felt like a bad dream that I was wishing that I could wake up from.

My sister saved my life. I saw the pain that my family went through and is still going through after almost 30 years. When I saw that, I knew I couldn't take my own life and leave that kind of pain behind.

I wish I could say that life was all roses and sunshine after that. Of course, it wasn't. Life is life. We have good days and bad days.

I read a poem years ago that was written by a child in a concentration camp and the main idea of the poem was that she would be sad tomorrow and if tomorrow came, she would say again, "I'll be sad tomorrow."

So I choose to live today. Tomorrow, I will say again, "I choose to live today."

(To be continued...)

© Pamela Sawyer, 2011