As a little girl I used to sit at the window day dreaming even though it was often at night when my step-dad had already gone to sleep. The only things I could see under the streetlights were the parked cars. Every once in awhile I would see a flash of light indicating a car coming down the road.

With each car that passed I would imagine it stopping outside of our house, a woman who looked tall and slender with long blonde hair would get out. She would stop at the trunk of the car and retrieve her suitcase and slowly walk towards the front door. Her hair would bounce off her shoulders with each step that she took. As she got closer my face would light up, I would stand and get ready to run to the door to greet the woman with a warm-hearted “Mom!! You finally came back, I’ve missed you sooooo much!” But then reality would hit me and I would realize that she was never coming back.

I was around kindergarten age and this would be a fairly common ritual for me. Even as I write this I cannot hold back my tears. Just the thought of how bad I wished for my mom, each day of my life, pains me. It didn’t stop as I got older either.

You may be asking yourself: “What happened to her”? I cannot give you the complete answer to that. What I have been told is that my mom and step-dad (my legal guardian since he adopted me) separated. At this point they both were living in Texas and he was in the military. My mom took me back to Wisconsin where most of her family resided. My step-dad stayed in Texas, but at some point received orders to go to Germany. That’s when the story gets shady.

My mom told me (we eventually reunited when I was a teenager) that he came to Wisconsin begging to see me one last time before he left for Germany. It happened to be mother’s day and he wanted to take me out to dinner and spend some time with me since he wouldn’t see me again for another four years. He promised to bring me home before my bedtime. However, the evening came and went and she waited and waited but he never showed back up with me.

I am not sure how she found out but she finally realized that he had taken me to North Carolina.

My mother and my grandmother then drove to North Carolina to try to get me back and that’s again where the story is vague. Neither my mom nor my grandmother could get on the military base to get near me. They couldn’t stay for very long without the fear of losing their jobs so they headed back to Wisconsin. Essentially giving up. Shortly thereafter, my step-dad and I flew to Germany, where I remained in his custody until I was 15 years old.

My step-dad’s version of the story is that she left “us”. She didn’t want to be with us anymore and she packed up her things and he took her to the airport where she flew back to Wisconsin.

The weird part is that I have this blurred memory where I’m screaming at the top of my lungs: “Mommy, mommy, please don’t go! MOMMY!!!” But as a Pisces, who are very well known to be day dreamers, and with many blocked out memories of my childhood, I am still wondering if this was real or an imaginary scene.

Either way, no matter whose story was true, to this five year old’s mind I was abandoned.

Feeling abandoned is an awful feeling. Imagining my daughter EVER feeling this way hurts my heart to the core. I believe that is another reason I struggle with co-dependency. Not just because of an unhealthy marriage but also because I NEVER EVER wanted my daughter to feel the way that I did while I was growing up. I was always by her side. Especially during times when she needed me the most. Such as her appendectomy. I stayed in the hospital with her until she got to go home even though her father wouldn’t. I went to as many school functions as I could even though her father rarely went. It’s like I cranked up the switch to make up for what had happened to me and knowing that her father was not involved in most of what she did.

You know what though? I succeeded!! My daughter still knows to this day that I will drop anything if she truly needs me. She knows that she can count on me. One thing she has consistently said to me over her lifetime is that I was the one who has never left her.

That my friends is just one way that unhealthy cycles can be broken.

What is one thing that you are proud of that you have changed in your life for the better to break unhealthy cycles?

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