RISE, A Modern Guide for the Purpose Driven Woman Winter 2014 | Page 44
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When Is it T Much?
oo
Have you ever
wondered how
much about your
self to share and
exactly how to do
it? Yea, I did too one
time and then...
Written by Camden Hoch
At 6 years old I knew we were different,
or so I thought. My parents were young
and had parties with their friends. It was
the 70’s with strobe lights and Gladys
Knight and the Pips on the stereo blasting “midnight train to Georgia”. My
parents and their friends were funny
to spy on because they were dancing,
screaming, and falling down. You never
knew what was going to happen. In the
mornings, my brother and I cleaned up
the stale cigarettes and left over hi-balls
all over the house so we could make
it look all pretty before they woke up.
They would be so proud of us for making it look nice and mom would be in a
better mood if everything was clean and
put in its place.
It’s exhausting thinking about pretending to be normal back then. What was
normal anyway? I later learned that most
people I knew had a secret in their family
- alcoholism, adultery, anorexia, drugs
and more. So I guess you could call us
all normal. It wasn’t “Leave it to Beaver”
but it’s what we knew.
I grew up in the South where I was
taught to be seen and not heard.
My mother was an alcoholic and my
Dad worked a lot.They both loved us
very much but they were growing up
too. I will confess that I was not much
of a Georgia peach. I was a rebel with
a cause. My cause was to fight back as
much as possible so my parents would
send me to boarding school. I just wanted to get away so that everything would
be okay. I started sneaking my parents’
alcohol in 9th grade and it snowballed
from there into smoking pot, cocaine,
promiscuity and more. I set a very successful course for abusing myself and
letting others abuse me too. I was a bully
at times to many and I was dying inside.
On the outside, as you might have
guessed, everything looked pretty. On
the inside, it was raw, painful and dark.
How would I even begin to share my
pain? If I did, what good would it even
do? If it looked good on the outside, it
must be ok on the inside.