Maybe I'm Crazy

Chess Pieces

Nothing is simple, things have never gone as planned for me, or 99 percent of the people I have had the misfortune, or pleasure of coming across in my 24 years of existence. Everyone always comes up with some grand plan for their life, and things are just magically going to work out for them exactly in that order. I think that's a joke, and the sooner that people let go of that misguided fairy tale the better.

I was about 10 when I started to become really aware of my existence, and really started mapping out my future. Typical things any little girl wanted as a kid. I wanted horses, and a ranch on a large expanse of land. A beautiful wedding and beautiful kids. I wanted to graduate from college with a major in marine biology.....what else? All of this would be done by the age of at least 25, no later. Time went on, and life happened(we'll get to that little nuance later). Anyways eventually I learned to kind of forget about those dreams, partly because some of them were childish, and partly because even if they weren't, that time frame is completely unrealistic.

I think. though, that there are some little boys and girls out there that can't quite shake their unrealistic expectations. When the rest of us were getting on with our lives and creating new goals to suit our ever changing lives, there are some that stuck to their guns, no matter the cost. While that sounds like an admirable quality, an ambitious one even. I think some of them are so dedicated to their master plan and their happiness, they forget to care about other people. Maybe there is something wrong in their brains, some chemical imbalance, some detrimental flaw. I know just how far these people will go to get where they think they need to be, and the scary thing is, you usually can't see it until it's already done. My life, or I guess more so those in my life, have been the chess pieces in someone else's game. Until recently, I had only had to suffer the aftermath of those wrong moves.

My name is Shelby, and this is where it all began. As far back as I can remember, things in my life and the lives of the closest people to me have always been complicated. I know, I know everyone says that, and maybe everyone's lives are complicated and I'm just overly sensitive. I suppose I'm just going to leave that open for judgement. These complications started pretty much as soon as I was able to remember things, and from what I can gather from my family, they started much before that.

It seems to me, now that I can make the connections, all the mundane and seemingly uninteresting things that have ever happened to me, were never actually mundane or uninteresting. Everything played it's part in the bigger picture of what my life is now.

Not all of my memories were bad, not everything that ever happened to me was bad. I think that of all the people I have ever known in my life, I have only had the misfortune of knowing one that was truly evil to the core.

Regular people have missteps, make mistakes. These mistakes, the ones that my parents made in particular seemed awful through the eyes of a little girl on the outside looking in. I couldn't fully grasp the idea that my parents were people too, just kind of making it up as they went. As I grew older, I realized more and more that they were aloud to make mistakes. I should have never expected them to be perfect.

Do you remember those huge camcorders, the ones that your parent's or you yourself used to film every single aspect of your life? The ancient version of social media. I can't figure out if I only think I remember certain things because of those videos that my mom relentlessly took and kept. She started doing this from the minute me and my sisters were born until the minute that a better form of recording was invented. So many of my memories have to be just memories of watching memories. None of the videos that she took were very extraordinary, just moments showing me playing, or sleeping or saying nonsensical things.

At the time of the large camcorder, we lived in Florida, my dad moved us there for work.  He worked for his father's company, a sheet metal business, and as far as I can see from the videos, this was probably the happiest my parent's were in their short marriage. My dad seemed normal, my mom seemed normal. Everything seemed normal.

My dad worked hard early on in life, I'm sure it was partly to support his growing family, and partly because he had this intense need to impress his dad, my Papa. He was the first born, the oldest, and he had this ever present intensity about him. Constantly moving, constantly changing, and constantly wanting for more. Eventually, it got to the point where you couldn't tell what kind of mood you were going to catch him in.

I think he began to grow unhappy in the life that my mom so enthusiastically tried to make better for him. She tried with everything in her to make her little family work, but what happened was not for a lack of effort. I just don't believe that she could have ever done anything to fix the man that she didn't know she married. I don't think that anyone could have. I think that very early on, the odds were stacked against him.

My parent's got a divorce. The happy little family was no longer a valid hope for me. The lifestyle that my parents made me believe I would have after they got married, and had me, would no longer happen. Things had changed for good, and there was no turning back. As I watched my cousins in their perfect lives, the life that I was supposed to have, I became sad. A sadness that would follow me for a very long time.