Sometimes I feel like a non-person. Besides my almost complete isolation due to both health and monetary restrictions, I also don’t have anything. What I mean by that is that I don’t have anything that is really mine, things from childhood or even my teen years. We moved a lot when I was a kid and each time we moved we left pretty much everything behind. Then when I was twelve my brother set my room on fire (yes on purpose) and burned everything I had. When I was fifteen and left home I left with just a suitcase and again when I got married and moved from Florida to Texas I took a few pieces of furniture and a suitcase.

Yesterday I called my mom and we got to talking, I mean really talking. It was good because it cleared up a lot of things that had always bothered and confused me. And I learned a lot of things I didn’t know before. Like that my father once kidnapped my brother, that I almost died three times before I was seven, that my mom was in an arranged marriage and that my step-brother is gay. I learned a lot of things that really changed how I look at the people I love, some for the better and some for the worse, but it helped both of us (mom and I) to metally clean up the clutter in our mind.

And because we are sick sick women, when we get stressed we clean and both of us have been very stressed. It turns out mom recently did some spring cleaning and happened apon some of my old things….and burned them. Mind you, she didn’t realize I would want them and she doesn’t have a lot of space and some of the stuff was currently housing mice, but it’s still really bothering me. Because I always felt insupstantial, like if I ever let myself just zone out and not be so intense, I might just evaporate and cease to exist. It’s sad to say people are defined by thier things and when you get down to it I don’t have anything, so does that mean I don’t exist?

It’s wierd how attached you get to silly things. I don’t have any photos of myself from before I got engaged, I don’t have any of the hundreds of awards I won, none of my baby clothes or old diaries (and boy did I have a lot of those). The only thing I do have that I can say is mine and always has been is my scruffy old Christmas bear George. He was an Xmas present in 1985 (which made me seven) and despite the fact that over the years he became naked, burned (do you see a theme), coated in pink glue and more grey than white, I love George like you wouldn’t believe. The only reason I have him now is because when I left home at fifteen I took him with me. I think I love George so much because he reminds me that there were happy times mixed into the mess I call childhood.

Anyway, my mom told me she burned my stuff but found my wedding dress. I loaned it to her a couple years ago to get married in. Yeah usually it’s the other way around but my family and life are wierd and you just get used to it. The odd things was it really wouldn’t have bugged me at all if she didn’t find the dress but it did bother me that she burned my old halloween costume from eigth grade and my cardboard unicorn decorations. Why is that? Maybe because my wedding was a nightmare and so the dress doesn’t really mean much to me. Or maybe because I still feel like a ghost here. Without things to anchor me and say ‘Hey this girl lived, she was a person. See? She had things.’ I feel like I barely exist. Nothing turned out the way it was supposed to and some days I wonder why I am here at all or if anyone would notice if I wasn’t.

I’m not trying to be pitiful and depressing, I’ve just been feeling introspective lately. Have you ever sat down and looked at your life and wondered what it all added up to? What did you do, what did you contribute, who did you hurt, who loved you, what will people remember about you when you are gone? Right now I feel like I don’t have a lot to show for all these years. I feel….lost, misplaced, forgotten and invisible. It hurts. Everyone around me is moving on and moving up and I’m standing still. I’d like to move but my feet are glued to the floor. And I keep hearing this voice in my head saying “Who are you?”

And I don’t have an answer.