just begin to write!

I've started reading more of other people's blogs lately, wanting to find out what other people are writing about, and was surprised that there are lots (LOTS!) of people "out there" who use their blog as an exclusive platform for their interests or even to promote their business. For example--a person with a certain political bent opining on various charged topics. Or, an attorney presenting a common legal problem central to their particular practice (complete with contact information at the bottom of the page, conveniently!)
I'm not sure what I'm using my blog for. Definitely not for any pointed purpose, I just like to get my thoughts out sometimes. I've always liked journaling, and this seems like a journal for modern times. Although, I do miss going to the bookstore and finding the *perfect* blank book, and starting a new journal, vowing to write as neat as possible this time, and to not abandon it before its full, like I have with so many others.
I view everything through the lens of my child these days, and I think of Elise when I write, wondering if she'll ever read it. The problem I have with blogs is that I want her to have something tangible of me for the day when I'm gone, for her to show her own daughter--my mom wrote this! I do have a few journals laying around still, and I want her to read my 13 year old words when she is 13, to know that I had the same crazy thoughts and hormones that she will have. Aside: my snoopy stepmother really robbed me of the joy of journaling when I realised she was reading everything I wrote--even when I was in college that first year, when I still lived with my parents. And she would use it as ammo against me during arguments--my most personal thoughts and sincere, unabridged feelings, which was really quite brutal (its one thing to snoop, quite another to use what you found snooping against me.) I started writing in Spanish when I realized I couldn't escape her invasiveness, and do you know what she did? She manually copied passages from my journal and tried to translate them herself. I remember the day I discovered this; that was the day I vowed to do whatever it took to get out of their house. I couldn't believe the lengths to which that woman went to spy on me--me! a GOOD kid! A good 19 year-old woman-child with perfect grades and a beautiful heart. I discovered it one day when I was looking for stamps--she hid them from us kids in her top dresser drawer (but we all knew where they were) and as I was thumbing through her various other papers looking for stamps, I saw Spanish words. When you speak another language, it just jumps out at you from anywhere, and I remember being very confused, because Sheila knew not a word of Spanish. Then, with horror, I realized they were MY Spanish words. In Sheila's handwriting. With a kidnergarten-esque attempt at translation below. How COULD she? Is it so necessary to know what I was writing, that you would go to such a length? I will never do that to my daughter. I hope we have a relationship where if something is going on in her life that I need to know about, she will tell me. Invasions of privacy only further erode the trust and estrange the relationship.
So, I am writing this blog now (in English this time!), still from the city I chose as my new home after I'd had enough of Sheila's persecution. I've only told a few people in my life what prompted me to leave so abruptly; my dad still doesn't know. He thinks I came to Lawrence to follow my boyfriend at the time. Certainly, Andy was an influence, but mostly I needed out from under the oppression that was that household. To this day that when I go "home" I still feel uncomfortable, even though we are approaching the two-year anniversary of Sheila's death. I never want my daughter to feel, even for a second, that I am not in her corner; in my youth and adolescence, home was not a place of sanctuary for me because of my stepmother. I made Danny promise me that no matter what happened, that he would always be Elise's ally. I know it would hurt my father to know that I think he abandoned me, in terms of support, during a critical time in my emotional development. But he did, indirectly, by his willful blindness to what his wife was doing to me. Its no wonder I ended up married young to the wrong guy.
But that is all in the past, and it is my turn to be the mom that I lost.