Going Back in Time at 59 Years Part 2

   The more I sit and think back to my childhood, the more I wonder how I made it this far. What I am trying to say is that I did not feel like a normal child. I use to handle the turmoil, that was a part of my childhood, by believing that maybe this is not really my family, and I was just placed with this group of people for my protection, because I am really a princess or someone of importance from a different land. Mind you, I was trying to figure out why I was being fought over so much.  Fighting over a child is costly to the child's mental health. Children are people and not property. Children love both parents and both sides of their family. I know for a fact that it is wrong to put down a child's last name or that family. That is what my mother did to me, she would run down the Roberts name. I do not believe she realized at the time, what she was doing. I personally do not or want to believe that she was deliberately running me down. Having siblings has help me in that being the oldest I have always tried to set a good example, even if I did not want to. My Aunt thought that I was stable, I often wonder if I really was or if I was just trying to not worry about things a child should never have to worry about. Like being uprooted from the home and the people I loved. No child should have to live in constant fear, but I did. Because of that fear I was afraid to stick up for myself when a bully would call me names like ugly. I know being called ugly had an effect on my self-esteem as a child. But today if someone should call me ugly I would just smile and walk away because as an adult I know that their opinion  does not matter. What matters is what God thinks of me.