My Personal Odyssey

The beginning of the buildings to the door of my soul. A glimpse at what will one day be my life's memoir.

My Personal Odyssey

“I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I walked with my father’s hand.”

                 -Robert Louis Stevenson

                I had often thought to myself my finger had been poised over a sort of self-destruction button all my life, one day I had finally pressed it. Often I wonder how my life would have become, had I not made the decision on that crisp October day.  Few times in life we take a moment of our time to look back and seek to tease out the ramification of our actions and attempt to imagine how things would have been had we acted otherwise. I have often re-examined the moment, and wondered. How would things be different? Would I have kept on my deeply rugged course of meeting others’ expectations, or could my actions have been inevitable? But you, no more then I, can possibly determine the consequences of decisions we make in our lives. In some ways, I believe we should not have that ability; the awareness is only unhelpful to us. We have no choice but to have our eyes enduringly fixed on the present and our present eye on the hopeful future.  My story, as a daughter, is not what many would expect. It seems to me about time that I begin to share my story with others; I am not ashamed of it. It is all based off my memories, which at times will seem choppy; as if my own mind is fighting against me to stop myself from unleashing my own anguish. But you must understand it is hard to take yourself back to a place, mentally, that you never wanted to be in the first place. I can promise this; everything I am telling you is the absolute truth. In order for you to genuinely understand, even if just a diminutive amount, I have opted to share my story in a veracious matter. 

Just seventeen years ago, I materialized into a world that began with love and affection. I was the first child, grandchild, niece, and primary focus of my entire elongated family. Although married only a few short years when chaos arrived at the front door of their relationship, my parents attempted to hold themselves together, and pursue the idea that I should be raised with the secure knowledge that I could overcome my challenges, free from fear. They bestowed upon me my name for that very reason, Brianna, which in Irish pertains to having vitality, its direct meaning being, ”strong one”. I see my name as an oracle of sorts, or prediction of things to come. From the very day of my birth, the universe made it clear that I would be handed truly heartbreaking hardships, and must find a way to have the strength to continue on. Two moths before my second birthday, my irrevocably beautiful, frustrating, and never-ending laughter of a little sister was born, and I could not have been more joyous about the new presence in my life. But even with two daughters that forced a bond between the two for life, my parents continued to be incapable of reconciling their differences, and divorced by the time I had turned four. My lack of maturity, and age shielded me from the repercussions of an ugly divorce, and the even nastier details that come with it. My only confusion from my parent’s separation came from the look I was given by my peers when they learned I was the child of divorcees. For years I struggled with this stare I was given, filled with empathy; through my secluded eyes the life I lived was all I had every really experienced, and I haven’t a single memory of the short amount of time my mother and father were in together.  I can also honestly object to the idea that all children with divorced parents have this endless wish, or ludicrous idea that their parents would one day get back together. Even as a child I was aware with the ultimate truth that my father and mother could not have found a more terrible match in one another.

Author's Note

*anything you have as an opinion i would love to hear.