A hard fact to face is understanding that people are flawed in their nature. We all strive to do our best, but we do fall off the wagon from time to time. I knew this to its fullest degree starting at a young age, or at least I thought I did. I thought everyone in my life was transparent because honesty is always the best policy, that's how mom and dad raised me. That's how everyone's mom and dad raised them, right?
There comes a time when we start to notice things that we couldn't see before, then the more occurrences there are the more questions we ask. It was the asking of those questions that led me to the conclusion that I lived a fairly sheltered childhood. Sheltered, to me, meant that a person grew up knowing absolutely nothing about the negativity that runs freely through paved jungles. When I imagine a sheltered child, an image of that sweet girl in school comes to mind. She doesn't swear at sixteen years old because swearing is a nasty habit, she goes home after she's finished her after-school activities, her homework is complete at an early hour and she spends time with her family afterward. She has the ability to spend time with her family because her family actually functions properly, it's the American Family archetype. Simply put, she's an innocent girl that has never heard her father curse at her mother because she didn't cook dinner and only the bad stuff happens in the news.
Well guess what, I'm a remix of sheltered.
My parents divorced when I was just a young whipper snapper and when I say it wasn't pretty I mean, as far as divorces go, my parents made damn certain it was an unforgettable one. If I'm being completely honest, their divorce is one of the reasons I'm terrified of relationships and I know that my mom will read this. Two people loved each other so deeply, had a baby boy and a baby girl and had enough money to get by in life. It wasn't Disney's version of a fairy tale, but it was their fairy tale. So how can a man hate the woman he loves so passionately and how can she walk away from him without a second glance? Their star burned out too quickly, that's all there is to it. It was a beautiful shooting star that the world was graced to see on the darkest of nights, but when it hit earth it destroyed everything in its path.
That divorce was the worst thing I ever had to deal with, but it taught me a million and one life lessons. Until recently, I never considered myself sheltered because I knew the ugliness that love could bring. Now I understand that, although the American Family is very real, being sheltered has a completely different definition than I comprehended. People are very flawed in their natures, I perceived that much, but I never grasped the severity of those flaws.
People lie, but you never know how much they lie until you catch them in a million and one lies. Cheaters exist, but you continue to hold out hope that they won't do it again. Personal items go missing and you prefer to believe you misplaced them because people don't steal, it's wrong.
I may have grown up too fast because divorces mature you in a way that life itself cannot, but every person had a good soul in my book. We were all salvageable. There are children that have witnessed far worse than I ever had to see such as Omran Daqneesh. I'm the product of a sheltered childhood and you can see it written across my face every day when my jaw unhinges and falls to the floor when I hear something inappropriate or shocking, especially with people. It's hearing the dirty details of everyone's lives that knocks me backwards but to others that could see through the facade, those people are in their natural habitats.
The world has more color to it than the crayola colored pencils I sharpened every day in third grade. The white lines between the brightly colored strips on my broken television screen stand out to me more. There's nothing wrong with living a sheltered life, the idea that I was less knowledgeable than I could ever imagine bothered me much more than acknowledging that I was sheltered. Let's face it though, we look to those that grew up sheltered when we've lost hope in each other because they know the value of holding onto hope and they're willing to share that with the world. We are the people that believe everyone is salvageable.
