I would have to say the moments that stand out for me know are the ones that really changed the path I was on and all of them have a intervention or had a profound effect on me as I saw revelation in what happened. I question everything I always have. Memories like having a dog chase me, singling me out from a group of kids who always teased him. I felt sorry for him gained to that post in the heat, all night and all day. I always looked at him with empathetic eyes. One day on our way to school I stopped the kids from teasing him and he broke the chain and came after us. He snapped at me so I turned and ran to the school. He chased me the whole way there. The shot him with a tranquilizer and I stood over him for a moment and then knelt down beside him. I just rubbed him. It occurred to me, he just wanted to be with me. But when he snapped and growled at me it scared me. He could have caught me if he wanted but he didn’t, He just ran with me, never snapping or growling again. I find myself thinking about moments like that more than all the noise in between. It is these moments that changed how I thought, how I felt.
I was an abused child and my need to understand how my mother could do and allow this lead me to be mean to my little cousin when he came to live with us. I hit him on his but and made him cry. I felt terrible right away so I hugged and kissed him and told him I was sorry. I cried and didn’t like how it made me feel. I never did it again and nevery understood how my mother allowed her children to be so severely abused, but I vowed to never treat my children that way and I didn’t. I was ten or eleven when that happened. Now all the other stuff is noise, it’s that things that made me who I am that matter to me now, the memories of times when things changed my life.