Part 1

Phobos and Deimos…terror/dread and fear/panic.  Mars’ two moons.  Cool names for things…like my pair of Instant Pots or a couple of pet rats.  I was at the Arizona Science Center with the family, enjoying a planetarium show of our galaxy when the narrator mentioned Mars’ two moons and their names.  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard those names, but for some reason, something clicked.  He said Deimos and Phobos mean pain and panic…and I’d never heard pain mentioned in the definition before, but I realized that terror and dread ARE pain.  So it made sense, even if he wasn’t quite right.  It made me think of my childhood and how sad it makes me that even in my 40’s, “pain and panic” are two really good words to describe how I grew up.

I have epiphanies almost daily, still.  I have flashbacks, and memories surface several times a week.  I find myself seeking answers and asking my husband, and now my oldest daughter, “that isn’t normal, is it?” and “do things like this happen to everyone?”  I have questions that will never be answered.  I don’t know why my parents were verbally, emotionally and physically abusive.  I don’t know why my father didn’t protect me from my mother, even though he knew everything (for years I thought he hadn’t, or didn’t believe me).  I’ve been asked for forgiveness and I can’t give it, as much as I’ve been told it would be healing to forgive.

I’ve wanted to write this series for many years, but I knew I probably couldn’t.  When my mother passed away in 2011, I realized that I actually could.  I still wasn’t sure I should.  Today is the fifth anniversary of her death and I come to realize that five years marks a good turning point and a good starting place from which I could really move on.  Unwilling to continue to be stuck in the past, I’ve decided that perhaps sharing my experiences beyond with those beyond my closest friends (both of them LOL) and most immediate family might be the step I need to take to really begin to put things behind me.