"There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself." - James Lee Burke
As a little kid, my family (parents) were so precious to me. I loved my father so much that anything he did must be right. He was my knight in shining armour. He was my hero. He was my comfort. Matter of fact I wanted to be like him when I grew up. I remember the way he used to give me a bath and prepare me for school. He taught me (I'm sure I learned from him), how to iron shirts and shorts so straight you'd think someone used a ruler to measure it. Somehow, I can't exactly remember what happened and things began to go wrong. My dad all of a sudden wasn't the loving, patient, concerned father he'd been. It got so bad he moved out of the house and one day in court while the issue of separation was being debated, he was walking out of the room when I rushed to him and he looked me straight in the eyes (a little 4 or so year old kid), and said "I'm not your father, ask your mother who your father is".
Now that happened many years ago, but the truth is from that moment on, I can't explain it, but I just noticed that a certain boldness eloped. Disappeared. I went through most of life with the mindset that I wasn't good enough to achieve anything good. I had a very low self esteem all my childhood years. I was intelligent, absolutely. But every time I felt, and I kept hearing "you're not good enough. Look at your friends they have both parents leaving together with them. They are the ones who are supposed to achieve greatness, not you". All my life I kept hearing that and into adulthood today I still fight "low self esteem", but thank God it's not as bad as it was growing up.
