I was born a poor black child...

Well, it seems that way! We were poor I suppose but not really black. My dad used to kid me when I got very tan in the summer and say I was a black child so in a way I was a poor black child but I didn't really know we were poor. I didn't know what poor actually was. I knew that my parents fussed about money some times but that was only a concept I didn't understand, we had some hard times but mom tried her best not to let us know just how hard. Food was slim sometimes but we always had something to eat. So, poor as we were, we kids didn't actually know we were poor until.... high school. I was totally oblivious to being poor until then and I think that was the beginning of the poor self esteem issue for me. I had never been judged on where I lived, what I wore, or how much food was in the refrigerator until then. I did not know other people lived differently than we did. My parents didn't prepare us for that bit of news. I thought everyone was the same, I really did. I am not sure exactly when I started to figure it out, maybe when I went to my friend Chris's house when I was 15, that is probably the first time I was aware people lived in big houses! I still remember driving up the street and seeing this HUGE mansion at the end of the road and saying something like OMG that house is huge, then they told me it was their house. What a shock! I got to go there!!! But, these people were very nice to me, they didn't make me feel like I didn't belong and so I still didn't get it. The first time I got it was when Michaels parents took me out on their boat and that evening Michael wanted them to take me to the Country Club for dinner and his mother said (right in front of me) that I wasn't dressed appropriately to go there. Now this was the first time I had even heard of a Country Club and being country I didn't see the big deal! Dumb me! That was the beginning of my realization that I was different, I was not good enough to be in this particular environment, this Country Club club. That is the first time I had to look at myself and wonder what was wrong with me, I didn't know I wasn't ok, and I certainly didn't know how to fix it. That was the beginning of my self image being chipped away. While they started it, Larry Bring fueled the fire, nicely I might add. It wasn't my childhood so much as it was the beginning of my adulthood that made me doubt myself and form my "not good enough" mentality. Now I have to say that dad did some work on it too, but what he started they finished. So, I have come to realize that it's my self-image I need to work on. That person in the mirror I can't quite get in touch with, at least I know where to start. I am good enough!