"The Cinderella Syndrome" Part II of The Ghosts of Crestview Manor property of Julianna Rowe

 

Part II: "Cinderella Syndrome" 

The Same as Make-Believe

Hello, My Name is Katerina, and I have so much more to tell: Gangsters and Guns, The Hooker and Charlie Rich, The Dentist, Virginia, and the Mob. Here is where it began;

Being raised as a female in the '50s is self-explanatory to some but not to others. Most girls were raised to find a good husband and have babies. To be quiet, cook, and clean. Example: Lucy and Desi in "I Love Lucy!"  I was raised in the ’50s, Living in the '70s.

The tragedy for Katerina became familiar in those days in the form of being a sexual party favor looking to fit in and be loved. (Not as in hooker) Crashing on occasion into a self-loathing victim.  The “Pretty Girl” Syndrome.  Searching for the glass slipper with a foot that didn’t fit any shoe, much less a glass slipper… anywhere.  Waiting for a break, never looking in the proper direction within.

I didn’t know how.  I was taught I was trash.

At that point in my life, my mind began listening to the faint whispers of the heartbreaking memories of the past twenty-some years.  I was likened to the deaf man who could not hear the crackling dead veins within the autumn leaves swirling in the wind as their life was no more.  Such was my mental order that sobbed and groaned to my own “blind” ears.

I must go forward, not backward, were the mental words trying to embed themselves into my ordinarily self-distracted mind.   To go forward, I was to ward things off or dust them off, to be expected of and in favor of.  To go backward was allowing myself to wallow in being behind or going in reverse and remaining there.

I knew what I wanted in life, so I moved forward while living mentally backward.  It was all make-believe slash fantasyland.  I wanted to be married, but I was not.  I wanted love, but I got none. I tried to fix my situation, yet it was not redeemable in my mind, and nor was I. So, I lived in a “Make Believe” world of many emotionally based bad choices.  I am not saying I always made terrible choices, but they were derived from emotions versus the truth guiding me.  Those emotional choices opened the door to the old Crestview curses over and over.

Yet somehow, I believe a higher power had protected me from all but myself and my own hidden emotions. I was like the Biblical woman at the well who had many husbands and needed to find out what was inside herself before she moved on to more.  John 8:11. God told her to go and sin no more.  I was also Queen Esther, the humble Jewish woman who married the King who planned to kill all the Jews.  Esther married a problematic man and then stated her unsurity as to how she got where she was.

Everything was an outward leap while I was drowning in the rapids of life, waiting for rescue. Only to be pulled further downriver by self-serving men escaping death many times over. Those men were sharp as the Eagle who soared high above the river with piercing eyes that could see beneath the surface, allowing the dive to catch its unknowing prey.

I would choose situations reflecting the unsuspecting game I was led into playing.  The victim.  Living in a continuing state of blindness to everything surrounding me, the people, the places, and events that deftly showed the chilling effects to come, all the time thinking I was getting when in reality I was in a city of the garbage, still searching for Crestview.  It wasn’t there, nor was it anywhere.  Have you ever searched for years for a haunting spirit you couldn’t see?

Sometimes we need not ask so much but rather hold our position for it may be valid beyond our understanding.  Or, as some would say, “Learn when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and when to run.” I had no clue because I was living in a mentally induced make-believe world derived from the opposing forces hidden in the halls of Crestview Manor. My Disney World. It's all I had.

Make-Believe can be painful, and it kept me in a precarious place as on thin ice, a lie, or denial.  I was grieving the ghosts of Crestview.  Thinking they were good when in fact, they were terrible. All my energy went toward conjuring them up through my make-believe life.  It was unhealthy, and I got no reward for it. No movie rights, no publishers contract, no anything but pain.  It was a worthless place to be.