Kissy

During this time of enforced stay at home, I am delving deep into my history and cleaning out my craft/storage room.  I can barely walk in there.  Years of 'shove it in and shut the door' made the room unusable.  At first I simply dabbled at moving the junk around.  I realized the only way to clean it out is to CLEAN IT OUT!!!!  I pulled out half a bed frame.  From the location I am guessing at least 10 to 15 years ago.  No idea where the rest of the bed is located.  Out and gone.  There is easy stuff like that and then there are "Oh Sh%#@!" boxes.  Memories stuffed away raw unprocessed sitting there waiting to rip back carefully healed scars.  One of them was Kissy. 

The saga of Kissy.  Like any little girl watching TV just before Christmas, commercials were vying for attention.  One was a cuddly little Kissy doll and the other Chatty Cathy.  I first fell in love with the little soft Kissy doll then changed my mind.  However, my mother already bought the Kissy doll for my present.  She decided to take the Kissy doll back to the store and wait for me to make up my mind.  Sure enough, Christmas Eve at the top of my Santa letter I wrote I wanted a Kissy doll.  By this time, the stores were closed. (This was well before the all night Christmas eve shopping binges.)  Christmas morning....no Kissy doll.  Plenty of other stuff but not the doll I wanted.  My mother decided to get me a Kissy doll and let me earn it.  When she went back to the store, the half price toy sales were on.  This larger, hard plastic Kissy doll was available for the same price as the smaller doll.  My mother's way of thinking that bigger was better.  She brought it home.  She and my Dad told me the doll would be mine after I worked for it.  But it wasn't soft or cuddly and it was humongous, NOT the doll I wanted at any time.  Since it was a sell item, she couldn't take it back.  I worked what seem liked forever for this doll I did not want.  I kept the doll.  For about 50 years....well actually I left it at home expecting my mother to throw it away like she did everything else.  Nope she saved it.  When we moved back to the area she wanted me to take it off her hands and once again here I was stuck with a doll I never wanted in the first place.  Shove it in the closet and forget about it.  Only I didn't forget about it.  Every time I stumbled across it was this tautening doll that my mother had no idea who I was or what I wanted.  I kept the very thing that caused me pain from the beginning.  Time to let go.  Time to say good-bye to sadness.  I am giving it away outside the family because the hurt and pain need to be cleaned out of the wounds.  I realized as I contemplated this post.  Kissy is the reason I didn't set goals.  If I set a goal, had a wish, or wanted something, that would be taken away and replaced with something I did not want with the expectation that I was lazy, terrible child if I didn't want what they wanted me to want and work to earn it.  Kissy represented all the times in my life I had the taunting, "You want it, you can't have it."  It was less painful not to want anything at all.  If I didn't want anything, then there was nothing for them to take away.