I was always a straight A student.
As a child, I am told that I loved pickles- today, the sight and smell makes me want to vomit. Pickle juice is the product of the devil.
My hands and feet are always cold, always.
Adding up long math problems on paper with a mechanical pencil is soothing to me.
Certain moments and conversations in your life you just never forget, no matter how hard you try.
Ryan was a young guy. He saw a young, good looking gal in my mother. She just came with some baggage, three children. While the youngest was cute and became pretty attached to him, she was less than a year when we moved in, my brother was more than a handful and I can't imagine I was a batch of roses. Throw the three of us into the fact that my mother and Ryan worked separate shifts and he was responsible for three children (while he himself was well under the age of thirty), and you can come to see how his temper and tolerance for us wasn't exactly perfect.
Discipline wasn't consistent or anything you would read abut in a Parents magazine- at either of my parents houses. My mother either wouldn't stick to her threats or would go too far with them. Ryan, who shouldn't have had much authority over us, went a little too far, and then was encouraged by my mother. A common reason for discipline was not cleaning, keeping in mind that my brother and I would have been in third and first grade. I can't remember when it started, I don't recall how often it happened, and I don't remember who found out first- but I do remember the belt, and all the marks it left one me.
I know my mom knew about it, and she didn't stop Ryan. My brother was hit as well, and to this day I don't know if his father did anything about it. Somehow my father found out, for years I think my mother assumed it was her mother, my grandmother who basically raised me, that told. I know that it wasn't her because until recent years she wasn't even aware of what had gone on.
It was the end of third grade, maybe even the summer after third grade. My father, my stepmother and my fathers youngest daughter and I all went to Children's hospital. I didn't know why until we got there. No one explained anything to me, I don't recall the ride, just the room I was in with my dad and some strange man with a large camera that had a big hot flash. He was documenting the bruises across my back and butt. After all the court arguments and cases that my parents had brought against one another, I think at this point in time, even at this age, I wondered if I had given one of my parents another pawn. As we walked across the glass bridge over the road, my father and stepmother tried to whisper a conversation and make lighthearted jokes about sending pictures of my butt to people. To this day, every time I make that trip across the bridge that conversation plays in my head and I am that same third grader. I can see the cars below me and it is summer, my dads shadow is behind me and I can feel my world changing with every little step I take. The power struggle of my parents is just beginning to take root.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
When Life Started to Really Change
We moved to an actual house! Each of us had our own rooms, there was a garage, a backyard and our street was paved and not busy so we could ride our bikes! It was also a shady neighborhood and we couldn't be out near nighttime. We had a neighbor, Big Chris, who lived with his mom in an apartment complex next to us, who played with us all the time. He had to be quite a few years older than us, and bless his heart for entertaining our bratty little selves. His mother was a very mean lady- she was constantly yelling at him and screaming, she was also a very large woman. I used to wonder why he didn't just run when he took a swing at her- there was no way that she could catch him.
We had quite a few characters around us at this house. A very nice old lady across the street- Mrs. Buzelli, her neighbor, Dale (who to this day I am sure was a child molester), a foster house down the street, and our neighbors Larry & Molly. Back then I didn't understand Larry & Molly, I only knew that Molly had four kids- one of them was Larry's, two of them were from another man and the oldest was from another man. I understood how this worked, since my brother and sister had a different father than me. What I didn't know was what else went on next door, Larry and Molly were very "friendly" people, and they liked to experiment in not only the bedroom but with various drugs. Obviously they hid it pretty well, because I didn't know anything until I was much older.
Molly's kids were right about the age of the three of us (my siblings and I). Brandi was the oldest and a year older than me, Brit was a year younger than me, Bradley was the same age as my brother and Courtney was a year younger than my sister. It was just meant to be!
This house is probably the most memorable of all the houses that I lived in with my mother, it is also the last house I lived in with my mother.
My brother and I attended a small Catholic school a few blocks away. We walked to school each morning. There was a woman at school that would pick us up in the morning after she found out we were walking the streets that we were walking. My mother worked the day shift and Ryan worked the night shift at Little Tykes, so in the mornings there wasn't always someone home when we left for school. Our first day of school, my mom and Ryan picked us up with two new rottweiler puppies- Just what a Kindergartener and a Second grader need, right? We named them Sasha and Conan, they were sisters.
There are endless memories in this house- sleepovers, our first trampoline, our pool in the back yard, roller skating in the street, and all the times I was the victim of being scared. It seems through my life I am always in the wrong place at the wrong time and people scare me instead of who they intend.
We each had our own room at this house- Kate had a Winnie the Pooh themed room (and a playroom next to mine), Chris had a paint splattered room, and I had a Mickey Mouse theme. My brother recalls that my sister had a ball pit that I apparently hated- I don't remember hating the ball pit exactly, but I must have. I do remember that we had to clean my sisters play room an awful lot and would get in trouble if we didn't.
This is also the house where our puppies had their own puppies. We eventually got a third Rotty, Zues, he was trained in German and was an outside dog. He knocked up the girls and taught my brother and I that the dogs could get stuck to one another, even through the fence! My dog had nine puppies and my brothers had two fat puppies. Our dining room was a nasty poop filled puppy area. Considering I can count on my hands how many times I remember eating in that room the entire time we lived there, I suppose it could have been worse.
The kitchen of the house was also used more as a storage area of sorts than an actual kitchen. The walls were notorious for containing leftovers of whatever food my mother threw (yes threw) either into the kitchen in anger, or at whomever was standing in the kitchen. Hamburgers from Hamburger Station were known to be hanging out on the ceiling. The irony being that we really didn't eat big meals at home, so I don't know where the mess was coming from.
I've stated that my mother is not a clean person, by any stretch of the imagination. Food that has been prepared tends to get furry before it finds its way to a garbage bag. Main staples are: Spaghetti and Hamburger helper. Looking back, this is a big reason for my hoarding now- I make sure that I have anything I could want to eat. I keep snacks on hand- just in case. I have the opposite problem of most people. If I know it is available then I don't want it, but if I don't have it, I will go out, buy it and devour it.
This house really was the turning point for many changes in my life...
We had quite a few characters around us at this house. A very nice old lady across the street- Mrs. Buzelli, her neighbor, Dale (who to this day I am sure was a child molester), a foster house down the street, and our neighbors Larry & Molly. Back then I didn't understand Larry & Molly, I only knew that Molly had four kids- one of them was Larry's, two of them were from another man and the oldest was from another man. I understood how this worked, since my brother and sister had a different father than me. What I didn't know was what else went on next door, Larry and Molly were very "friendly" people, and they liked to experiment in not only the bedroom but with various drugs. Obviously they hid it pretty well, because I didn't know anything until I was much older.
Molly's kids were right about the age of the three of us (my siblings and I). Brandi was the oldest and a year older than me, Brit was a year younger than me, Bradley was the same age as my brother and Courtney was a year younger than my sister. It was just meant to be!
This house is probably the most memorable of all the houses that I lived in with my mother, it is also the last house I lived in with my mother.
My brother and I attended a small Catholic school a few blocks away. We walked to school each morning. There was a woman at school that would pick us up in the morning after she found out we were walking the streets that we were walking. My mother worked the day shift and Ryan worked the night shift at Little Tykes, so in the mornings there wasn't always someone home when we left for school. Our first day of school, my mom and Ryan picked us up with two new rottweiler puppies- Just what a Kindergartener and a Second grader need, right? We named them Sasha and Conan, they were sisters.
There are endless memories in this house- sleepovers, our first trampoline, our pool in the back yard, roller skating in the street, and all the times I was the victim of being scared. It seems through my life I am always in the wrong place at the wrong time and people scare me instead of who they intend.
We each had our own room at this house- Kate had a Winnie the Pooh themed room (and a playroom next to mine), Chris had a paint splattered room, and I had a Mickey Mouse theme. My brother recalls that my sister had a ball pit that I apparently hated- I don't remember hating the ball pit exactly, but I must have. I do remember that we had to clean my sisters play room an awful lot and would get in trouble if we didn't.
This is also the house where our puppies had their own puppies. We eventually got a third Rotty, Zues, he was trained in German and was an outside dog. He knocked up the girls and taught my brother and I that the dogs could get stuck to one another, even through the fence! My dog had nine puppies and my brothers had two fat puppies. Our dining room was a nasty poop filled puppy area. Considering I can count on my hands how many times I remember eating in that room the entire time we lived there, I suppose it could have been worse.
The kitchen of the house was also used more as a storage area of sorts than an actual kitchen. The walls were notorious for containing leftovers of whatever food my mother threw (yes threw) either into the kitchen in anger, or at whomever was standing in the kitchen. Hamburgers from Hamburger Station were known to be hanging out on the ceiling. The irony being that we really didn't eat big meals at home, so I don't know where the mess was coming from.
I've stated that my mother is not a clean person, by any stretch of the imagination. Food that has been prepared tends to get furry before it finds its way to a garbage bag. Main staples are: Spaghetti and Hamburger helper. Looking back, this is a big reason for my hoarding now- I make sure that I have anything I could want to eat. I keep snacks on hand- just in case. I have the opposite problem of most people. If I know it is available then I don't want it, but if I don't have it, I will go out, buy it and devour it.
This house really was the turning point for many changes in my life...
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