The things you just can't explain

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.