I Am Norma Jeane

The beginning

Disclaimer: many facts in here are presented as such. Some are fictional, it's up to you to decipher what is true and what isn't. Most that is given is truthful. The only fiction about this is, Marilyns thoughts on stories for she never really spoke much about it all..

When I was a baby you would have thought I grew up quite normal like everyone else, or thought that because of my successes I grew up equipped, mannered, and kept up. But that is far from the truth. I find myself talking about this quite often to friends & my therapist but I can read the room! No one seems to understand that others, including myself were given such poor luck at the start.

There's Norma Jeane, and then there's me Marilyn. If I were to ask 1-10 people lined up in a room who they'd prefer I guarantee you 9 out of 10 of them would choose Marilyn Monroe, if not all. I find that quite sad honestly, given I find my own self quite the company. I enjoy who I am stripped away from Marilyn Monroe. I find myself relaxing and calm, responsive to emotions other than laughing and flirting. You'd be suprised who I am truly, quite the opposite of the character Hollywood pokes at. And from the beginning, we go...

Just like Marilyn Monroe...my mother I don't know her. She's familiar but I don't know her.
As a baby it's said I was orphaned at three years old because my mother was unfit to take care of me, sick even. Unequipped to take care of me nor herself. That is true. The woman with the red hair was my mother and for a long time I would get visits from her and yet I still wasn't aware she was indeed my mother for a very long time until one day I called my care giver/ guardian mommy and she went beserck on me and told me nor her or her husband was my parents but the woman with the red hair was.

I was shocked, given they treated me better than Gladys did. She'd come by and seem distracted, cold and distant. She knew I was hers, and would do her very best to maintain conversation or play with me in some sort but she would in the middle of whatever we were doing would begin to trail back into her mind and at that point if you spoke to her she would get snappy and tell me she shouldn't be here.

Although I knew who she was, and wasn't quite pleased with her demeanor or affection at all, it wasn't her I most questioned. It was the absence of my father that really left me puzzled. I really wanted to know who he was but even Gladys wasn't sure, which gave me intense doubt that I'd ever know.

On my birth certificate it is written Norma Jeane Mortensen. And the father was listed as Edward Mortensen. My mother married twice before she had me. One to a man named Jackson Newton- Baker who was 26 years old and my mother was only 14 years old, in 1917. They divorced in May of 1922. She would remarry again to a man named Martin Edward Mortensen in 1924. They were married for 7 months before they separated in 1925-1928 sometime around those years. I was born in 1926, and even though he's listed as my father I'm given reason to believe he isn't.