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In the beginning

One of the craziest things about life to me is looking back on your childhood and evaluating it with an adult brain. And I think in the process you either end up loving and appreciating whomever raised you or you end up hating them. Maybe even both, it's possible to feel both because I do.

How you are raised will determine everything about you. I'm still a little angry it took me 30 years to figure that out.

Here's how my story began:

The farthest back I can remember is being 3 or 4 years old. My first major memory is waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to find my mother & grandmother whom I lived with at the time.

They were two peas in pod those two, for awhile at least. They partied together, they did drugs together & they bonded over an eating disorder together. I'll never forget going to the bathroom & seeing ruminants of food & saliva in the toilet on a regular basis. Being a toddler I didn't know what I was looking at obviously but it was just the norm.
They more often than not worked at the same places together and usually got caught stealing and were fired together.

That particular night I remember waking up and they were no where in our small apartment.
I came across a pair of finger nail clippers on my search for an adult & for whatever reason I decided to use them. I ended up cutting my finger tip really bad & immediately started crying. Knowing that there was no one home to help me, I left the apartment. Mind you I was a toddler & it was the middle of the night. My great grandmother, at this time, also lived in these apartments somewhere and I knew this. I can vaguely remember always associating her with comfort so my toddler self set out to find her apartment in the middle of the night. I don't remember what happened after that.

My mother was never a fit parent, like ever. Even to this day. She's still an addict bouncing from hotels, people's houses & being straight homeless. She burned all of her bridges with family between the lying and stealing from us all.
She went on to have 3 more kids that I know of, all girls. The baby after me she put up for adoption. Her last 2 were twins that she kept. I believe she was MIDLY stable when she first had them. But eventually their childhood was worse than mine.
She did drugs while she was pregnant with all of us I've been told. I believe it.

I hate her.

I remember her being pregnant with the baby girl she adopted out, I assume that was, is & always will be the most selfless thing she ever did in her entire life. I still lived with her then. I remember her getting in a fight with a neighbor while pregnant.

I remember they got food stamps and more often than not would spend them all in one weekend partying with the apartment complex and then not having anything to eat the rest of the month. I remember waking up in the mornings before them at 4 or 5 years old, turning on cartoons, waiting for the tv to come on and racing to turn the volume down so they wouldn't wake up and yell at me.

You know because when you're "twaked" out all night you sleep all day regardless of if you have kids to take care of.

I remember all of the hunger pains & going through the garbage to look for food. One particular morning I ate what was left of the powdered cheese from a macaroni packet & some raw corn bread mix.

I remember one of the times they had people over it was the land lord, her son and these two guys that were old friends of the family for years to come. I vaguely remember always being told to stay in my room but after a certain amount of drinking and drugs they stopped giving a fuck where I was or what I was doing. I remember coming out and seeing tiny mirrors, straws and white powder on the coffee table. They were always blasting classic rock too.
I remember the heavier set family friend pulled me onto his lap and bounced me up and down. He would always whisper in my ear & ask; "you like that?" I didn't like it. I remember not feeling comfortable at all around this dude, like ever. He eventually ended up touching me inappropriately one of those nights and no one believed me. The night I told my mother he put his hand in my panties while he was bouncing me she took me to my room and told me that if I got out of bed the devil would pull me underneath it and kill me. So I stayed in bed traumatized & terrified of the devil under my bed & the one in the living room. Mother of the year ladies and gents.

There are a few more scattered memories. Like getting the chicken pox & basically taking care of myself. Even cleaning up my own shit out of my bed when I was running a fever and couldn't make it to the bathroom. I remember the apartment flooding. And I remember coming home one day and being locked out because they hadn't paid rent. And all of our stuff was by or in the dumpster. They blamed the land lords of course. They weren't known for taking responsibility for their own actions, they were ALWAYS the victims.

I remember walking in on my mother having sex with different dudes a lot. As an adult now I assume a lot of those times were probably for drugs or money. I can recall one specific time she was getting plowed and my grandma sat me in front of the tv with a plastic cup full of chocolate syrup. You wouldn't believe the dental issues I had with my baby teeth.

My stay with my mother officially ended because she never enrolled me in school. I'm not sure of all the specific details but I do know that my great aunt became my guardian and I moved into her 2 bedroom apartment that she shared with my mothers younger sister. My great aunt worked days and my aunt worked nights. So most of the week my great grandmother babysat me and a bunch of other kids for extra money. She lived in the same apartments.
On top of not enrolling me in school, I missed over 100 days of kindergarten, I never really saw a doctor, so I was behind on all my vaccines. I remember going to the free clinic where they moved kids in and out like cattle. I got so many vaccines in one leg I could barely walk the next day. They thought it was funny & invalidated my pain and feelings. I'll never forget that.

Thanks mom.