I have been putting this one off. On some levels it is because I am not the type of person to allow anyone to treat me like shit, let alone make my life hell. I have started some glib post about how most people are not important enough to affect me, and for the most part it is true.
I just couldn't get it right though, and so I left my blog, and read a really open powerful bit from another blogger, and felt like a huge fake. People do hurt me. I just don't like to think about it. I try to avoid pain as a general rule. It's still there though, under the surface. So let's pull it up and take a peek shall we?
My step dads mother - I had never met her, she kicked him out when he was 16. He raised me from eight to almost 16. He thought of me as his own. Then he died. The company he worked for lost a 3x5 card that had the names of his beneficiaries. He was planning on marrying my mom that fall. We got nothing but his bills.
His mother got it all. His retirement, my collage money, even him. She took his ashes and had a private ceremony. She said she supposed my mother and I could go if we insisted. We didn't. She showed up at out the house asking about the deeds to the vehicles. She took his boat. We hid his tools so she wouldn't take those. We lied about the dogs name so she wouldn't know he was my step dad's dog. She said she was amazed my mother allowed him around her child. That he was a good for nothing drunk. He'd been sober for two years when he died. Not as long as I has wished, but still, no longer a drunk. I tried to go after her with a baseball bat. My uncle stopped me.
My aunt and uncle had to move in. He beat his son. I had to protect him. My uncle would bully and threaten me but I would hide my cousin until he calmed down. My mom had to work double shifts. I started running around with fast boys, doing drugs and drinking. I came home at 1am with hickey's and my aunt taught me how to cover them up. I ended up getting date raped by a 27 year old friend of my uncles. He told me to lock my bedroom door at night because I shouldn't have an unlocked door between my uncle and myself. I was a virgin before that. Then just for fun, I ended up with the 27 year old date rapist for six months. Lets not even discuss the sexual issues I had to overcome because of that relationship.
My mom kept talking about killing herself and how she was a horrible mother. She didn't get dressed or take a bath for 2 years unless I made her. God knows how she kept her job. I had to get a job just to make ends meet. I never even bothered with my SAT's, because there was no money and I was to strung out to imagine scholarships. I had a 4.2 GPA. I ended up at a community college with a bunch of mouth breathers. I mean, just look at these skills. It's clear I didn't live up to my potential.
She could have signed it over to us. The boat, the money, the life he had worked for, the future he had planned for me. But she didn't. Instead we had bills and sadness and a worn out recliner that he used to sit in. I know we would have still had some of those things, even with the money, but not the abusive uncle, or the 27 year old rapist or the long shifts after school and the absentee mother. Still, my life is not ruined. It's different from what I wanted, but I am loved and I am confident and I am strong. Looking back I have no idea how (please ignore the self derisive humor, it's just a little defense mechanism).
That hit me right in the heart, woman.
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