In the beginning

I do not remember much before the age of 5. Photographs reveal a happy, chubby baby with proud young parents holding me. I know I was loved and I was wanted. Not everyone can say that. The details are fuzzy about my parents' divorce. I have always felt that it did not effect me the way divorce can traumatize other children because I do not remember them being together.

There was instability from the very beginning though. I remember my mother taking me away to a motel for awhile. I am not sure how long we were there. But it was long enough that my mom made me go to a preschool or daycare of some sort that I was unfamiliar with. I remember every one standing up to say the Pledge of Allegiance which I had never heard before. I held my hand over my heart and cried. I also remember driving on the highway and holding my Care Bear out the window. I swear I had no ill intentions towards the bear. I didn't think his round, plush paw would be ripped from my hand by the strong highway wind. My mom pulled our car onto the berm of the road. A semi-truck behind us had also pulled over. The driver walked towards us holding my salvaged bear. He looked familiar to me. For a moment I thought he was a friend of my dads that had come to rescue me and take me back home. My Care Bear survived but only had one plastic eye left.

I lived half the time with my grandma in Cleveland and the other half with my mom in a trailer park thirty minutes away. Countless hours were spent driving back and forth. I guess I could say my third home was our car. To say life was different at my two homes is an understatement. My grandma's house seemed like the epicenter of the universe to me. People always coming and going, my cousins lived there sometimes, too. Kids from the neighborhood were always around. My grandma was "grandma" to everyone in the neighborhood.
I know my grandma loved life back then, things are so different for her now. The hustle and bustle of our urban neighborhood was her life. Her husband, my pappy, was alive then. But that is another story.
Life was not always pleasant. It was not your Beaver Clever neighborhood in the suburbs. It was kind of "ghetto" if you will, for lack of a better term. Someone was always joining a gang or selling drugs or getting robbed or jumped, including members of my own family. Some of my favorite memories were sitting on my grandma's porch during the summer and watching our drunk neighbors fight in the middle of the street. It was awesome. However crazy or dysfunctional it was, there was life there.

My mother worked two jobs a lot of the time. At the trailer park I was left home alone often from the age of 7 or 8. My grandma did not like that and worried about me. I watched a lot of t.v. I didn't have any friends there. There were no street fights to watch. It was lonely but I liked to read and eat, so I managed to entertain myself.
Around that same time life changed dramatically for me. My mother remarried (this would be her 4th marriage, my dad was her 3rd) and something in me changed. The day my mother married my stepfather I had the choice of going to their wedding or going on a field trip with my 2nd grade class to the zoo. I chose the zoo. It was a good choice, the zoo rocked.

My mom was so happy. I just wanted her to be happy. She deserved it.
I wanted to like my stepfather. I really did, I really tried. Neither of us knew that he was an alcoholic and a drug addict. We didn't know he would steal our stuff and sell it. Or that he couldn't keep a job. Or that he would disappear for days/weeks at a time. Or that he would get our car stolen in a bad neighborhood while buying drugs. Or that the cops would come to our trailer looking for him and shine their flashlight in my face and I would be so scared and ashamed. That he would tell me I was a bitch when I was 10 years old and I would say "Yup, and proud of it!" while trying to keep a stone face and hold back tears. That there would be countless nights of screaming. That I would have to tell him to shut up because I was trying to watch t.v. and he would say "Fuck you!" That I would lock my door at night because I would so afraid he might kill me. Nights that I would be so terrified lying in bed, listening for him to come home and start screaming again. That I would get so angry I would stand in my kitchen holding a knife wondering if I could murder him and get away with it. I was 12 then.

I stopped forgiving him long before my mother did. She forgave him and forgave him. She visited him in jail. She made him dinner. He has a disease. She worked two jobs. Sometimes we didn't have food and I would steal some from my grandmas and bring it to the trailer.
She made it up to me by letting me go on shopping sprees every once in while when she could. I could buy anything I wanted. I remember picking out over $50 worth of Sweet Vally High books at the mall. She bought them all for me. I didn't read any of them. She would let me eat whatever I wanted. Burger and Subway in the same night? Sure. Taco Bell and McDonald's? Only the best for me.

She bought a house with him when I was 18. He continued to terrorize us then. You can take the drug addict out of the trailer but you cant take the trailer out of the drug addict. Our house smelled like piss and crack. He would stay in his room which was next door to mine. He would do his drugs and pee in a jar in his room. I went in his room once and found a crack pipe made out of a beer can. I showed one of my friends and we had a laugh. My mom would go to work at 5am and come home as late as midnight, trying to escape him. She slept on the couch for years. He would scream so loud I swear the neighbors could hear him in our nice, suburban neighborhood. He would get in my face and scream and spray my face with saliva. He would kick me out of the house and I would drive away praying he wouldn't kill my mother
On a particularly bad night I suggested to my mom that we both kill ourselves. A double suicide. She didn't say anything. Maybe she considered it, I don't know.

She bought a computer the summer of '01 and met a man from New Jersey online.
She divorced my stepfather that following January. He got my car in the divorce. That sucked.
She remarried a year and a half later. Her 5th marriage.
She was so happy. I just wanted her to be happy. She deserved it.
I wanted to like him. I really did.
Two years after they married I was being nosey and found some emails my new stepfather sent to some women. Professions of love and lust to women he met online, pictures of his penis too.
I have never told my mother.
Why rock the boat?