I find that writing in the middle of the night is the most open and vulnerable I can be, especially with topics that are hard to discuss. So far, things that I have shared very few people in my life know about. If so, it is 1-2 people and they have only been given bits and pieces. I don’t want the pity of some things or judgments of others, especially in areas I have had no choice or control. My childhood is one of them.

Of course, I am not going to cover everything in one blog post, but a basic rundown with some examples. I am tired of holding it all in. It wears you down and you put up walls to protect yourself. It’s hard to get close to people for me for many reasons. I have tried, I still try and I always cry.

My parents got married after being together a short while. Neither had great upbringings. My dad was raised by his very strict mother with 2 brothers. His father was killed in a coal mining accident while my gran was pregnant with him. On the memorial it states my grandfather was survived by his wife and 2 sons because he wasn’t born yet, he wasn’t mentioned. His mom wasn’t that loving, cuddly type mom. She had a job to do and it was to raise those boys. She was never the type to say I love you. Not even to me, her granddaughter. I think growing up in a fatherless household at that time, it did a lot to my dad.

My mom, coming from a dysfunctional home was also a mess. Her parents divorced when she was a baby. Her dad sent my moms’ mother away. He immediately remarried and scratched out my moms’ real info off her baptism and birth records. My mom grew up thinking her stepmother was her mom. Her real mother came once to see her and my mom was very little. She screamed you are not my mom, because she didn’t know any different. My mom grew up heartbroken, always wondering where her mom was. My grandfather would say she remarried and committed suicide. We had 1 picture and her first name. This year through a genealogy site, it seems she only died 8 years ago. My grandfather was a controlling, manipulating bastard.

So my parents were married. My dad joined the Navy. They had 3 children. My oldest brother, me 13 months later and my younger brother 13 months after me. We moved from Detroit to California. My dad was drinking ALOT. He was also an abusive womanizer. When I was about 4-5 my mom found out my dad was cheating with a woman he worked with. They were done. My dad was now with this new woman, who would become our stepmom. Throughout my adulthood, I referred to her as our step monster. My 2 brothers went to live with them and I stayed with my mom. The only time I saw my brothers were at a babysitter all 3 of us went to.

I missed my brothers. Siblings that close in age are your first best friends. My mom used that as a way to send me to go live with my dad, the way it was done would soon be the way us 3 kids were traded off, pawned off in the future. My mom drove me to the apartment they were living at that night. I was 5 years old. It was dark. She handed me my things and told me to get out of the car and go knock on “that door”. And so I did, and she drove off. My father had no idea I was even coming. I met the lady he was with. My first time meeting her, she had a black eye. I asked her how she got it and she said a doorknob hit her. Even at 5, I knew a doorknob doesn’t hit a 5’6 woman in the eye.

My dad and she were always fighting. She cut off my long blond hair to be short like a boy. They buzzed both my brother’s hair off. They made us stay out in the hot sun, pulling weeds like we were child laborers. But, we still had some good times.

Then the more my dad drank the worse things got. She would lock him out and he would get arrested and come back after he was released and bang on the door, threating us if we didn’t open the door. There were times mom would call and we were not allowed to talk to her. I remember one day going to school and she was there in her sportscar and my dad and our soon to be stepmom would make us keep walking and told us to ignore her. That went on for the rest of my childhood. One parent trying to get back at the other.

Then we moved from Los Angelos to a mountain resort. This is when things turned into a bigger nightmare. Our dad drank, he was constantly drunk-hungover-repeat. His punishments were to pull down our pants and beat us with a leather belt. If you moved in pain, he would just keep hitting with that belt and wherever it landed, you had broken skin with belt marks. He would make you count the hits. He also made us stand face against the wall all night. We couldn’t talk, go to the bathroom, eat or sleep. If he woke to find us sleeping. He would beat us. One time he picked up my older brother when he was 11 and punch him in the face, giving him a black eye. Some days he made us stay home from school to chop wood or clean out a rental house. I even had to do work on a rental outside in the snow once. He dropped me off in the am, said he would be back. I was freezing. Nothing to eat or drink. He came back at night drunk. And we drove home. I was 12. He made us rip up letters from my mom, or return them and tell her we didn’t want to talk.

If we ever said we wanted to see our mom, it went a few ways. He would say ok, but if you go you have to stay and never come back. Or you have to call her by her first name because he knows it would hurt her and he wanted us to call our stepmother mom. The last time my brothers were all living together with my dad, my oldest brother ran away looking for my mom. He eventually found her in Las Vegas. He just turned 13. Then my dad really laid into my younger brother, he always got it the worst. at 11 he didn’t want to have his head shaved anymore. So my dad put him in a dress and took him to the store to embarrass him. I believe know he had learning disabilities that weren’t diagnosed back then, so my dad picked on him hard. He sent me to go visit my grandmother that summer in Michigan. When I came back my younger brother was gone. My dad sent him to my mom. He was 11 and that would be the last time he and my father ever saw or spoke to each other.

Christmas came around and out of the blue, my dad said how would you like to go see your brothers for Christmas. Of course, I did. Now they and mom were living in Tacoma Washinton. So at 12.5 years old he put me on a Greyhound bus by myself and sent me from California to Washington State. He said, just call your mom when you get there and she will pick you up. After a 2-day bus ride, I get there and call her. She was shocked and not expecting me. I was heartbroken and scared. What if she had moved or changed her number. What would have happened to me? So she comes to get me, only the last time I really saw her was when I was 5. I wasn’t even sure what she looked like. This would not last long. A single mom with 3 kids. She wasn’t educated to get a great job and my dad never paid child support.

So for the rest of our childhoods, we would be shipped to my paternal grandmothers, maternal grandparents who I never met and didn’t even know their last name, a greyhound bus across the US with my little brother and no money for a week, I was 14. I went back to Dad’s once. I charged a school lunch, he gave me the option of a beating or going back to the grandparents in Florida. All 3 of us were never under the same roof after I was 14. We were always separated to foster care or the other grandparent or moms if she came back for a while. My grandfather would say your mom doesn’t want you, she doesn’t even call. He said this the day after I heard him on the phone with her the night before. If my other grandmother sent us clothes he would make us send them back. They made us work for their business and clean their house. Our parents used us as weapons. Our grandparents would try to get us to hate each other with mind games. My oldest brother stays to himself and has never had a good relationship with a female. He is also an alcoholic. And as mentioned in an earlier blog post, my dear, sweet, tender hearted younger brother committed suicide 5 years ago. My dad died at 53 from what alcoholism did to his kidneys and my mother committed suicide last November.

In my adult life, I quickly realized my parents came from dysfunction and hurt. Hurt people, hurt people unless they learn to heal. Alcoholism is an addiction. They should have never had kids. I don’t hate them. Actually despite, I loved them both until they died. But, the “go-to” people in your life, the ones who are to protect you are the very ones who hurt us. Physical abuse may go away, but neglect, emotional and verbal abuse never do. They are the scars you don’t see. It is no wonder I have trust issues. I have a very hard time trusting words. I need to see actions. I literally became an adult, as a child. I don’t NEED anyone. But, I would like to want to have 1 very special person in my life and a couple of good friends. Ones that you can be yourself. Who stands beside you as you grow from the pain. I have yet to find my people. And I don’t think I ever will, that truly makes me sad. I am lonely, not because of the time spent alone. I am lonely around people. I am trying to be ok with that.