Saturday, June 18, 2016

The Record: Part 3

I don't have any real sense of family. I have a connection with my mom, and that's about it. Everyone else tends to feel at arm's length on good days, and completely foreign on bad days.

When my younger sister, Haley, developed anorexia, the family worked together and did everything they could to help. They spent money they didn't have to make sure she got the treatment she needed. I have a lot of resentment about that.

I lashed out a lot in high-school as a result of prolonged abuse. I was angry, I yelled, I threw things, and most assuredly scared everyone. I was often told that I was simply looking for attention. I was made to feel like it was my problem, that I had to deal with, and it felt like everyone walked on eggshells around me and let me to deal with it alone.

And I have. And I feel like I will never again feel like I have a family beyond a few very, very good friends who I can regard as family. And I hate that, and I resent it, and I feel like there's nothing I am willing to do about it. They didn't make any effort to understand what I was going through; why is it up to me to explain it to them?

In the summer after sixth grade, which would have been 1997, mom took me, my sister, and I think Haley, who was 2 at the time, to Costco. I liked going there. They had these amazing hot dogs that I loved, and food was the only real joy I had for most of my life.

We were there for hours and hours, and I didn't understand why. We just sat there. Eventually, in the evening, the police arrived and placed mom under arrest. It turns out she had been forging prescriptions and using them again. I remember they took her away and I was crying, and I didn't understand why she was going away, and mom was the only person I felt I had in the world.

My step-father, Bruce, came to pick us up and take us home. I remember I had a big slice of cheese pizza on a paper plate, and I dropped it as I was getting into his shitty white pick-up truck that he still has, and I remember going 'oh no' and giving another round of crying. It's a memory that kind of highlights the role food has played in my life, and why I struggle so hard to not eat so poorly. With mom gone, it was like that was all I had left, and I had lost that, too.

There was no rehab this time; mom was sentenced to six months in prison for fraud, and spent it at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor. I was faced with a choice of either continuing to live with my step-father, or living with my real father, and for some unfathomable reason I chose the latter.

I don't know if it was simply because he was 'dad,' or if my memories of abuse felt somehow normal compared to my dislike of Bruce. In Bruce's defense, he never hit me, or yelled at me. I don't really know why I hated him so much. He is an ass, and is completely clueless, but I don't know if that was really a good enough basis for the choice I made.

Regardless, I spent the next year and a half with my dad, who lived in Conway, five minutes south of Mount Vernon, Washington. I consider this period to be far worse than the the many years of abuse I'd experienced previously. Back then, it had at least been a shared experience. However bad I was made to feel, I had my mom to comfort me.

The school in Conway was a combined elementary/middle school. I had a couple of friends, whose names I can't really remember, now. I feel like I've blacked out large portions of this period. The things I remember most are a Playstation, one of my teachers, and the school's counselor, who had both been kind to me. There was also a constant sense of fear.

Dad and I were living in the corner of some guy's large garage/workshop. We slept next to each other, in beds that were a bunk bed that had been sawn apart into separates ones. There was a TV and a computer desk, and a combined bathroom/kitchen. If you turned around from the fridge, you were immediately facing the shower, and to the left was the toilet.

Dad hadn't lost his anger issues, and now he had only me to take them out on. I can't really place it all chronologically, but I recall him getting into constant shouting matches with people. He had an especially rough relationship with his brother, my uncle, Loran. He had a girlfriend named Karen who had two kids of her own, and while it wasn't as bad as he'd been with Linda, it was still tumultuous.

I remember an occasion when we'd been grocery shopping. When we came home and were unloading the groceries, a can of soda fell out of the bag and landed on the ground, doing that fizzy spray thing. He lost it and started tossing everything on the ground, and I could only cower near the doorway.

There was an incident where we made a game of hitting each other with flyswatters. It was one of those stupid things that guys do, I think. He accidentally hit me on the knuckle with the metallic part of the flyswatter, which cause me to yelp. He then started to whip me mercilessly with it; I was shirtless and in bed, so he was hitting my bare skin as hard as he could.

I went to school the next day, my knuckle noticeably bruised and swollen. That teacher I remember noticed it, gave me a sad look, and then walked away. I remember having the sense that people knew what was happening to me, and did nothing. I think that helped reinforce the idea that I deserved what I was getting. If people knew he was treating me like this, and didn't do anything to help me, then surely he wasn't doing anything wrong. That was the thought process, I think.

Things like this were a near-daily occurrence, and I became more and more withdrawn. I wasn't making any more friends. As my bowel condition worsened, I made a concerted effort to avoid being around people if I could help it.

I remember being out boating with the guy who was renting us that hell-hole, and I had soiled myself. He asked me if I had shit myself, and I desperately said no and shook my head, but he could see it. He made me change and sit on a towel until he dropped me back at the hole.

Dad would punish me for it. He would beat me and make me wash all my underwear by hand in a sink. I didn't understand why I was doing it. I didn't know why I had such an aversion to going to the bathroom. I don't know if I was afraid that it would hurt, or what. And even when I did go, I was never really taught how to wipe myself. Dad either expected me to learn it on my own, or mom would do it for me.

She did it well into my teenage years.

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