The Year With My Mom, Moving In With Grandma, Two Week Farce, Learning Disability, School Counseling...

When I moved back in with my mother, I was eight years old. She had married a truck driver so that she could get me back, apparently having a home, and a husband who makes money makes her look good. Plus she didn't need to work and that allowed her to stay home and care for me. Ken was the name of my Stepdad, and he was nice enough, he had a step daughter who was 14. She seemed nice at first. But soon we were like sisters, and that means bad times. We absolutely tortured each other, well her mostly torturing me is what I remember but I am sure I bugged her just as bad. Anyways, mom stayed clean for awhile....for awhile. But then she was back on the stuff, I'd smell what I later learned was the smell of pot. I'd wake up to find her cleaning the house at three in the morning. Sometimes and this was the poison I had come to recognize because she'd do it in front of me, she'd get drunk, and that's a person I didn't want to be around. She was sometimes nice, sometimes means, and sometimes she'd cry. But everyday she was on something different. And then she met my best friends' father. Robbie and I had been best friends for the whole time I lived there, mostly I'd spend the night at his house, and my mom met his mom. Things were cool back then. But then for a sleepover my mom met his dad, and they had this like falling in love of sorts. They cheated on their respective others and my mom got pregnant with Lila. She thought she was having a boy the whole time and bought things all for a boy. When Lila was born though she was given my Stepfathers last name. He already had two other kids besides my stepsister. Suddenly my mother was packing me up with Lila. Ken, my stepdad was yelling and she drove down the street, and picked up Larry, Robbbies dad.
My Mom drove me out to Arizona to be picked up my Grandma. I was told I was going for two weeks, that I was just visiting, but after two weeks my mom didn't show up, and that's when my Grandmother told me that I was staying for a year. I threw a fit, and became really difficult in school. They thought I had a learning problem so they took me to a testing center. There they administered all three IQ tests, I wasn't allowed to see those tests til I was eighteen. That's the day I learned I was actually smart. And I put away my singing and started to push forward in college. But back then they learned I didn't have a learning disability and put me instead into school counseling. I stayed in it for four years. I don't think it really helped me. But I did find help eventually

Being in an All Black Foster Home in LA, Foster Homes all together, And Living with my Father

In the times that I lived with my father I was happy but like I said he wasn't without his own problems. I can't remember what he got in trouble for. But I do remember him being about 26 years old and getting in trouble with his parents and being spanked by his father. That was sort of weird for me to see actually. Later on I had another memory of coming home from school and seeing him shove something under the couch really quickly and when he left the room looking at it quickly to see what it was. Turns out it was a tray with which I didn't know what it was at the time but figured out later on was weed, a couple of joints and a weed clip. But like I said I do have good memories of him, like one time my stepmother and my brother and sister left town to visit her parents and he made a steamed artichoke for us which I loved and then another night he'd made tomato soup and I didn't like it so he put a bag of popcorn in it to make it edible for me. And one time I got off of his motorcycle the wrong way and burnt my leg and he tended to me. He was a sweet guy when he wanted to be it was just hard to get that guy to come out. We even went and flew a kite once. But his marriage to my stepmom fell apart and I went to a foster home. I bounced in and out of three foster homes before I went back to my moms. One of the fosters home was an all black foster home in Eastside LA, where I was the only white kid. The Foster Mother did my hair like a little black girls hair, and I got teased by all the kids and was called a reverse oreo. But my roomate protected me. She was really cool and kept me safe from the other kids. But before she came I was the abused little doll of the house's kids mercilously tease from them. At one point I had even been gang raped by all the older boys of the house. They had ganged up on me in the game room. I had blocked that memory til I was in my adult years and had been confused about it til many years later. But eventually I did remember and was able to overcome it. Anyways from there I moved to a womans' house that I was her first foster kid, she was super nice and a great mom to me. I had loved living with her and felt safe there something I hadn't felt in awhile. But I lived there only a year before moving back in with my mom...and that was a whole nother episode all in it's self

Beginnings for me...Mother and the "harder" drugs...The "Secret Game" ...

After my mother left my father, she was basically ruined. He had started her on pot, and it was a natural eventuality for her, I guess, to move onto something harder. She met a guy named Scott, and did cocaine a lot of the time. I remember once going to stick my finger in the sugar bowl to taste the sweetness of it, and my mom flipped out, grabbed my hand, washed it thoroughly, and then told me never to go near the sugar bowl again.
When I was three, I awoke from my nap early, and heard my mother making groaning noises. Of course I feared the worst, and immediately ran across the hall to Hers and Scotts bedroom and opened the door. I saw Scott on top of my mother, and they were moaning together, naked. I asked what Scott was doing to her and he yelled he was giving her a back massage and to leave. I didn't and instead, even though I was three, asked, If it was a back rub then why wasn't she laying on her stomace. My mother asked me to leave and wait in the den for her. After about fifteen minutes(as it seemed to my little brain at the time) she came out and sat down. She explained what exactly sex was, how it was done, the sexual parts(penis, boobs, vagina) and that men and women do it because they enjoy it, and sometimes to have a baby.
I tried to tell my friends about sex later when I was in kindegarten and their parents freaked and told them to never play with me again.
Most of my youth was spent being a social outcast, I'd stare at all of them, trying to figure out what made them different from me but my mind at that age couldn't figure it out.
At five my mother and I were living in Las Vegas, in fact she'd been back and forth between Calif. and Nev. from the time I was three til I was five. I thought nothing of it, but apparently my mother's drinking and drug usage had gotten worse and she was escaping tickets and jail back then, racking up tickets and fines in one city to another, moving constantly. My mother had good periods. When I entered Kindegarten, she was in a good period. My consisted of waking her up and making breakfast, and my own lunch and going to school. I'd come home to an empty apartment and would wait til late into the evening when my Mother would come home.
She and I had tons of fun in those days but it didn't last. Soon she started drinking again, and then she met a guy. And we moved in with him. He seemed nice enough to start, he definitely loved kids and I was no exception. He bought me pretty pink dresses, and dolls, and set me up in my own little mobile home so it was like I had my own place. He worked nights so he was there in the day to watch me while my mom worked days. He started to become scary when he wanted to play games.
He would get me to try on my new dresses while he sat in the room, and would watch me undress and dress. At first, I didn't think anything of it, but then he started saying I needed help and then would pause to touch me and asked if I liked it.
Long story short, he was having me masturbate him and he would touch me in my private places and the first time he had sex with me was when I finally broke the promise of our "secret" and told my mom he was doing bad things to me. She called me a liar and did nothing about it. For six more months he raped and molested me, until one day when my mother came home early(She'd been fired for coming to work drunk. I overheard her telling my Aunt about it)and caught him "In the Act". I dont remember much from that time, except her holding him to the kitchen wall with her "Rambo" knife against his throat. Threatening him with castration if it progressed to any other little girls.
We left and lived in her car. One that my Grandmother had given her, and was a nice buick when my mom got it. We were poor and on the street, my mother unable to get a job at the time took to having me beg on the streets for money. I would stand there and ask anyone if they had a couple of dollars I could have so I could call my brother to come get me. Then if they pushed or asked any questions about informing authorities or where my mom was, I backed off and said my mom was in the store and I just wanted to talk to my brother. It would always end with me running back to my mom and us finding a different spot on the boardwalk, off the pier in Calif. We were in Balboa at the time and soon she met another guy. He lived on a houseboat. This guy was cool, but they were both heavy drinkers and stayed on the boat for long periods of time, having me drive the boat or go to shore to get the essentials. Only venturing out themselves when they needed alcohol. My mother got the accreditation to home school me at that time but it was easy back then. And she left me to do the work all by myself. I did and actually ended up asked if I wanted to skip a grade when I came back to school. But my mother, who was a good heart, just confused and in need of help, always screwed up the relationships with her drinking and drugs. He wanted to sober up and she didn't. So he left there, on the boat with me and took off for a couple days. My mother got so drunk that the coast guard was called and she was taken to jail. I was sent to live with my father for a short time.
I was happy to be with him and have happy memories, but even he had his problems...

Second Generation...She Just Wanted TO Be Donna Reed...Bipolar Barbie...

My Mother had inherited my Grandmother's talent for music. She was studying to be an Opera Singer when she got pregnant with me. Besides wanting to be a singer, all my mother ever wanted to do was be the perfect wife and mom like she saw my Grandmother be. So she cooked and cleaned everyday while going to college for her Opera singing, which the Sperm Donor(Father, Ugh) constantly complained about her "wasting" her time on singing. And every friday she made him his favorite dish, WHICH took all day to prepare. SHe also cooked homemade bread for him for his sandwhiches for work. And she found a healthy solution for his asthma. Now if it sounds like my mother was too good to be true. Well My mom WAS bipolar, but since she'd had a totally normal life, she'd never had a single episode. So she'd always had little highs and lows but nothing huge. She just wanted to be Donna Reed. And she was so excited when she got pregnant. But my dad just called her fat, made fun of her, cheated on her and she new it. But she stayed. It wasn't til I was born and he made it clear he didn't want either of us around that she left.
My mom went downhill after that. But that's another post altogether, because it affects my life too...it begins the rollercoaster of my life that had rippling effects for years afterwards. I think some of them I am still dealing with today.

In The Beginning....She threw boiling pots of soup at his face...

If I am really going to tell all the terrible secrets of my past, I really should begin at the start. But that really is irrelevant. Instead, I'll start with my families start of bipolar. Cuz I can trace this back three generations, four if you believe some of the stories. It all started with my Grandfather and Grandmother on my Mom's side. Dad is just a sperm donor, we'll say because he was never in the picture long enough to be anything more.
My Grandfather was 1 of seven children and his father was the poorest profession in the world at the time, bizarrely, a Chemist. They went sometimes days without eating and when his father did bring home food, the children would be awoken in the middle of the night even to eat. Sometimes it was only a loaf of bread, which later spawned the in a roundabout way our families most favored recipe, "meaties". Anyways, for some reason, my Grandfather was the only child to NOT be named after a family member, and was the only one to be phsyically and emotionall abused by his mother. She threw hot pots of soup at his face, came charging after him with a knife, and later on when he was in high school would tell him he could do something then wait til a few minutes before he was due to leave and say nonchalantly that he couldn't go. He grew up watching all his brothers and sisters being loved around him, but never knowing it himself. It made him crave it.
My grandmother was a child prodigy, she began the piano at age three, could play anything and everything put in front of her face. But she was forced into this because her mother was a mediocre pianist who married instead of following her dreams. My grandmother was homeschooled til Junior high and even then got up two hours before needing to get ready for class and praciced the piano, she went to school, came home, did her homework, and played the piano til dinner, then she went back for another hour of practice before bed. This was her life til she was sixteen.
She had two brothers, one seven years older and one seven years younger. Her mother loved them but criticized everything my grandmother did, "You played well, but on the third stanza of the second page you missed a note" something that no one, unless they knew the song intimately would ever be able to tell. When she was twelve, she went to a church picnic. And there her older brother introduced her to my grandfather. He was seventeen and joining the Navy the next day, he'd tricked his mom by telling her he'd gotten bad marks and needed her to sign off on the paper. But she signed him off to the military. Her brother explained that his girlfriend dumped him and he needed a pen pal, so they chatted for an hour and that was it.

They wrote letters for four years and fell in love, before he came back he asked her to marry him and she said yes. THey got married, got pregnant quickly and quietly, and she told her mom the news and never played a piano again for five years.

Now It was said that my Grandfathers' mother was "touched" but from what I've gleaned is that she was schizo-affective. and must've either been raped or had an affair she felt guilty about and took it out on my grandfather.
My grandmother had two generations back of her family that had drug addicts. She has now become engulfed in depression, and although she takes pills for it it does nothing for her, and she is in total denial.
That's the history of where it came from in the Early stages....