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