Memior

United States
December 3, 2006 7:15pm CST
I am my parent’s first pancake. The one they burn and always end up throwing away just so they can test and scrape my dead, lifeless body off the pan. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. When my parents decided to get a divorce it was probably the best idea they ever had but it drafted me into a four year long court battle. I will admit my father had no original say in the decision. My mother had him arrested and filed a domestic abuse injunction against him. When the police took my father away I was hysterical and locked myself in the bathroom which was a common practice for me at the time. The officers kept yelling “Do you take Ritalin?” and all I could say was “Does it look like I take fuc king Ritalin?!” to which the cop replied, “Yes.” After that I had a personal vendetta against my mother. I wanted my parents to divorce, I did not want to witness one of my parents getting arrested-that is a fine line and she crossed it. I made sure she knew I hated her every day. I don’t anymore; I eventually got over it in my own time I suppose. However, first chance I had, I moved to my father’s in Zephyrhills. He lived in a duplex at the time. I started ninth grade at Zephyrhills High School and I thought about killing myself everyday. If anyone has ever been to Zephyrhills, even just in passing, I’m sure they have felt my pain. I was severely depressed and I liked to shock people. I pierced my arm, the web between my thumb and pointer finger and numerous other areas during classes and not to mention I was usually high as a kite. It was probably a bad decision since my parent’s knew nothing of my self-destructive behavior and there was a home study. A home study is done by a social worker who interviews the children in both environments (my mothers/my fathers) and at school as well as interviewing their teachers. My teachers gladly told the social worker of my suspicious and offensive behavior and my parent’s were shocked. Nobody really said anything to me about it after the initial reading though and I continued doing everything I was doing before. At the same time, I avoided my mother at all costs believing every nasty, manipulative word my father had to say. While, my father got a lady, Katy Bowers, pregnant all the way in DeLand and we visited her every weekend until the day after ninth grade. Then we moved into her tiny three bedroom house and one bathroom house. My sister and I shared a room, my two step-sisters shared a room, and my father, Katy and my half-sister slept in the other room. It was cramped and their conservative, “do as I say, not as I do” hyper babble literally made me go insane. I acted out even worse when I lived with them. Especially after finding out how much the DeLand High School loathed my step-sisters, Cassie and Ashley. Ashley was actually decent but it was Cassie you had to look out for. She spent more time on her knees than she ever did standing up and when she was standing she was swearing to her naïve mother that she was saving it until marriage…or telling them I did something wrong. They immediately sent me to counseling and required me to attend church when I confessed that I was confused about my sexuality. I was put on Xanax, Zoloft, Prozac, Lexapro, Sonata, Wellbutrin, and Valium-not all at the same time, they were just testing the waters because nothing seemed to work for my depression. The most common combination I was on was Xanax, Zoloft, Sonata and Wellbutrin. I was diagnosed as being manic depressive, having anxiety, insomnia and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They also decided I may be the future winner of Borderline Personality Disorder but it was too early to tell. I think I lost. I also developed a case of anorexia, unintentionally of course. My step-mother locked the refrigerator (with a real lock), and we weren’t allowed any soda or junk food. One meal a day and that was dinner and it had to be the size of our hand. Then she continually told us that we were fat and overweight. I hated being around them so much that I would skip out on dinner and hide in my room just so I didn’t have to see them. I gave up food for my own inner peace. At the end of the year I weighed ninety pounds and still felt ugly because of my step-mom and emotional abuse I had endured over the years. My step-mom did a lot of messed up things though. She took the doorknob off of the one bathroom that we had. She said it was for safety-I wasn’t allowed to take showers alone there, my sister had to sit on the toilet and I wasn’t allowed to shave or even have thumbtacks. They believed I was going to kill myself. I’m pretty sure my step-mother would have loved if I died but they needed to look good for court! She needed more child support! Nevertheless, the divorce ended that year, and I wanted to move back in with my mother whom I just started contacting again. My father refused to let me go and even though I knew I could have flicked him the bird and walked out and done whatever the hell I wanted to do, I was terrified of my parents. So, instead, I went to my mother’s for the summer and never came back. I haven’t spoken to my father since and my sister and I rarely speak. I don’t really get along with my mother but we get along better than we used too. Ironically, I would never take these years back in my life. Since I was in my coming-of-age stage they have definitely formed me into the person that I am today. I have learnt that if someone is manipulating you, blood is not thicker than water, and you have to cut that person away. Not talking to the family I lived with for a year, no matter how bad they were, felt awkward at first. Now I feel that it was a key part of me becoming a stable individual who got into college and will hopefully have a successful future.
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