I Ain't No High Class Broad

I found out that this month is Child Abuse Prevention month. I'm wearing my blue ribbon as much as I remember. When I can't even remember to put on my name tag, I prolly won't remember this ribbon. It's a nice one though. Pretty and blue. Not one of those other icky colors that don't work for me. I like the pink breast cancer ones. Those are pretty too.
Listen to me, acting like the wearing the ribbon is all about the color. It signifies something so much more. Different things to different people even. I'm not trying to trivialize it, only add my own special brand of daftness to the idea.
I feel for anyone who has had to deal with Child abuse in any capacity. I'm sure it's completely heartbreaking to the people who want to help, but feel like they can't for some reason. Coming from a household full of all kinds of abuse, I wish someone had helped.
I shouldn't even say that.
One person DID try to help me, and I couldn't tell the truth. I couldn't or didn't say it and make it true. I was afraid they wouldn't believe me. I think I'd rather pretend like my mother never knew as opposed to telling her and having her deny it. When she knew DAMN WELL it was a problem.
Maybe she only KNEW it was a problem while she was drunk, but she would say things that made me KNOW she knew something was up. She KNEW that something was not right between Mike and myself.
Like she was any better. (I had a dream recently and my stepfather was in it and he was talking about how crazy my mom was in that tone he used to use when he thought I would agree with him. He was right, she is crazy.)
She couldn't even take the time or money to do laundry most of the time. She was too busy snorting the money up her nose. He was too though. In all honesty. All I knew was that almost the MINUTE I hit my teen years, we clashed. I don't know if she felt threatened? Some things she said sounded like she did feel threatened. She was worried that her daughter would "take" her husband, I guess. She should have been worried that her husband liked little girls, but that's only my opinion.
I was forever wishing that I could just get away from her. From the guilt trips, from the yelling, from her perpetual frown and her quickness to smack me. Almost worse was she would be really nice to me. Only because she wanted me to be on "her side" or because she wanted someone to listen to her when she was mad at him. It was like...them against me, or else they'd try and pit me against the other one of them.
I was not an easy teenager. I don't know if things would have been different if she was different. All I know was that I became a mother, at 11, in all the ways that mattered. I woke up with Michael. I was with him most of the time. When I wanted to hang out with friends, she'd say yes, but I had to take him with me.
I LOVE my little brother, but NO CHILD should have to go through that.
Even later, when people would ask me to the movies or something, she'd be like..ok, but only if he can go with.
I was a teenager, and my mom would only let me go places with my 2 year old brother. It seems ridiculous to me now. I mean..I'm glad I wasn't a kid who just got pissed off and passed the anger onto him.
April 1st was the 14th anniversary of me being caught shoplifting. Not only was I shoplifting, I was also skipping class. I had to skip class to go somewhere without my non-child.
They got the whole thing wrong. The people at JC Penny's. They wrote down that I stole men's underwear. They wrote down that my name was Deidre Mallacy. I was NOT trying to mislead them. I was crying and maybe hard to understand, but why would they say I stole men's underwear? Maybe I'm stupid? I thought they were women's. I can't even picture them in my head now. Maybe they were men's. This just made my mother think I was a pervert, and no matter what I told her she didn't believe me. She'd just ask me who I stole them for. Now, it's not like she should have trusted me, I suppose. But I do my damndest to give Derek the benefit of the doubt. Unless I KNOW that he is lying.
This further cemented her belief that something was wrong with me. I was some sort of pervert and for all she knew, I was trying to steal my step father away.
My dad got the message and called the police and corrected them. Gave them my RIGHT name AND then called the school and told them I was ditching. I had detention for what felt like forever.

It got worse after that. We moved here, maybe so she could limit my exposure to "bad influences"?
Since she didn't feel like she could trust me, she only allowed me out to go on errands for her. And sometimes a rare outing with friends.
I did something stupid one day and stole a candy bar with a friend at the Safeway on 18th.
They caught us, duh.
I got in more trouble. I don't know why I didn't care. Over a freaking candy bar. I think I was missing the rush from all the stealing I had been doing. They banned me from Safeway and then she would send me there and when I freaked out, she'd be like...they're totally not going to even realize. They never did, but I lived in fear every time.
I had been sneaking into my parent's room and stealing money from my stepfather's wallet. I just figured I had earned it. Dealing with him, dealing with her. No one ever seemed to notice. They got smarter after I was caught shoplifting.
I NEVER shoplifted again after that candy bar at Safeway. I KNEW I was going to be caught. I'd get all sorts of paranoid if any alarms went off. I still do.
When I started hanging out with "bad influences" again, I'd warn them not to do it with me. They'd prolly get caught just from being with me. As far as I know, no one ever did.

After we moved here, my mom got really heavy into white drugs. I say white drugs, cause I have NO idea what it was exactly. I know it was snorted, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't above doing anything that would get her high. I'm somewhat surprised she never became a heroin junkie or something. We NEVER had money. And Mike made $13.00 an hour (which was a lot then). We couldn't afford clean laundry, but she was still doing the drugs. Somehow they could ALWAYS be afforded. And when they couldn't? Her happiness was gone. She'd spend the whole day sleeping naked on the couch. We'd have to tiptoe around so that we wouldn't wake her up. If we woke her up, she would just rage on us. She'd go on and on about how NO ONE CARED about her. She was such a martyr. Probably still is. Do you see why I don't have very good feelings about her visiting? I can just see us falling into old patterns. We just don't get along well in person. At all. We disagree on almost everything.
Now that she's moved away from Oregon, and into the boonies, she can't do those kinds of drugs. She just drinks all the time instead. I can't imagine that she's happy. And it makes me so sad that all her kids, all of US, are going to have to go through her own personal hell.
All 6 kids that she HAD to have. All six kids have to deal with some kind of abuse from her, even if it is only neglect. I say only, because sometimes I WISH she had neglected me. She seemed all too interested in me, and what I was perpetually doing wrong. I must have ALWAYS been doing something wrong.
I always FELT like I could do nothing right. That's the worst feeling in the world for me. Because WHY EVEN TRY if you can't get it right? I'd do something that I thought would get some kind of "good job" or something and instead it was that I had done this part or that part wrong. Not, thanks for trying. Not, thanks for doing it before I even asked. Just...well, you did it wrong.
I never want to feel that way again. When I feel like nothing I do is right, I just get hopelessly mired in negativity.