I'm just so fucking sad....and bitchy

EDIT: After much consideration, I've decided to make this blog a bit more private...see I can't be sure my sisters won't see this and I don't want to ruin their lives more than our mom did.

___________________________________________
I can't even make up my mind.
Was catching up on LJ today and it's made me more sad than bitchy. I think I might prefer sad to bitchy. When I'm bitchy I KNOW it's not helping but I can't seem to fucking stop.
When I'm sad, well..shit I'm sad. I'll get over it.

My mom has always been...well, an ostrich. Pretend there is not a problem and MAYBE there won't be. I'll admit I've followed this route on a few occasions, but NEVER to the extent that she did and STILL does.

Before my sister came to visit, I thought that maybe I'd exaggerated how bad it really fucking was. I'm at least HALFWAY normal and capable, maybe my brain had made it worse than it was. It's not something I talk about frequently. It's not really something I even told the psychiatrist that the shelter made me see.
While sharing stories with my sister, I realized that I wasn't making any of it up. She remembered it all and more.

SO WHAT THE FUCK? What is so wrong with a person that they don't choose their kids over drugs, or over a child molester? I thought it was me..I mean..shit, maybe I was so fucked up that my own mom couldn't give a crap. It seemed like she cared enough about the other kids.
But not enough to stop doing drugs. When she moved to Wyoming, I figured that the coke, smack, (whatever the fuck it was) would stop...it's got to be hard to find that in Wyoming. Indeed...
So she just goes to the bar instead. ALL THE TIME. My niece says "My grandma lives there" when they pass the bar. Truer words were never spoken, though Kylie doesn't know that.

Misty's husband listened to us for those nights, while we rehashed the crazy shit house that was our life...when we stopped he was like..wow, I thought I had it bad.
Yes. Most people probably do as kids. Derek no doubt thinks his life sucks. More so since I took away his (completely tame) porn letter he failed to hide well.

He has no idea.
It's awful to listen to a drunk wasted woman rant about how NO ONE loves her and how she gives so much and no one cares. I'd feel bad for her, only to have her turn on me like a poisonous snake.
One time while REALLY drunk, she insinuated that I probably LIKED all the attention her husband was giving me.
That same husband who smacked me across the face one night cause I wouldn't hand over my baby brother to his drunk ass?
Sure, we had moments. Moments where I forgot how weird he got when mom wasn't around.
I needed a dad, he seemed good enough.

Until he went really weird.
Then I would go OVERBOARD to piss him off before I knew my mom would be gone for an extended period. She'd get home and be pissed off at me and not understand why I was being such a "handful".
On better days, I think she was so mean so that maybe she's shocked me into telling her the truth.
Most of the time, I think she really just thought that if she ignored it, it'd go away.

When I was really little, he watched me one day while my mom was at work. She came home to find us taking a bath together. I did not know better, only knew that my mom was pissed off at Mike. So I figured I'd done something wrong.

Then I started stealing. First from my mom and Mike, then from stores. When I got caught, I'm sure people were shocked..good little me? Why would she become a delinquent?
HOW DID NO ONE UNDERSTAND?
Kids don't fucking act out like that for no reason.

Then we moved here. Maybe partly to get me away from the "bad crowd" I was hanging out with that was no doubt influencing me.
I still told no one about Mike's inappropriateness.

When my little brother was born (before we moved to Oregon) my mom went really crazy with the alcohol and she'd have me wake up at night with my little brother. He started calling me mom. She got pissed. I'd work at getting him off the bottle, something I was hoping would help his teeth. I'd made a monumental mistake. One night while out of formula or anything I'd made him sugar water so he could have a bottle and go to sleep. The boy wouldn't drink water.
His teeth did not fare well from this.
So I started trying to break him of the bottle. My mom would come home and give it back to him.

She wasn't working, she would leave me with all the kids for long periods of time so she could be with friends, or go "dumpster diving".

Yes, I acted out. I was not allowed to go anywhere or do much of anything, since I was her babysitter.
Then after getting caught shoplifting, it was worse. She REALLY didn't want me to go anywhere.
I started trying to run away. I couldn't handle it. Her craziness, Mike's niceness as long as I went along with his touching....their fights when they got really drunk. One time Mike stuck a knife in the door jamb to keep my mom from getting into the room. She managed to get the door open and the knife flew out and hit her in the forehead.

I'd hide with my sisters as far away as I could. Holidays were the worst. The stress level would escalate to the point where either cops would be called (I remember being driven somewhere in a cop car one Christmas..yay) or I'd want to put my head through a window. Nothing was good enough, no matter how I tried to help.

So I ran away. I tried a few times before I actually succeeded.
After many months, I found out my mom had had a new baby, so I moved back in so I could help with her. She was really premature and mom needed to visit her in the hospital and I would stay with the kids. That all made sense.
Until my mom started putting restrictions on me, then I left again. Why follow rules when I didn't have to?

Why put up with the abject poverty? The cockroaches? The trying to find something just clean enough from the dirty laundry to wear to school since drugs were more important than clean laundry? Mike was a mechanic. He made more money than then I do now. They had money to almost always be in drugs?
When they'd run out, my mom would sleep/crash on the living room couch naked for at least a day. I'd never know if I could bring people over.
She'd send me on missions to find her druggie friends.

I'm sure people thought I was a delinquent. A bad child FOR NO REASON AT ALL. I'd run away from home and no doubt I was an ungrateful child.
I don't blame them, they didn't fucking know.
I thought that same of a few kids I ran into on my trials as a runaway kid. I couldn't believe that people would run away for such stupid reasons.
Maybe they didn't share the real truth either.
What the fuck did I know?

It's horrible. It's awful that shit happens to kids like that.
The one thing I'm really grateful for?
Shit, there are more things I'm grateful for, but in this situation, I think I actually have two things to be grateful for.
1. I KNOW how to do better. At least to an extent. And I know how lucky I am to have a more normal life now. I could have repeated the pattern. I could have picked an abusive, hitting, molesting asshole for a boyfriend.
2. My sister has NO clue about her father. I'm thankful now that I lied with social services showed up. For the most part, I knew my mother needed Mike, I wasn't going to turn him in. It's only lately that I also realized that I didn't think she'd believe me, or at least she'd pretend not to believe me.
My sister loves her dad and I'm glad. She got a perfect wedding, she's well on track to being the more normal one of all us kids. A nice husband, 2 pretty little girls, another on the way (totally planned! Amazing!)...Part of that perfect wedding was having her dad there to walk her down the aisle. She has NO idea what he used to do to/with (??) me.

I'm REALLY glad for that. I can't tell you how fucking guilty I've felt. I left them in that house. While I had a hunch that he wouldn't molest his own kids, it's not like I really knew that for a fact. I escaped, leaving Misty to deal with being the oldest and more put upon. She's amazing at being a mom. I saw her with her kids. So much patience and love.

But I needed to save me. I was having thoughts of killing myself. I put myself in really dangerous situations thinking that it didn't really matter. If it was MY TIME, it'd be my time. And with my history, what worse could happen to me?
Now I know that worse things could have happened. I could have been raped...or cut, or beat. While Mike was a molester, he never penetrated anything. I can't imagine being raped. That would have been awful. And yet I lived on campus, slept outside..and while I found a lot of good friends who saved me from myself and others, I really could have ended up hurt.

By the time I got pregnant, I really knew I needed to save myself. I needed to save my baby. I needed to do better. And that was the point where I knew I couldn't move back in with her. I couldn't handle the stress and I didn't want my baby in a house where she smoked inside. I stopped putting myself in dangerous situations and went back to high school. I strived to get into college. By the time she was moving to Wyoming with my sisters, I was in college, barely. I'd just got an apartment with Jake...I couldn't have taken my sisters from her. I was barely 18, and I had no legal room. Since I'd lied about Mike, it's not like I had that as ammunition.

I've lived with so much guilt since then. It was lovely to see my sister be so fucking normal and nice. It was nice to get some recognition as to how crazy mom was. It was hard to hear that she's just as ostrich-y as she used to be. She still won't admit she has a problem. Even with Aspen being took from her and me running away. And the rest of the kids can't wait to turn 18 and get the fuck out.
It does sound like she has a nicer boyfriend now.
Hopefully he's not a child molester. =(

Part of me is glad to get all the little shit out. I don't think I've ever told anyone about that one really drunk night when she hid from Mike in the room with me and seethed about how I probably "liked" him and was a slut. I WAS FUCKING 12. WHAT THE FUCK is wrong with people? My kid is 12 and I would never assume he liked the attention and touches of an adult.

Shit..I shouldn't say that. I've read a book since that made me feel better. Cause while I KNEW that it was bad, when it was happening I can't deny that it felt good. He knew what he was doing. That book I read acknowledged that sometimes the child feels good and then feels guilty. YES. Part of me wondered if she was right in her seething about how I probably liked "it".

So now the internet knows. For bad or for good. No one in my family reads this anymore that I know about and I'm damned careful not to mention my name anywhere in here. A few people know and I'm trusting those few people not to give this shit away. I don't want my sisters or anyone else to know about this shit. It's over, it's done, I've lived through it and survived.

I'm just hoping that maybe sharing it on the internet will help me in some way. And maybe help some poor lost soul scouring the internet to see if anyone else "understands".

I just need to get it out. EVERY little bit. I have to share it with someone, not just my written journal.

Shit happens. Life sucks. But you get older and away from it and better. I'm better now. I know that it wasn't my fault. I know that I wasn't unlovable. I know that I can do better.
And some days that is really all I need.

Other days I get sucked into the darkness and I have to pull myself back. Usually with music.

You know, I never did know how to wrap up a story/thesis/essay. So here...it's done. It's out. More so than before.