Thoughts of the day

For some reason, I woke up this morning thinking about a few of the injustices my parents did me...

When I was 12, we lived in Bisbee, Arizona. I had done children's theatre throughout my childhood and loved it. I always had big small roles. LOL What I mean by that is that I never had a starring role in the plays, but I was usually cast in the biggest of the small roles. I was also usually some sort of "character"- something outrageous that the other kids were afraid to do, I guess...

Anyway, after several auditions, I had just been cast as the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. To me, this was the role of a lifetime, and I was SOOO excited!

Then we moved. We up and left town without me even having the chance to tell the theatre group. I just disappeared.

Then there were the various pets....when I was 5 I had a black lab named Sambo, and when we moved from California to Wisconsin, we "let him go." At this time, I had no idea how bad that was. Hopefully someone found him by the river (which was where we let him out) and took him home.

When I was 12 again (lots of bad things when I was 12, thanks to my awful step-mother and my wuss of a father who never stood up to her), I had a pet rat. Actually I had him before my dad and step mom got together, in Nevada City, CA. We moved to Bisbee shortly after, and I got to bring the rat. His name was Cisco. My parents (I'm sure it was my step-mom, but they claimed everything was a mutual decision) had the bright idea of keeping Cisco's cage in the cab of our truck. This was a big moving truck/box truck that we had because we moved so much, but we only used it for moving, so mostly it just sat there. My dad bought it with the intention of using it to haul equipment to gigs (he's a drummer in whatever band he can find). Anyway, we lived in the desert outside of Bisbee, and if anyone reading this has ever been to the southern AZ area, it is HOTTTTT. I was 12, and for some reason I didn't understand that it might be bad idea to put a rodent cage in the cab of a truck with the windows barely cracked in mid-summer. Cisco died.

To make up for it, they got me a kitten, which I loved. He was a grey striped tabby and I named him Charlie. One day, I came home from sleeping over at a friend's house, and he was gone. They were not ashamed to tell me they had taken Charlie to the pound. He was scratching the furniture too much.

Months later, my step-sister and I got puppies! We went to someone's house and each picked one out. She got a little boy dog, named Gus (short for Augustus) and I got a little girl and named her Taz (for Tazmanian Devil, cuz she was rowdy). You should have seen me and my step-sister running around the property with our 2 little dogs. They were german shepard mixes. They used to get under the barbed wire fence into the neighboring cattle pasture, and we would have to crawl through the fence and chase them down. They were beef cattle, and they sure didn't seem intimidated by those little puppies.

Shortly after, the parents decided that 2 puppies was too much work, and since mine was the rowdier of the 2, off mine went.

I really shouldn't be sharing this next experience, but since a blog is supposed to be like a journal, and it's all pouring out right now, here I go. My step-mom was pretty nasty to me. It's hard to explain, but one experience sticks out in my mind.

We were living in Wisconsin (which is where we went right after Bisbee) at my Aunt's boyfriend's (now husband's) house. Since there wasn't enough room in the house, my parents, and little half-brother (about 1 at the time) lived in a spare room of the house, and my step-sister and I lived in our motor home which was parked in the driveway. Since there was no running water in the motor home, we had to come in the house to use the bathroom, etc.

As a teenage girl (about 13) I loved magazines like Seventeen, etc. Well, my aunt had given me some of her old magazines which were the likes of Cosmopolitan. Yes, I realize now that those magazines are a bit inappropriate for a 13 yr old, but no, I didn't understand half of what I read. I mostly like the makeup and fashion tips. Knowing that my step-mother would not approve, I hid them under my bed in the motor home. She found them one day (why she was snooping around, I don't know), and grounded me to the motor home.

Later on, I came in the house to pee, she asked me what I thought I was doing, and when I told her (probably in a snotty tone), she picked up a handheld mirror (probably 8 x 8 or so) on the bathroom counter and smacked me across the face with it. All I remember was the shattering sound of the glass and the screams (mine) that followed. My dad didn't even know this had happened until a few years later when I told him. He sort of apologized that it happened, and that was the end of it.

I don't want to talk anymore, but I feel that this has been a good therapy session. The End.