Being a Pre-Teen SUCKS!!! Pt. 2

So, my last post ended with me finding out that my mom was gay and moving back in with her and blah, blah, blah.

It took me a good month before I would even really speak to Mom or Nancy again. I was angry, embarrassed and confused about the whole thing. I mean, how do you stay married to a man for 19 years, have 4 kids, and then all of a sudden, you're done with men completely and now I have to deal with this?!! I'M 10! I have no idea how to process this, but I don't really have a choice, so I cope with it the best way I know how: acting out.

I got really desperate for attention around this time. I felt like my mom's emotions were wrapped up in someone else and I was seriously unhappy. I mean, I was so desperate that I came up with a foolproof scheme to get all the attention I wanted. I was going to break a bone. My leg specifically. I got hit by a car when I was 5, and was in a cast for 6 weeks, and I remembered all the love and support and attention I was showered with then, so I decided that I was going to break my leg on purpose and maybe my family would pay some attention to me. So one day, I was playing by myself in my mom's room and decided it was the perfect time to seriously hurt myself lol. It's kind of funny looking back at it now, but it really was a stupid and dangerous thing to do. Does anyone remember those fold up couch things? They were like tiny futons... anyway I had one and I climbed on top of my mom's massage table (she is a massage therapist, by the way) and took my futon with me. I climbed on the futon on the massage table and that put me a good 6 feet off the ground.

And then..... I flung myself off of it.

Well, I broke a bone alright. But it wasn't my leg. It was my stinking collarbone, and if you haven't broken a collarbone before, let me tell you, it is NOT pleasant. Not only do you have to wear a stupid looking brace, which just gives the other kids at school something else to make fun of you about, but you can't dress yourself, bathe yourself or anything! Seriously, try pulling up your pants with one arm. It's not easy.

So, my plan backfired. People just made fun of my brace, my mom was mad at me for playing on her massage table in the first place and my mom's new girlfriend, who I was highly uncomfortable with since finding out about her and my mom, had to bathe me. Not that Nancy would ever, EVER have done anything shady, but I was 10 and didn't understand how things worked. Put yourself in my shoes. It was just horrible.

So fast forward to 6th grade. I was 11 years old and desperate to get out of my mom's house. So I moved in with my sister Jessica, who was living with this lady at her church who was in the middle of a really ugly divorce. There was nothing really all that special about 11, except that I finally was semi-popular, I got into kid's choir for a little bit and was just really relieved to live somewhere else. There is one experience that really does stick out to me though and it is actually pretty sad.

I went to an intermediate school and we had different periods like in middle school, and passing periods. Well, after one passing period, my teacher realized I didn't come back to class. She went looking for me and found me on the floor in the bathroom sobbing uncontrollably. When she asked me what was wrong, I told her about my mom. I will never forget her kindness to me that day. She took me in her arms and sat with me on the bathroom floor while I cried and snotted all over her nice dress until I got it all out. We sat there for a good ten minutes. Afterwards, I got up, washed my face and thanked her. She never mentioned it again, but every once in a while, she would take me aside and see if I was doing okay. I was grateful for her sympathy. It was the first time I had told anybody about my mom.

After 6th grade, I moved back in with my mom. I started 7th grade and went to the middle school with all the kids I grew up with, and life got a little harder after that. I went back to being that dumpy unpopular girl with problems, except this time, Nancy worked at my school.  I would go and talk to her between classes and people would ask me who she was, and I always said she was my aunt. I was too ashamed of the real answer.

During my 7th and 8th grade year, I had my first boyfriend, had my first sexual experience and started dabbling in witchcraft. And by the end of middle school, I was so ANGRY with the way my life was turning out and I blamed it all on my mom and Nancy. If I wasn't for them, I would be popular. I wouldn't have to try so hard to get people to like me. I wouldn't have all this RAGE inside of me. I decided that the only way my life would be better was if Mom and Nancy were dead.

I think my mind blocked out some of these memories... maybe it was God's way of protecting me from guilt and shame down the road, but according to my sister, I started plotting ways to kill Mom and Nancy and possibly even told them or someone that I was going to kill them. Anyway, my mom, in an effort to keep me from going insane, and probably to protect herself from her crazy middle schooler, decided to send me to live with Jessica again, who had just gotten married. After my 8th grade year, I was packed up and sent to Indiana.