Being a Pre-Teen SUCKS!!!

So, all of the stuff I have talked about happened sometime before I was 10. I don't know exactly how old I was; my memory is pretty foggy about some of this stuff. My dad moved from an apartment down the street to East Texas, which was about 3 hours away, with his girlfriend and her 2 kids and BOY was that a slap in the face to me! I was MAD! I felt like I needed a daddy, and instead of being there for me, he decided to raise someone else's kids.

Around this time also, (I was maybe 9) my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember laying with her on the couch in our living room, and I had my head on her chest, and she told me to move my head to the other side because it was hurting her. When I asked why it hurt, she explained to me that she had a lump in her breast. At 9 years old, you don't really understand what that means. All I knew is that my mom had cancer, and cancer kills people. Needless to say, I was devastated. My mom was my rock; the one constant in my life and I was going to lose her to a disease I didn't understand. But my mom is amazing, and she pulled through. They had to take her breast and if I remember correctly she went through some chemo too, but she beat the cancer and it has never been back PRAISE GOD!

This battle with cancer opened my mother's eyes to something. She had always pushed aside her wants and desires for someone else, and she was going to start living life for herself! Unfortunately, that included pursuing the attraction to females that she had suppressed for so long.

One day, there was a knock at our front door. I happened to be closest, so I answered, and there stood a woman I had never seen before.
"Is your mom home?"
"Um...... lemme check!"
And with that, I slammed the door in her face and went to go get my mother. Up until this point my mom had been in a relationship with a woman named Cindy. My mother would take me over to her house and I would play with the cool things in her house while they were doing whatever they were doing. I did not realize until later that my mom and this woman were in a relationship, but I had my suspicions, and when my mom wasn't paying attention, or wasn't at home, I was snooping trying to get some hard evidence. Once I found the evidence I was looking for however, I immediately went into denial about the situation. My last shred of hope that mom and dad would get back together was destroyed at that moment, but I didn't know how to handle it, so I denied it.

Back to the woman at the door. This woman happened to be Nancy. She used to be our next door neighbor. Her kids were friends with my siblings and she used to babysit me. Apparently, she divorced her husband and needed a friend and didn't know where else to go. She ended up moving in with us shortly after that and oh, how I loved me some Nancy! She was always there when I needed to talk, she would tell me stories and she was just another stable adult in my life that wasn't going anywhere soon. She started out in her own room, but eventually she moved into my mom's room. I knew why, but once again, I was in denial and refused to believe it.

I'm not sure why I moved out the first time. I'm assuming that maybe it was because Dad found out about Nancy living with us and told Mom that he wanted me to come stay with him. So my stuff gets packed and we drive the 3 hours to East Texas and my mom leaves me with a promise that she will come visit every 2 weeks. I was so excited to start the 5th grade at a new school. I had never been popular and I was sure this was my chance to remake myself. I was wrong. It's hard to be popular when you wear glasses, have an awful haircut and the bus comes and gets you from the 2 room tin shack that you share with 4 other people. I didn't know what poor was until I lived with my daddy. There was no sidewalk; only sand. The first couple weeks I was there we didn't have plumbing! We had to do our business outside in a hole we dug and we showered outside in an old tub. Our shower head was a water hose hung on a bucket with holes in it. Needless to say, I HATED it! I was a city girl, I hated bugs, I hated my step-siblings, I hated the woman who took my dad from me and I wanted to go home! My step-sister and I fought over everything and one day our fighting resulted in tearing the medicine cabinet out of the wall of the inside bathroom my dad had just built. We knew we were in trouble and we were terrified. Sure enough, Dad sent us outside to get some switches and although the spanking really wasn't that bad, it looked terrible. I had cuts and was bleeding all over my legs, the back of my thighs were raw and the top of my back looked about the same.
Dad realized that if he sent me to school wearing shorts, someone would say something and the authorities would probably be notified, so I had to wear pants to school in 100 degree Texas weather. Luckily, my mom and Nancy were coming soon to visit and once they saw my legs, they were furious! I was pulled out of school and taken back to live with my mom.

All was not well though, because I guess in a last ditch effort to keep me from going back, my dad informed me that Mom was a lesbian. I will never forget that day. We were sitting in the tiny living room/bedroom watching TV, and there was a special on about kids whose parents were homosexuals. I remember turning to my dad and saying "Gee, Dad, I'm glad my mom's not gay!"

There was a long pause, and then he said "Crystal, come here baby." And in that moment I knew. He went on to explain to me what was going on with my mom, but he didn't have to. I had known for a while, but I wouldn't admit it. So when I went back to live with my mom, everything was different. I was furious with her and Nancy and that was the beginning of my rebellious stage. I was 10 years old.