I've got no power in my apartment right now (whoops) so I have no internet. And apparently I have to empty out below my bathroom sink, kitchen sink, and *my entire walk-in closet* so the plumbers can replace all the pipes in my walls.Here's what I wrote on a freaking paper notebook today until I remembered the computer at the apartment clubhouse.
I shouldn't have gotten away with half of what I did. It shouldn't have been so easy to get in and out of the house by my bedroom window. My mother should have noticed I never ate anything but diet pills. I wasn't that sneaky. I remember at the time thinking, "She must know" - that I was skipping school more often than I was attending; that I was sexually active; that I was experimenting with drugs; that I had a secret love affair with a razor blade.
She's told me in the years since that she knew about far more than what she confronted me on. She said it was because of how nasty our fights were, thus neatly burdening me with the responsibility for her failure to act on my behalf. At the time, I thought the difference between the times when I got caught and when I didn't was whether or not I had prayed to get away with it, on my way out the window. I thought Jesus was helping me keep things from my mom, but in reality, she embraced conscious denial. Like a Word of Faith adherent worried about negative confessions, she heard no, saw no, spoke no evil.
My mom left me to the wolves. I was raped three separate times by three separate boys between the ages of 14 and 16. She should have known. She should have paid attention, but the year I turned 14 and my brother turned 18, she decided she was done raising children. My sister was the only one of my mother's three children to live at home till adulthood. My brother she kicked out at 12, for calling in an abuse report to HRS, and she kicked me out shortly after my 17th birthday, for bad behavior she did nothing to prevent. How the hell else was I supposed to get her attention?
Saturday night I screamed, "You SUCK!!!" to my mother's face, at the top of my voice. It was a long time coming.
From a high school journal, 2/8/2000
I'm so scared of myself, my life, everything right now. I don't know what I'm doing or how I'm supposed to handle it. I spent about ten solid minutes earlier bawling "I don't know what I'm doing. I'm so scared!" (repeat) It's all just really rough right now. I don't want to be bad, but I keep doing bad things! I skip school, I drink, I starve myself, I played with a Ouija board today and I tried to kiss my friend Kerri. God please help me. I'm so confused, so lost. I feel so utterly helpless and 14 again.
