Neglect

I used to live in a closet.

For starters, I’ve actually lived in a lot of closets, cars, hotels, shelters; one time it was an abandoned boat parked in an empty lot.

My mom used to be the best, until she met my stepfather and everything went sideways. The funny part about this whole fucked up situation is I don’t even blame him for getting her into drugs. I adore him, and I would never turn my back on him.

Being raised the way I was has shaped me to be this weird, loyal person to two people who completely neglected their responsibility to take care of their children.

Without eating for days, never going to school, not taking showers, being forced to do awful things. YES! This is my reality. I’m not making this up as some dark twisted fantasy, this is my truth.

When I was younger I thought I was normal. I thought it was normal to steal things with your mom at ten years old. I thought it was normal to watch her and the other parents do their drugs in the middle of an abandoned house. There were a couple kids I met along the way and we sought comfort in each other. We didn’t know we were in pain. We thought this was normal. I thought I was normal.

Until I started going to school, trying to make friends. Nobody wants to be friends with the weird, smelly kid that has nothing to talk about. I couldn’t relate to their Barbies or the new show they watched on TV. My only concerns were eating lunch and playing at recess because I knew when I got home, wherever home was at the time, something bad could easily happen.

Bad things always happened when mommy and my stepdad would leave us alone to go get their drugs. Sometimes we would have to wait at a park till they got back or on a street corner. Sometimes we got questioned by weird people or the police would pull up and talk to us. We usually lied because we were conditioned to think they were bad people trying to take us away from our parents. I loved my mother, I respected my mother so I lied. I always fucking lied and I hate myself for it. I let them get away with so much when I could’ve saved myself sooner or my siblings.

Oh yeah, I’m the oldest of four. My two younger siblings are a bit slow and things don’t click as fast as normal kids. When I see them I see the hurt in their eyes. I see my mother heating up a spoon and shooting up while my brother and sister sit there in her tummy. But what could I do? That’s my mother, the woman that gave me life. Do I sell her out and get us help or do I stay loyal to the person that tries to feed us when she can and sometimes takes us to the water park? That’s how I thought when I was a child, because I didn’t know any better.

My mother. She is an awesome woman. Even when she was cracked out she was a beautiful soul and she taught me a lot. She taught me a lot about respect and love. Although she completely fucked up my childhood, my innocence, my youth; I love her to death. She will always be my shining star. She will always be the sun in my sky.

I hate her.

I still defend her after everything she’s put her children through, I don’t know what it is about her but she has my soul.