Rewrite My Life

I've often wondered what it would have been like, to be born into a different life, different family. Unfortunately for some, we have to play the cards we've been dealt, right?

I catch myself in envy every once and a while seeing a picture perfect happy family, followed by reminiscing and usually a teary eyed run to the bathroom. Why couldn't I have had normal, loving parents?

My childhood was terrible, absolutely terrible. My parents were horrible people, and when I say parents I mostly mean my mom but my step dad can be included because he did nothing to stop her.

My mother, had a nice way of doing horrible things to me and then pull the whole "girl cried wolf" thing whenever I reached out for help. She was abusive, mentally and physically and just all around a horrible person.

Just to give you an idea on how crazy she was, I remember quite clearly a night when my mom recruited me to come with her to steal corn from a field.

Yeah....you read that correctly.

So we get to this field, fill up about four friggin Walmart bags of corn (most of which rotted in our fridge for months because my parents were disgusting and wasteful people.) We're heading back from this, and my mom starts cursing under her breath and looking at her mirror at the car behind us. I turned around to look and it was a car tailgating, just normal people.

Now, as a 22 year old that's been driving, I understand the frustration when someone is driving too close behind you, I completely understand. What I don't understand is why on God's green earth she chose to what she did that night.

Upon coming to a stop sign, my mom maneuvered her car in way to where the car behind us would be able to easily pass her. She got out of the car, slammed the door, and threw her hands up as she walked towards the strangers, screaming at them. I started to panic, unbuckled my seat belt and rushed out of the car to see what was happening and to ultimately try to get my mom back in the friggin car.

We'll she didn't get back in the car, more screaming and profanity happened from her end and the two men in the car telling back at her. They ended up telling her to "get the **** out of the way" and when they said that followed by calling her crazy she lost it.

I watched, 11 years old helpless and freaking out as my mom climbed on the hood of this person's car and tried to punch their windshield in. She got about three hits in before they started try to drive away with her on the hood.

From that point, to her finally getting off the man's car, to the men driving away is honestly a blur to me now, I'm pretty sure I was failing at that time to process what just took place but it didn't even end there. When we got in her car, she told me we couldn't go home. When I asked her why we couldn't go home she went off and told me that those men are going to watch us to find our house, then hurt our family.

Are you friggin kidding me?

So, she ends up parking at this private school right down the road from our house at the time on State Street. She left me in the car and walked to the house and walked back, and what blew my mind was that she actually handed me a screwdriver to "protect myself." She had a steak knife. Then we started walking, she had to find these people. She found a car that looked like the one they drove off in and checked the hood for her fingerprints, obsessing over this and looking in their house windows. She told me to push my chest out while we were walking so they'd stop if they just happened to drive by. Again, I'm 11 years old!

I was dragged around with her until about 4 am on a school night walking around looking for these people, for two men who we're probably already in bed or talking about the crazy psychotic woman they had to deal with on their way back home.

I could think of so many situations my mother put me in that were similar if not worse. But this, was probably the craziest thing I had to deal with at such a young age. There's also the time were my mother tried to drown me...those memories are the kind that don't make sense until you're older if you know what I mean.

The way my mom treated me when I was a child, opened me up to a lot of challenges in my adult life. They affect my friendships, my work, my love life. It's not that I'm not a good person, I know that at least. But even though my parents are no longer in my life, the trauma, the abandonment, mental abuse and neglect has me always second guessing, always questioning, always in fear and worry.

Always wondering why....

I wish I could rewrite my life, my childhood. I wish I could back space having a sliding lock on the outside of my bedroom door, or sent away, and copy and paste myself in family trips to Dorney Park I wasn't a part of or in my own home in my own bed, or even in a different family with stability and unconditional love.

But unfortunately, we cannot rewrite our past. We can remember, accept, and find our strength.