About me. Where to begin... well, I guess the beginning is always good.
I'll start with my mom. Something was wrong with her. What, I don't know. Not even her psychiatrists could figure that out. They debated on whether she was bipolar, had a borderline personality disorder, schitzophenia, and the list goes on. When I was younger she was constantly in and out of mental hospitals.
She left my father when I was almost 2. Haven't seen him since.
When I was little, she'd have fits. Terrible fits. If the smallest thing went wrong, like if she lost a shoe, she'd have a fit. Started off blaming me, calling me a spoiled brat, a horrible child, and a pig, throwing stuff at me and hitting me. Then she'd regress into calling herself names, hitting herself, calling herself a horrible mother, and it'd end with her trying to commit suicide and me stopping her any way I could. Once she handed me a knife and told me to kill her with it.
And god forbid I do anything... like once when I accidently knocked over her favorite can of coffee. I'd either be put in the pantry for an hour, forbidden to so much as breathe or shift in my seat too loudly lest another hour be put on, or get beaten with a belt so hard I'd have bleeding welts on my legs.
I was angry, but never showed it, never let it out. I was brought up not to. Anger was evil, especially if it was against your mother. And I didn't want to cause her another fit. So I didn't show it.
There were her good days though, when she'd talk about how all we had in the world was eachother, and how it was just the two of us. How someday she'd find me a father and we'd all live together in happiness. But then she'd get upset and tell me that one day I would leave her all by herself to do my own thing, and she should just kill herself now since I'd leave her one day anyways. I promised I would never do that.
She'd also tell me about men and how all they wanted you for was sex and how evil they were. When I got to the age where I started liking boys I felt guilty for it. I tried to remind myself they were evil, and my mom didn't find out I liked them until I was 16.
But I hated myself. I hated myself because I couldn't keep her happy. I hated myself because I knew I had caused her problems when I was born... she told me in one of her fits that she had only married my abusive father because I was born. I hated myself because I was angry, especially because I was angry at her, and God didn't like that. God hated me for that. And I wanted to please God, and I hated myself because I didn't.
I wished I was dead. I wished I was never born. Once, when I was 6, I said so. And I got the whipping of my life. That was probably why I didn't start SIing until I was a little older. I was too afraid I'd get whipped.
When I hit school, I hit it with a vigor. I had an insatiable appetite for knowledge, a never ending curiousity, and a strong desire to be the perfect daughter for my mom. I made straight A's, won almost every acedemic competition I entered, but still wasn't perfect enough for her. And I endured relentless teasing from the other kids about my weight and what I wore (my mom always said she didn't have enough to buy me clothes, despite the $300 in child support my father sent me monthly... I now know she spent it... so I wore hand me downs people gave me).
I originally started SIing in elementary school, although I just recently realized and remembered it. Whenever I felt I needed to be punished, I would punch my left arm with my right hand for a few minutes and then go on like nothing had happened. It was hard enough to hurt, but didn't bruise alot.
In 6th grade, I was quiet, and still teased by kids. By this time I had started liking boys and was rather ashamed of my appearances, especially my weight (I was a little chunky, no more than your average 6th grader, but I thought I was a regular Porky the Pig). So I started abusing laxitives and eating as little as possible. By that summer I had lost quite a bit of weight. I cut my long hair to shoulder length, my aunt took me shopping and I got a wardrobe of daisy dukes and stomach revealing tops, and returned to school in 7th grade a new girl.
I gained a group of friends and boys started noticing me. But I had a distorted view. I thought that since guys only wanted sex, that meant I should dress sexy and act sexy to get their attention. I didn't HAVE sex, but everyone thought I was quite experienced, and I became quiet popular, especially with the girls. And I loved getting the attention I so desperately craved, so I kept my mouth shut. Never said I didn't know a thing about sex. Didn't say I did either. Just kept my trap shut.
It was in 7th grade I first tried cutting. One of my friends came to school with cuts on her arms. She told everyone her cat did it, but she told me the truth... that she had done it with a razor blade. She then showed me where she had carved a word into her arm and let me feel it. It felt cool, and I asked her for a razor so I could try it out. She gave me one, and I went home and tried it. I drew it over my hand lightly to test it out, and a strange thing happened. I loved it! I absolutely loved the sharp bite of the metal on my skin, loved those little beads of red starting to appear. So I went over it again, this time a little deeper. It was great! So I turned my arm over and carved a peace sign on my wrist. And went over it. And went over it again. I finally stopped when I realized if I didn't stop I was going to hit a vein. So I put my new best friend in my keepsake box.
When I went to school the next day to show off my new super cool peace sign, the kids thought I was nuts for inflicting self pain, even if it felt really cool when you ran your hand over it. So I learned my first lesson: keep it a secret.
My second time was my first time doing it to relieve pain. I don't even remember what made me feel like I was going to pop with all the emotion surging and raging inside of me. But I got out the razor hoping my little new hobby would help take my mind off of it. And an amazing rush of relief swept over me when I felt him bite. I was shocked and thrilled at the new perfect pain reliever I had found.
But not for long. My first lesson (keep it a secret) got driven into my skull harder when my mom found out. This time she chose to throw shoes at me... high heels. Ouch.
Eventually the cutting also replaced my arm hitting as a means of punishment too.
When I was in 8th grade, my mom started seeing a guy. He freaked me out... you know those people that are so nice and so perfect they scare you? That was him. He looked and acted like some sort of date rapist or a pedofile. But I put my reservations aside and let myself like him... he made my mom happy, and I really wanted a father. 3 months later we moved in with him. He acted like he liked me, he acted like I was the greatest fucking kid he'd ever seen.
One week later, 3 days before my 14th birthday, I was waiting on the bench at school for them to pick me up.
One hour. Maybe they're just late.
Another hour. What if something's happened? What if they're in a wreck?
Yet another hour. Calm down, Vannessa. They're not in a wreck. They probably just got caught up.
I went on thinking like this. It was 9 pm before my grandma came and got me. I was frantic by that time. I kept asking her "What's going on? What happened?" She was silent and told me she'd tell me when we got home.
She took me to her house though. This isn't home.
She silently led me to one of the rooms, where my things were stacked up. I didn't understand. What's going on?
She told me that they had brought my stuff over and I was to be living with her. And she handed me a letter with my name on it in my mom's handwriting.
She was abandoning me because they had found terrible stuff in my things. She couldn't stand the heartbreak.
What? What terrible stuff? I couldn't figure it out. (Later on I found out David had supposedly went through my stuff and shown her porn of women, satanic books, and drugs that he had found... the closest thing to porn I had was a 1933 artist's book on figure drawing that I used to help me draw the human body, the closest thing I had to being satanic was a st. james bible, and the closest thing I had to drugs was pms pills... and would you believe to this day my mom doesn't fully trust I'm telling her the truth when I tell her the stuff wasn't mine that David showed her? Geez....)
My grandma would've came to get me earlier but David kept his car parked behind hers where she couldn't get out.
And that was the beginning of my breakdown. If someone was 5 minutes late picking me up from school, I would completely flip out. I mean, I would be a halfway sobbing, halfway moaning, halfway screaming, completely senseless mess. One of the teachers would find me stumbling down one of the hallways beating on lockers and falling down occasionally and have to take me to the guidance office for them to call home and find out what was going on. I was a zombie in class. Vannessa didnt exist. I stared ahead, and the teacher spoke japanese. Everyone spoke japanese. I robotically went from class to class. I had to be forced to eat. I barely knew how to use a fork, much less how to be hungry. I couldn't sleep. I didn't know how. I spent my time at home staring at the ceiling. At school, I stared at the tests, unable to understand them, unable to write. The only thing I woke up, that I knew how to do, was art class. I poured out art like never before, in a fever I never had. I'd spend hours on the details. Hands scratching at unrelenting walls until they were bloody. Girls melted down into an unintellegable heap in a corner, their hair ratted and knotted, their hands tearing at it. Huge alien heads with dark black, piercing eyes (I think this had something to do with my wanting to go away). Girls sleeping with eyes, hands creeping up on them from out of the dark, attacking them. Nobody dared mess with me when I was in this world. I would glare at them so harshly they'd back off.
But just getting to school was hard for me. I don't know what was wrong with me. I'd sit there and stare at my closet and end up throwing a sobbing, screaming fit and hitting myself and banging my head against the wall. My grandma had to help me get dressed and pick out my clothes. It'd take me hours to figure out how to take a shower, and half the frustration of that would sent me into another fit. I'd stare at the knobs. How do I turn them on? How do I know the water's the right tempeture? What if I don't turn them right? Finally my grandma would have to turn on the water and guide me into the shower. And there I'd stand. What do I do next? Shampoo? What's that? Lather? How do I do that? and so on.
It took me a year to get past that. And I almost failed the 8th grade... I would've if my teachers hadn't have helped me. That summer I started going to the mental health center. They diagnosed me with melancholia and PSTD (post traumatic stress disorder) and started me on prozac. I went nuts, they upped the dosage. I went even more nuts, they upped the dosage some more. It took them 4 times upping my dosage until it occurred to them that it wasn't working (and it took my grandma bitching them out for my low grades in school... I was in 9th grade by then). So they started me on Paxil and counseling. The Paxil didn't work, but the counseling did. I had the most wonderful counselor in the world... her name was Brittany. She was young enough to relate to me (she was 30), didn't get on to me or look at me wierd for anything I said, didn't get clinical on me but acted like a friend, didn't tell me what to do but asked me questions to help me figure out what was best for me on my own and made gentle suggestions from time to time when I was at my wits end about something, and just all around was great. We didn't have to talk about my problems or anything in particular, if I wanted to talk about, say, music, we talked about music. She'd even share with me events going on in her life, like telling me about funny stuff her daughter said the other day. I showed a dramatic improvement, even stopped cutting myself. Brittany became the healing razor blade, so to speak. In other words she healed just as much as the razor, if not more. Unfortunately, though, the health center decided that after 3 months of her writing that I was doing ok in her notes that I didn't need counseling any more, just meds (I was also on a low dosage of xanex to make me sleep at night). Soon after I started cutting again, got depressed again, and made another suicide attempt. One month later I quit going to the center and quit taking my medication, as it was doing nothing for me.
When I was 16 my stepdad (they married after I was kicked out) left my mom and took everything with him, along with leaving her in debt (he spent her money on electronics). She got back in contact with me, and wanted me to move back in with her. And I did. Turned out though she just wanted me because she thought my grandma would sign over my dads checks to her, which she didn't. My mom kept complaining that she didnt have enough money, so I started working a full time job while going to school (and taking college classes with the newspaper and musical theater). I slept maybe 3 hours a night after coming home and doing my homework. And every week I handed my check over to her to help her out. Because of this I didn't eat lunch at school and, since she never had food at home, learned to live on kool aid, water, snickers for lunch, and a yogurt for dinner every day. The rest of the $150 from my dad went to helping her further, buying needs, and buying an occasional pack of cigarettes.
Then when I was 17 my ex step dad decided he wanted her back. The one condition: she had to lose me. So she made me quit school ("you know you're not going to make it this year... you've been sick a whole half of the year" which I was because I wasn't eating, wasn't sleeping, and was working my ass off) so I could get a full time job so she wouldn't feel guilty about kicking me out. And she kicked me out 2 weeks after my grandfather died (doesn't she always have such perfect timing?). So I moved in with my boyfriend that I had been dating for about 6 months.
I've now been with him for about a year and a half, haven't spoken to my mom since. And that's my story.
