My life, Unedited and unrevised (2)

To this day, I still don’t know why my stepmother had a problem with me. I think it had something to do with my mother, but before starting on that, a little background. My dad was married to a lady for what only seemed like a month’s time. Coincidentally, this lady was sisters to my Kindergarten teacher. According to dad, shortly after exchanging vows, she decided she didn’t want to work. Guess dad had other plans, and they didn’t work out.

My stepmother had a pattern where she would get pregnant, then get married. She got knocked up when she was sixteen years old and married the man. She held true to her traditions, because this is how she managed to catch my dad. After my parents split up, they remained friends. This is odd to me considering what my mother had been through, but I am not one to judge other people’s actions. They were actually quite close and talked about things. I guess some people just get along better when they aren’t together. I understand that personally, but I will leave that for another chapter in my life. That having been said, my mother and father talked about the Bitch, and when my dad told my mother he was remarrying for the third time and with such short notice, my mom asked if the Bitch was pregnant. Personally, this is not the order I wish to go about things, but then again, them, not me. My dad reassured my mother that wasn’t the case, but turns out it was, and he knew it. My mom just knew something was up with him wanting to get married so soon after the last one, but she bit her tongue.

In English, my mother’s name is translated to something similar to the Bitch's name. With my father being involved with a lady named similar to that of my mom, I suppose a slip of the tongue is possible. I remember him calling her my mom's name once, and I remember her getting pissed about it. I think this is where her problem with me started. I think she had something against me being a product of my mother and father, but mainly because I was linked to my mother. The Bitch seemed to be very jealous of her, and as a result, she was a bitch to me. She made my life very difficult, and as a result, the seven months I spent there were pure Hell.

The Bitch made me call her Ms. Bitch. Personally, I don’t agree with that. You should refer to someone as Ms. or Mr. that you respect, or someone you don’t know, but to someone that I didn’t even like, Ms. was a stretch. My mom and I decided to call her BB instead; Big Bitch.

Living in her house was similar to living as Cinderella, with the exception of the two evil stepsisters. I had a chore list and so did my stepbrother, but if one was to compare the duties, mine was worse. His chores consisted of dusting his room, vacuuming his room, shoveling dog shit, etc. My chores were everything except Step Brother’s room. It was so bad, that I would get yelled at for loading the dishwasher incorrectly. If I put a glass in the top rack, but in the front instead of the back, I got yelled at. I even remembering my stepmother checking my dust jobs with a glide of her finger, and if there was one thing I missed, I would have to go back and do everything all over again. You may think I am kidding, but I shit you not. Living there opened a new can of peas, and the wrong kind of peas; let me explain.

What I ate in that house was limited as well. I did not have access to the TV dinner macaroni and cheese, because that was too expensive; here, I’ll give you your dollar back. I even did wrong by her once by opening the wrong can of peas. She made a potato salad on occasion and the can of peas I opened were the expensive ones she used for that particular recipe, expensive meaning closer to a dollar than fifty cents. Anyway, back to the peas. I remember telling my dad that I was hungry and asked if I could have a can of peas. He said yes, and then I proceeded to ask him if I should microwave them all, or half the can, etc. He said that I could heat up the whole can and whatever I didn’t want, to put in a Tupperware container. BB (the Bitch) walks in the kitchen and throws a fit. She yells at me for opening the wrong can of peas, and then proceeds to yell at my dad for letting me. She then yells at me for heating up the whole thing instead of just a portion, grabs my baby brother from my dad saying “give me my baby”, throws something at him, and leaves the house. After all is said and done, I don’t think I even ate the peas once it caused such a commotion.

I also don’t know if she tried to get me sick on purpose, but every time she cooked, which was not often, I would get sick and throw up. My dad did the majority of the cooking, as well as brushing my hair, and when he cooked, I never got sick. I remember getting sick at least three times from BB’s cooking. I think she put something in my dish. I can’t help but think that just because it was only when she cooked that I would violently up chuck my food. Not only that, but I had to go to school regardless if I was puking or not. I remember having to call my grandmother to get me from school one day because BB would not. BB shouldn’t have sent me there that day to begin with, but then again, that is why she is BB.

In addition to the food restrictions, I also was not allowed to wear shorts until April or May. I can’t remember exactly, but from anyone knows what the weather is like on the Mississippi coast, this is a ridiculous and torturous rule. This was back in the day when colored jeans were in style and I remember coming home every day with my legs the color of my jeans from sweating so profusely. First off, I grew up in Texas, where sometimes the weather allows one to wear shorts in December, so this bitch was just trying to push my buttons. I did what any normal ten or eleven year old would do. I called my mom and tattled on BB. The thing I didn’t understand was that BB would let me wear skirts, but not shorts. Can anyone please explain to me how that makes sense? I am still trying to figure it out nearly eighteen years later. My mom confronted BB about the clothing situation and BB replied by saying that I wore pantyhose when I wore skirts. This is a lie. Either I had enough hair on my legs to pass for pantyhose, or this lady was trying to cover her tracks. After all, who wears pantyhose in ninety plus degree weather, especially someone in the fifth grade?

I am not sure what kind of spell BB had on my dad, but I remember him having to hide giving me money for good grades and stuff like that. I never really had an allowance, but he made sure to sneak money to me here and there without her knowing. Perhaps I should have given it to her for her grocery shopping inconveniences, but I didn’t. An eleven year old could find better things to do with five or ten dollars, like snow cones. Thinking of BB, I probably shouldn’t have been eating snow cones until May, when I could wear shorts, right? But I am not bitter, not at all. Yeah, right.

I can honestly tell you my dislike for her had nothing to do with the fact that she was with my father. I know that growing up in a divorced family takes a little getting used to, but I never felt this way with the second wife, even though that was short lived. I knew that whoever my dad was going to be with would never be my mother, and I was not trying to make her what she wasn’t. I truthfully hated her because of the way she treated me. I would be more understanding if she was an all around bitch, but I was the only one that received this treatment. She would never think to treat her own blood like dirt on the ground. I think she felt inconvenienced for me having to live there for seven months. If only she knew how displeased I was for having to deal with her, maybe she would have been a little more understanding. We both didn’t want me to be there. I can honestly think that is why she treated me the way she did, and maybe in some way she was jealous of what my father and I had before she came along and ruined it. Needless to say, she succeeded in breaking what my dad and I once had; something that we will never have again.

My life, unedited and unrevised in Chapters (1)

I was born a daughter of a military man and a native Spaniard mother. My mother met my father in Spain while he was docking port from the U.S.S. Guam. My father told my mother he would come back for her, and that is exactly what he did. I am sure; however, he made plenty of visits to the “other” females in his life as he made his way back home. The evidence proving these accusations can be found in the collection of love letters he had obtained around the world: letters he still currently has in his possession. If things haven’t changed, they can be found inside the bottom, left hand drawer of his gun case, along with some of my mom’s hair. The hair was a result from a fight my mom had with another woman, pre-PissedOff I believe. Even though my parents have been divorced for nearly twenty years, he still has a part of my mother with him; that Ziploc bag of her hair.

I entered this world in a very violent upbringing. My dad hit my mom, my mom hit my dad, and my dad hit me. I have even been told that my dad hit us both at the same time, while my mother was pregnant with me. I am unable to confirm that information, but I can honestly say that it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. I distinctly remember when I was six years old sitting on my parents bed while he beat the crap out of her. I was writing “I hat dad” on my blue Lisa Frank stationary. I didn’t know how to spell hate, but you get the idea.

At the age of seven, I had become aware that when a parent keeps you from another parent, it is not considered kidnapping. I find this pretty amusing really, because there is no other way to sugarcoat what it was, and it was kidnapping, regardless of what the authorities say. My mom and I left Mississippi and moved to Texas. The courts had established visitation, and I had gone to Mississippi to visit my father for the summer. I remember him asking me if I wanted to stay an extra day, and not knowing the concept of a plane ticket, I accepted. I was familiar with flying, having taken my first flight at two weeks old, but I was unaware that flights had specific times and dates. I was the little girl that thought you buy a ticket, show up, and catch the next available plane. I didn’t realize that wasn’t the case, but a seven year old shouldn’t have been put in that situation to begin with. Aside from pointing out more of my father’s flaws in parenting skills, I should explain the kidnapping. Because of his gracious offer extended to me in staying an extra day, I missed my flight (what a surprise) and my mom was at the airport waiting for me to not get off the plane, which was a shock to her. She called my dad, and he told her if she ever wanted to see me again, she had to come back to him. She did, and as per the norm, and he beat the shit out of her; over and over again. You tell me whether that is kidnapping or not.

I was the only blood my mother had in the United States, and why she didn’t leave him and take me to Spain I will never understand. She said that she didn’t want to take me away from him, and she knew that he would never fork out the cash for me to fly overseas to see him. In the temporary orders establishing visitation, my dad was supposed to pay the entire flight from Houston to New Orleans, and even that wasn’t good enough for the cheapskate. My mom had to shell out half of my measly one hundred dollar tickets for me to even see him, so one could only imagine what an overseas ticket would do to him. My mom didn’t want to be the reason I never saw my dad. She told me, many years later, that she wanted me to make up my own mind about him. She didn’t want to brainwash or manipulate me to think what she thought of him, so she allowed me time to form my own opinion of the man.

I must have blocked this out of my mind for nearly a decade’s time. I remember it hitting me like a bolt of lightning. I was in the theater, in high school, sitting with Miss Black Teen Texas and a few other girls. Miss Black Teen Texas was talking about her St. Lucian father and the things he had done to her mother, and it came rushing back. I was so pissed at myself to have forgotten something like this. I guess I suppressed those feelings due to the trauma I had experienced, but to just forget it was beyond me. How could someone do such hateful things to another person anyway? It was then and there that my opinion of my father started to go downhill. It took me ten years to remember, and another 10 years to put it down on paper. Only this time, I don’t have a Lisa Frank spiral notebook with blue paper in it.

The time of my life when I had forgotten about all the bad things, I was quite the daddy’s girl. When he married for the third time, however, that changed. My mother was on her second husband at the time, which was going nowhere fast. It was going so fast, that she thought it would be in my best interest to live with my father while she “ironed out the kinks of that relationship”. I was in the fifth grade. I left Texas and ended up in Hell for the next seven months of my life. This particular Hell is referred to as Pass Christian, Mississippi.

Update: Smoking vs Divorce

I am still smoking.

He is still married.

The end.

I have been wondering if this is just a huge waste of my time. It has been nearly a year and a half, and he has been separated for 2 years before I came along.

Is he ever going to do it, and if so, is he going to want to marry me?

Smoking vs Divorce

I talked to Eggs on the way home from babysitting tonight, and when I pulled into my driveway I was still smoking my cigarette. I told him this and he said....

"I wish you would stop smoking."

I simply replied with this "I wish you would get divorced."

"Touché."

"How about I quit smoking when you get divorced?"

Needless to say, I put an end to that discussion....