My whole life, my mom has referred to me as “a cold-hearted bitch.” I always pretended not to be interested in anyone because of the redicule and constant picking she enforced upon me. Everytime someone showed a minute bit of interest in me, it was constantly, “how’s your boyfriend?” This began as early as second grade, and she will never know how much it damaged me.

I have always been a shy person, from as early as I can remember. It began with my embarassment in kindergarten. I sat in between two boys that would constantly look up under my dress, and I would go home crying and complaining because my mom forced me to wear that damned things to begin with. I quickly learned to hate being a girl, to hate frilly clothes, and anything else that was associated with being a weak, little girl. 

In the middle of first grade, we moved to a new town and a new school. The school I had came from, I had lots of friends, and other than those two boys, people were not mean to me. Even as a small child, I was abnormally tall and overweight (tall enough to ride the adult rides as Six Flags at age 5). So at the new school, I was taunted merciously with, “big momma and fat momma.” I didn’t understand why I was being called these names because I had never done anything to these girls. I learned to absolutely hate that school. I was so far ahead of my class coming from a big city to a small town, that I already had been introduced to Spanish, computers, and wrote in cursive. My new first grade teacher docked my papers because I was confused about whether to write in cursive or print. At lunch, when these weird red lights were turned on by the lunch monitors, no talking was allowed, otherwise you were given “licks” as it was called. This meant your teacher paddled your behind with a wooden board for misbehaving in the cafeteria. One day, a kid threw all of his lunch trash onto my plate. I said no, and put it back in front of him, and he proceeded to do it again. Well, sometime during this, the lights came on, so when I told him no and to throw away his own trash, I got licks for defending myself. He just got reprimanded for not throwing away his own trash. I quickly learned how unfair life is, that no one will stand up for you, and you had to be strong and keep your mouth shut and just take it. In no way will I say I never did anything wrong while at that school, but I won’t say that doing anything right got me anywhere either, and besides that I was just a little kid.

The next year we moved into our permanent house, and another new school. This time, kids were friendlier, as were the teachers. I enjoyed my time at that school, but was still a bit fearful of getting into trouble. I didn’t want to get whipped for something that wasn’t my fault again. By third grade, I was at yet another new school because of the convenience for my parents of picking us up after school. I made new friends and I had fun, although I was just wasn’t that outgoing. I had learned the hard way too early on to receed into my shell lest all hell break loose and it be blamed on me. By this time, my brother was old enough to start school kindergarten even though he was a summer baby, and ended up getting spanked nearly every day at school because of his misbehaving. He was also behind a lot of the kids since he had JUST turned 5 when he started school. My mom and the school wanted to hold him back a year, but my dad said no.

I really feel that my little brother would have benefitted from this by giving him time to grow up a little more. He was in trouble ALL the time. I mean REAL misbehaving, not just standing up for himself..and he honestly could have cared less. Because he was constantly in trouble for being too hyperactive and into everything at school, I tried to be the good child, to disappear and stay under the radar. If my brother did well, he was rewarded and if not, punished accordingly. My parents at first tried spanking him, but he laughed at them, so they would take away toys that he loved. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t..and shortly thereafter he was positively identified with attention deficit disorder after the recommendation by his teacher that he was quite behind compared to the other five and six year olds. This was before it was the big “craze” in the schools…when you could really tell who had it and who didn’t. Plus, mom always had this guilt complex because she feared that she personally caused it because she was drinking alcohol on a regular basis when she learned she was pregnant with my little brother. She’s always felt that she was the cause of his behavior problems by drinking when she was UNAWARE that she was pregnant.

See, my mother and my father did not plan on having anymore children. My dad had a son by a previous marriage that is eleven years older than me, so I was supposed to be the one and only. The doctors always said my mother would never be able to carry a child to term anyway, especially after multiple miscarriages, even a late one. There are women out there who do have menstrual cycles while pregnant, and therefore, do not know they are with child. Plus, I was supposed to be born twins. There were two heart beats for a long time, and we stopped moving, and were thought to have passed away. Eventually, I moved, giving my mother hope. This was in the time when sonogram machines were really new and the technology was still being developed so expectant parents did not get to take home pictures of their unborn children. From what I am told, she had a lot of trouble with her pregnancy of me. The doctor’s finally took me a month later than my due date after mom just could not seem to deliver me, but I fortunately had a good birthweight 6 pounds and a few ounces, but I was very sick often as a small child. The doctors did not want her to have anymore children, so that was supposed to be the end, until one day, my parents were surprised with the news of another baby on the way.

As my brother and I grew up, I slowly became the straight A student that was never in trouble, and he became the little hell-raiser. No one could get him to do his school work. My parents did everything they could, finally putting him on Ritalin so he could concentrate. He was on it for years until the point where he begged my mom no more because he felt so weird with it, and not himself. The teachers would berate him about why couldn’t he be more like his sister. That did not help matters. At home, he would get into trouble, and blame me for it, and for some STUPID reason, my mom would believe him..so once again, although MOST of the time, I didn’t do anything wrong, I got spanked or grounded for his actions. I love my little brother and my mom, but I learned to further recede into that nice chiseled, ice castle I had built around myself.

This will be continued in a further segment..so stick around if you want to see how things turn out…