Custody

I'm learning it's challenging to drag old memories out of my mind, especially given that I've spent my entire life repressing them.  I look back at my relationships with friends and realize that most of them never had a clue about what went on behind closed doors (until a supposed best friend make a fairly public announcement...I'll get to that later).  I have someone that I've considered one of my closest friends since I was 12 and I'm pretty sure she knows only surface details.  Our relationship primarily worked because I was content just to hang around with her and feel included in something for once in my life.  We talked boys and music and ridiculous girly things, but I didn't discuss my family.  I would shove the memories back down quickly if they surfaced-and I never knew when to expect it or what would trigger a flashback.  I remember crying myself to sleep on the bunk bed one evening trying desperately not to let the sobs rack my body so I wouldn't wake my friend.  I've never thought of myself as immature; I have never acted my age.  I'm still very young but have experienced some of the  less appealing sides of life and it shows-that kind of stress takes a toll both physically and mentally.  Looking back, I wonder how I managed it.  My therapists were never especially helpful and I didn't really have many people to talk to.  Those that I tried to confide in couldn't understand as they had never had to deal with the darker aspects of some families.  I'm still very grateful that I had people that would let me vent just a little-I believe it's necessary for a person to be able to get the negativity out of their system.

Alright, alright, I'll try to stop procrastinating now.  I spent a good deal of time today thinking about what point in time I wanted to get out of my head tonight.  I'm trying to start small and work my way up to the big stuff....I'm still scared of verbalizing what happened-or putting in text, in this case.  I honestly don't know how I will react.  That might sound odd, but sometimes just tiny things, ordinarily no big deal, can send me into fits of rage or depression that I'm unable to handle.  Given that I have two small children that depend on me for their care, unexpected emotional outbursts are not ideal.

Tonight I've decided to address the strange parental arrangements my family concocted.  It's something very basic, a question I was often asked during my school years: why did I live with my grandmother? Where were my parents? Why had nobody met them? Come to think of it, I'm fairly certain only one of my friends from school ever met my "father."  She was also the one that I ended up confiding in before the insanity really hit its full stride.

From as early as I can remember, I didn't have a set home.  I was passed around between houses, from Minnie's to my mom's, and during a brief divorce, also to my dad and step-mom's house.  It was very confusing, but I felt the most comfortable with Minnie.  There was always food, a warm bed to sleep in, it smelled lovely, and there was plenty of love to be had.  Unfortunately there was also a crap-ton of passive aggressive and codependent behaviors and it was from Minnie that I learned most of life's lessons. I don't remember what finally brought it all to a head, but the first turning point was in second grade.

Minnie and my dad had gone to the store, leaving me with several aunts, uncles, and cousins.  My mom called and asked to come pick me up out of the blue-bear in mind this was during my parents' first divorce.  My aunt replied that she didn't think it would be a good idea until Minnie came home, just to make sure that there would be no issues and everybody was on the same page.  That made sense even to me, and I was only 6 or 7.  To Mom though, it was an extreme insult to have someone tell her she couldn't come get her daughter.  She ordered me to pack my things and said she'd be there to get me shortly.

By the time Mom got there it seemed as if everybody in my entire family was there-and my family is huge.  There were even more aunts, uncles, and cousins, Minnie's best friend and her family, as well as our neighbors.  If there was ever anything that everyone in my immense family agreed on it was that an audience was always required.  Dad was back by that point as well, which is never a good thing.  Mom pulls up in her beat up little car with my uncle and her new boyfriend in it as well.  She marched right up to the porch where I stood, bawling my eyes out and crying that I didn't want to go, and dragged me to the car.  Dad followed, bellowing and generally raising hell.    If I remember correctly there was damage to the mailboxes (I definitely know our neighbor bricked his in shortly afterwards), and I definitely remember screaming when Dad punched through the window at Mom's boyfriend, shattering glass everywhere.  I ducked my head down and shut my eyes as tightly as possible, because I had seen some movie with someone getting glass in their eyes-a pretty traumatic scene for a kid that age, but I knew it was "just a movie."  I cried silently the entire way back to Mom's, trying to smile when she would reassure me that it was okay and I was "home" now.

The next few months were awful.  I mean really, seriously, I hated everything.  I wanted to go back to Minnie's but I wasn't allowed contact unless Mom wanted a sitter and would ship me off for the weekend.  We were once again staying with my grandparents so there was no bedroom-my brothers, sister, and I slept on a mattress in the living room floor.  This was a bigger house than the one I described in a previous post-this was before they moved to the blue house.  And it was always full of people.  Mom was dating pretty steady, and her boyfriends always grossed me out and were excessively rude and lewd.  I do have a single slightly fond recollection of one of these boyfriends: Mom allowed me to stay out until 3 am with them to go bowling. It would have been great but Mom ignored me all night while he pawed all over her, right in front of me.  It still grosses me out just picturing it in my head.

During the time that I was staying with Mom, my grandfather (Minnie's husband) passed away.  He was her third husband and not my blood relative, but at that point in my life he was my entire WORLD.  He was a skilled carpenter and built me piano benches, furniture, picnic tables, and even a playroom on the back porch.  He doted on me endlessly and generally spoiled me rotten.  One of the stories I like to tell about him was the time Minnie locked me in my room for throwing a temper tantrum.  I waited until she came back to see if I was ready to apologize, then literally crawled through her legs and ran to climb on Papaw's lap.  His exact words were, "What are you doing to this poor baby?" I stayed with Papaw for the rest of the day.  He taught me how to color in between the lines, showed me how to draw pictures (leaving Minnie angry when she would find our drawings in the back of a storybook that wasn't intended for anything but reading).  In short, I adored him.

Words cannot describe how very difficult it was for me when I was not allowed to attend his funeral.  I have his American flag displayed in a wooden case in my living room now, as well as pictures of him and nearly everything he ever gave me.  I have never gotten over it.  Both Mom and Minnie still blame each other for my absence; neither one of them is adult enough to admit wrongdoing.  I hold an everlasting grudge against the both of them for taking away my chance to say goodbye.  He died in his sleep, and I'm very grateful that he was peaceful.  But I would have appreciated the chance to tell Papaw I loved him one more time.  I haven't visited his grave in a couple of years now because the last time left me numb for a couple of weeks.  Papaw wouldn't want me to live that way.  He and Mamaw Granny are the two of the main reasons I'm trying so hard to straighten myself out (along with my children, of course).  I would hate it for the two of them to look down on me from heaven and be disappointed.  I'd like to think that if they were here they'd be spoiling the crap out of my kids and would have been there to hold me when I so desperately needed someone.  To my deceased grandparents-I love you both very much and miss you every day. <3

Sometime after this whole situation went down, Minnie hired an attorney and went to court to get joint custody of me.  She has held that $1200 attorney's fee over my head ever since, but honestly had it not been for her I might have just caved.  I distinctly remember Mom asking me what I wanted and I told her I wanted to live with Minnie.  Mom swears it never happened and says signing over her parental rights was one of the biggest mistakes she ever made. I don't know, but I'm glad she did it.  I got to move back home with Minnie, with weekend and summer visitation.

That was really just the start of it.  I was enrolled in the magnet program-the very first class, and one of only a couple that weren't transplants.  Most of the kids in class were extremely intelligent and had been transferred by their parents to get a superior education.  I'll be honest, I always felt like an outsider-like I didn't belong.  I was the kid they kept just to say there were a few from Beaumont, but I wasn't nearly as intelligent as my peers.  They were nice enough-some I tried earnestly to keep in touch with, but as with everything else in life, absence tends to wipe things from your immediate attention.

After a couple of years the magnet program really got to me.  I spent hours doing homework in the evenings and usually the majority of my weekends were used up for the same.  There were times I couldn't visit Mom because I had so much homework.  Of course Mom was having none of that.  In fifth grade I moved in with her again, this time living with her best friend from high school and her husband and three kids.  I'm still pretty close with that family and I really liked them-I even forged a couple of independent friendships at the school I attended in Lenoir City-but I didn't like it.  Living under Dad's tyranny was stifling.  I soon moved back in with Minnie and resumed the magnet program, but I never really caught up.  I wanted to stick with it and go to Vine for middle school, but Dad was having none of it because it was a "black school." I am not at all racist and I hate to even put those words in here (I was later to get kicked out for dating a black guy-more another time), but it's the reality of the situation.  I still find it odd that my parents lived in nearly every housing project in Knoxville and that my brothers went to Sarah Moore Greene (which was also predominantly black) but that I was not allowed to attend Vine.  His promise to me was that if I didn't go, he would pay for me to have dance lessons.  I really, truly did not want to give up dance class.  I loved it-it brightened my entire day.  I loved our concerts despite my family's mutterings about not understanding it (it was interpretive dance).  I felt free, I felt...I don't know, I felt *right* in that class.  So I went to Northwest instead, and never had another dance class from that day forward.

That's really only the beginning of the custody battle but I don't think I can handle anymore tonight.  I have no idea how I'm going to get through all of this.  There's no chronology here, it's just me spewing forth what comes into my head.  I have a journal filled with notes, several incidents that have come into my mind that I have made reminders to myself to cover.  After it is done I promise myself I will come back and put it in order.

But you know, I really do think this is helping.  I have been way more relaxed, and I know I'll sleep easy tonight.  It honestly feels good just to get this out.