WARNING: I need you guys to know something before you read this. I am okay. I really am. I’ve started writing these things down, as a way to get them out of my head. As a way to try and process why I am the way I am. For me, writing helps. Writing is better than therapy. It’s almost like a way to release some of this. As I’m dealing with some things that have come up lately, there may be more posts like this. I’ll try to post one and then post other things before posting another. Please know, I am okay.

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I am six. It is my second memory of her. It is morning and there are cartoons on in the background. She asks which cereal we each want and I choose Coco Pebbles. I see the chocolate milk on the counter and ask if I can have that on my cereal. She asks if I do that at home and I say, oh my mom always let’s me. Why I had to say that, I’ll never know. Maybe I just thought it sounded good. Maybe I wanted brown milk.

My dad comes into the room and asks what in the world I’m eating and she tells him what I said. He laughs and then says, she’s never even had sugar cereal, her mom would freak out at this breakfast. I hide my face guilty in my hands. She laughs it off.

She makes me pay for it later.

Years later she still tells the story at times. How funny that she believed a silly lie from a six year old child. She leaves out the scalding hot bath and the clumps of hair she yanked from my head, in brushing it that night. Yep. She always leaves that part out.

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I get sick and throw up in bed one night. I may have been seven. I don’t remember the details of what she said and did. I just remember being forced to clean up the mess myself. I remember bathing myself. I remember trying to change sheets myself. I remember setting a beach bucket by my pillow myself. I remember crying myself back to sleep. Wishing for my mommy.

Any time I get sick after that, I go back to my moms. I tell my dad, I’m sick and need mommy. He takes me home. Somehow I think he understands.

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She makes a scene one night at a restaurant. We get sent to the car any time we act out in public but she can scream at my dad at full volume. His offense? He’d come and picked my mom and us up earlier in the day when my moms car broke down on the highway. He’s a mechanic. This is what he does. I should have left my children stranded on the side of the 101 because they were with her. YES she screams.

I cry because I picture us next time stranded for weeks. She sees me and starts freaking out even more. Stop crying you little brat she screams. He loves you best, he’d never do that to you. He loves me best huh? He didn’t stop her from grabbing my arm and shaking me to stop crying.

The manager of the restaurant kindly requests us to leave.

At seven I learn to zone out and pretend to not be there every time she screams.

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For every birthday until I was ten she bought me the most beautiful dresses from Nieman Marcus. Oh they were so beautiful. I could always imagine myself twirling in them. I never got to though. She’d send them home to my moms house. My mom would get all pissed off realizing that the dress was always two sizes too small.

It was all for show. To show my mom what she could do, because she had money. My mom would try to go and exchange the dress. But no, yet again it was out of season and long gone. The replacement dresses were never the same.

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I get scared in the line for Space Mountain and refuse to go on the ride. It’s really no big deal, the Disney guy tells me. Happens all the time. I stand with him, until the rest of them get off the ride. She belittles me to everyone for the entire day, yet refuses to look at me. You know, lots of kids are scared of roller coasters at nine years old.

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She is very careful what she does. It’s all underhanded. She’d never let my dad see it. She love to have a row with my mom, but she wouldn’t do things that would leave a mark. Or not a mark one can see.

Sometimes she won’t brush my hair for a week. Sometimes she yanks it out. After a time, I make my mom teach me to brush my own hair.

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Get your nose out of that stupid book and pay attention to what is happening in the real world. Why would I do that, I said to her, this world sucks. I am ten and we are on vacation. She is shocked in the moment, because I rarely spoke back to her. In fact I had learned to speak to her as little as possible.

The next morning every book I’d brought on our two week trip is gone. She yells at me for not paying better care to my stuff. Because of that, she takes away my snacks for four days and my Game Boy and Walkman for the remainer of the trip.

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I am equally scared of her and somehow still want her approval. At times she is very nice to me. At times she compliments me. She likes me. She buys me things. She takes me to the store, just her and I. Sometimes when crossing a street, she holds my hand. At times she tells people I am her daughter, instead of his kid. I know it won’t last, it never does. Yet it keeps me from hating her for years and years.

I need that approval. I try and earn it. I get good grades. I am in general, a pretty dam good kid. I volunteer to read to the boys, to help them learn to read. I always do dishes there and clean up after myself. I never back talk or cause trouble. None of it really matters.

When she’s nice, she’s nice. When she’s evil, she’s evil. It can and does change in seconds.

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It’s the summer of our big US adventure. 18 states I believe. We saw 18 states in a month. I’m twelve. This had actually been a better vacation than most. Her daughter was allowed to bring a friend. Paula. Sweetest girl my step-sister was ever friends with. Her dad had died suddenly that March, so we invited her on vacation with us. She needed distraction. Her mother needed some time. Paula being there made it easier for me. Everything is about appearances, you see. Appearances for appearances sake, kept me safe that summer. Safe from her. Safe from her monster of a son.

Yet one day, I get my period. First time ever. I remember that a few years prior she made a big deal of her daughter becoming a woman. I tell her and she smacks me. I’m lying and I just want attention. Don’t I know that nothing is about me this year? Suck it up was her response. I spend my video game money buying tampons. Thank god I read instructions well.

The following month, I am at home with my mom. Hey mom, guess what? I got my period!!! She is so happy that she cries. My baby, a woman.  She buys me a phone for my bedroom, with my very own line. We celebrate.

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My step-mother hates me. She always has, she always will. I am a reminder that my father had a life before her. I am also a girl and she’s not fond of girls. I have little to no contact with her anymore. I rarely speak to my father. It’s sad, but it’s better for me.

She’s a functioning alcoholic. I’m not saying that to make excuses. It’s just fact. She’s a hateful horrible alcoholic. She takes good care of my dad though. This will sound really bad, but in my head I think, if she dies before him…which she will, as he’s not a drunk…maybe then I can have a relationship with my dad.

I miss him. I miss my dad. Every day.