Opening doors to dark places.

So here's the usually warning of graphic content and triggers guys. I know I've said it constantly but I think it is important to remind everyone rather than being the cause for someone's upset. The more entries I write for this blog the more responses I get, I won't lie they have been mixed. Some find it helpful and relative while others have called it selfish and inappropriate. The fact is I do this for myself and because when I was coming to terms with my abuse other peoples experiences helped me feel less alone and really helped me understand that it wasn't my fault. And most importantly that I wasn't the only one who felt damaged. Anyway....

So now the main event.

The next two years of my childhood will be the most tumultuous of my life, the ones that would realistic pave the way for the rest of them. Wedge open the doors of self doubt, self abuse and self sabotage. I have often envisioned lift as on of those round rooms with many different doors and each experience is a new door but you can only have so many doors open at a time. It kind of ties into that whole thing about not being able to move onto something new until you let go of something else, close a door if you will.

Now I was once again living with my Mother and my Dad was being pushed away. My time in Sydney with him and Anne was a dream and life was to gain a new routine. I started at a new school and my Mother started working as a security guard in a nightclub. She was home less so I dear say the fights were less and she even found a babysitter for the night work.

Enter Marshall.

My Mother really liked Marshall, I think she thought he was going to be some kind of permanent fixture. He certainly did, he insisted we call him Dad. I was so emotionally broken and exhausted I did. I didn't really even think twice about it. It wasn't really that I was replacing my Daddy I had just become so used to playing roles that I picked up this one as well. So I called him Dad. I didn't call him Daddy though, that may not seem like much of a distinction to anyone else but it was to me. He really was your classic monster though, Marshall.

I don't remember how it started. He gave me special treatment, things like letting me stay up late, letting me watch what ever I liked on TV, giving me ice cream, the usual things to make a child feel special. Now that I am an adult I know this is called grooming and looking back I really can't think of a better word for it.

I do remember the first inappropriate touch though, clear as day.

It was a weekend morning, bright and sunny. I think my Mother was cooking breakfast or something, she was occupied somewhere else. She said to go and jump on Marshall in bed to wake him up so I did. He said to come and give him a cuddle in bed and then he would get up and he pulled me under the covers, he was naked. But it was OK he told me because I was wearing pyjamas. He cuddled me and pushed himself into my back and I just laid there. He planted the first seed of doubt in myself for feeling put off by the situation. My Mother even came in at one point and he chatted to her like nothing was amiss and I felt like there must be something wrong with me for feeling uncomfortable.
Thinking about it, he really did lay some solid ground work for what was to follow.

No he was my babysitter when my Mother worked nights, so she would leave before dinner and he would cook dinner, let me have desert and stay up watching whatever I liked on TV until it was time for bed. That was the catch, "time for bed" came to mean my Mother's and his bed. He made me feel like I owed him for all the niceties and because he was my "Dad". I don't remember how it escalated from a morning naked cuddle to me naked in my Mother's bed with him at the age of 11.

He'd preform oral sex acts on me and ask me if I liked it and if I said nothing he'd answer for me. Then in the tradition of give and take he walked me through returning his efforts. He spent quite a fair bit of time trying to teach me to preform to his liking. A number of times he would put on porn and explain to me what the girls were doing and how I needed to emanate it. He'd always say that he was showing me how to be grown up. When he tried to have intercourse with me I'd cry that it hurt so he never really succeeded but he'd always tell me

"it's OK, we'll do it when you're more grown up".

I was far enough gone that I felt guilty that I couldn't do everything he wanted.

Substitute Girl Card #9 The Sexual Subsititute

This became a routine for us, my Mother would leave, dinner, TV, bed. I thought I was just filling in for my Mother's absence and it was normal. I knew it wasn't appropriate but really what about my life was appropriate? I didn't think it was damaging, it didn't make me cry. I just shrugged my shoulders and got on with it. I wouldn't say I felt I deserved it but I did feel like I only existed for other peoples gratification at this point so if my Mother wasn't around to keep him company in bed that was my place right?

Strangely enough Marshall's drug habit is what saved me. He really liked his hard drugs and I think that got a bit much for my Mother. I remember sitting behind the hallway door watching him pace the lounge room mumbling to himself holding kitchen knives waiting for my Mother to come home probably. When he'd calm down I'd go back to bed but I'd always watch him pace back and forth and wonder if he was going to kill us. What most disturbs me is that I didn't watch him out of fear, I just watched him out of curiosity. I don't really think I cared to much about being stabbed by a drug crazed lunatic, I was that numb.

Not long after that "Dad" aka Marshall was gone and my Mother moved on too, this one was called Mark.

Enter Mark.

Now Mark was more the emotional abuse type rather than sexual and didn't he have an ego! Mark convinced me I was the most troubled, ungrateful, awful child he had ever encountered. I remember him sitting on my bed for hours at night lecturing me on how rude and disrespectful I was for not eating my dinner or getting the clothes off the line before it was dark. This may not sound like much but he would berate me with it.

"Just admit you hate us, it's OK. We know you're a bad child, that you don't love us."

Over the most menial things and this would go on for hours especially into the night until I would cry exhausted on my bed and he would whisper how lucky I was that they put up with how awful I was and I didn't deserve the bed I was sleeping on.  I don't think Mark hated me or anything I think he just got a kick out of twisting me up. And by then my Mother thought very little of me so she was happy with his arrangement of "discipline".

Not surprisingly my Mother married Mark. They had a lot in common, especially when it came to parenting. But unfortunately there was only enough room for one ego and a few days after the wedding Mark disappeared, I wasn't sad and I didn't know why he had married my Mother in the first place if he hated her kids so much.

Mark really ruined any self esteem I might have had lingering inside me. He cemented the feeling that I was only there for the use of anyone who needed me. That my identity wasn't important, I wasn't important. And so I started my journey towards becoming an adult with this constantly in the back on my mind.

This is a brief recollection so is not to aggravate anyone else's triggers but I will expand further down the line on the effects and touch back on these times.
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Popcorn and the Pre-show

***Warning graphic content and triggers***

Where I last left off my sister was living with my Mother in Darwin and I was living with my Dad and Anne in Sydney. I was leaving my Dad to go back to visit my Mother and Kory under the pretence that I was to collect the rest of my possessions and return to my Dad. 

Looking back on it is hard to believe that I spent almost a whole year with Dad and Anne in Sydney before going back to visit my Mother after Christmas before the school year started. Dad and Anne were moving to Brisbane that Christmas and I remember driving into the night with them to Brisbane to stay with Anne's mum for the holidays. The biggest trigger for this memory for me is actually popcorn. Anne had brought me snacks for the road trip and the one that stood out was popcorn. I remember it being night time at a road stop sitting by a playground while Anne and Dad had a cigarette brake eating my popcorn and again feeling very special to be included and thought of.

Anne's family was probably the first glimpse I had of larger families that are mindful and engaged with each other. I spent a lot of time watching them interact and wanting desperately to be a part of the whole dynamic. Her mum was not a typical family matriarch of six children, she loved old Hollywood and embracing her youth no matter who she offended. She wore bright lipstick and danced in sequinned tops and I could never understand what compelled her. She didn't act like a TV mum, but she didn't act like my Mother either, she was another kind of mum but she still loved all her children, she was like an exotic shiny beetle.

For Christmas lunch she let me help her in the kitchen, making salad and my soon to be new favourite, caramel tart (which I discovered was less magical that I thought with canned filling which she told me was to be our secret). All around me people included me, paid attention to me, cared about my well being regardless of who I was just that child and should be looked after. This was the first time I can remember being so snaked by indifference to people caring about me that I couldn't relate. I really didn't understand why they were so nice, I felt off to one side no matter how many times they embraced me.

Then I returned to my Mother.

I flew by myself from Brisbane to Darwin. I think she was happy to see me but when I try to imagine that all I can think of is her being inconvenienced, but she probably cried. She cried at the appropriate times but as I got older all I could think was how exactly appropriate they were. I remember getting off the plane and into my Mother's car with the steel resolve that I was just visiting, I was going back to my Daddy. Oh how wrong I was.

This steel resolved I am sure my Mother saw and was threatened by. I didn't want to be with her, I liked Dad better. I was a child rejecting her and didn't want to stay. I don't remember how it started the very first all out assault but I know it hurt more than anything had ever hurt before. She wanted to know why I would leave her, why I didn't love her? She told me that I hated her and that she hated me even more. She screamed these things at me, I was her first born and I was leaving her!
As a child I didn't understand that she was manipulating me.

The pinnacle of this was when my Mother had retreated to her room crying on her bed that I didn't love her and her first born was leaving. She screamed that she couldn't even look at me and "how dare I!" (one of my Mother's favourites "how dare I/you").

I grovelled.

I begged.

I grovelled and begged for my Mother to take me back. That I did love her and I was so sorry that she felt this way. I crawled onto her bed and she pulled away as I sobbed for her to take me back. She shoved me off her telling me that I didn't love her and that I was a bad daughter. You may find it hard to understand why I wanted her to take me back, to not be mad at me and it all really comes down to this; she's my Mother. No matter what that's what she is and I still needed to think she loved me.
The more she pushed me away and screamed at me the more upset I got, the worse I felt. I can remember clearly being curled in a ball on the bed next to her crying so hard my chest hurt and I completely believed that my heart was breaking. I felt like I was dying. This is when she gave me the ultimatum (and it wouldn't be the last time) I had to choose between my Mother or my Dad.

I chose my Mother.

Why? Because I honestly and whole heartedly believed she couldn't survive without me. She seemed so so upset at the proposition of me leaving that she was this mess. Everyone [my Dad] had left her and now I was going to as well. My Dad always taught me that I should do the right thing no matter how hard it was, so I had to stay with my Mother to make sure she was going to be OK. My Dad had Anne but my Mother had no one, I couldn't do that to her.

Substitute Girl Card #8 The Saviour

I had to save my Mother from this horrible torment. A torment that was all my fault. While I was still entrapped in her dramatic whirlwind of torment she pounced. As I lay there crying in a ball she went and got the phone and told me if I was really going to stay with her I had to call and cancel my plane ticket back to my Dad. She menacingly hissed at me that I HAD to do it to PROVE I still loved her. So, in tears I called the airline to cancel my ticket. This phone call happened three times.

No sooner had I tearfully called the airline my Mother flew back into another rage. Why would she want a child like me? How dare I want to leave like this? I should leave and go back to my Father (she'd always spit that word "Father!"). Again she made me call the airline in tears, sobbing down the phone at the poor attendant  and re-confirm my flight. Then she'd regain her composure of a cold manipulative bitch and tell me I didn't love her and was a bad daughter.

I begged again, I didn't want to be a bad daughter. I wanted and needed her to love me. And again she told me what I had to do, so for the third and final time I called the airline and cancelled the ticket. I think I fell asleep exhausted after that. The next day my Mother had me mail my ticket back to my Dad and as she said "that's the end of that".

Thing's settled back into the same routine of school and looking after my sister but with one small difference, my Mother was fired up now and there wasn't really any stopping her. She became capable of flying into these amazing rages and they became more frequent.

Two of those rages stood out year; the family incident and the kitchen incident.

The family incident started over my sister and I riding our bikes to our grandparents without permission. One afternoon Kory and I decided that with my Mother absent we would go and see if we could find our way to our grandparents house on our bikes, two suburbs over. As a child it seemed like a long way but in reality it was only 2.8 km so its fair to say we likely only took 30 mins to get there. To us it seemed a grand adventure and we got to see our Nana and Poppa but to my Mother who as you'd probably expect wasn't on good terms with them and it was a huge betrayal.

Once home again with my Mother she started screaming at me;

"How dare you go to MY parents house! How dare you take your sister there!"

Now I would like to take a quick time out to make a note that my grandparents are wonderful, supportive and caring people who tried to help in anyway they could. My Nana often came over to help me with my sister when my Mother disappeared. They had to walk a fine line not to provoke my Mother and help where they could. For her own reasons my Mother hated them, from my understanding it was that they didn't validate her dramatic streak that was evident even when she was a child. 

My Mother stood at my bedroom door as I pleaded with her that I didn't mean to upset her and I did love her. She screamed that she hated me, that she didn't want to be my Mother. She screamed that I didn't deserve her as she ripped my pictures from my bedroom walls. She pulled my bookcase that sat on my large desk down, smashing the porcelain figurines. These were from when I was born and I'd received for my following birthdays. My most memorable one was a pink teddy bear that was a vase my Mother had gotten with flowers in it at my birth.

As they smashed my heart sunk and the dark resolve came over me that would become more frequent as I grew up. She proceeded to make her way through my room tipping up furniture and ripping things as she found them. I remember watching her try to flip the mattress from my bed and not getting the right leverage as it slid off my bed. In frustration she stormed out to return a split second later with a large multi photo frame full of family pictures and she threw it down on my bedroom floor.

"I don't even want to be part of this family!" she screamed insolently.

I felt numb. My Mother stormed off to her room and I started picking up the pieces of my bedroom. My sister Kory had watched from her bedroom door this whole time, she knew better than to make an appearance. As always I cleaned up after my Mother and by the next day it was as if nothing had even happened. I hang the photo frame back up without the glass and only I noticed the empty spaces in my room where my possessions had been destroyed.

The next incident was the kitchen incident. I don't remember what triggered this particular time. Our house had a kind of nook kitchen. It had an arch door way that lead into a walled off alcove that contained the whole kitchen. It wasn't small but there was only one way in and out and the benches lined the kitchen walls. My Mother was screaming about my being an ungrateful child and had cornered me in the kitchen. She then started smashing plates and glasses at my feet on the kitchen tiles. I lifted myself onto the bench to escape the shards as she smashed what seemed like everything breakable onto the floor in front of me.

When she ran out of things to smash she paced in front of the door way, screaming at me about what I had made her do. Then she told me to go to my room, there was no way out of the kitchen then over the shards of broken porcelain and glass and I wasn't wearing any shoes. I said this to my Mother and she just screamed louder for me to go to my room, so I walked over it all, barefooted and numb.

I sat on my bed and picked the shards from my feet as I listened to my Mother carry on outside my room, eventually it went quiet. So I came out to clean up, my Mother was in her room and I had almost finished cleaning up the kitchen when she came out again screaming at me for leaving my room and making such a mess. I think this was the first time she really started hitting me. As I tried to get passed her to take out the rubbish she smacked me over the back of the head and I stumbled out the front door. I remember blinking away tears as I put the bags in the bin and when to sit in the front garden away from the house and contemplate what I could've done for my Mother to break everything like that.

And in my Mother's true style as it got dark she called me to come inside for dinner like nothing had happened. She was so good at that, switching back to the mildly indifferent woman who just happened to live in the same house as me. We seemed to be sliding into the situation where if there wasn't yelling we just existed together.

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Everyone has Demons

Why is it that when we become adult our pain has more depth. When we're an infant we cry because it hurts or we're hungry, tired, bored. But as we get older crying doesn't do it. It's almost like a band-aid effect. We cry, we feel relieved and the problem is still there. We have grown up problems. We need to address these problems. Once upon a time we could cry at our problems and they went away but our little problems grew up too and now they're happy to stand up to our crying, to stand their ground and hold on. We're told to let go of our problems, stop holding onto the past, but it's almost like along with growing up these problems take on a life of their own. They have their own identity and mingle it in with our own.

"I don't tie my shoe laces with bunny ears"
"Why not?"
"Because it's childish" [Which is an issue because I was forced to take on adult roles at a young age and took pride in killing childish activity. Result: I can't relate to children and feel like I'd be a detached Mother]

When the fuck did being unhappy become so damn complicated!?

A classic example of this is I feel over at work. I tripped, that's all. Skinned my knees and all that, no big deal right? Wrong. People fusing, first aid kit out, incident report, questions of finishing early for the day. I tripped and skinned my knee I didn't die! If I was 4 you'd pick me up brush me off and tell me to "run along, you're fine".

So is it that our adult emotional problems are stagnant because we hold onto them, give them a life of their own and nurture them? I feel like each time I slip into anxiety and depression it should be for a fresh reason but I always have this feeling that its a carry on from last time and I never really won the battle. When I come out the other end I want to feel like I overcame something but I often feel like it was all a fluke. People tell me coming out and being alive is what I should be happy for but crippling anxiety, pushing away people who love me and walking the tight rope between self destructive behaviour and normality isn't exactly the embodiment of "Alive".

It dawned on me that I completely understood the term "Everyone has Demons". I've got emotional demons, they have identities and unique characteristics and apparently are bit on long-term committed relationships with me. So do I exercise these demons or what? I feel like my writing has become more of an embracing activity. I don't want to be defined by my demons, but could I stand to be defined by my ability to embrace them. May be "let it go" should be more "don't let it take over".

So in imagining my emotion issues a little demon puppies that when we were both little would wander off as we have grown together they have become fiercely loyal and equally destructive. If you cage a dog he becomes more vicious when let out and will rot away so that isn't the answer. A leash perhaps. Nurturing my demon dogs to walk obediently behind me, to be house broken and socialised. I want my demon dogs to get along well with others, to be something that lifts and guides me not pulls me off course. Good thing I'm a dog person.

Substitute Girl Mantra #5

I never really knew who I was convincing with this one.

The Tiger and the Orphaned Cacti

OK so here is your warning, as of this entry there is going to be more graphic content, namely my accounts of child abuse please be mindful of this when reading. 

The arrangement between my parents was alternating Christmas holidays and the year of my ninth birthday was the year we were to visit Dad in Sydney. This was going to be the first time we would be away from my Mother and her magical roller coaster ride, she didn't like that. I think my Dad had pushed for the visit and naturally my sister Kory and I were excited and with childhood enthusiasm comes blissful ignorance. My Mother was not pleased to be letting us off the stage of her little drama.

She started screaming. She went from yelling at me when she was annoyed to screaming. It is different, when a parent yells at a child it's to get their attention, to stop their current behavior and guide them back. But screaming, that is different, its the difference between a house cat and tiger they both have a bite but one gives you a fright and the other makes you frightened. She started throwing tantrums to rival a toddler.

I noticed that Trimsy was around less and my Mother was easier to irritate the closer we got to visiting my Dad. Now a little back story i lived with my Mother and Kory in Darwin Australia. Now that's in the tropics, so it's hot all the time and if it's not its hot and humid, that's pretty much the extent of the weather. The place also comes with a few painful quirks, crocodiles, cyclones, heat rash and bugs. It was the bugs that caused my Mother to snap the first time.

In Darwin head lice are a major problem in schools, every year every child has their hair washed with the smelly shampoo at least  twice. Its unavoidable and it is really just part of living in the tropics, so I thought nothing of it when I was sent with the usual slip home from school saying that my grade needed to be treated at home for head lice as a student had been found with them. I came home from school, got changed, unpacked my back and left the note out for my Mother. When she read it she screamed at me to come inside. "Sit down" she said in this menacingly low tone as she pointed to a kitchen chair. She combed through my hair and sure enough lice.

"Right get in the car, I've had enough of this shit. MOVE!"

Kory and I obediently got in the back seat of the car watching my Mother fume as she drove to the local chemist. She marched us inside and went straight to the counter and asked for hair clippers. What I thought was a trip to get medicated shampoo turned out to actually be a trip to get hair clipped and my Mothers intention was to shave our heads. Since I was little I had long blond hair, I loved my hair and here's the clincher, so did my Dad.

After failing to aquire clippers at the first chemist (she was told they had none in stock) my Mother took us to another chemist and again, none in stock. This wasn't helping, she wasn't becoming deterred, quite the opposite she was in the right and she was going to do it. So we drove to another chemist, by then Kory and I were crying as we were being dragged around by my Mother now that we were clear on her intentions. We were girly girls and we didn't want to look like girls. At the last chemist the attended realized what my Mother wanted and refused to sell her the clippers so she stormed out and took us home.

Now in a sane world, the wind out of her sails would mean we were safe but lets not forget this is my Mother circus.

I sat against the wall in the hallway watching from the corner as my Mother hacked off my sisters hair with kitchen scissors. I cried watching my sisters beautiful little bob get hacked off by my crazed Mother. Not cut, hacked. There was no method to it she just grabbed chunks and cut it half an inch or so from the scalp. My sister sat so obediently as she did this while I watched on in horror knowing I was next.

"Get in the chair. MOVE!"

My Mother dragged me to the chair. When I was younger, before my Dad left my Mother would brush my hair every morning while I sat on the dinner table. She would put it in a plait for school and every night after I had a bath I would sit at her feet in front of the TV and we would repeat the same ritual. We didn't have much but that was something between my Mother and I. And as she hacked off my hair and I cried I think the last part of my Mother that shared and special parental bonds with me was cut away too. My Mother disappeared for much of the night after that. She did that often, locked herself in her room or just left the house in general. I'd like to say that we were babysat by someone but no, she just left us.

The next day we didn't have to go to school. Once upon a time my Mother did feel remorse, she did this time. We were so embarrassed about how we looked, so ashamed that the next morning we were still crying. She took us shopping to buy hats and gave us a note the next day saying that we could wear our hats during class. I had sports that day and my hat fell off, I was mortified and in true form my class mates new this and laughed at me. My teacher asked me about it and I told her a sedated version of the truth, but nothing happened. Soon it was holidays and time to visit Dad.

When we arrived Anne (who was once an apprentice hair dresser) had to cute our hair shorter again to make it look even and less like a maniac had hacked off our hair. I cried again, now I had a boys buzz cut. But now we were with my Dad, away from my Mother and things could be just a little bit different, I made it to the happy place, right?

Yeah not so much.

Staying with Dad and Anne in Sydney was the first time since before Kory was born that I felt safe and relaxed and when I asked Dad if I could stay he said yes, but Kory wanted to go back to my Mother. It was the first and last time in our childhood when we were ever separated. It was the first and last time in my childhood I was a child.

Dad enrolled me in a school the next suburb over and I would catch one bus in the morning to go to school. I was 10 years old. Every morning I would wake up early and watch cartoons by myself as Anne and Dad would already be at work and then I would get myself ready and go to school. I remember that many of my class mates didn't actually know where Darwin was, even though it was a capital city so I was interesting and exotic so I made friends despite that I felt I looked hideous. I made up dances to pop songs in the play ground with my friends, and played on the monkey bars, had tuck shop when I was good and generally learnt how to be a kid again.

Every afternoon I would come home and Dad would usually be home about the same time so he would give me a dollar coin and I would take our german shepherd Chewy for a walk to the local park via the corner store where I would buy a Dr Pepper. I would sit on the swings with Chewy and drink my Dr Pepper singing songs to myself and watching the sky change colour, when it started to get dark was when I knew I had to go home, I wasn't afraid of getting in trouble it just seemed logical to me. Sometimes on the way home I would let Chewy off the lead so he could jump in the creek we walked passed, I always told Dad that he slipped out of his collar but I don't think he believed me when it happened almost every night. I was  always happy to towel him down because he loved it so much. Those afternoons are some of the happiest memories I have, this safe little routine my Dad gave me based on trust and love.

Substitute Girl Card #7 Daddy's Girl

The little routines my Dad, Anne and I had made me feel so special and loved. Having lived in chaos in my Mothers world it was practically like Disneyland. I remember my Dad and I trying all these different kinds of milk as I was mildly lactose intolerant, every week we would try a different brand because he knew I hated soy milk. Dad and I often did the shopping together, he would take me to a local fruit shop and let me help pick the veggies for dinner and the fruit for my lunches. Then we'd look at the specialty items, usually European specialty foods and pick something interesting to try. After our fruit store adventures we would go to see Lenny the butcher, he was a friend of Dads and would never let Dad pay  for meat. He'd always give me a frankfurt sausage to eat on the way home and I felt so special. These little outings may have seemed normal to anyone else but to me they made me feel like I was a princess, my Daddy's princess.

I was still shy though, I waited for at any minute to wake up. When it came close to the end of the school term my grade was told that there would be a five day school camp for grade five and six, it took me almost a week to get the courage to ask Dad if I could go. Of course he said yes, he even money to buy something from the souvenir shop. I went with my best friend at the time Sheridan, she and I shared a bunk and we basically inseparable, she was the first best friend I had since preschool. At the camp we did all the things children should do and I even had stamped envelopes so I could write home to Dad and Anne. Anne had made these up before I left. I brought a sports back and a boomerang from the camp and had never been more excited about something so simple before. When I got home Dad took Anne, Chewy and I to an oval so we could all practice throwing it, Dad being all manly and all was the only one who could throw it so it came back.

I had my first school dance in Sydney as well. Anne took me shopping for a dress I still remember what it looked like it was a sleeveless dress that was red down to black with the outline of black leaf outlines on it. Anne even had a black hat for me to borrow to cover my hair. Dad had brought me a disposable camera to take pictures while Anne helped Sheridan and I get ready. She helped us do our nails and make up and even put on lipstick. Dad wasn't totally impressed with the lipstick as it was bright red but he still said I looked beautiful and took our pictures. Oddly I remember nothing about the dance just the getting ready part.

I never really knew if everything Dad did during these few months were normal parenting or he was trying to make up for lost time. Never the less I was always so thankful to my Dad for humoring my childish wants. I remember Sheridan's mother had a cactus garden and when she had taken Sheridan to the nursery there were little cacti you could collect each week and she had brought some for Sheridan so naturally I wanted to collect them too so Dad took me to the nursery and with my pocket money I got the first  three in the series to live on my bedroom window sill. Dad took me to Sheridan's to drop them off in a shoe box the day before I left to go back to visit my Mother.

On a side note I am going to be posting every Tuesday and Thursday (time permitting) and this is in the Australian timezone. As always my email is substituegirlkhayle@gmail.com for questions and you can follow me on Twitter now@SubstituteGirlK ~ talk to you all in a few days, be good.

Substitute Girl Mantra #4

It's amazing how saying this to someone can make the world seem less of an awful place, I said this a lot to myself growing up.

I'd kill the Rhinestone Cowboy in a heart beat.

So now my Dad is gone and my Mother is set for her vendetta against everything sane and I set that I will be OK and so will my little sister. So now my Mother has regained the confidence of her youth and is entering the dating scene. Now since sarcasm doesn't work well in the written form; my Mother never left the dating scene whilst she was with Dad  if you catch my drift.

So before I go further I thought it might interest you to know that I had to take a moment to write down all their names, the men I mean. 

Now the first man I remember was the Cowboy (I don't really remember his name) he worked on the cattle stations so he made infrequent visits to see my Mother and wasn't notable of character. When I think of him I remember that he told me one day when I was sitting on my trampoline that you could sleep on it and its better than a real bed if you have company. I remember that my Mother agreed, now at the time I new they were being crass but I didn't know the particulars. So from then on her became the Cowboy who slept on trampolines with girls.

It concerns me at such a young age I was already understanding sexual connotation and applying it in my own fashion, but I guess the snowball has to start somewhere.

During my Mothers period of dating the Cowboy my Mother went through a phase of playing country music in the car but she only had one tape so she played it over and over. She took us on a lot of long drives, mostly to rural places to go to outback pubs or barbecues, not necessarily with people we new just friends of the Cowboys. One particular afternoon she took us on a long drive to some cattle station, this trip developed my hate for the songs "Rhinestone Cowboy" and "You gotta know when to hold 'em" they  were both on that tape even to this day those songs irritate me, the tape went out the window that trip, whoops!

So we arrive at this cattle station and we were told to go play in the yard and were given apples to feed a young horse. I remember we weren't really allowed inside the house but there was a nice lady inside. This was where the Cowboy lived/worked. But this wasn't where my sister Kory and I would be staying the night. My Mother stayed with the Cowboy in the house and Kory and I were taken to a kind of dormitory, you know the ones for jackaroos and shearers. Now let me give you a mental picture of what that looks like; its basically a tin shed with wire frame beds and those old mattresses you see in prison films with the blue stripes on them. I sincerely wish I was kidding when I said that this is where she left us to sleep while she screwed the Cowboy back at the house but alas. We didn't have sheets on the beds so I found it hard to sleep and I was worried the multitudes of spiders were going to get on me as soon as I did. I was awake and wondering around at dawn and a man working in the shed next door told me I would make a good worker being up so early, but truth be told I didn't want to hang out with the spiders.

When I think about  it I really was in a state of wonderment for most of this relationship. This man wasn't like my Dad, he wasn't interesting to talk to, he didn't want us around and never really acknowledged us. But I guess that didn't really matter all that much, he didn't last long.

Then came Trimsy, this man was a complete idiot. I am not saying this will any real malice but this man was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I think he was very much into drugs, no one could be that unhinged normally. He had wild unbrushed long hair and I don't think he worked. I have no idea what my Mother saw in him, I knew my Mother was clever and Trimsy wasn't. He was really the first person I realized I could manipulate.

Even as a child I knew I was different and saw things differently than people around me. I didn't think of this as being smarter than other people I just thought that I saw things different so I could reach different conclusions. All though school I would go to the teachers in grades above me and ask for homework from the higher grades, I'd take it home and return it before class the next day. When I reached high school I would borrow the text books for higher grades and read them at home, doing the exercises inside them to amuse myself. I was a straight A student for most of my schooling, perhaps if my parents had've been in a better position that would've lead to something.

So back to Trimsy, I think the incident where I learned I could manipulate him was when my Mother was no where to be found and we needed milk. Now it wasn't uncommon  for my sister and I to go to the corner shop alone and get lollies and groceries to get us out of the house. So my Mother being absent I asked Trimsy for money to go to the shop, he couldn't tell the difference between the coins he was giving us. I clearly remember that he gave us coins based on their size (for those of you not from Australia our smaller coins for the majority have the higher value) he divided them out as "here some big ones for you because you're a big girl and here are some small one's for you because you're only little". I then spent the walk to the shops convincing Kory that more coins means more money so I could swap my 20 cent pieces for her hand full of $2 coins.

I didn't really have any respect for Trimsy  after that and realistically I lost the automatic respect for adults that all children have at that age. I started becoming aware of adult behaviors and assessing how they acted towards each other and what that meant in social situations. Even now as an adult I analyse people  on their actions rather than their face value personality. I started to view my Mother and her men with a critical eye rather than the blind acceptance  of a child.

Substitute Girl Card #6 The Anthropologist

This change as a child saved me from being a hate-filled adult that so many abuse victims are. Still to this day  I judge someone on how they act, not their reputation or impression. And I act accordingly.