panicking: (unacceptable.)
[personal profile] panicking posting in [community profile] skylarks
things I recall; sept. 5, 2010. word count: 2145.

My father's name is David Farrell and I think he's forty-two years old, but I don't really remember; he might be forty. He's six feet and three or four inches tall and he has super pale skin; it burns very easily. His eyes are blue, and his hair is... I think it's a brownish blond, and it's meant to be very curly. He shaves it, though. I remember his eyes and I remember the top of his head and even his nose; I don't remember the things underneath that very well. I haven't got any recent pictures - recent being within the last ten years. He was never very muscular, but as he hit his mid-thirties, he got a tad less lean. Still, he is - or was, I don't know if he is now - a very active man, so he isn't - wasn't? I don't know which tense to go with, I don't really know him anymore. But he was never out of shape. I don't quite remember what his voice sounds like. I remember the feel of him kissing my face, though. I remember what he smelled like - marijuana and alcohol and smoke, and oil and... something else that I don't know how to describe. And the fabric of a t-shirt.

My mother's name is Cassandra Farrell - I think her last name's still legally Farrell, anyway, I'm honestly not sure; it might be Newman? She's thirty-eight years old. She's about five feet and eleven inches tall and she's kinda mocha colored. I look nothing like her. Her eyes are brown and her hair's very dark, and long and incredibly thick and quite curly, too. She's got a lot of freckles. She's chubbier than my father for sure, but she exaggerates her size when she talks about it. She's also got a huge chest; when I was small, and just hitting puberty, I remember my stepmother telling me not to worry, I'd probably inherit my mom's boob genes. (I didn't.)

I don't remember a lot about them from when I was small, because I don't remember a lot about anything from when I was small. When I was four, my dad lived in Oceanside. Oceanside is really pretty. It's the city I was born in. He had a tiny house, or something like it, and I would go to visit him sometimes. This is a story I've told before, but- What I remember is going to the seaside with him, once: He loved the beach and I always have, too. He was a surfer. He took me down to the seaside and he sat me down on the sand, and he drew a circle around me. He said, "Don't you leave this circle. Don't go with anyone if they tell you to." I said, "All right." He went out into the sea and I sat there for hours, until the sky went all colorful, and I looked out and saw him on waves and in the distance there were dolphins. I remember being amazed, because I don't see dolphins out at that beach very often.

The longest I lived with him consecutively is two years, and that didn't come till a long time later. My mother and father had split up with finality when I was two, I think. From there, it was custody battles till I was ten. Staying with my dad was always exciting. I loved him - I worshiped him, in a way, sort of like I do to big brother, now. He used to send me letters and drawings and a lot of adoration. He used to put me in a lot of dangerous situations when I was a child, too.

I never lived with my mother for very long at a time, either. Both of them were into drugs, but it was heavier for her; she was a junkie, and meth was her drug of choice. (She's been clean for eighteen months, now. Her longest run is two years, and so on some level I'm wary, but... idk.) When I was eight we lived in a rehab facility for a while. It was called Family Recovery Center. I'm not sure how long we stayed there, but I remember liking it all right. It was really rundown. We've done other rehabs, too, but they were basically awful in comparision. Options For Recovery sucked.

So, I lived with my grandma the most. I don't remember a lot of details regarding how I felt about that, but I do remember being a little dissatisfied at school about it. Kids wonder, etc.

My father's schizophrenic. Earlier today, I talked to my mother on the phone and I said something that I usually don't: "I miss Dad from when he wasn't crazy." I don't generally miss him; it doesn't usually bother me all that much. Today it wormed its way in, somehow, though. Right after I told her that, though, I followed it with, "But I guess he always sorta was, huh?" She hurriedly said, "I didn't know he was, honest! I had no idea!"

But thinking about it, he's always been like that. He's always been able to tell the most astounding lies and really truly believe them. It's... so strange.

So when I was ten years old I went to live with him. When I was twelve years old, he had a psychotic breakdown. He sent me away, immediately gave up every shred of legal rights he had to me, and- that was basically that. We spoke on the phone once after that. Several months ago, we had a single e-mail exchange. That was it. He hates me and I never really found out why. I can deal with that, since I realize now that he is just legitimately out of his fucking head with what he believes, but the fact that he told his/my/our family God knows what terrifies me. I have a little sister from him and I'm too scared to get in touch with her again. (Another little sister, too, actually, but I haven't met her. Does she even know I exist? Fuck.)

That night was easily the most surreal thing I've ever experienced, and that includes my instances of being somehow intoxicated. He was so angry with me. He broke things; one of them was a framed picture of me. It was a large picture, if I remember right - one of my school pictures from when I was a little girl, maybe. The glass was all over the kitchen floor (white tiled) and he told me to stand there, not to move. He left the room and I stayed there for almost an hour, I think. Then he sent me up to my bedroom.

A lot happened in there. He said a lot of things and... I must have been frightened, but when I think about it now, I'm just at a loss, really. It was just strange. Part of everything was in the dark, I think. Finally he told me to call my grandmother, that she needed to come get me. It was three or four in the morning. He told me that if she didn't come for me immediately, he'd send me out and away; he'd send me to a home as a ward of the state or something. Thinking about it now, he couldn't have just shipped me off to an orphanage as he'd threatened, but I was sure scared of it then, so I tried to dial. I was so startled by everything that at first I couldn't remember the phone number. That got him mad, but my head finally kicked into gear and I called her. I don't remember how the conversation went. She says, though, that it terrified her because I sounded so dead calm. She says it was really eerie, hearing me as though I wasn't feeling anything at all.

She called my uncle and he left immediately. Like, literally. He got up and drove from Vista, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. That's about a five hour drive. I remember not knowing how the hell I'd get to sleep until Uncle got there, but eventually I did. I don't remember what happened between the time I left my room and ended up in the garage, during morning time, but then Uncle's truck was there and I think he and Dad were off to the side talking about something. I was... pretty humiliated. Dad sent me in shoes and a dirty denim dress with a pair of shorts underneath. That's literally all I left with. I don't remember whether my stepmom said anything to me (yes, she was there the entire fucking time) but my sister Tuesday came up to me after I was in the truck. She gave me a pine cone and asked me when I was coming back. I don't remember how I answered; her mom took her away. We left.

And that was that.

As for my mom-- She had recently had a baby. (My brother James, the little one.) When I called my grandma as Dad had told me to, one of the things she said to me was, "I don't want you to worry, but you need to know: your mother is in the hospital right now." Well, okay, that's just fucking great. So, uh, she had been shot.

Right. Okay. So I think that was the first place my uncle took me to after picking me up - the hospital where my mom was. Like, fuck. I was gross and stuff but it was where we went because... Mom wanted to see me. I met my baby brother James in the hospital room where my bedridden mother was. (WHAT) Eventually she got out, of course, and was basically crippled for a while. She lived with a preacher and his family and whoever else they were taking in at the time. I lived with Grandma. That changed after a while, though, so I moved in with my mom and that family, too, and eventually James' dad got out of prison and also moved in. It was a big household. Then they decided to move, so we had to leave. :( Hurt my heart, man. So! We moved again, to another place. A town called Ramona. I fucking hated it there. First we lived with yet another family, and then we moved into our own place - it was half of a duplex, a little one bedroom place. Mom and James and I stayed there. It was pretty much a dump, but definitely livable. I worked, and Mom didn't, and then she started spending the money I made for like, you know, diapers and gas and shit, because she was getting high again. We fought. Eventually she took James and I to Grandma's for Christmas, and went out. She didn't come back for months.

So then it was Grandma and my sister Joey and James and me. Mom got worse. For a while I hated her so much; she'd come over while she was high, we'd fight and fight and she'd fight with Grandma, too, and sometimes she'd hit me and sometimes she'd just break things. I hated her so much. 3/4 of the time I was around her all I could do was panic.

When she started getting clean again, I was beyond skeptical. I mean, it wasn't like she hadn't done it fifty thousand times before. But-- I don't know. She's stuck with it this time, for the most part. She has a steady boyfriend (even if she's kind of awful to him sometimes), and her bipolar disorder goes untreated but we all deal with it. I don't hate her, now. She's... more of a mom, even if she's also still basically a sixteen-year-old girl who tries to be my bossy galpal. She understands more about my head than any other of the adults here (even if that still doesn't cover everything), and when I need to get away from my anxieties here, I go to stay with her. lmao, it's so whacko where she lives that by the time I come back here, I'm so ready for it. (Currently she's in another sober living housing community, and boy most of her roommates are just... really hard to deal with in large doses.) So I-

I dunno. I guess I forgive her? I don't know if I will, should she screw up again, because I don't even know how I would handle that. But even if our relationship is a little turbulent, now, it isn't bad. I love my mother and I make to defend her if Uncle or Carla badmouth her. She's developed a lot in the past year or so and I'm kind of surprised by it. I do wish her the best, even if she has it in her head that I'll live with her again some day. lol, not gonna fucking happen. ever.
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