For the first several posts, I want to pull back the sheet and tell my story. Maybe that’s a bit on the main character syndrome scale… but hey… this is my blog and isn’t that the point?! I want you guys to get to know me and have a better understanding of how my inner world works… to say that my head is stuck in the clouds is putting it lightly lol. My creativity and imagination have always come natural to me. Honestly for a very large portion of my life I wanted no part of the outside world, and at times I didn’t really have a choice but to live in my fantasy world. I was perfectly content living in my head, I was safe there, I was happy there, I was protected there.
Like many kids early in life I created imaginary friends. The thing is, I had way more than just one! There was an entire world up in my head and while not everyone stuck around all the time, there were four that were always there! Maddie, Gun, Keet and Poot this was the gang. They were my Little Darlings, and they went everywhere with me. Maddie was the leader; she was the one who always came up with the plan. Gun was tough, he kept us safe. Keet was the smart one, he was always inventing stuff. Poot was silly, and he got in trouble a lot.
It wasn’t until later in life that I realized I spent a lot of my childhood alone, so having a large imaginary world kept me engaged and content. My dad was the typical disengaged father who’s main contribution to the family was a paycheck. He was also the bulldog, when mom wasn’t able to handle the kids he used fear and punishment to get us back under “control”. Mom also worked for a large portion of my early years. We had a nanny, Rhonda, before I was school age, and her priority was my sister. She was the baby, so I ended up playing by myself in my room, or getting into trouble with my little darlings.
I remember one time we had to save Poot from the toilet and the only thing that I could find was my dad’s expensive work ties. When Rhonda found me in the bathroom with all the ties in the toilet and the bathroom flooded. I was sent to my room until my parents came home. When Mom came home, the wooden spoon came out, and when Dad came home the yelling started.
Another time Maddie wanted to play with a wooden rabbit that was on top of our TV set. Keet came up with a genius plan to stack a bunch of chairs on top of each other so that I would be able to reach it. As I was climbing up the chairs Gun was holding the bottom to keep it steady, but he couldn’t reach the top chair, so Poot climbed up first and was waiting at the top for me. As I stepped on the last chair and tried to get on top of the TV the stack of chairs fell out from under me and Poot. I landed on a glass picture frame that went right through my cheek. I didn’t want to tell Rhonda, there was blood everywhere and I didn’t want to get in trouble for making a mess. I tried to clean up first, but once I realized that I could stick my fingers through the hole in my face and feel my teeth I got really scared. I knew I had to say something. Mom and Dad had already left for work, and this was before cell phones. Rhonda took me to the hospital and then called my parents from there. I ended up with 13 stitches because of my little darlings’ genius plans that day.
Things got a little more complicated when I started school. I was very shy and struggled to make friends. I also really struggled with my schoolwork. Reading was so hard for me (still is honestly), eventually one of my teachers suggested to my parents that I should be tested for learning disabilities. I remember doing the tests, I enjoyed it because I got to play with blocks and puzzles. I got to play matching games and draw stuff. According to my parents the tests showed that I displayed characteristics of ADD (attention deficit disorder); although nowadays ADD and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) is considered the same thing. I’m not really sure why my parents chose to do nothing about this information, but I guess they felt like my struggle wasn’t severe enough?
Then at the end of 2nd grade things got worse. We moved! I will never forget that first move, it was by far the hardest to adjust to and honestly I never really did. It was the first of a series of moves that would last until 7th grade.
3rd grade was blocked from my memory for a really long time. I now remember spending a lot of time in the guidance counselor’s office because I refused to stay in class, eat lunch in the cafeteria, or go out to recess. Not only was this the first move but I was experiencing sexual harassment from a boy in my class. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and I didn’t know how to explain it. All I knew was that he scared me, he made me feel uncomfortable, and I wanted to go back to my old school. Eventually I was able to communicate to my parents that there was some inappropriate touching happening at recess that caused my refusal to go outside.
At that point my parents pulled me out of that school and sent me to a small private catholic school. It took a while to settle in after the last two moves, but eventually I did find someone to connect with there. She was just a weird and shy as I was. We were the kids that spent recess in the corner of the grass looking for 4 leaf clovers. We didn’t really talk much but we didn’t need to, when one of us would find something interesting we would make up stories and find hiding places to keep our special treasures. But the calmness didn’t last long…
Even though I wanted to stay at that school and begged my parents not to move again… guess what… we moved right before the beginning of 4th grade. By this time I was not really interested in school. It was hard, I had no friends, and it was a constant topic for why I was always getting in trouble. This was about the time that weight really started to become a big issue for my mom. I was miserable and because I didn’t have any interest in making friends, I turned to food. I would spend a lot of time in my room by myself eating snacks that I would hide from my parents. Mom was relentless, the middle of 4th grade was the beginning of a long road of diets and binge eating.
So let’s recap real quick… during my 4th and 5th grade years I was the overweight, awkwardly quiet new kid that wouldn’t play with anyone at recess because I just wanted to pick flowers. I was also not completing schoolwork and would refuse to read out loud during class. Let’s just say those were some prime bullying years! The kids at that school had a lot of material to make me a target.
It wasn’t much better at home either. Like I mentioned mom was very concerned about all the weight that I was gaining. Even though the kids at school were mean… some of the things that would come out of mom’s mouth about my body and weight were just horrific. And because she was my mother, I believed her. She is the one that instilled that I would not be lovable because I was fat, she was the one that refused to buy clothes that fit because she didn’t want to buy “fat girl clothes”. She was the one that told me to hide my body with a tee shirt at the pool. She was the one that would grill me about what I ate every day. She was the one that made me obsessed about losing weight and dieting. But by then, binge eating was a habit for me that I hid from her at all costs.
Mom and Dad both were also very concerned about my schoolwork and not in a helpful way. Their idea of concern was seeing the poor grades and sending me to my room to “force” me to get my work done. Or spending hours at the kitchen table lecturing, yelling, and threatening. Well the joke was on them… I could spend endless amount of time daydreaming up in my room and I did. At that point I started lying about how much work I had and started forging their signatures on tests.
By the end of 5th grade I was experiencing so much bullying that I was failing every class. Mom was at the end of her rope. She literally did all my homework for me just so I would scrape by without having to repeat the grade. But that came with consequences of course, she was frustrated with me. And Dad was frustrated at her for babying me… here’s a thought… maybe it was because of my learning disability… maybe I needed some special attention? Or Maybe I was depressed because of the constant instability and no friends… maybe I needed some medical attention?
I was miserable, so my parents decided to send me to a different school for 6th… another catholic school. Looking back I did pretty well at these private schools, I think it was largely due to being very small and intimate. The teachers were able to work with me more. Once again I started finding a groove. I found a couple friends that I became very close to and for the first time felt good. But once again that was short lived.
My dad was commuting to work about an hour and a half. By the end of 6th grade he couldn’t do it anymore… so we packed up and moved again. I was completely devastated; I wanted to stay and go to school with the only real friends I ever had. I think my reaction to this move finally got through to my father, because he promised me that it would be the last one. I didn’t really believe that, and I didn’t care, I didn’t want to go.
That last move was the last straw for any fucks given that I may have had left. I didn’t care about school, I didn’t care about my health, I didn’t care about my family, I was broken. The new school did notice something wrong and suggested having me tested again. Once again the tests showed there was evidence of ADD, but still no treatment was pursued. There was a brief moment in time where they took me to therapy. But that was short lived, Mom became very angry and defensive once the topic of discussion became about her. I was told that she wasn’t going to pay for me to lie about her to a stranger. So I just continued to stay quiet, hating life, eating my feelings, and just doing my best to stay invisible.
I was pretty good at staying under the radar at this new school. I was still pretty weird and did experience some bullying, but by then I had a huge wall up… it didn’t really phase me at all. There was one person that saw past it all though. She saw the soft center, the deep hurt that I felt. We connected and it was because of her that I found the strength to keep going.
Thanks for supporting me in this journey! Feel free to leave me a comment to let me know what you think. If you have any questions, I’m an open book. I’m here to share my story and hopefully connect to others who can see themselves in it. If you are like what you are seeing please consider subscribing to get updates on new material coming out. Also feel free to follow me on tiktok and Instagram for more fun content. I love y’all!