Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : Biography

"I love you." Said my assigned mother as she walked me up to the check in counter of the psych ward. "What a joke" I thought to myself privately. Just like every moment id spent with this woman had been a joke. It was a total love hypocricy. It was a complete love mockery. A breeding ground for resentments against actual and or fictional love, the true meaning of family, and for resentments about god and religion. All derived from what ive learned from this woman. This assigned mom of mine. I learned alot about the darker side of things vicariousely thru her ways of operation.
   She and my assigned father had raised me and my three biological siblings mormon. One of the main focusses in the church we attended was of love and family. We never missed a service. We were loyal to the third ward in the church of latter day saints on the outside. And we were loyal to the look good and the sugar coating of a burnt meal on the inside. All smiles and pretty dresses. Once a week we were able to pretend we were a normal happy family. We were lying to everyone there. However Im pretty sure, if he does exists, that you cant fool god. You cant lie to him. Not by ommission, not with a white lie, a black lie, or even a suit and tie. Despite that, my parents had no problem trying to create facts for his eyes out of this fictional facaud they created. They lied faithfully every night when we prayed, and with very meal we asked him to bless. Lied with every counted blessing that we said we had long enough to thank him for. And lied every time we went to church. 
    My assigned parents showed no guilt or shame for the abusive ill mannered money hungry mutts they were. Because when we went to church they were good people. They were god fearing. And they acted as if they loved my siblings and i so much. For three whole hours, every sunday, for ten years straight I got to experience them as two completely different people. During the time we spent in church I learned of loves definition and the culture surrounding it. I learned what support looked like. Dignity and respect. Caring and guidence. 
   Then each sunday after the service had ended, when my new mom and dad carted my siblings and I home, it was like everything we saw or heard there went away. With a snap of your fingers we were back in the pits of emotional neglect and discouraging words. Name calling. The silent treatment. Yelling. Screaming. 
    My parents had adopted me under substantial adoption which meant they got paid to adopt and raise me, along with my three other siblings. The state paid for her to take us in and she got a check every month for each of us individually. As long as we were there of course. And because my parents did not want the checks to stop, they were forced to act like i was still residing with them. Seemed like an easy task seeing as acting wasnt a problem for my assigned parents. And neither was getting money. This is the reason they never reported me as a runnaway. It was all about if shed be able to afford remodelling the back yard or driving a new lexus without my portion of that money. And that was also the reason she was there with me when i woke up after a week of sleeping in the ICU. She was getting paid to be there. Paid to act like a destraught victim, devestated because her precious daughter had almost died on the streets. Here she was, only when it mattered to her, and in reality, only playing the part for another dollar in her pocket. And it was just another day in the life of a hustler.
  I was 15 years old. It had only been a year since i left to venture out on my own. I was strung out on heroin, had lost almost a hundred pounds, and apparently contracted hepetitis c from sharing needles. I also had charges pending. Four counts of theft one for stealing dvds to support my habit. I knew i couldnt continue to steal dvds without getting caught up. They were now watching me at every store i went to, and i wasnt allowed in most of them anyways. I considered doing other things to support my habit like robbing people or screwing my dealers to get me well. But i was so exhausted. So i along with a girl who also was charged with the same thing i was, decided we needed to detox. Only a week into detoxing i started to use meth. The pain was bad and i wanted it gone. So to take away that pain i had to sacrifice my sanity.   Because of my coming off of heroin I quickly started to hallucinate on the meth. My judgement was altered and i was not in a safe place both mentally and physically. I ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person and the wrong motivation. I was given a hot shot and was raped. Then was dumped off downtown where someone recognized me and called for an ambulance to swoop me up. I remember only bits and pieces of it. The time i spent in the ICU ended up being alot longer in reality than it felt like to me. Probably because I only woke up once or twice and it was only for a moment each time. Long enough to pull the tubes out of my nose. I was in ICU for a week and then the moved me to a room for recovery on the first floor in the hospital.
    I was in the hospital for two weeks altogether befor i ended up deciding to leave against medical advice. Well, i didnt actually know it was against medical advice because i had not told anyone i was doing it. Therefor they could not provide advice to me about it. My boyfriend had gotten out of jail and he came to visit me. He also helped me clip off my pediatrics security bracelet. I felt courageous and bold as we briskly walked out thru the hospital doors giggling. I held his hand and he led the way walking , almost jogging, in front of me. A mutual friend of ours, Matt, was waiting outside for us to come out. 
 "Awe your free!! Holla!" was all matt said befor we silently and as stealthy as a trio of bank robbers ran towards the river. 
   We got to the river and each cracked a beer open. My boyfriend started professing his love to me. Talking about how this last 30 days hed spent in jail had done him in completely. Apparently i was all he could think about and when he saw me in that hospital bed he knew he couldnt just leave me there. Something had to be done, he had to get me out. I knew he had already gotten loaded befor seeing me but i nodded my head and smiled like i believed his words to be sobering and true. After finishing our beers we decided it had to be safe now to wander in public. I knew the cops would be looking for me because i was a minor who was a danger to herself living on the streets. They wanted to watch me close while waiting on the system to swoop in. the recent theft charges i recieved still had not been completely processed. I was waiting to get some time in juvy and a probation officer. They told me if i went to treatment befor that happenned then it would be better for me and i might not have to go to juvinile detention at all. Yet here i was. An escapee with a last attempt at freedome befor the state owned me. We wandered to the downtown transit station. My boyfriend, Bobby, saw someone he knew and started to socialize. I wanted to go. I still didnt feel comfortable out where people would recognize me. These concerns were justified only a few minutes after i vocalized them. It had only been about an hour since my "excape" from the hospital. There was a couple cops patrolling the station slowly who recognised me right away. Imediately they slowed down to a stop right beside where i was standing on the sidewalk, got out and ran my credentials. The confirmation of my identity came back possatively as me so they put me in the backseat of the cop car and brought me to my adopted parents house. My assigned mother openned the door to them and acted as tho id just been there eating dinner, happy as could be, the night befor. Like shed never been without me. I mirrored that imagination of hers and stepped inside the house as if id always lived there. We smiled, said thank you to the officers and shut the door behind us. My assigned mother didnt say anything to me. She just folded her lips together super tight making her mouth to form one solid line. Then turning hastily she walked to the kitchen to grab the telephone and call my assigned father. After a stressful sounding hushed conversation full of anger hostility and resentment she hung up the phone. She grabbed the phone book and looked up the number for the hospital and was again on the phone. This time when she spoke her voice sounded like it belonged to a whiny, scared and concerned victim. I watched her for a minute, not paying nearly as much attention to the actual content of her conversation as i was to how she was acting while having it. I bet this lady could sweet talk a dragon into killing itself if she wanted to i thought to myself. I didnt listen for long as I soon became resentful and disqusted by her manipulation skills. I diverted my attention back to the living room, which is the first room you walk into when entering the house thru the front door. I was not interested in venturing deeper into the miserable vortex. Only in getting out.
 The first thing i notice is the huge flatscreen tv, wondering how much of my adoption money they had to fork over to buy it. Then i quickly let my eyes move on to the fireplace, where I noticed the giraffes. So many giraffes. They were my assigned moms favorite animal and you could not enter this house without knowing somebody living in it was obsessed. 
   My head started to ache and i found myself sitting at the grand piano. The very same piano that was my scapegoat for my first initial step out the front door and onto the streets. I remembered the incident clearly. I had been told to clean my room and after about an hour i asked my assigned mom if i could take a break and play the piano for a few minutes. She said okay and then she left to go to the store. I was playing the piano and my assigned dad stormed in yelling at me to get to my room and clean it. I told him i had permission to be at the piano and as i argued this he grounded me from the piano for two weeks. I stomped into my bedroom and put on the daddy song be Jewel. You know, the one that sais " i wanna rip your toungue out and use it as a stamp". I turned it up louder and in came my assigned dad. He ripped the stereo from the wall hard. I immediately turned and started to pack a bag. Not much i could take with me so i was ready to go quickly. I expected him to yell at me, restrain me, and back me into a corner as he had countless times befor. Suprisingly he didnt. As i walked down the hall and to the livingroom with my empty backpack he went into his bedroom. Befor i made it to the front door he was standing next to me holding his hand out with something in it. A business card. It was for a place called station seven. A homeless shelter for youth. Had he been trying to push me out? Did he plan for this day by obtaining this token to relieve his guilt for not being a softer more capable "dad"? I grabbed the card and proceeded out the front door. My younger sister ran out behind me. She begged me to let her come along. I refused to let her do so. In my mind i thought i was protecting her. She hadnt really been the victim of the abusive behavior, i thought. She was too perfect. Always aiming to please our assigned mom and dad. Little did i know i was damaging her as i walked away leaving her behind. Reality was that she would grow up feeling abandoned and like i didnt care. In reality she got stuck with the backlash of my fathers temper since no one but her were to remain residing at our assigned parents abode. Both our older brother and sister had already left. 
   I stare at the black and white keys of the grand piano. I touch one. I missed you piano. I really did. I couldnt count the number of times i had to hide from my assigned dad under this massive instrument of beauty. It had protected me. It had provided me safety. I would curl up in the corner of the room on the floor undernieth it and it was somehow able to bless my anxiety and dread with some sort of peace and calm. I lived in hypersensativity and angst for ten years and was miserable. I wasnt prepared to come out from under this piano and into the world and even still it was better to me than here. However i will admit, the streets are cold. They can chill you deep into your bones on a ninety degree summer day. And they brought my fear to a whole new level. A level i couldnt get down from by hiding under anything.
  I continued to sit there with my finger touching the piano key blurred out in thought until my assigned mom came rushing in to the livingroom. She was telling me to get into the car. Apperently she thought i was going to try and stay there so she had talked the hospital into taking me back under their roof instead. She was wrong cause i definately wasnt planning on staying there at all. Especially not long enough to witness my assigned dad coming home from work. So i went with her. Still too weak to fight her on going back to the hospital. It would at least get me closer to the downtown area i thought to myself. However, escape wasnt to be in the cards this time. My assigned mom explained to me as we walked thru the hospital doors that they decided id be better off waiting in the psych ward for a treatment bed to become available. I guess it made sense. I understood that my assigned mother wouldnt even entertain the thought of a girl like me coming back to stay with her. And even though i wouldnt have stayed if she had asked or offered me to, it still hurt knowing i wasnt welcome. But still it did make sense. Since we hated eachother. And so alas, back to the hospital i go. She seemed so nervous around me. Well, maybe she had always been? I couldnt remember.
    This was the first time id seen my assigned mother since leaving her and my assigned dads home. And I knew that the only reason i was even seeing her now was because i was a minor and its required that the legal gaurdian of a minor patient be present to transport sign papers and make decitions on their behalf. What i didnt know is why she blurted out those three little words befor we reached the check in counter. I had no idea why this lady was trying to tell me she loved me. I have never felt sincerity in those words coming from her mouth since the day i first met her. I wonder if she ever felt sincere when she said it. Like maybe she had lied to me so much saying it that she started to believe it to be true. Or its possible that she said them out of guilt. Maybe even defeat. Then again, it could have been that she wanted me locked away so she didnt have the cops delivering me to her house again. Like saying i love you would keep me from splitting befor they could put me in a square room and a smock.
I bet she really enjoyed the sympathy she was getting over me. Poor assigned mom. Her daughter is like job in the bible. Wandered off to party and hasnt returned. I can hear her now, whispering in her prayers at night about how she always loved me and did everything she could to save me from the wicked sinning ways of the world. Begging god to intervien in my life because there was no more she could do to help me towards a rightouse path......
 (To be continued")