Home- It's a place where you feel safe, welcome, wanted. Where you want to go to. A sanctuary. You want to sleep there. Maybe you have family there. And for me it's been the most elusive thing for me to find ever since I discovered how devious and evil my step-mother was.
So I haven't blogged in a while because I thought I had found a secure place, and it was for a while, but things were thrown upside down, at least for while. I thought that I would need to find a new place to go to live, and I know that in my heart that is what I need to do, still.
I've been struggling with money to afford to get to pay for the gasoline to go visit my doctors... Then when I saw my doctor, I tried to share good news, only to have it dashed in my face. Losing 25 lbs isn't enough, lose more. You shouldn't have any romance in your life until your back issues are solved.... That one hurt a lot. Then when I am home I was sat down and told that I was a liability and needed to ... yes, needed to, ..., not really told what needed to be done!
So now my best friend came and he helped me with my room. It is a lot cleaner, which I am SO thankful for his help. Now I can actually find things and work on disposing of donation items, trash, or other things, slowly at pace that doesn't hurt my back, at least too much. Tony, my landlord seems sated with the state of it, not happy, but satisfied enough.
I won't mentioned that I've fallen several times in my room, trying to get out of bed, just from weakness... my back gets worse every day. I need to go grocery shopping for food, but I have no one to take me. I feel like I am in an utterly hopeless situation. Most of my support system has fallen through. There are five people in it-- and I am ignoring them, and I don't know why. And of those five, two of them I've only just met!
Of the two I just met, it was very awesome. I went to Monolith which was awesome. It was in Ventura. They were friends who play Warcraft like I do, and the place was wheelchair accessible, although it was a humorous way that we discovered this. First we thought that there was no ramp, and only five steps. So I grabbed my cane, and the railing, and made it up, only to discover that there were more steps, and there was a man explaining that there was a ramp on the far side of the building.
So we took the chair back down. I precariously went back down the steps, and we went up the ramps! There were some bumps between different flooring types and I had to guide my new friend on how to overcome the bumps (pull the wheelchair backward). Eventually we reached our destination, really early!
This gave me time to get to know my new friends. Which was awesome. Eventually by the time they were setting up, I was even able to talk to the dude doing the lighting and have the strobe set at a pace where it would not induce seizures upon me. How kind!
An Xbox360 was set up in the rear of the room, and I was told that there was going to be Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, which there never was, but I did wait with anticipation. As time went by and conversation died off I eventually wheeled myself over to the console and tried at King of Fighters '98 not realizing that instead of trying to unlock characters, I was playing an arcade download trial that only had like 8 characters. It was horrible.... some guy tried to join me and it said not available in trial and suddenly I realized why I couldn't unlock anymore characters.
So then... it was Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, which was not a demo. And I don't really know this game too well. Mike Z, who designed Skull Girls, always said that he wanted to "fix MvC2." And I played a fair amount of SG.... so once I recalled how to play MvC2, like after 2 rounds I began whooping the poor guy's ass of who was playing me, and turned on a handicapped, which didn't help him too much. Pfffft and Mike would always be like "learn how to play," you learn how to play Mike...and kick my ass.
And his friend faired little better. So hours of playing video games, I finally took a break and went to the dancefloor in my chair and a girl in a gasmask and cool outfit danced with me until my back hurt. Then I talked to some dude about WoW and how he should get back into it....
When I got home I felt good, until I saw Tony's mother. So I immediately shut myself in my room... and I've stayed here since. I barely leave it. Restroom and water are the things that bring me out. She is creepy. She babbles in Spanish at me as if I understand, which I don't. I am American, I live in the USA, and I speak English. I do not know Spanish, it is a foreign language. It is one hot topic that I feel much heat about in debate.
When I worked in the pharmacy there were so many instances of people who were angry that people did not speak Spanish, or would not speak Spanish to them. California is close to the border of Mexico, but it is not IN Mexico. Spanish is a fucking foreign language, if you come to the USA from another country, learn the native language, which is English. It is infuriating that there is a woman living under the roof right now, who had lived in this country for YEARS and she doesn't speak the FUCKING language! Yet she expects me to know HER FUCKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE?! WE'RE NOT IN MEXICO CREEPY LADY LIVING IN THE LIVING ROOM!!!!!!!
UGH..... I hear arguing and fighting a lot.... Always in Spanish which is fine, it is between the family. I mean, I understood when I moved in with a Mexican family, that yes, they spoke Spanish. That did not mean that I was supposed to learn a fucking foreign language though. When they speak it among themselves to other family members I am not bothered. But when that woman has the audacity to start trying to tell me to DO things, when I am paying rent to live here, and she is free-loading on the couch, and she doesn't evens speak the language of the country she is LIVING in.... AND she has LIVED here in VENTURA LONGER than I have!!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER?! There is NO excuse for her NOT to know English!!!!!!!!!!!!
EVERY other immigrant has to learn English, because people don't bow down to their needs, why are Spanish speaking immigrants given exception?! It is so racist and biased it drives me mad, especially because I dated an immigrant for almost 7 years! He was from the Philippines, HE learned English. People from China, learn English, people from Germany, they learn English, people from Russia learn English, Iran, English, Romania, English. Everyone else I know who is from a non-Spanish speaking country they learned English, why do Spanish speakers have something up their asses that makes them feel that they are SO much better than EVERYONE else, that they are SO MUCH MORE entitled than EVERY OTHER SINGLE PERSON including every citizen of the USA and every other immigrant that everyone else should learn Spanish to accommodate them?
Ah yes.... well.... This is something that has been bothering me every since I moved to California. It felt like I moved to another country. I had to study to be a Pharmacy Tech. to find a job, because I didn't speak Spanish actually. No place would hire a fresh high school graduate who had honor roll in AP classes and other good stuff, previous exp, but didn't speak Spanish.
And then my computer crashes.
To have people close to me who are supportive, even if they are busy most of the week, is nice, and I feel unfamiliar with how to deal with it, and I am sure that they both feel rebuffed by how I have ignored them up until we finally met and went out. It all goes back to home. As I return back to the place I live now and get ordered to do things in some foreign language, I do not feel at home, but also for most of my life now, home has been foreign.
When my elder sister left the house, my step mother, not my father, my step-mother began to cite that they were having 'they same problems with me.' [That they had had with my sister.] Almost immediately. It took only about two months.
The problems that lead my father to ask my sister to leave, which he never got the chance, she left before he could ask her to, were numerous. She turned 18, said she had a physical for the Navy in Chicago, and didn't return. But, she was flunking out a grade, failing classes, skipping them, not doing homework, constantly arguing and fighting with our parents, and then later our father and step-mother, she would have friends who did drugs, smoked, and drank alcohol, and she was sleeping around. There were so many other things wrong that she was doing such as sneaking people into the house and wrong doings against me that I shall not mention, but when my step-mother said that they were having the SAME problems with me?! I was astounded.
It began slowly at first. My bedroom was put downstairs, away from them. I was asked to clean more and more of the house. I was asked to cook the meals. I was discouraged to eat the meals with them. I was getting straight A's but if I got a B that was very very bad. I got very involved with church on the weekends, and if I did anything wrong, that would be taken away as punishment. One day I did not hear something that my aunt said to me in the kitchen, so as punishment I was grounded severely for weeks, no television, music, computer, or anything. Not even church. Just because I hadn't heard her. She had asked me to do something after I had descended the stairs to my bedroom. It was her mistake, not mine, but I paid for it.
As I sang the song from Oasis, "As he faced the sun, he cast no shadow," my father grew angry with me and I apologized. They grew upset with me that I was depressed. It was a thing that deserved further punishment, my depression. Soon when I began to self-mutilate, that too also deserved punishment.
So the same problems, I got good grades in college classes, I was devout in church, even volunteering on retreats. I had never kissed, although I had a terrible crush on a guy for years, I hadn't even held hands with a boy except for once, and I felt so guilty! I had never, have never, touched drugs illegally... I wasn't out getting drunk, I did not spend time with people who did drugs or got drunk either. I didn't spend any time with any friends really... Except when they shoved me off to my best friend at the time, who had her son, Nick, she was friends with my sister, had gotten pregnant at 16, and they would constantly abandon me upon her. But I didn't mind, I loved her.
But I cleaned the whole house, I cooked for them, I stayed out of their way, I hadn't kissed a guy, I got good grades, I was nothing like my elder sister, how was I committing any of her errors? But my father listened for some reason and agreed. Shortly after I was 17 I was beaten and kicked out to my best friend Nellie... she'd lost her son by then. My father got away with beating me and kicking me out illegally, too, from the police and children's protective services. Amazing. No one wanted to see my bruised ribs, or listen to what had actually happened.
After that I thought I had a home with Nellie... until I turned 18 and she suddenly told me that she needed me out because she was trying to get her son back... but even before that- she had called me a slut when I had crushed on the same guy as she had and then changed my mind. I 'dated' him for a brief period, but he was too ashamed of me to even hold hands in front of others, so I couldn't handle it, and for that she, my best friend, my ONLY family at the time, called me a slut.... still hadn't kissed.
Then I thought I had found another home until I got news that that was insecure. Then I came to California on vacation and stayed here. I found refuge out here, expecting perhaps to be raped, murdered, left or dead or something... I was raped that first night, not left for dead, but he stopped though.
We were supposed to go to his house, and he made up a fishy excuse that his parents were arguing, so we went to a hotel. He was a nurse, and his scrubs and stethoscope were draped over the seat.... it felt all so planted and fake..... I knew I was being mislead, but I had no choice, I was here in his territory, I had been tricked, I just needed to survive until I could figure out a way back to Chicago.
The hotel was nice. He was nice. We hugged, it was okay. We kissed, it was less ok.... then other things happened and I began to resist, but he seemed not to notice. It was as it he took no notice to my complete and utter resistance to removal of clothing and being touched and kissed and such, how I cringed, cried, shook, whimpered, begged quietly for it to stop. It wasn't until I finally spoke up loudly, yelled for him to stop that it stopped. I had to yell. I was so afraid, expecting a hand to enclose my throat like my first boyfriend would have done, or to cuff my face, like James would have done to me.... but no, instead he stopped.
I was shaking from fear and trauma and he hugged me until I fell asleep. I awoke hours later alone in the hotel room alone.... It was freezing. My things were in his car, and he was gone. He had met me online, had me, and left. I went and took a bath to try to cleanse my shame, it was during this that I heard someone unlock the door. I was terrified that it was a friend of his, coming to have his own turn. When I came out in a towel and holding the hair drier as a blunt weapon I was surprised when it was him... He said he had had to help out at his house and had woken me up and told me, and was so sorry that I'd been worried. I cried as he held me again.
Even after all this, he approached me for sex again and again, even though I trembled and shook and begged..... When I finally asked him about it years later, he broke down as a man, degraded, like he should be, shocked... I hadn't been consenting? How could he have been so blind in the first place is what I wonder. Over the years I finally stopped begging, stopped fighting it, and got used to it... I guess maybe he forgot what was going on, though there were instances where I would protest loudly and it still happened.... and even with this, it was news to him on the day I left.
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