Better a serpent than a stepmother! --Euripides
The last nine years of my life have been filled with absolute chaos, most of which centered around interaction with my stepmother. My dad remarried when I was eight years old; shortly afterward, we moved, and I had to change schools for the third time in five years; two of my siblings moved away, and the only one remaining stayed holed up in his room all the time, in order to avoid having to make contact with our stepmother. Of course, being as young as I was, I was not too awfully reflective on the situation, and just thought it was cool to have a mother around the house. We started out as friends; she took me places, made sure my friends and I had a good time, let me go to church activities, and taught me to do household chores. We had a good time when we were together, and there were not very many problems between us.
In 6th grade, all of that would change when I had my first very serious crush. Granted, I will tell you now that I did not handle it as properly as it could have been handled; I did keep this infatuation a secret from my parents. Reason being, I had learned by this time that my stepmother was rather worrisome, and I did not want to upset her. I knew that if I told her about this boy, she would scrutinize everything from the way I dressed in the morning to what subject I chose to do school projects on. She was, and is, as paranoid as hell. So I kept this rather innocent crush of mine a secret. Something that I don't think my stepmother ever realized is that the relationship this boy and I had was purely innocent, at least on my part: harmless flirting (as in, elbowing one another. Or, as happened once, his taking my school ID card and taunting me with it.), chatting on Facebook, sending notes to friends to debate over whether or not he was into me. I mean, it was typical puppy love. In hindsight, I realize actually how adorable it all was, compared to the state of my love life at the current moment. We were 12 years old, and were still holding on to some scraps of innocence.
And then, Stepmother found the message on Facebook--the one that I had not seen yet, and, fatefully, the one where this boy decided to ask me out. (Just a note to the boys: never, for Christ's sake, ask a girl out over any electronic device, ever.) She blew up. I panicked, tried to lie, tried to make excuses, but she was having none of it. She put a curtain up in the house, creating a physical and emotional rift in the family: my brother, my dad and I were on one side of the house, she was on the other. She said she felt betrayed. I felt overwhelmed and confused. But nobody asked me. Amazingly, my brother and dad just did their best to act normally. And I guess it worked pretty well, because soon, my stepmother emerged from her little cave of irrationalism, and decided that instead of banishing herself, she would banish me. She sent me and my brother out of the house (reminding me sneakily now of Hansel and Gretel's stepmother), and when we came back, she had removed everything from my room, with the exception of an air mattress on the floor (which I had to blow up every night, because it was old and deflated quickly) and a few items of clothing, all of which were ugly and far too big for me. I was to stay in my room at all times. Door shut. No contact with the outside world, except for school. (Which, by the way, she made as close to hell as possible for me; she notified all of the teachers and half of the other staff members of the "incident" between this boy and me, and she had me removed from all the classes I shared with him. I ate bologna and cheese sandwiches for lunch everyday, no exception. And I hate bologna, so I just stopped eating period.)
Fast-forward four years, and this basically was still the state my life was in. There were a few breaks in between, but they were short and insignificant. I moved in with my vagrant mother for one year in 7th grade, but that was no less of a hell than living with my father; my mother was selfish and neglected me. I quickly gained weight and acted out at school, disrespecting teachers and peers alike. I thought that if I moved in with my father again, possibly things would be different than they had been; they seemed willing enough to let me, once they had noticed how I had started gaining weight and just altogether letting my life go to Hades. So I moved back in, and things were great for a while.
Until. Until something set my stepmother off again (I cannot even remember what it was; that's how insignificant the incidents are that upset her). Then we were back to playing this game of "Ashlynne's-in-her-room-this-week-let's-see-how-long-she'll-be-in-there-for-this-time". This went on for three years. No one ever knew when I would or when I wouldn't be locked up in my room. It was hell; I have legitimately gone crazy on several occasions. I stopped trying to please my parents at some point, since it got me absolutely nowhere, and I also stopped caring. I carelessly disobeyed, carelessly lied about it, and carelessly became less and less of the person I had always dreamed I'd become. Stepmother began taking my homework away and not allowing me to complete school assignments, since I poured everything that I had left of me into schoolwork, knowing that it would pay off in the end and be my ticket out of here. My grades dropped, and with them my desire to live another day. I was suicidal, depressed, full of bitterness and hatred. I couldn't see a way out of my situation. I had absolutely no control over it, despite what my stepmother said. Every day, I became more and more desperate. I didn't care what happened to me, just so long as I got out of there.
Luckily, reason got a better hold on me than impulse, and I did not runaway, or call my mother out of lost hopes and desperation. I succumbed to my fate, just slinking into my room after every school day, sneaking a few chapters of a book in if I was lucky, and being always hopeful of early bedtimes and long hours of sleep.
At some point, teachers at school began to get worried, and inquired into my situation. Before, if they had ever asked, I had shied away from them, not wishing for any confrontation--which is something that I avoid like the plague, or like Harry Potter avoids Draco Malfoy (yet, they always seem to bump into one another, don't they?). But this time, I just let it all out; I didn't care anymore. I didn't care if my stepmother pulled me out of school, I didn't care if they somehow got her arrested. I just wanted it to stop, I just wanted someone to at least know. And that is how, two weeks later, I ended up moving in with my brother. Staff at the school had asked if I had anywhere to go, and after thinking about it, I said, Yes, my brother's. Of course I had thought of it before, but never very seriously; he has a wife and a small son, and I did not wish to impose on them, or cause a rift between them and the rest of the family. But one day, after another homework-less night (my homework privileges had been taken away because I had failed to pick all the weeds in a large 15x30 patch of dirt in our backyard in 45 minutes or less; it had ended up taking me three goddamn hours, if that doesn't give you a good idea of how many blimey weeds were out there.), I did something daring, and walked the 4 blocks from my bus stop to his house after school. I had called him at school, let him know the situation, and asked if I could live with him for a while. He was more than willing to let me in.
And that is how, a month later, I am sitting at the counter in his basement, typing this out and becoming, day-by-day, more and more O.K. Moving in like that was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I had to stand up for myself, and show my stepmother that she was not going to walk all over me anymore. I had to show her and my dad that I am done with it all. It's all still very weird and saddening. I do not feel like everything is okay now, or will ever really be okay, and if I'm being honest with myself, I'm not exactly happy. I feel out of place and unsure. But I have a lot to recover from, and a lot of lies to untangle myself from, a lot of lies that my stepmother told me about myself: that I am stupid, unworthy, a disappointment, a failure. There are also a lot of lies that I told myself, along the same line, and I'm not sure if I will ever believe again in love triumphing over anything, or in the power of a father's embrace. But I do believe still that someday things will work out, if not be happier and filled once more with light and belly-deep laughter. I am learning to hope again. I am learning that it's okay to sing off-key in a car full of friends, to laugh as loudly as I please, to express myself fully, and to read whatever the hell I feel like reading, even if it does involve a romance or contains swearing; I am learning to embrace scandals, I suppose!
This truly is why I have started this blog: because I am embarking on the journey of finding myself, and I want to be able to share those experiences, of humor and heartbreak. I want to be able to relate to others, and to be able to laugh together over some of the things that have brought us to where we are today--like the knock-off-brand Vans that brought me to my brother's house, with a little pink heart drawn on the foxing. I want to be able to share life, as I begin to experience it for myself the way that it was meant to be experienced: through living it, not reading about it in a book, secretly, or watching it playing itself out in the lives of my classmates. As George Bernard Shaw said, "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." And thank God that I'm a creative person.
All the love,
Ashlynne <3
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. --Abraham Lincoln
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. --George Bernard Shaw
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