No More Mother May I

College C

Eye of the Storm

Dirty Walls and Starry Night Blue

This is also a take on my life, written nearly a year before Dirty Walls. I don't know that I had entirely dealt with the events before I wrote it because it almost feels too self-indulgent.  I'll have to read it again to formualte a real opinion.

At sixteen, I was completely convinced that nothing I did would ever really affect anyone. Acting on this mentality, I drove to Texas on a beautiful spring day toward the beginning of March with my mother's ATM card and over seven hundred dollars drawn on it under my seat. I didn't feel guilty. I wasn't depressed. I wasn't "acting out," as the psychiatrist later put it. I didn't even have a "Master Plan." I didn't intend to go to Texas, nor was it an accident. I was at one of those moments in life where I felt the action to be more important than the resulting opposite and equal reaction, and I was perfectly willing to ride that action wherever it wanted to take me. In all honesty, I just didn't have anything better to do. 

It's funny how once you do something really wrong, no one will believe that you didn't have much of a reason. I wasn't really interested in attending school on that particular day. I was bored with school and bored with my teachers. There is this stigma attached to being the smart kid in which you're expected to excel in all that you do. I didn't, and still don't find much of an accomplishment in completing routine exercises that were too easy the first time. Really, I'd always thought it'd be neat to "run away." Everyone kept calling it that, "Running Away." I wasn't running from anything. I suddenly had access to a large amount of cash, a motor vehicle, and no real concept of me as far as the effect I could have on other people. End of story. 

Driving to Texas was probably the start of a long line of bad career moves that I made, very easily, without consideration of consequence. I've always had to learn my lessons the hard way. I didn't stay in Texas, obviously, even the cheapest traveler can't go long on seven hundred dollars, and I bought random things like new cameras and floor mats along the way. I'm terrible about spending all the money I have as quickly as I can, because I've always been much more comfortable being broke. Stuck in Texas, I did what an intelligent sixteen-year-old does when they're in trouble… I wrote my parents a letter. 

Letters are a fabulous escape technique because you don't have to hear your parents' voice and therefore never fully realize the magnitude of your actions. I came home from a lovely walk around Childress, Texas to my small single hotel room by the empty pool. My phone was ringing. Interesting, considering I didn't actually know anyone in Texas despite having spent a week there. It was mom. They were on their way. 

Later that week, lying on my bed in Parkview Mental Hospital, I thought maybe I shouldn't have taken Mom's money. That was the extent of my regret, even then. 

Everyone at Parkview wanted to know why. I have come to hate that question. 

"Why did you run away?" Random nurse or psychiatrist asks. 

"I didn't run away. I took a trip," I reply, agitated. 

"Fine. Then why did you take a trip?" They ask again, humoring me. 

"It was a nice day," I answer. 

My days at Parkview were not unpleasant ones; however, I didn't really feel they were "helping". Although I had formed several close friendships, one in particular that would last long after Parkview and for years to come, I didn't really see a great deal of reason to be there. One of the rules that must be abided by for a hospital such as Parkview is a reason for inpatient care. Essentially, they had to give you medication. If you don't need "regulated" medication, then you don't need to be there, and insurance won't cover you. I was diagnosed as depressed, yet the drugs they gave me were to calm me down because I was "too hyperactive." Too hyperactive generally meant I was happy, and that really wasn't working for them because it showed, I wasn't too bad off in the emotional well being department. I wasn't a danger to others or myself. I was compliant, easy to along with, and in a decent mood the entire time I was at Parkview. Yet, without a reason for leaving Topeka, I "wasn't admitting I had a problem," and therefore could not be treated. How do you fix something you don't think is broken? 

Finally, I grew tired with the institution and all the friends I had made were leaving so essentially, I made something up. I told them that I felt torn between my mother and my father in their separate homes and didn't know where to go so I chose someplace else. They loved that. You know how psychiatrists enjoy it when you blame your parents. They can get all of you into therapy and charge twice as much. I was still "depressed," but "stable," prescribed medication that I've never taken and sent home to my father's. 

My father was in a lot worse shape than I was, I think. He didn't know how to deal with a daughter that wasn't perfect, and I wasn't overly interested in being perfect for him. He began to watch me. His eyes were on me from the moment he or I walked into the house until I disappeared into my bedroom. In all honesty, he was really creeping me out. 

Still in my sixteen-year-old mind set, I "overslept" one morning and didn't go to meet the bus. The school called and my dad nearly had a heart attack. I had never considered that skipping school a month after running away to another state and being put into a mental hospital might raise some concern. My father took it a little far, though, in turning off the electricity in the house and telling me I could rot there. I spent forty-eight hours alone in the dark house over the weekend. He had also disconnected the phone line and on Saturday night, my mother drove out from Topeka because she hadn't heard from me and couldn't get ahold of me. She was worried sick about my father's behavior but didn't know what to do and hadn't I always been one to exaggerate things? He came home Sunday night without ever saying a word to me. He sat down in front of the blank television screen and watched it for over an hour before turning it on. He grew worse. 
I burned incense in my room one-night and Dad thought the house was on fire. My dad was "named" in a Potawatomii Naming Ceremony several years prior to this. He had been given the name "Big Bear". When he came into my room that night, half-asleep, hair sticking up, I could see where the name came from. He looked precisely like a wild bear woken from hibernation. Sixteen-year-old self simply cocked her head and asked, in not so nice a tone, "What?" 

I knew in that second before he came at me, that I had pushed him too far. Today I blame myself, but sixteen-year-old C called 9-1-1. Probably a good thing, in all actuality, because I have always been rather attached to my larynx, and I enjoy continuing to be able to use it. I could say that I was abused, however, that really implies that there was a long history of this sort of thing. There really wasn't. This time, and once, when I was much younger, and really deserving of a good kick in the ass, are the only occasions that my father has ever "attacked" me. I rode in the front seat of the Sheriff's Car with Deputy Duer, an odd looking little man who would later be dismissed from duty after drowning a litter of kittens in the name of duty. He handcuffed me, "for his safety and mine." I hadn't even swung at Dad. He had done all of the fighting on his own. 
Social services aren't all they're cracked up to be, I'm afraid. Sitting, in the back room at the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, I received a lecture on "abusing" my parents as opposed to sympathy. I also glanced on my file that my father had told them I was prone to lying. I was sent home with my mother. 

I moved into my mother's house in Topeka in the summer, June. I had my first job at a small two-register shop that sold over priced groceries to the community of Hoyt. In general, our only customers were the old ladies of the town that couldn't get all the way to Topeka, just twenty miles south, to a "real store". The Store systematically took these old women for every penny they had with outrageous prices on bread, milk, and fiber. The owner, knew my father very well and therefore didn't trust me. I spent hours in the cooler stocking and restocking the milk case, only to have Sam come back and redo it all. Often days I'd come in hoping to start on the register, but was handed a broom and forced to sweep the small store for three hours instead. I hated that job. I loved the idea of a job though, the suddenly possession of money without stealing or begging. I sought after a new job closer in Topeka and continued to drive to The Store, a full half-hour from home, in the meantime. 

In the evenings, I attended College Algebra at my high school, hoping to pick up college credit before college. Two of my closest friends took the class with me. We sat in the back and passed notes about how cute the professor was in his cargo shorts and river sandals. After class, I'd drive back to Topeka, stopping off at Judy's Ice Cream to visit my best friend, Brett. Loud and bouncy and opposite me in every way, Brett has often been my salvation. Often when I try to describe her, I find myself repeating several times, "She's… Brett" with little more explanation. Shorter than me, maybe 5'6" with hair that's never the same color between two visits. She's a little stocky, but most would describe her as healthy, not overweight. In middle school, we used to call her "BBB," Big Butt Brett. Of course, I was Crusty Crispy Christy, so you have to decide who really was worse off. By the time I was visiting her at Judy's, we'd been friends for five years. A few times I'd work the drive-thru window for her as she was, like me, over worked and underpaid. We made plans between customers. We were going to go find new jobs that paid us enough money that we wouldn't have to work all school year and could take a camping trip to Colorado in August. She teased me that my mom wouldn't let me go because I'd never come back. I'd laugh and toss ice cream at her. 

The summer passed lazily. I finally took another job at the movie theatre next to my house, but stayed with The Store as well, and for one month, I did nothing but work. I'd work in the mornings at The Store, then rush off to the theatre to work the afternoon shift. When I left the theatre at six, I'd go to Judy's and run the window until Brett got off at eleven. We'd go back to my house, and pick up my stepbrother, DJ. 
DJ, a full five months older, visited every summer from Boston, M.A, and he and Brett had an on going love affair that generally meant they held hands and talked to each other quietly, a lot. Quiet wasn't usually DJ's style. The six weeks that he spent with us every summer were always filled with wrestling in the living room, loud music, and Disney movies he knew all the words to. Much to his father's dismay, DJ wore his dark hair long and pushed up into a hat that usually looked like it had been kicked around in the dirt for a few years then spit on. When DJ was old enough to start shaving he didn't the entire time he was in Topeka. I always remember him as being excessively dirty but still showering everyday. 
We'd stay out until our curfews, that summer, sitting in the cemetery and watching the stars. Many nights, I would fall asleep on the soft grass in our favorite spot and Brett and DJ's whispers would go well past her curfew and mine as they made plans for the next summer when he would be here for good. The three of us were inseparable in the summer time, especially in that summer before DJ and I really knew anyone else in the city, and Brett really loved us both the same. 

My life seems to move in six-month increments. Six months of good, then six months of bad, then six months that is easily forgotten. The idea of the six month period is one I'm comfortable with. A year is a long long time in my mind. I prefer things to be a little smaller, a little less severe. I prefer things to be in six months. The six months between my hasty relocation to Topeka and my 17th birthday were pleasant, quiet, and easy, but they hardly stand out in my mind. The next six months, during which I dropped out of high school and quickly became what can only be described as a "pot head" segued into an incredible six month period in which I worked hard to catch up in summer school, met my first girlfriend, kissed Brett, who in turn, began dating DJ seriously, and spent many a night out in the country watching the lightning with him and John. Another six months at a new high school and I'm 18. Six more and I've moved out of my house and am living in a trashy trailer with what can only be described as trashy friends. My dad and I are getting along again. Brett and DJ have broken up very badly and he is living in an apartment where he's deep in drugs and barely getting through college. If we go on in this way, I'll finish six months of college with barely enough credits to come back, then another six months with a 3.5 GPA. Brett will go off to school in Missouri and DJ will stop using drugs for six months only to go back again for the next six months. Brett will join up with a professional horse trainer and rider and leave to travel the country working on his team for six months of the year and to live in Florida on his ranch the remaining six months. My dad will visit me every month and I will take summer classes to make up for a semester of slacking off. After that… I can only guess. The next six months has yet to be written.