So, this is ridiculous. It never snows in Portland, so because it snowed a little bit this week, every day, we had no school.

So V and I have been stuck inside all week with three very restless children. 

In Kansas City they would have made us go to school, so I’ve found this whole experience to be very entertaining. 

The meteorologists have been predicting a huge snowstorm all week. Every day the storm has been supposed to hit, and today it finally came. There is snow all the way up to the bumpers on the SUV, and we’re all cold because today our friend Polly decided to rent a light studio to photograph for her portfolio.

Four hours of our day was spent in a freezing concrete room over the river.

So yeah, just wanted to update, I’ll probably post more sometime this week, because it’s winter break, so i should have some free time.

“Ally? You in there?”

The strangers’ voice sounded calm and steady through the bathroom door. A rarity in my home.

“Are you safe? Have you harmed yourself?”

I scooted closer to the door, “No.” I said, loud enough so that the stranger could hear.

“Ally, This is officer N- from the Police Department. Can you come out of the bathroom? Please?”

I hesitated, briefly assessing what my mother could do with the police officer there. “Sure.”

I opened the door, glancing at the police woman to make sure she was alone before stepping out of the bathroom.

She breathed out, “Good. Are you ok?”

I nodded.

She looked at me, then started going over why she was here while checking my pockets.

“Your mom called because you locked yourself in the bathroom-”

Yeah. I was chased into the bathroom and then I locked the door to keep her out.  I thought angrily. 

“-and because of your history with self harm-”

What? I can’t even cry anymore without someone thinking i’m dragging a razor across my wrists?

“-We thought it might be good idea to come check the situation out. Have you harmed yourself?” 

I shook my head. No.

“Do you have a razor on you?”

I shook my head again. 

She nodded, “Ok. Well, because of your history, I have to take you to the hospital, but we can go in my car, I don’t need to call an ambulance or anything because you haven’t hurt yourself.”

Great.

So thirty minutes later I stood, handcuffed, in the hospital waiting room. I was angry because the kids across from me kept looking over and whispering. Officer N–, though, was decent company. She talked to me as if I wasn’t some idiot kid she had coaxed out of a bathroom, and I was grateful for it.

An hour later, I was in an emergency room, in scrubs, waiting. The policewoman explained to me that my mother and I needed a break, and that it was ok. I wasn’t in trouble, and I wouldn’t be admitted back into the hospital.

Thank god. I thought.

An hour later, Ruth, from a local organization that provided temporary and long-term foster care, sat on my bed, chatting and taking inventory. She seemed nice enough, and we patiently waited for my mother to come and sign the papers. 

So began my experience with foster care in Portland.

They were able to give me respite care for a week. A long, miserable week in which I was able to go to school once, just in time for my group presentation in World History.

Xander had to go twice with me. He hated it. Because we were siblings we weren’t split up, but because he was a boy, we had to go to homes without other kids. A luxury. We went to families who rented movies for us and took us to laser tag. I thought he was lucky.

The first time I went I had an ok experience. The other girl was twelve, and we got along fairly well. She sat next to me and told me all about her twenty-five year old boyfriend, then showed me her collection of matches and told me how she was going to burn the room while I slept. But all things considered, she was ok. 

The next time I was alone, I went to a woman called Sabrina. She already had a thirteen year old daughter, and several other foster kids. She was nice, but her daughter was a terror. She snatched food away from me, pouring it into her mouth and daring me to tell her mother, and she made a huge deal of blocking off her room from me and the new girl. She called us the “Foster girls” with a tone that made me want to go scrub myself with boiling water.

The final time, I was sent because I actually did hurt myself. I put a jacket on over my short sleeved shirt, and because my mother passed over calling the cops, I didn’t have to tell anyone that I had cut.  However, the woman I went to was so hospitable that she followed me around insisting I take off my coat. Not wanting to horrify or disgust her, or admit what I had done, I quickly ducked into the room I slept in and changed into the turtleneck I brought. she was very sweet. She was from Russia and spent several hours describing the landscape of her hometown to me. The other two girls were courteous and for the most part ignored me, which is sometimes better than being noticed. 

After that, however, Xander told our Mother that if she ever put either of us in foster care, he would move out and never talk to her again.

So she never did.

My family is a family of fighters.

My mothers side of the family is Irish. For years her ancestors graced boxing rings and bars with their fights and brawls. She used to tell us that Christmas used to mean fistfights in the streets, that her family was always itching for a good display of power.

My fathers has fighting blood too. He comes from a long line of war heroes, decorated soldiers who fought for what they believed in. 

My brother is a fighter. He walks into a room and you can feel power radiate off him.  He’s been homeless, he’s been in juvy. Life has hardened him, and he has learned to punch back when life kicks him in the ribs.

I may not be a physical fighter. But I haven’t put aside either traces of my genes, I still have the Irish brawlers and the Polish generals running through my veins, and they can’t be silenced.

I was at the table today, with Mary, K’s mother, and we were talking about Vietnam. I was so revved up, and we were talking about some other things, but somehow it brought me back to Touched By an Angel.

We weren’t very religious, but whenever we could my family sat down to watch Touched By An Angel. When I was Rowan’s age, nine, I was watching the episode with the Chinese lady, and I don’t remember what it was about, but she was on trial, and in the end she was beaten to death. I remember looking up at my mother, and saying “I’m so glad that doesn’t happen in real life!” She just looked at me and stated, “Oh, it happens in real life.” And I began crying because of how unfair that was.

Then, in seventh grade I stumbled into the holocaust section of our library, and over the next couple months I had this strange obsession with the Holocaust. I would have nightmares, and I would cry, but for some reason I would not stop reading those books. I felt like I owed it to the survivors, but I also felt so enraged.

That’s when I decided I was going to do something to change the world when I grew up. I wanted to prevent that from happening again. I felt like I was personally responsible.

Then I hit my second major depression at the end of eighth grade, and I stopped. My mother went off the deep end mentally, and I decided that either I was going to kill myself, she was going to kill me, or eventually I would die in some other way before I graduated. Either way, I wasn’t going to college, and dead people don’t change the world.

After my second hospital stay, I was moved here, and I began to slowly regain my previous personality.

It hit me around April. I was in my English Lit class, and we were discussing the novel Brave New World and we briefly touched upon the treatment of savages and the dystopic overtones, and I felt a rage of passion against this fictisious government, that I haven’t felt in a long time.

Bit by bit, between our Dystopia unit in Lit, and our American History class, I began to rekindle my old passion for equal rights. Which may sound cheesy, I know, but it’s one of my passions.

I began working on a Holocaust writing competition, and the more I researched the subject of genocide, the more I began worrying about the indifference some of my peers expressed.

There was a quote I read in one of my books, about how man doesn’t care about whats happening to other people, because it’s not real to him. I don’t think we aren’t concerned about this because we’re sociopathic jerks, I think it’s just that what’s on our i-pods are more important than whats happening in Africa. Our i-pods are in front of us, Africa’s not. it’s not real.

Lets make it real.

I’m a traveller. I like to travel, I like to immerse myself in different cultures. It’s one of the gifts my mother gave me when we moved so much. I want to go to these countries, and photograph, and interview, and raise overall awareness.

Then there is my other human rights passion. Children of mentally abusive parents.

This one strikes a more personal note with me. Mental abuse is the hardest abuse to prove. What’s crossing the line between being at the end of your rope and having an outburst at your child, and abuse? Who’s to say the child isn’t lying? And, once it is proven, is it easier to force the parent into classes for reform, or to put the child in an already overcrowded foster home when the cure seems so easy?

Unfortunetly, mental abuse leaves bruises and scars that can’t be seen. It leaves the child withdrawn, and most children feel loyalty to their parents, and wouldn’t tell to begin with. Eventually though, this abuse will take it’s toll. Sometimes by causing the child to reach a point where self-injury, suicide, and drugs seem like like the only resources to calm their pain. 

It’s a problem. A quiet, terrible problem. One that needs more awareness and education. 

I want to be an advocate for children who are being emotionally abused. It took so many cries for help until I was allowed to remove myself from that situation, and it’s still not over all the way. If it happened to me, it can happen to anyone, and it’s not right.

So my goal is to go to a good college, get a good education, and begin to spread awareness. I have that fighting instinct. I can have that power. I’m a fighter too, and like my ancestors, I will stand up for what I think is right.

You can too. Help me change the world. It can be something like donating to charities helping victims of genocide, or it can be something as little as pointing out to a friend or co-worker that there is a genocide going on right now in Darfur. Start a conversation with someone! You don’t have to have a soapbox to be an advocate for change.

In November 1999, my mother fell unconscious for three days. She would wake up to tell my brother and I not to call the police. She would be ok.

She wasn’t.

When she woke up, she was paralyzed on the left side of her body. She couldn’t swallow, she couldn’t lift anything, she could barely speak.

Xander and I became her caretakers. I would do the laundry, shave her legs, massage her feet, make her food. Xander would cook for us and ask Saint Germain questions. We were nine years old, but we grew up mentally so much in those three days. 

Eventually she lost weight. She became emaciated and her hair began to fall out while her skin turned a pale yellow color. She could only eat thin broths, so when we went out to eat she would take along a strainer and she would send Xander or me up to the counter to ask for boiling water.

Then she would choke on watered down mashed potatoes. She would cough and sputter and spit her food out, and hack. While Xander and I sat opposite, blushing and not looking at her. Pride was important in my family, and she would glare up at us with hate, hissing “Do I embarass you?” Her eyes always took on a metallic quality when she did this,”Maybe I should just stop eating and let myself die so you won’t be embarassed.”

Sometimes she’d storm out before we’d gotten a chance to eat, hissing that she was hungry too, but since we wouldn’t help her why should she help us?

These were the times that i’d step back from myself and look at her with disgust. Not because she was disabled, or because she had just coughed up most of her dinner, but because she was the mother, she was supposed to protect us. She wasn’t supposed to scream at us, or decide not to feed us because she couldn’t eat. That’s when I began to divide up my feelings for my mother, and a part of myself began to hate her.

I’d go home, and i’d try to talk to Xander about it, but he’d stare at me in horror and and say “Mom loves us! You can’t say things like that, she’s our mother!” And i’d want to scream back “I know she’s our mother! That’s why she shouldn’t be acting like this!” But I never did. 

Looking back, I can’t imagine how scared she must have been. How frustrated. But I was a nine year old, and I resented the fact that I had to take care of her, that I had to be independent. I had been responsible when we were little and she had seizures, but we’d always had help from one of our family members.

It was the first time the three of us were truly alone.

To make matters worse, she began spending a lot of her time with Xander, having him ask questions. So he became her crutch. She hated being separated from him. Unless we were at the hospital.

Oh yeah, did I mention the hospital yet?

A couple times a week she’d go to KU medical center, and she’d be in there for hours, leaving her two homeschooled nine year olds in the waiting room.

So we’d go to the foodcourt to get icewater, and we’d make detours going through all the floors. Eventually we knew that hospital like the back of our hands. We saw everything, from the maternity ward to the psych ward. Once we even ran into a dead body, and quickly turned around to run the other way.

After about six months of this, my mom went to a retreat, came back, sat us down, and ate a cookie. The first time she had had solid food in years. A miracle.

As Xander and I looked at each other in relief and happiness, we knew it was the beginning of something new. A month later we were on the road to Washington.

—————————————————–

Right before I moved into K and V’s home, my mother and I were in her car, and she was yelling at me for something. I wasn’t really listening until she suddenly said “It’s your fault I’m like this.”

I snapped my head up and stared at her in disbelief. “What?” I asked in a quiet voice.

She gave me one of her looks. “If you had called the police when I was unconscious, I wouldn’t be like this today.”

I was so surprised I started crying. “That’s not true.” I whispered.

“Yes it is.” She said.

My Mom walked into our room. She was white, but triumphant. “Pack your bags!” She crowed, “You’re going to foster care!”

I pulled a suitcase out while Xander sat on my bed, staring at her, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Why?” He asked, then followed her into her room, begging her to change her mind.

Earlier, Xander and I had argued, then we had failed to clean something. My Mother had proclaimed the usual statement of “You’re killing me!” and had bolted. Later she returned with the phonebook and made a show of looking up foster care programs and shelters. 

As I packed, I was sure she was bluffing. I had heard the statements so many times to “Pack your bags!” So many times I had pulled out a bag and stuffed what was important in it. She never followed through.

I was slightly surprised when, instead of retreating to her room, she loaded us and our suitcases into the car, and we were driven to The Childrens Shelter.

She said good-bye, left us with the woman at the front desk, and left, Xander grabbed my hand and cried. I glared at the door, then allowed myself to be lead to my new room.

If I told you that TCS was terrible, that the staff was cruel, the children awful, and that I was homesick, i’d be lying. We were a bunch of kids thrown together. We all had different backgrounds, but we all united in the fact that we were alone.

The staff was very friendly to us. They took us Ice Skating, roller blading. They drove us to doctors appointments and combed our hair. Xander and I listened to the staff talk about school, and where we would go. 

On our ninth birthday, they threw a big party. We got toys, and books. We had cake and ice cream in the kitchen area. Then our case worker came and took us to a seperate room, where our mother was waiting for us.

We hugged her and sat down at this huge table, where she had laid out slices of chocolate cake for us. We picked at the cake and talked to her about how we were doing, but the entire time I remember wondering why she was there, after all, she had told us that once we were in foster care, we would never see her again.

The next morning our Case worker told us that we were going home in a few days. We were there for respite, not foster care. I stared at her, angry and shocked. We were supposed to be there until we graduated! They couldn’t send us back!

Suddenly I was unsure. Angry, again.

My mother came late at night to pick us up. Smiling at her, we tried to hide how disappointed we were to be going home. Xander pointed out that we still loved her, so it wouldn’t do any good to anger her before we even stepped in the door.

We curled up in the back seat, the quilts the shelter had given us wrapped around our shoulders, and we cried. We had been happy. We had been safe. Neither of us had been called stupid, or bastard, or white-trash. We hadn’t been kicked out, we hadn’t watched our mother have a seizure, we hadn’t accompanied her to the hospital to wait forever in those hard chairs. We had been promised foster care, and when it wasn’t miserable like she promised, she had taken it away. It wasn’t fair!

 While my mother talked cheerfully about how she had missed us, and had cleaned the apartment so we better not mess it up, I stared out the window at the stars, wiped my eyes and thought:  “Why?”

At the end of 7th grade, my mother decided we were moving to Oregon, in a tiny cultural city 15 minutes from the coast.

We were going to live in a hostel. A tiny hostel. We had the second biggest room period, with a room big enough for three beds and a t.v. We also had a luxury: a bathroom. We shared a community kitchen, and we frequently had no car.

This was during the time when my mother was “Passing Tumours”. She would kick us out of the room so she could scream or give herself coffee enema’s, and we would listen to music in the lobby, smiling like angels for the rest of the people who walked by us.

We went to school on the coast, so every morning we ran out the door happily at 6:15 a.m. I loved going to school, I don’t remember missing a single day. It was my only chance to get away, I had real friends, and I was getting a 4. again. But i’ll rave about school later.

This was the period where I realized that there was something not perfectly fine with my behavoir. I didn’t run around at all hours of the night like Alex, but I did other things. Unfortunetly, I soon began to think of these things as being ok because my friend Merrit talked about suicidal thoughts all the time, and how he’d do it. And the girls at camp talked about cutting whenever the counselors were gone, and how they did it, so in my eyes everything I did was justified.

So whenever my mother told me to “Get the fuck out you bitch!” I would go hide in the parks or the Rose Garden, and make plans to run away while scratching myself with whatever I had at hand.

However, I had someone who knew me better than anyone else. Xander.

He could find me no matter where I hid, and I always made a point to go somnewhere I never went with him, but magically he’d always show up and drag me home.

Where I would listen to her moan about how it felt like she was pushing a baby out of her uterus and the idiot docctors must have had bad equipment, or else they were lying to her, because none of their pelvic exams or ultrasounds came up with any tumours.

Then she’d have Xander ask saint germain about the tumour, and she’d have him ask about whether or not our hostel manager had a crush on her. Then she’d ask about her unborn son. (Anderson. The perfect child who didn’t actually exist)

When we left it was because the Hostel manager had let us down by leading my mother on. He had ‘betrayed’ all three of us, and we all felt angry and sad and it was ok to hate him.

In all actuality, he had never led my mother on, he was a decent guy, I never felt betrayed and I never hated him, even though it infuriated my mother that I didn’t.

One thing about me that has changed drastically: personal space. I have gone through periods where i’ve had the biggest room in the house, and periods where i’ve slept on a pallet next to my mothers bed.

When we moved to Portland it was after a period where the three of us shared a single room for eight months. I had my own room, and it immedietly became my sanctuary. No one was allowed in. When they did come in, there was a specified area where they could stand and I watched them like a wolf, making sure they didn’t destroy anything. I was kind of over the top.

So, naturally Xander believed he was immune to my NO ONE IN MY ROOM rule. So he’d come in whenever and take my stuff, leaving my door open and my light on. Which were my pet peeves.

So anyway, one day he came into my room in the middle of the night, being quieter than usual. I woke up the moment he opened the door, because I was that neurotic about who entered my room, and I realized that he shut the door and left the light off.

So he came in, sighed, and then layed down on my bed. I’m laying there in absolute fury, too mad to say anything, and he just snuggles into my bed and my pillows and starts to go to sleep while i’m still glaring at him.

Then he opens his eyes, looks at me in real confusion and says:

“Ally?”

“Yes?” I hiss.

“Ally, what’re you doing in my bed?”

I sat up really straight. “Xander. You are in my bed.”

He looked at me with the look you would give a full grown person who doesn’t understand that the sky is up, not down.

“No, Ally, you are in my room, in my bed. Are you ok?” 

I growled in frustration and flipped the light on. “This is MY room! What are you doing?!”

Xander blinked, “Oh, Ally, this is your room.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Oh my god. I am so sorry.” He blinked up at me with an apologetic face. “I just drank too much tonight I think.” He stood up. “Night Ally.”

then he walked out, remembering to close the door, and leaving me very confused.

Yeah, I share a room with Rowan and Sunshine, and I’ve gotten over my whole sanctuary-don’t-touch-a-goddamned-thing-or-I-will-kill-you phase. We cram all our things on the same shelf, and while the lights still have to be off and the door must be shut, anyone can come in, I really don’t care anymore.

Since school has ended, I have been spending a lot of time with the children. Because I might be talking about them a little bit, I thought you all should know a little bit about them.

K and V have four children alltogether, two girls, Sunshine, my best friend, who is also a senior in High School, and Rowan, who is nine and has a very colorful personality. Then the boys, Everett, who is twelve, and Dennis, who is ten.

Then there is one of Rowan’s best friends, Eloise, who is eight and whom I babysit sometimes.

Something I’ve noticed: they are nothing like I was when I was their age, any of them. Of which i’m very, very glad.

When I was Eloise’s age, I had sat in the car while my mother had seizures and watched as the ambulance men took her away. I had been to six different schools and had lived in nine different houses that I could remember. I look at Eloise, who is in love with Hannah Montana, adores the Jonas brothers, and loudly proclaimed in the zoo the other day that “We must help the poor creatures before they’re all gone!”, and i’m so happy she has never seen anyone have a seizure, and i’m so happy she has a secure, safe place to live.

When I was Rowan’s age, I had sat for three days looking at what I thought was my mother’s corpse. I had shaved her legs for her, fed her, cooked for her, done all of her laundry, and my mother had pulled over on the sides of the road to yell at me to “Get the hell out of sight and never come back!” Rowan is very spunky, which sometimes gets her into trouble, but she lives in an environment where she is allowed to thrive. Her mother takes care of her, and she still believes that V has the power to do anything. 

When I was Dennis’s age, I had seen drugs, been in an environment with them, not because my mother wanted me to, but just because we lived in that neighborhood. I could differentiate the smell of pot from cigarettes (not so hard after all) and I could identify the prostitutes that walked on our corner. I had found out that two girls can have sex because two of my classmates got jealous and accused my friend and I of doing it, just because we were the best students in the class and got special treatment for it. My mother had begun telling me I was white trash and that I had ruined her life, and she began making Alex talk to Saint Germain in three hour long increments. He therefore got to ask questions about everything from her uterus to why the “E.T’s” were performing surgery on her. I am so glad Dennis is still a kid. He still loves Pokemon cards, and watching Anime, and he barely remembers to eat, let alone cook for everyone in the family.

By the time I was Everetts age, I had moved across the country to Washington. We had to deal with the fact that the Apocalypse was coming and everyone except us was going to die. Xander was a smoker, and I had fallen into a pattern of not feeling any emotion at all.

 I grew up feeling like I was being immature, and like I was selfish and stubborn. Now, as I look at the kids i’m around all the time, all I do is get angry. Not angry at my mother, not angry at society, just angry. Because if I was forced into a position of maturity at an early age, other kids were, and are still. Children should be allowed to be children for as long as they need to. I admit, I occasionally get frustrated with the kids, but when I take a deep breath and reflect a little more, i’m always glad that they have the ability to thrive at their own pace. =)

My Mother was an activist. So as a result, my brother, Xander, and I were activists. We went to rallies for pro-choice. We marched for the ERA. We woke up early and rode in the car stuffing envelopes to take to the Governor of Missouri and all the Senators.

We were on first name basis with the Governors secretary.

So one day, when I was eight, a bunch of women were hanging out talking about how much better life would be if we had a female president, so I proclaimed loudly “I’m going to be the first female president, and i’ll be the best in history!”

The women all laughed and shook my hand, telling me that if I wanted to be President I had to shake everyone’s hand.

So I did.

Whenever we were in a gathering of Activists, I would shake everyone’s hand and tell them I was going to be President someday, and would they please vote for me?

They all promised they would.

So, I began writing my philosophies down, and deciding what I was going to do once I was president (this was back hen I thought that being president would make me the most powerful person in the world) including free health care for everyone, and help for children of people with auto-immune diseases (this was also during the height of my mother’s physical illness). It also included putting a stable in the white house, but i was an eight year old girl so what do you expect.

So then I was reading this book about powerful women, and they interviewed girls ten years older than me, and about six out of ten girls decided they wanted to be the first female president, and, being eight, I had not expected anyone else to think of my plans.

So I decided that I would become a secret agent. Then I wanted to be Trinity from the Matrix. Then I wanted to be an actress, then I wanted to be a writer/photographer.

I’m stuck on that last one.

College is coming up really fast. I have less than one year to decide where i’m going, how i’m getting money, and what I want to major in. I know I really want to get a job travelling. Photographing for National Geographic is probably my dream job, but I don’t know how to get there.

Any advice? Any ideas? Any college/financial aid ideas. I’d love to hear them.

I was in the third grade when I had my first encounter with drugs.

My mother had been giving us the NO DRUGS talk for years, and so we knew every single way to say no to drugs.

Being nine though, we had to practice saying no to drugs by playing. So, my brother and i would take turns being the dealers and the unsuspecting or suspecting buyer. Our games usually went like this:

Dealer: Hey man! Want to buy some Grass or Weeds man?

Customer:  Oh, you sell lawn supplies?

Dealer: No man, I sell the green stuff!

Customer: Grass?

Dealer: Yeah! Grass!

Customer: Well, my lawn does look a llittle yellow..

Dealer: Allright man, here’s some grass!

(Dealer puts a bag into customers hand)

Customer: ARE THESE DRUGS!?!

Dealer: Yeah man, they are! Man.

Customer: I am not going to do these, I have better ways to spend my time, and drugs ruin your life!

(Customer throws bag at dealer, runs away)

 

So yeah, this was how we spent our afternoons while our mother was asleep.

It also didn’t help that we went to a school in the “Ghetto” of Kansas City. We went to this Italian cultural school, but the neighborhood was kind of shady. At recess there were always guys hanging around willing to pay any random student to hold their paper bag and wait for a man named ‘Roscoe’ to come by and get it.  Occasionally we would find needles and tourniquets lying around, until eventually recess was permanently cancelled.

One day my brother and his friend found two bags of this powdery stuff. My brother’s was white, his friends was orange, and they decided it was marijuana.

So they went to lunch, and made a big show of sprinkling it into their food and eating it while the rest of us watched in disgust.

Then someone tattled that two of the boys had brought marijuana in plastic bags to school, and my brother’s friends father (who was the sheriff) came to strip search both boys and do tests.

Turns out the powdery stuff was chalk dust. 

After this my brother became the leading ‘no drugs’ person for a while. Later when we actually moved into the ‘ghetto’ he was always on the lookout for them. We’d go through clouds of pot smoke on our way up to our third story apartment, and we’d sit on the fire escape and watch dealings happen in our parking lot.

He’d always tsk and say with the voice of someone who’s been there, “They shouldn’t do that.”