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. =)

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.”

 

I have the utmost respect for all religions. I acknowledge the possibility that every single one of them might be true. So before you read this please note that I am not judging my experiences on the religions/beliefs/practices in those ways of life involved. I am just expressing my point of view. 

So when I was little my family was mostly christian. We went to Unity on Christmas and Easter and we were happy. Then, later, my mother told us about the Gods and Goddesses.

I already knew something about the other Gods, being an avid fan of Xena. I thought that they should come down and interact with me. My mother then told me that no, they weren’t like Xena, I couldn’t just go to a temple and call them and have them physically appear. Gods were busy, like people.

So for a little while we believed in Gods. My mother had her goddess, Hera, my brother had Pan. I never quite found one I liked, my mother told me to close my eyes and ‘hear’ the one who suited me best, so I opened them and said “Aphrodite!” and she said no, Aphrodite was not my Goddess, I was watching too much Xena.

Then she decided we were going to a new temple. This one had Jesus and Saint Germain. Unlike Gods and Jesus, apparently Saint Germain could just drop everything and be at my mothers beck and call constantly. He was always in her head, and later it was expected that he would be in our head too.

The one thing about the Temple though, was that we were all supposed to be ‘holy’. So everyone who went to the temple was supposed to wear white only.

My family didn’t own white. 

So there was a room full of angelic, lightly clad people who looked they way ‘holy’ people should. Then there were the three people in the back who were dressed exclusively in navy blue and black. Scary much?

Then eventually the Temple was not the right place for us anymore. So we moved on to a period where we met with Hare Krishna’s, then the self realization people who followed Paramahansa Yogananda.

Yogananda was my favorite, because it was mostly visualization and meditation.

Meanwhile, Saint Germain was talking to mother, telling her what to do and why she couldn’t swallow. He told her to go to a retreat in Washington for a week. So she did, and we stayed with friends.

When she came back she could swallow. She told us that she had found a holy place, the world was ending soon and the only way to survive was to buy two thousand dollars worth of food and move to Washington, where we would eventually build a concrete bomb shelter and live underground while civilization was purged.

I was eleven years old when we picked up everything two weeks later and moved.

So then we moved up to Washington, in the middle of the rain forest. It was absolutely beautiful and my mother decided that in order to save us she was going to have us go through the retreat too. 

I actually almost liked it. I loved the rainforest. I would go out all day in big rubber boots and tramp around playing. Sometimes with my brother, sometimes by myself. I could learn to live with the knowledge that we would be the last humans alive.

Then Saint Germain told my mother that that way of life was unholy. That it was a sham. There was another way of life that was the real way of life.

So we moved to the coast and pursued that way of life, which sometimes balanced mother out, except for the fact that we were being constantly watched by the FBI.

The big black helicopters that flew over the beach weren’t because of the beach, they were because of my mother, our lines were tapped too apparently, and we had to be careful about what we said. But it would all be ok. 

After the rainforest though, my mother was different, she began acting worse, violent even. She’d begin hitting us on the head, pulling me around by my hair, throwing things at us, slapping us. She also began using worse words. Swearing became a constant when she was in one of her moods, until I was called Bitch more than any other nickname she used on me.

Then we moved down to the Oregon coast, and then to Portland. Where she stayed in her current way of practicing, and I began to develop mine.

I was in freshman year when I decided I was going to be pagan, and I began practicing.

Her previous statements of “You can be whatever religion you want to be.”  became “You know those Gods aren’t really Gods right?” A couple times she accused me of conversing with evil spirits, and when she was really mad at me, she decided I was possessed.

Imagine what that did for my self-esteem. Unfortunetly, This was also around then time I began really utilizing my unsafe coping skills, so my mother had even more reason to justify her belief that I was possessed. My depression seemed to her a manifestation of all the evil spirits messing with me, and she believed I needed to immedietly switch over to her way of thinking. 

I didn’t. I continued to stick with the paganism, because it gives me a freedom and a sense of security.

 So yeah, i’ve lived with a bunch of different religions, a bunch of different ways of worshiping, and while it has been extremly colorful, in the end all it has done is teach me tolerance and respect. I’ve decided to land on pagan for a while, give it a couple of years before I settle down or move on. I don’t really feel holy, I never really have, but maybe I don’t have to.

 

 

My mother was not always crazy. Actually, she was the best mom anyone could hope for when we were little.

My mom was amazing. She was a chef, and a good one. She was the type of woman who had power, and charm and beauty. If I was scared as a little girl all I had to do was go near her and I felt safe. She was amazing.

Sometimes when she worked at night she would leave us at our babysitter Gloria’s. Then at midnight she would pick us up and smile, always smelling of the restruant she worked at (a blend of mac and cheese, pie and hamburger) and night. She would smile, take us out to the car and drive us to Dunkin Donuts so we could pick out a treat for being up late.

Once, we were in the car, and it was really hot, and we looked up at the full moon, and our mom smiled at us and loaded us up in the car to “chase the moon” and we did. For hours. Until we got out to the observatory and looked at the stars through their telescopes.

She was also the best storyteller. Not about fairytale princes and enchanted castles. That was Disney’s job. She told us stories about her life as a chef student, her life as a high school student, her family, her pets. She told us personal stories that had more meaning to us than the constitution, and we loved it. We had our favorites and we’d request them like songs.

As far as i’m concerned, she also made sure we didn’t grow up jaded. We travelled constantly, and we were forced to sit through four hour long symphonies. Mozart and Vivaldi were just as important to us as The Indigo Girls and Styx. Who were Gods as far as we were concerned.

We didn’t know our father very well, and while we mourned his absence, we could forget him sometimes. It was the three of us against the world.

But it’s the nature of the world to change, and ours did. In the worst and most effective sort of way. I’m still hurt and angry at my mother. That’s what  some of this blog is about. Maybe even most, but before I go telling about all the stuff that came later, it’s important that you know my mother was not always the way she is, and maybe part of whats so upsetting is knowing the way she was before, and wishing she could go back to the way she was. When she was my mommy.