white noise

My step-mother is not the most people-savvy person in the world. Add in her flare for codependency and she becomes hard-core gullible. I’m never sure if she can’t take care of herself, or if she won’t. Either way, she’s easy to take advantage of and people such as friends, relatives, my sister, or just about anyone looking for a victim will take advantage of her. It infuriates me.

She infuriates me.

When it came to my sister’s mental welfare in 1996, I had no choice but to resort to threatening her. My father was buried in his speed addiction and the Bi-polar had him so far out in orbit that he was a danger, if not physically (which I believe he was), then certainly spiritually and emotionally. When Chelsea’s school counselor came to me because of my step-mom’s lack of action, I had no choice, I had to act.

I’ve been a lot of ugly things in my lifetime, but nothing quite so ugly as the moment I looked Barbie straight in the eye and said, “you’ve been playing this bullshit game with my father for almost two years now and you’re fucking with my sister’s well being. Either do something about it fast or I’ll pack Chelsea’s and my bags and you will NOT see us again. The two of you can live your fucked up lives without the two of us.”

Chelsea was only 12 then. When I related the story to her when she was 18, she just looked at me and asked, “why didn’t you just do it?” My friend, Randy, asked me the same question at the time. Why didn’t I?

Could I have changed the course of my sister’s life if I had? Would she have graduated from high school? Would she have stayed away from speed? Stayed out of juvenile detention? Stayed off of welfare? Walked away with a better self-image? Would she see herself as a better person?

Between the abuses I suffered before I left my birth-mother at the age of 10, to the time I left working at the jail in September of 1998, my whole life was about fighting to stay alive — about survival. Maybe not always a physical struggle, but certainly an emotional or spiritual one. I am an extremely aggressive personality. But, thankfully, for the most part I’m only retaliatory — I won’t start a fight just because I can. I also consider myself a fairly patient person. I’m not, however, properly assertive.

I used my character, Lucinda Rae Thompson a.k.a. “Lucky” Thompson in a short story once, and upon reading the story over a few years later, realized I’m a lot like her. While she was having dinner in a diner, a man at the counter started harrassing her … not super aggressive, but Lucky isn’t really a social character. She told him to leave her be and he decided that was quite rude of her. He continued speaking to her and flirting (being just a wee bit obnoxious about it) so, in response, Lucky stuck her fork in his thigh.

I had a similar incident with a truck driver at a cafe in Olancha when I was fourteen. It was my first job waitressing and the truck driver decided he needed to pat my ass. I asked him nicely to keep his hands to himself (keep in mind I’m the survivor of extensive sexual abuse and at that time I believed the only good man was a dead one). When I came back to the table to refill his coffee cup, he decide to pat my ass again, only this time he rubbed it. Well, the coffee pot just kinda slipped off the rim of his cup and splashed half that pot onto his crotch — ooops! The worst of it was when my boss (also a stupid male) tried to tell me I had to put up with it. My father had a different opinion when I told him the situation.

I hadn’t realized how much of Lucky’s story was writing about myself. I used to leave poetry in bathroom stalls in her name. But, unlike me, Lucky was wild and completely untamed. She never really found a place in civilized life.

Ever since I left the Inyo County Jail, I’ve struggled to change who I am. I don’t know if working at the jail altered me, or if it was the past abuses finally coming to the surface, or the constant stress of those last 5 years — or if it was the culmination of everything — but I was definitely a broken Breece, and I didn’t think there was going to be any fixing me. A wreck physically, emotionally, spiritually … yeah — there’s no doubt that if Sharon and Howard hadn’t stepped in, I’d be a dead puppy right now.

Or maybe just living under a new identity. But, either way, I’d have killed the person I was then.

I haven’t felt or seen any progress for a long time, though. I thought I’d hit a wall. Spiritually, my world seemed blank. Not empty, just … featureless or colorless. I heard no sort of god voice anymore and wondered if I’d stopped believing. In God. In myself. Have I learned to be assertive instead of aggressive? (you’ll have to pardon my contempt; it’s too easy to think that it’s just some candy-ass political correctness for beating around the bush instead of getting to the truth).

I railed at my step-mom the other day for handing a couple $something-K over to her brother without any records to indicate she’d done so. She couldn’t even remember how much. Yes, THOUSANDS, folks. She thinks it’s over X-thousand but under Y. He put it in a CD under his name, but now he won’t produce any documentation from the bank. Gee, I wonder why. He tells her the bank won’t give the paper work to him. Hmm. Usually with that kinda money, I’m guessing the bank management is going to meet you at the door with a red carpet, maybe even offer you a cup of coffee and a place to sit down.

Yes, I’m mean.

I didn’t say it out loud. I do love her. I really do. But I yelled. I railed. “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!” Her brother recently signed a promissory note stating he owed her X-amount, but for all she knows, it could be twice that. For all she knows, it could be non-existent. She doesn’t have anything about the term of the CD, the interest rate, nothing, nada, zip. *sigh*

But, I had to call her back the next day and apologize. Really, it’s none of my business and I shouldn’t have gotten excited or upset. She laughed. She said a few golden words that made me feel the best I’ve felt all year (yes, I know, it’s only February).

“You thought that was bad? That was nothing compared to ten years ago.”

Neat. :)