Our Family Collapsed: A Prologue

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My life was pretty normal, once.

Sure, me and my sister had different fathers, and I never knew mine, but that didn’t stop us from being a regular family. Lots of kids have step-parents and siblings.

When my mom got remarried and my sister was born, things started to feel whole in my life. My sister must have been around 4-5--a couple years older than I was when she was born--when our little suburban home started to fall apart. Mysterious visitors, locking the doors, and hiding in the basement were some events that lead up to it.

Mom smoked weed and cigarettes in the house, step dad drank. Most of the time they seemed pretty cool; hanging out, drinking beers with the neighbors, occasionally smoking a joint with one our relatives and teenage cousins. Fighting wasn’t always often. It usually happened after our step dad had one too many, and did something stupid (like take a piss off the balcony) to make mom upset. Then the belligerent yelling and accusations would begin. Yelling at mom, telling her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, she’s on barbiturates, and she’s just high.


We witnessed our little family begin to collapse. Mom pulled me out of school when I was 10. She wanted to “home school” me because traditional education wasn’t ever befitting. My sister, however, had just started kindergarten. The first few weeks of it were almost ordinary. My mom would leave me large, 1000 page hardcover books and leaflets of lessons and homework to accompany. I liked reading and was a reclusive, curious young girl, so it was easy for me to be alone for hours studying. Before long, though, lessons and books became less frequent.



I had read almost every book in the 5th grade curriculum. I loved science, the arts and literature, even a little bit of history, but always avoided math. My step dad was the parent that was better at math, and I was always too intimidated and disaffected by him. At that point, I had still never called him “dad,” and everyone thought that I was strange because of it. I didn’t come to him for anything, and my mom had cut-off talking to me. Dad would be at work all day, my sister would be at school, and my mom would be smoking weed in her room, or having company.


She had a friend named Tina, who was about 20, that often came over to smoke pipes and menthol cigarettes, while dancing in the living room to blaring pop music, 80s ballads, and The Beatles. Eventually it seemed like she lived with us, watching me and my sister in the evenings and inviting her friends (mainly young men) over. I remember attempting to show them my drawings, and wanting to bond with her, yet I was constantly brushed off-- by seemingly every adult in my life at that point.




Soon it seemed like Mom was drifting apart. Getting closer to her new friends, and farther away from us. Things grew quieter, colder. Many nights she wouldn’t come home at all. My step-dad, sister and I would watch adult swim--or movies he obviously pirated onto dvds-- cuddled up in blankets on the couch, waiting for her to come home. Even when she was home, our parents never slept in the same bed. Mom would retreat to her room, while dad slept on the couch, often with my little sister. I could never fall asleep with the TV on; I’d wait for them to fall asleep, creep into our shared bedroom, and climb up onto the top bunk. I was accustomed to being alone.

It was painfully obvious their marriage was falling apart. After 10 years of being a parent, she resigned her responsibilities of being a mother, and a wife. She had lots of old and new friends, that she would rather be getting high with. My mom was unfaithful for months. Leaving for days, weeks at a time, only coming home to “visit” us, and even sometimes taking me and my sister with on one of her exploits. We’d go to whoever’s house and be scarce until she was done socializing. Only one day, she had enough. Sick of returning home, she decided it was time for her to leave. She couldn’t stand living with her husband anymore--the only father we had ever known. As children with no free will, or control of the universe, we left with her.

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Read Part II here: How Me And My Little Sister Got Kidnapped
Read Part III here: Getting Separated From My Sister

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