Dancing Queen

She is the dancing queen, young and sweet only 17, but not for much longer. My birthday is this week, and I’m going to be 18. Officially an adult, legally allowed to smoke my lungs black, to gamble away all my money, to vote in this awful election, to get my own loans, to go to a strip club, to get married! The list goes on. Now, I’m not going to actually go out and get a pack of cigarettes or run off and elope or even visit the strip club, nonetheless, it is still exciting.

I’ve always had a tremendous amount of freedom in my life. My mom let me do nearly anything (except walk to the park alone because I guess that’s very dangerous) as a kid. I got a tattoo at 17, I traveled on my own at 15, I’ve even drank alcohol with my mom. Going to college wasn’t a huge shock to me because when I was going to go somewhere or have a sleepover, I asked my mom out of formality. I knew she trusted me (a trust I earned). Turning 18 is exciting, but also a bit mundane. I’m already on my own at college, really the only thing new is that I’m going to vote. However, that’s a political can of worms I am not opening on this blog.

I’ve never really liked my birthday to be honest. It’s so close to my favorite holiday (Halloween) that it almost feels in the way. I’ve never been a huge birthday person, mostly because I hate gifts and attention. Okay, as a birthday gift to all of you, I will get real personal.

My dad is a jerk. Gosh I so hope he never finds this blog. Basically, he has done a lot to hurt me throughout my life. My parents are divorced, that’s no secret, but my dad and I never got along well. Throughout my life he made me feel worse and worse about myself. He’d indirectly call me fat or tell me I’m too short to be pretty or that I hurt him so badly whenever I couldn’t come over to his house one weekend. It wasn’t too bad, I could handle it. However, he would always get me cheap gifts. I would come to his house and a cheap CD player would be on my bed, or a coloring book, or a pack of gum. Stupid little things he would get me to buy my love. Stupid little things to make himself look like the better parent. Meanwhile he would neglect child support and never open the college fund he was court ordered to put money in every month for me. Then I made a mistake. I went on a suicide hotline one night, not because I was going to hurt myself, just because I needed someone to talk to. It’s probably my greatest regret. I talked about my dad to the person online. I told them everything. Things I had never ever told anyone before in my entire life. I told them about everything he did, I guess they thought it was bad enough to find out my name and call CPS. CPS investigated my life. They interviewed me, my brothers, my dad, my mom, my step parents. The tore my life apart. I lied. I told them how much I loved my dad. I told them what a great father he was. They, in turn, told me I was wasting their time. I was a perfectly happy and healthy teen, and I shouldn’t have gotten a suicide hotline involved. After that, everything got so much worse.

He sued for custody of me. He lost and won. He got more custody of me, but not full. I had to see him every Tuesday and Thursday and every other weekend. Things got bad. He would do the same things to me, more often. The things he said were harsher.  I never loved my grandma who had just passed away. I hate my step mom. I don’t care about my step brothers. My mother is evil. My step father is a nut case. Why don’t I work out more? But mostly he would tell me about how much I’ve hurt him. He would tell me over and over and over and freaking over that I didn’t love him nearly enough. He told me that so many times that it became true. He would say that all I ever want to do is hurt him. My mom has turned me against him. He would say how he knows I’ll try and never see him again when I go to college. He knows I’ll keep his grandkids away from him one day. Finally we got into the biggest fight we’d ever been in.

He came into my room and started yelling the same things he’d always said calmly to me. I hate him, I hurt him, I don’t care about him, my mom ruined his life, my mom turned me against him. He was kicking my door over and over. When that wasn’t enough, he opened my door and slammed it closed and opened it again and slammed it back again and again. To this day every slam of a door is a fist clenching my heart in its palm. I can’t hear the slam of a door without jumping and remembering. I texted my mom to pick me up as soon as she could. I ran out of my room and he ran after me. I made it outside before fear froze me completely. All those awful things he had done to me. I don’t know what happened next. My mom said she found me laying and shaking on the pavement with him trying to pick me up and hug me.

After that, I got his custody taken away. That was the summer of junior year. My lawyer told me that if I still want child support, I have to still see him sometimes. My mom told me he’s still my dad so I have to see him. I would see him every few month my senior year. Now that I’m in college, I talk to him more than ever. He’s near my college a lot because of his job and he texts me almost every other day. I broke my step brothers’ hearts by leaving. I made my dad’s side of the family hate me. I’m not making that up either, my cousins sent me a letter describing, in detail, how much they hate me. They included picture of me and on the backs of the picture they said horrible things to me. What kills me is that after I went and made my whole dad’s side of the family hate me, I still have to see him. In high school I used to say to myself I only have to go through three more years, only two more years, one more year. Now I find myself doing that again. Only four more years until I can have my degree and go anywhere in the USA in search for a teaching job. I’m hoping my willingness to leave my current state will help me find a job. A lot of teachers can’t find jobs because they want to stay home, however I want to be almost anywhere but home. Hopefully that helps me.

So I’m sorry I said all this stuff. I know it wasn’t the happiest of posts I could’ve made for my birthday, but I share so much here, it hasn’t made sense to me that I never said this before. I apologize about some of the blanks in this story, there are still some things I’m not comfortable sharing. I left out a lot of things because I just don’t like to be reminded. If anything maybe my story will be a comfort to anyone out there with family issues. I know what it’s like to have no one believe that you are being abused mentally or physically (I don’t like to say that I’ve been abused because then people assume things, and I know I had it easy compared to some kids. While my dad did harm me a lot mentally and physically, I know it’s nothing next to some stories. Also, my dad always victimized himself and told me I was hurting him, I refuse to play the victim). I know what it’s like to have to lie so that you don’t hurt other people. If you ever need someone to talk to, I am here for you. I wouldn’t trust suicide hotlines anymore, but I would never disclose information to anyone. I promise my next post will be more upbeat! I think I’ll talk about Halloween next time. I loooove Halloween so it should be a bit happier. Happy birthday to me, I love you guys, here’s to another year of blogging!

-AcuteAnimosity ❤

Friends

I apologize, there’s no story or poem in this post, so if that’s what you’re looking for, I promise to get a new one soon! What I want to talk about today is some more college things. Specifically college friends.

Basically when you get to college you are freaking out. Everyone is a bit of a hot mess when they get to college as a freshman. The biggest worry (for those going to a college where few to no friends attend) is friends. You worry about keeping your high school friends, making college friends, and finding people who are best friends. It actually isn’t too hard to make friends at college. You literally just have to jump into a group, which isn’t the easiest, but if you go to one meet up thing you will find other lonely people. That’s how I ended up with Jenny and Madison.What is hard, is finding best friends. I love Madison and Jenny to death. They are both beautiful people inside and out, but sometimes I feel like they connect with each other more than they do with me. They always include me, but they like the same tv shows, they love tumblr, they are just very alike. They have so many things to talk about regarding the things they like, but they don’t exactly share the same likes as me. Which is great! Having diverse friends is so important, but I want someone who I can talk to about the things I love. I know they would both listen to anything I had to say, but it wouldn’t be a two-way conversation. I want to talk about musicals and singing and writing and hockey and League of Legends and Game of Thrones and snowmobiling and so much more. They would listen to me until their ears bled but it wouldn’t be a real conversation. I know this because I listen to them talk about Steven Universe and their interests, and I am never able to contribute much to those chats. I also need to find someone with a similar walk of life. The three of us look identical if you look superficially. We are middle class, white, female, from the same state. However, both Jenny and Madison have parents who are still together. In fact, I have yet to meet any other kids with divorced parents here. That’s a big part of who I am. Sometimes I need to talk about it. About my step brothers, my half brother, my step momster, about all these things that they really don’t understand. Again, they would be there for me in a heart beat if I told the I needed to get these things off my chest, but it isn’t the same. Finding your best friend in college can be hard. I’m still learning how to, but I’m not giving up. I have four years to find the people who will be my friends for life.

Okay, I want to jump ship completely and talk about high school friends. It’s very very very difficult to keep up with them. They all have gone to different places and are trying to meet new friends and find a balance in this new life, but just letting them go is wrong. My main high school group still have a group chat together, although it is slow and we don’t talk every day. We are trying to still be a part of one another’s lives. We saw each other over break, and we are making plans for next break. It’s important to have people back home.

I seriously went into this post full-steam, but now I’m tired. Such is the life of a college student I guess. I will try to post more. Also, there are no views on my last post “Battles” I worked really really hard on that one guys. It would mean the world to me if you checked it out and left some thoughts on it. Thank you guys!

-AcuteAnimosity

Battles

Don’t tell me they’ve

“Lost their battle.”

How can you fight

A battle when

There are no

Armies on either side?

There is no clashing of swords

Only the collision of thoughts

There is no popping gunfire

Only loaded feelings

There are no commanders

There is no support

There is only a single

Person sitting

On the battlefield

Armed with soley

Their skewed judgement

To consult with

Don’t tell me that’s a

Damn battle

That’s 6am unable to

Stay asleep, haunted by

Their own mind

That’s 10am surrounded

By people, yet still absolutely alone

That’s 3pm coming home

And  lying to your mother

When she asks how

You day was

That’s  9pm staring at the

Ceiling and wishing

It would concave in

So far that it could

Scoop you out

Of bed and cradle

You beneath the stars

That’s 2am praying

That you won’t ever

Have to do it again

In what battle

Does a soldier

March for years

And gain no ground?

This is no battle

It begins with the intention

To destroy its own own side

It begins with the

Sobs of a frightened,

Lonely person

Not with a war cry

In a battle, a soldier know

What they are walking into

In a battle there is no uncertainty

But this holds only doubts

Doubts that pile up

One on another on another

Until you’re left

Trembling under the

Weight of each loathsome thought but

The one thing this and a battle

Have in common

Is that the both end

But what kind of battle

Ends with friendly fire?

 

-AcuteAnimosity