Ctrl+A, Delete. I just made a cooshy journal about the current happening in my life but then said, “Wait, why am I trying to sum up happenings when I don’t even know my life.” So, here we are. If you ever wanted to understand me, this is it. This is a tell all. And I don’t care who reads it.
I’m from a small town. I usually gloat about it at parties when people ask where I’m from. I never say town. I always say Harbour Grace. Why the fuck do I do that? I hate everybody in that place and I never intend on going back there. I guess I’m just dishonest like that. I like to say things just because I know it’s more interesting than the truth.
My ex-hometown is a shithole. There are some good memories, sure, but I was a kid. I was so naive. My mom was a drunk. My dad was a drunk. My sister and brother acted like it was nothing. My mom would get a different personality when she started drinking. Something that would drive me insane. I’m using that phrase literally, not figuratively. I couldn’t control and still can’t control any actions when she’s drinking. I am absolutely powerless in my body. So maybe I provoked her the night it all went to shit. I’m not saying I didn’t. But it happened. I was thirteen years old and I had the biggest physical altercation with anyone I’ve ever had in my life. Sure, she beat me around before, but never like this. It was the final straw. I called the pigs on her, and we were taken away.
It’s funny the things you remember the most vividly. I don’t remember much at all from when I lived in Harbour Grace, but I remember sitting in the cop car outside my home. Alone. My eyes filling to the brim with tears and the streetlights turned into orange and yellow streams. I remember thinking to myself how much my life was going to turn from this point on. For better, for worst. I was thirteen. There’s only a few more moments in my life I can remember as precise as this.
From that night on mother couldn’t live with me and dad. Deemed unfit, I suppose. She moved to Bay Roberts, but dad had other plans then to babysit me in her absence. He was going to teach up North and nothing was going to change that, not even if it meant me being put into the system. Can you feel the love? I had three choices, foster care, live with my grandparents in another loser town, or drop all charges against mother and live with her again. I chose the latter. She promised not to drink anymore. That lasted almost a year. Anyways, completely disgraced out of our tiny little shit town we packed up and moved to St. John’s. How did the whole town find out, you ask? I told one person, my best friend of the time. She told everyone. Thanks, babe. Best friends for life.
So, I’m living in St. John’s. New people, new school. Just me, my mom, and my sister. Ironically enough – I was zoned to go to the physically largest Junior High School in the city, so that didn’t help much. I hated all the new kids. They were all so stuck up. But anyways, I started getting a bad reputation early. I didn’t show up to school much. I hated it. I didn’t need to go. I’m smart. I can learn things on my own. It’s just the way I am. Not too far into my first year in town though, November, actually, I got hit by a car when I was walking to meet my mom for lunch (no friends at the time, remember). Another one of those moments I can relive over and over and it’s more vivid and detailed than the last. This one I wish I could forget more than the cop car, I swear. I remember crossing the road, a bang, the clouds in the sky, the gray pavement. I remember trying to get up, but couldn’t move. I remember people staring at me from far away but no one coming over to me. I remember screaming at them to stop staring. I remember my mom seeing me lying on the pavement, and then yelling at the man who hit me. The ambulance ride, where I laughed and said I hoped I didn’t get a full leg cast, but secretly being so scared that I’d never walk again. Waiting in the hospital with a stupid neg brace that only made me more uncomfortable. A little boy who couldn’t stop crying because he spilled hot soup all over himself. Being wheeled into X-Ray and lifted onto the table by the sheet under me, without a drop of morphine, not so much as an ibuprofen having my shattered leg be twisted in five different directions. The absolute worst memory of the whole experience though are the faces of the nurses while I screamed in pain as they twisted my leg around. Absolute horror. I don’t remember much about the pain itself. I mean sure, yeah, I can recognize it. They told me afterwards that I experienced 10/10 pain so I don’t really have much more to compare to it. I also remember playing hangman with my mom as I waited for more morphine.
I got a surgery, because my break wasn’t very clean they had to insert a pin or whatever. It’s really common. My room mate was the best. I really miss her sometimes. I always wonder what she’s doing now. I think her name was Miranda. She was from Bay Roberts. I really want to find her again someday. I tried facebooking her but it’s not much use when I’m not even 100% on her first name let alone her last.
I didn’t go to school much from there. Surgeries came and went. Physically therapy sessions I lost count of. I saw over twelve different doctors. I still experience pain today. In my hip. In my knee. In my back. There’s so much muscle death in that leg my knee cap can barely stay in place. I lived, though. They told me if I was one step further I could have been paralyzed, or died. I’m definitely thankful I’m not paralyzed. But am I thankful I lived?
Dad came home from up North and almost immediately mom got back on the sauce. It’s not as bad though, I mean, she leaves me alone now. I haven’t physically fought with her in a real long time. My dad drinks a lot now though. They’re both going to kill themselves. I can’t do anything. I won’t do anything. I want them to learn their lesson. Sure, I’ll miss them when they’re gone, terribly. I’m not stone cold. I just need some justice. I don’t care in what form. They get away with everything.
These two events in my life make me the person I am today. No, I don’t go to school much anymore. It’s real hard getting around for me. If I walk too much I get in a lot of pain. People tend to get sick of chronic pain sufferers. I mean they’re all sympathetic at first, but they get tired of it and lose interest. We’re still going through the same pain as we were in the first place, but it gets old to them. It’s hard. I wish they could understand.
I drink a fair bit. At least once every weekend if I can. I mean it’s always socially but it numbs it all, you know. Everything physical and emotional. It’s all gone. I love it. We all do.
I don’t talk about these parts of my life much anymore, and sometimes it’s good to remind yourself of the things that make you the way you are. Sometimes I’m a bitch. I can be really defensive. I can be really offensive. I hate a lot of people that I love, but I never miss the people that I have lost – and that’s the truth. Maybe someday I’ll meet someone worth missing. Expect more blogs from me. This isn’t the last you’ve heard. Now that you know me, maybe you’ll get to know some of the people in my life.
lesleyannchard. looking for new reasons to blog in a new year. be prepared for rants and ramblings you may not and very well are not intended to understand. lover of music. yeasayer, phoenix, ghostland observatory, rogue wave, tragically hip, santogold to name a few. a few television passions: the tudors, mad men, veronica mars, the x-files.
