I don't remember much from my childhood. It could be because I blocked most of it out, but occasionally an glimspe shows through. Like the day I accepted the fact that my family was never going to be together again, it was the day that one of my sisters explained to me why my mom left my father when I was 4 years old. Once you find out that your father sexually abused your two older sisters, you accept that the family is never going to be together again. Especially when your older brother doesn't believe it and sides with the father and blames the sisters for making it up. I never really noticed, having my own problems at 7-years-old of being sexually abused myself by different men. Which is a big part of why I have blocked out most of my childhood. But I remember that moment when I knew the family was never going to be together, I decided that some day, I was going to have my own family. A husband, kids, the whole package!! I even decided that if I ever have a boy, I was going to name him Max from Goof Troops. Use to love that show.
So Junior High comes and elementary schools mix together to create new classes with new classmates. A time where every teenager struggles to find their own identity. What am I? A jock? A cheerleader? A scholar? A rock star? Everybody wants to be somebody important, it's just a part of who they are. Everybody wants to feel as if they are going to change the world, not realizing that no matter what they did they were making a difference in somebodys world already. Which is when they get emotional. Personally, I just wanted to fit in with friends and enjoy creating fun schooltime memories. I didn't care if I was special or not, as long as I had my best friends beside me. So imagine my confusion when they started getting into 'magic.' And I'm not talking about Wicca, but the kind where they think that just by reading some words they think they can move mountains.... Literally. I waited for that phase to end with them, unable to comprehend everyones desires to fit in. I was never an ugly girl, and the popular crowd did try to force me to hang out with them, but I refused to ditch my best friends.... Which is more then I could say for them. But I waited a coupl years for them to come back to reality and their senses, and pick up where we left off. Only we didn't. Instead, there was forever a gap we could not ever fill where we didn't really understand each other anymore.
In High School, it was pretty much the same thing except physical. It seemed like at one point of time or another, everybody wanted to be a vampire. Why they wanted to be leeches and suck blood while living forever by themselves always confused me. I wanted nothing more but to be with somebody, and it seemed like it was working out. There was this nice boy that I thought was cute that asked me out, and of course I was thrilled to say yes! But then the nightmares from my childhood came back with a vengence and I realized that realizing my dream was going to be harder then it seemed if I get scared when being with a man. To make matters worse, I seemed to be getting sicker by the day. I started to drift away from my friends, them thinking that I was avoiding them when I guess I was, but only so I wouldn't worry them.
High School, like much of my childhood, seemed like a blur. There were days where I couldn't even remember which classes I even had. Or I would go to class, only feeling like it was my first day and not a month or so in. My nightmares got worse to the point of self-harm in my sleep. I dreamt of nothing but death, and different ways I would die. My mom finally started noticing and sent me to the doctors, all of them referring me to a different one, not really understanding what was wrong with me. They loaded me up on so many medications, that my friends didn't want anything to do with me, thinking I was a smoking weed to the point of being stupid. I started to just not care about anything anymore, feeling so much pain I honestly thought I was going to die before I graduated. I know students say that they are never going to make it out of there alive, but I honestly thought I wasn't going to make it. The sun and light gave me severe migraines which a brain specialist ended up giving me special extra strength migraine pills for since I grew amuned to advils when I was a child. I had to take that everytime I went out, and had to be in the sun or a brightly-lit room. And when I started to get immuned to those, the dose increased. I started having odd dizzy spells just from standing, which resulted in more medication. And then there was the medication they gave me just for sleeping. And to top it all off: I started hearing voices.
No, they didn't tell me to hurt people or anything like that. They sounded exactly like my friends and familys voices, except they were saying bad things about me. Apparently I was a drama queen, I'm faking everything, I'm a b***h for breaking my ex boyfriends heart, I'm never going to amount to anything, I can't take anything seriously, I'm never going to move out of the house and live off of mom forever, I'll never be able to take care of myself. Ugly, horrible, bad things that kept building up until I got soo sick, I coughed and vomited my own blood. When I went to the hospital, they put me on blood thinners and told me that I had a blood clot in my lungs. Me, not really knowing anything medical, just shrugged it off thinkink it wasn't a big deal. I went back to school, told everyone where I've been and why I wasn't there, they shrugged it off. In a room full of over 20 of my so-called friends, it was that moment that I realized how truly alone I was.
That's not even the life-changing event. Oh no, there is a point about my friends and their disillusions. Take my one friend, for example. She wanted to be a vampire. And when she got unhappy or depressed, she started cutting herself. I felt a huge urge to help this time. Not only because she was my best friend, but also because I felt bad because the knife she was cutting herself with was one I gave her for her birthday. I told her the truth, straight up: not only is there nothing good about being a vampire, but they exist just as much as her so-called 'magic' from Junior High. And I had to ask why she would want to live forever, if she couldn't even stand being alive at the moment? When she tried to argue me over the fact that she could be a vampire, I pushed her. I told her to drink some blood. After she ran out of excuses for me, she did so.
It was disgusting! She licked at the deep slash, and not only made a face of disgust but rushed to her bathroom where she vomited. She came back, apologized for being soo stupid and said that she realized I was right, and only sick and twisted people would enjoy it. And not to mention it tasted disgusting. After that day, she did more research on it and likes to point out facts occasionally about how disgusting of creatures vampires really were. I should have been relieved, only that was the start of my troubles. I should have been disgusted by the sight of her blood when she mad that cut to lick at it, only I stared at it in puzzlement. Why wasn't I disgusted? I just kept staring as if it was smooth chocolate coming out of her, not blood. She told me that the copper taste is horrible and any person would get sick off of it if it wasn't diluted. When she rushed out, she left blood drip trails in her wake. I always told myself it was only curiousity, as I dipped a finger into the first drop and stuck it in my mouth. But as I licked and sucked the blood off my finger, I felt my throat dry. I continued to do the same to the other drops, until there was nothing left. I felt disgusted and horrified with myself. Disgusted that I actually licked blood splats off the floor. Yes, it was clean, but it was still disgusting. And horrified by the idea of liking it and wanting more.
I tried to tell myself that it was a phase, another chapter in my life I had a delayed reaction to. Maybe this is how it started with my friend and her vampire obsession? Only I still hated them and preferred werewolves, and I couldn't do the same experiment as her. I didn't fear not liking the blood and being just another normal person like she and others did, I feared that I would enjoy it and confirm that something soo fictional existed. And wouldn't it be just my bad luck that the one person that wants nothing more then a normal family life would be the one person who couldn't have it?? I couldn't believe it, wouldn't!! So instead I pretended that I never did enjoy her few drops of blood. I pretended that I was as healthy as the other students. I pretended that I wasn't fixated on others blood when they hurt themselves. And most of all, I pretended that I wasn't as excited as a kid on christmas whenever I accidentally cut myself. And when I eagerly licked up the blood, I just told myself that it was because there were no band-aids closeby and I didn't want to get blood on myself. I became very good at lying. Not only to others, but to myself.
