#jim: my dad abandoned me and my mom on my 5th birthday | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

what-soul · 7 years

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My life story

I was born November 10, 1995 at 2:03 AM in Baltimore, Maryland. From what I can remember from my dad's "birthday story", nothing too significant happened. My parents were in their early 20s and I'm fairly sure they weren't prepared for the financial responsibility, because I've been told they sold my mom's CD collection and we ate PB&J and other filler staple foods. I'm pretty sure that's why I can't stand the idea of a PB&J sandwich - I had too many as a kid. We lived in Ducketts Lane in Elkridge, soon joined by some of my cousins who I grew up with. I remember a nasty, broken toilet in a basement with wood paneling and willow trees off in the corner. There was only 3-story townhouses there.

Ginny was born, and my dad realized that if he wanted to be in the military, he had to join before he had more than 2 kids. So he was at training camp when Katie was born, doing crazy stuff like swimming with 50 lb backpacks and running through chemical fumes without a mask. We moved around during this time, I think to Tennessee and Kentucky? I have no memories beyond a pre-K daycare (where I made a scarecrow with brads for joints) and the neighbors having those electric kid-sized cars.

In Kindergarten I went to Rockburn Elementary at 4, due to Maryland's strange age cutoff at the time. All I remember was that our class was near the entrance, the room was big and empty in the middle, and a caterpillar once pooped on my hand while I was admiring it on the playground. I don't remember anyone from the class. First grade is a blank, but second grade...

The second grade area was a bunch of dynamic classrooms with vibrantly colored sliding walls and a larger central area where we could buy lunch. They offered either a special that day or pizza, but I usually brought a packed lunch. I remember playing mandala with a tomboy of a black girl who scraped her knee once and showed us how it was getting puss. That's where I met Nicholas Eagles, who was my best friend for the year. I'd go over to his house every week or two where we played the pokemon card game and some Nintendo games. He had a pogo stick, but I couldn't figure out how to use it. At one point, we climbed up the big evergreens in his front yard and I fell, getting caught by branches a couple feet below. He once admitted that he thought I was gross when he first met me, though I don't know why.

Then we moved to Pennsylvania for my third year in school. I don't remember our house but I remember the area. It was next to a small pond with cattails and the backyard led to a huge patch of undeveloped land. We found some kids playing there far away, and I became friends with the older brother who enjoyed hacking together weird electronics. There I got into Yugioh. Ginny's hermit crab died and we had a fancy funeral for it, complete with a coffin made of mud bricks molded from legos. Our parents bought a wooden playground, I think?

I don't remember much from school, just some event snippets. Bits of hallways filled with seasonal candles in bags, monthly school events like a Jim Henson style play about how drugs are bad, an uninviting cafeteria... I know I was called "booger boy" for picking my nose, but I've lost the emotional context. According to my parents, I had problems with my teachers because the Pennsylvania 3rd grade curriculum was the same as the Maryland 2nd grade curriculum, and I liked to be the teacher's pet. I'd raise my hand for every question because I always knew the answer and wanted to say it, which annoyed the teachers because they wanted the other kids to have a chance. School was apparently bad enough that we moved at the end of the year to West Virginia.

I had started the gifted program in 2nd grade, but I remember absolutely nothing from then. For 3rd grade, I remember I was called out of class some days of the week to go to a room for a gifted class, but don't remember anything. For 4th grade, all I remember was the room we went to and that I had a very hard time with math and remembering the names of shapes.

It was Shepherdstown Elementary School, and we mostly did stuff in the 4th-5th grade hallway, which I remember very well. The walls were lined with lockers and there were... 6? classes total. In 4th grade I only remember an older teacher I had for English, in which we read Roald Dahl books. I think she was a hardass but I have no especially bad memories of her.

In 5th grade I had M(r)s. Lawrence at least, and Mr. Ebersol for gifted. I remember my friends better for this time than in 4th, even though they're probably the same. They were all in gifted for some reason. There was Levi Spickler, who was more of a rival than a friend. Sam Yates, a girl with bushy brown hair who hated chocolate and loved zucchini bread. Arlo, he was best friends with Levi and a very funny and sociable kid. His hair was perpetually messy, like a big brown afro almost. The only thing I distinctly remember from him was a joke he started saying "je veux une omelette du fromage", which is French for "I want a cheese omelette". No idea why that was funny, if it was. Then there was Merideth, an athletic girl who was a bit of an early bloomer.

Most of my memories were from the gifted class. We once acted out commercials, including one, "Don't be sad, get GLAD for all your kitchen garbage needs!" We would enact plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream. Or even write our own plays; one Levi wrote included a joke that flew completely over my head about a girl being "rapped on the head", to which everyone started knocking on the table with their knuckles.

In Ms. Lawrence's class we once made our own peanut butter chocolate candies for Halloween... That's all I got.

From 6th to 8th I was in Sheperdstown Middle School, less than a mile away from the Elementary School. I remember the layout of the building fairly well, but there are some fuzzy areas. It was mostly one long hallway going left and right from the entrance with some hallways jutting out from the forward direction. I remember Ms. Carter, a science teacher who adored me. She was a very large red-head who liked to wear excessive make-up and had a Ms. Frizzle vibe to her teaching methods. By this point I loved science, so I relished in raising my hand for every question. She eventually made a running joke out of it, saying she needed to call "1-800 dial a Robert!"

Next to Ms. Carter's room was a ramp down into a secluded area with a few classrooms, one of which was my... history class, and somewhere in that area was my sign language class. Or was it English? Gifted class was in a hallway directly in front of the entrance with Mrs. Wagner across the hall from the touch typing classroom. I mostly remember learning English, particularly the roots of words.

Then there was Mr... Marcin? An older science teacher who had a very dry, even cynical sense of humor but seemed to genuinely care about his job. And Mrs... Tracey? The 8th grade science teacher. I remember the cafeteria very well, as well as the gym - it was burned into my brain by the Pacers, an exercise we did twice a week where we'd run from one side of the gym to the other with increasing frequency.

In the 7th grade, my parents divorced. From what I can gather, my mom had caught my dad cheating multiple times, and then my dad caught her cheating with my stepdad. Of course, these were symptoms and the official explanation. Underlying that were personality incompatibilities, my mom's stress from generalized anxiety disorder without medication and raising 4 kids vs my dad's stress working a billion minimunm wage jobs just to support us. Abandonment issues, personal insecurities, projection, the works.

I know that when they announced it, they sat us all on the couch and told us about it very seriously. I barely remember it, but the memory paints it as feeling like a dream. From there, my mom moved into the basement while she found work (she was laid off) and housing while my dad bought a dog (Zoey) to fill the void. Eventually my mom moved to a rinky-dink apartment and later to a nice townhouse, and we went to each parent's house in shifts over the week.

9th grade... Was at Shepherdstown Highschool. I remember the cafeteria, a taller guy I was friends with, the entrance being near the library. That's all.

At this point my dad was laid off from his job as a professor at some university. In searching for another professor position, he had the option of going to New Mexico or Wyoming; he chose the former. After a few months of convincing, I decided to move out with him over the Summer for the opportunity of going to a good school and good college.

The time I spent from 10-12th grade blurs together. I remember quite a few teachers and classmates, but not when and where I knew them. The teachers I remember are my Spanish teacher (native speaker), Ms. McCoy (art teacher), Mr. B? (Chemistry teacher, very eccentric), Mr. Smith (science and CS teacher), Mr. DeWitt (AP Biology, he had extreme standards), and the dreaded Mr. Evans. Hello, yes? He tried to fail me out of high school by demanding that I not be allowed to take a replacement English class to substitute the grade I got in his.

The people I knew, I knew only some names and the rest were archetypes. Al of course, Ryan Sun (an asian guy who took it upon himself to become my rival, which unintentionally became a kind of bullying as I was too depressed to cope). For some reason I remember Kim Wong, another asian girl who was always near the top of the class. And Stephanie, I think her last name was something like Dijkstra, who I think was even better at programming than I was. Beyond them, the archetypes I remember were * a crazy-fun drug supplier who had some issues with her parents * a larger hispanic guy who had a very negative vibe and introduced me to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac * one girl from art who was like 7 feet tall but had normal proportions, so she looked like a mini-giant

At the same time, I was going to UNM for dual-enrollment, mostly math. My relationship with my dad was deteriorating; teen angst, stress from moving, depression, and lack of mutual understanding. Eventually he relented to getting me a therapist, which ended up being a (late) PhD child psychologist. I stopped seeing her when I turned 18 and went into college. To get away from my dad, I moved into the UNM dorms.

Sometime around here was when I got my first job as a student worker. First a temp job moving boxes, then as an IT admin assistant, and finally data entry and call redirection. Over the Summer I got a job with one of my mom's coworkers helping him research hobby electronics so he could make the most of his free time. All of these were full of shame because I didn't feel like I was working hard enough to justify the pay, and they all ended in ways I took personally. At the time they confirmed to myself all of my personal failings and screamed back that I was a loser who couldn't do anything right.

I think this is around the time my mom married my stepdad, and my dad married Kaya for tax reasons. Eventually they separated and Lindsey came in; they married a couple years later. I liked both stepmoms, and had no problem with remarrying. My stepdad however, I didn't dislike, but I found a very large disconnect with him. He clearly didn't enjoy children, and had a difficult time expressing emotions which made him extremely intimidating. There were even some interactions which unintentionally shattered my confidence, as he was a programmer and I thought I could talk to him about that.

College was a blur. I met up with Al again in a sociology class we shared, and through him and his sister Sarah, I made two more friends: Ariel and Tristan. They were the best friends I remember having, though it was mostly through Al. We shitposted about My Little Pony and Arnold Palmer tea. The first semester I passed, barely. I think I failed the next semester and planned to kill myself at the end because I thought my life was ruined. I exploded and told my dad that I hadn't taken any of my antidepressants. I ended up moving back in with my dad. My sisters had moved in by that time. Our relationship only strained more, and I exploded at him telling him "fuck you", to which he kicked me out. I moved in with Tristan.

There my depression stewed. My eczema got especially bad without my topical steroid, and I isolated more and more. Tristan's dad talked to me often about stoicism, philosophy, and project management. He pursued stoicism as his best virtue, taking on all the burdens of the world. When I talked to him, it always felt like he was a diamond under immense pressure that would shatter if the pressure was relieved. It seemed like he was using my stay as an extra mouth to feed to increase the stress he was under on purpose, so I eventually worked up the courage to go back to college.

I think I did one semester, passing barely again. Then at some point, Al realized I was taking the group's sarcastic jibes personally and was codependent on them. He told me he didn't want to be responsible for giving me pain and that we shouldn't be friends. From there, I avoided everyone from that group, going so far as to make large detours to avoid spotting them. I was too afraid to face them any longer. The next semester, I went to the first few classes, then became a hikikomori for the rest of the semester, only leaving my room for food and the bathroom. I didn't want to live, but I didn't have the will to kill myself either.

That state broke when it was revealed that I had failed all my classes. My dad took me back in, with similar tensions. I visited my mom for the Summer and saw a therapist/psychiatrist named Dr. Goodman. She had my half-sister Marlena.

By sheer luck, I got a job as a administration assistant at a company my cousin Alex worked at, Engage. He presented it in terms of reprogramming their database stack, but I knew I wasn't there for that. Still, I insisted on writing scripts to do the extremely tedious job of pressing buttons in the right sequence to print the mailing labels by the thousands. At some point I accidentally managed to fuck up not once, but twice. The first was caught, but the second made it all the way to the post office where they charged a fee for every incorrectly labeled mail, probably costing thousands of dollars. I was let go soon after for personality conflicts and because I wasn't taking my time, doing things too fast so mistakes were easy to make.

I was offered a replacement job in the data entry department, which I was very reluctant to take because I wanted to run away from the whole thing and forget the wild emotions. I got it, learned the ropes, and did that for a couple months during the 2016 election (which made lots of mail), all the while getting less and less stable as I began to see the job as a symbol of my failure as a person. As I saw it, it was the job I was moved to out of pity because any hobo off the streets could deliver identical work, and yet I was still struggling and felt ashamed because no one else had any problems. I ran out of my medications and that spiral plummeted and I felt the need to quit because what work I did on the clock was terrible and I frequently had to clock out to keep from clawing my eyes out. Every day I went in was sheer agony, which I'd compare to mentally tearing off each fingernail one by one. It was exploding with shame, panic, anxiety, fear, self-hatred, and tedium.

Unfortunately no one in my family saw it that way. Everyone seemed to think I just didn't want to do my job because I "didn't like it". I tried to tell them that I "just couldn't" go in anymore, but all I got back was that I have to. I didn't. More shame. It doubly confirmed the fears I already had, that the job was more important than I was. I suffered this pain every day and yet it was more important that I bear it and lose my mind rather than lose the job. Talk about worthless.

Eventually it came to a point where Goodman seemed to think I wasn't depressed and was manipulating my parents into giving me a free ride. My parents expressed their fear that "if I dropped him off at a shelter, I'd never see him again", which stung. I didn't want to live and everyone around me wanted me to work to live no matter the cost. I would thoughtlessly mention euthanization as a viable option. So, she was right to fear that. More shame from being such a failure as to put such responsibility and pain on my parents. That day I spent an hour seriously thinking about killing myself despite my hesitation, reasoning that I was a parasite on my family and the only way to relieve them of my burden was to relieve them of me. Whatever pain I caused by dying would pale in comparison to the pain I'd cause by living. I wondered if any excuse I had against this plan was a selfish desire to continue living in spite of the pain of others. I never went much farther beyond that, though.

Eventually my parents convinced Goodman to send me to Sierra Tucson. There, I learned about trauma, the distinction between shame and guilt, codependency, and the importance of friendship. I felt awakened, as if from a coma, and first time in my life, I enjoyed living for its own sake. I was transferred to Crownview Co-Occurring Institute for Intensive Out-Patient, where I regressed some due to it being a less supportive environment. Still, I learned how to deal with adversity in reality, particularly overcoming my issues with authority, defensiveness, a need to be right all the time, and how to take criticism without taking it personally.

During recovery, Katie had my niece Aurora. Most of the effect of that was from watching how other people reacted and interpreting the underlying reasons. I believe Katie refused an abortion/adoption because she intended to use Aurora to assert her maturity and capacity to be responsible to my dad and Lindsey, who had a tendency to micromanage her which led to teenage rebellion. What's sad about that is I think she lacks self-care emotionally and mentally, and now she won't ever have an opportunity to work on herself because she'll be working on her kid. In trying to appear more mature, she destroyed any chance of reaching maturity healthily. Now she's still struggling to break free of them, seeing all of their "suggestions" (which, to be fair, are stated more as commands) as personal attacks, saying she isn't capable of taking care of her symbol of adulthood.

And now I'm in R&R. I don't know where I'm going from here.

#life story

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