maybe i'm sociably awkward because i grew up in environments that didn't do jack shit to help them grow and prosper. i had that horrendous run-in with the family in texas where all i really got was a couple inches off my waist and a tongue-lashing for every wrongdoing i could manage. surely, anything would be an upgrade to that, right?
wrong.
it's hard to compress two years of my life into a few short paragraphs, but i don't really want to spend anymore time than i have to at this point. it's even hard to really look back upon it, because there's so much turmoil and such little resolution, it's the first dark age of my life.
things were hard from the beginning. everyone knew my tendencies for screwing up and everyone thought they had the fool-proof way of getting me to stop. my sister and her husband, well, theirs were the worse. second to no one, hands down psychological abuse was carried out and tested in that house. power trips and exertion of authority ran rampant with not a single roadblock to stop it.
i remember being grounded a lot. sure, it might sound like a laughing matter, but i can count the number of weekends that school year i wasn't grounded.. all on one hand. i couldn't play during the week. kids would come to my house and ask if i could go outside, my sister would answer the door with a resounding 'no'. the smallest fouls would have the refs sending flags flying all over the field.
my friend had a trip to the water park that i was looking forward to. planned a month in advanced, and i made extra sure to be careful as to not get grounded that week. the day before, i was told to vacuum the house, and after inspection, it was declared that i didn't vacuum my room. [cough] i did the whole house, let me count it; two stories, the living room, dining room, office, hallways, master bedroom, my room, guests room one and two, all the closets, and the mats in all the bathrooms. i would do all those, but skip out on my room, which is a mere 15x15 with a queen bed in the middle of it?
i was being falsely accused and had the only thing i was using to get me through taken away from me at the last moment. that water park signified salvation. that water park told me that maybe it's not so bad, maybe they're doing it for my own good and the lack of positive reinforcement is paying dividends.. but i was stupid and naive, and things got worse because at that point, maybe i saw that no matter what i did, i couldn't win.
my grades started to slip, and if it's possible, the punishments got more severe. my brother in-law actually forced me to set up the camcorder, and record myself doing homework for the entire duration of tape, until my sister got home from work. no lie, i sat at the table, with a camcorder transfixed on me, for three hours a day. monday-friday, i sat for three hours doing homework under the eye of my guardians.
with the passing weeks, my psyche declined as my grades rose. the fight in me was lost, the once defiant youngster was merely a facsimile of its former self, now one without much a soul and without meaning and without something, someone to make sense of it all. the world became a dark chasm without a light in the horizon.
and then one day, after school, i ran away from home.
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