As does anyone, I’ve had my share of life experiences. Yet it is so hard, so painful to look back and remember detail by detail my own story. I guess when I compare myself now to what I was like back then, well I really don’t want to face the truth. To me it’s like my own Pandora’s Box, and it literally has stayed shut until just a few days ago.

After the events of Feb 24 2009 (that will be my next blog), I was left to really think about what I want in life and where I want to go from here. When I tried to answer my own questions, I was only left with more. All generating from my past… the place I until now refused to figure out. Before I could talk myself out of it, I laid down and allowed myself to retrieve those distant memories from the darkest, deepest trenches of my heart; and I started to cry.

My birth parents are divorced; my mom was the one to raise me along with multiple dads. (I didn’t actually live with my real one until I was 10) I flashed back to points where my youngest sister’s father used to beat me. I remember one night, I was caught looking into the refrigerator due to a lack of dinner when I was caught and back handed right in the face. Next thing I knew I was beaten raw with the belt off his waist… I went to bed without dinner that night, weeping softly until I fell asleep. I woke in the middle of the night to my mom parting my hair. She brought me a banana and some milk… my throat so dry from hours of crying was instantly healed. Mom eventually left him and took both me and my sister far away.

When I was ten I went to live with my real father; oh I was so exited! I moved to Tennessee where I realized that everything was so different, so complex. I didn’t fit in at all which led me to plead with him to send me back to Hawaii. I was told that I would never see my mother again ad that I was messed up in the head. I was eventually seeing doctors and taking medication; all of which I was told was normal… until 5 months later I was parked in Lakeshore mental health institute of Knoxville Tennessee.

The hospital thought I was too young to be placed in the 13-17 boys ward, so they put me in the 13-17 girls section instead. For a month I stared at walls only allowed to ask one question an hour. I saw young pretty girls defecate on the hallway floors, pull their hair out, and bite or scratch themselves raw. Everywhere I went was locked rooms and doors and I even had to earn the privilege to go outside into the caged concrete pad for recreation. What was wrong with me? Did I have a disease? I thought that this place was where all the unwanted children were sent… that I was unwanted.

Eventually I was sent back to Hawaii to live with my grandparents. I was told that my mother could not afford to take care of me. I didn’t see her for months at a time. I turned into a defiant little pain in the ass… skipping school, failing, stealing money and running away. I had nowhere else to go, I was scared. When I was thirteen my mom came back with another guy, a Marine. They said we were going to move to North Carolina and start over, start new. We were going to be happy again… a family…

*** enough for now, I will continue later***

Teary eyed Tristan