My first such memory was when I was 5 years old. We were getting ready for church and I was unable to find one of my shoes. When I told my mother, she yelled and screamed that I had misplaced the shoe on purpose so that I wouldn’t have to go to church. On the way to church, she continued by telling me that I was the devil and I had nothing but evil in me. In the fourth grade, I went to a new school. For the first four or five months, I was picked on and bullied. When I told my mother, her first response was to ask me what I had done to make them pick on me. It was about this time that I began to believe that I was less than, not as good as, other kids. I carried that feeling into adulthood, and still fight with it today.
One day during the summer before seventh grade I was working on a puzzle when a friend called, I asked my mother to ask her if I could call her back later because I was almost finished. She did as I asked, but after she hung up the phone she flew into a rage and told me that I was a ♥♥♥♥♥ and that I would never have any friends. I still carry that with me. As a teenager, I was given the offer to train for the U.S. Swimming Team for the 1988 Olympics. I was excited. This was my dream. My mother declined the offer. When I asked her why, she said she didn’t have time to waste with that. These events were not as rare as it would appear. My mother would often yell, scream and put me down. By my early to mid-teens, it was routine. It was part of my day. The only upside to my mother’s rages was that she wouldn’t speak to me for a few days afterward. The silence was calming. I enjoyed it while I could.
Having said all of that, I loved my mother, and I know she loved me. She made many sacrifices so that my brother and I could have some of the things we wanted, and go on vacations. We would look through all of the catalogs that we got in the mail and pretend that we were shopping at the mall. The problem came when she got angry. She responded to me the way her grandmother responded to her. I have always been disappointed that she never tried to be better than that. I did drugs and drank during junior high and high school. I stopped doing drugs during my late teens, but I started drinking rather heavily.