Historical or Hysterical?

It was difficult.  High school was not quite a total misery, but it did come in second only after home life.  There is a phrase for you.  Two simple words - home and life.  It assumes that you live in a home and not a house and it assumes that life is something pleasurable.  A pleasurable time at home was not exactly what any sane person would use to refer to my formative years.

Life began for me technically on my birth day.  I chose to remember the part that started when I was six.  I left my father's house to live with my mother.  There are anecdotal incidents that I remember with great clarity.

I remember being dressed up in a light blue dress with tiers of ruffles, a ribbon around my hair with a bow on top and my hair down to my waist.  I do not remember the occasion.

Another instance I remember playing outside at the apartments we lived in.  My playmate was a little older than me and we were out back playing.  She suddenly started picking her nose and she turned to me and said, "Watch me eat it."  I watched, repulsed and shocked, as she did just that.  I never played with her again.  I remember my father asking me why I did not play with that nice little girl and all I could say is, "I don't want to."

I remembered once when my mother came to visit me with her new husband that I was terrified of her and I hid and would not come out and talk to her.

I remember my father said that he married Lucy and we moved to a house to live with her.  She introduced me to neighborhood kids, laid out my clothes for me and taught me that if you are bigger than the other person, you can make them do things they do not want to do.  I was playing outside with some of the kids when an older boy hit me and threatened me.  Of course, I ran home and told Lucy and she told me that I needed to hit him back.  She explained that if I did not go back and hit him that she was going to whip me.  After carefully weighing my options, I ran out, popped him a good one and ran back home.  

But I found myself at the age of 6 on an airplane going to Washington, DC to live with my mother.  I threw up on the plane and mostly it was just misery.  I did not know what to think about this woman I was to call mommy.  She was a scary figment of my nightmares and suddenly there I was.

I remember inconsequential things before I was 6 but after my 6th birthday, life took many turns.