Everyone--
I don't really know how to begin this. There's so much I need to say but don't know if you'll listen to... and a lot to ask that I have no right to. I've been a veritable nutcase for... well, for as long as most of you have known me. I've been, in the stingingly true words of :iconmage116:, a 'doormat', too. I let people walk all over me and then justify their doing so. I say I want something different but I never really do anything, do I? I complain a great deal... at the same time, making excuses. I despise and fear change... 'the devil you know is better than the god you don't' seems to be my personal motto. I hate taking risks, I hate... mostly myself, in all honesty. Mostly, I talk about things. Or write, as the case may be. I sit and analyze and analyze and then congratulate myself on 'figuring things out'... then I let them remain as they are. It makes me feel comfortable to understand things. It makes bad things acceptable. But bad things are bad things, and hence are bad for me.

... I complain A LOT. I know many of my friends listen to me talk about things... mostly my mother... and nod and smile and then think to themselves, "She's making up this crap." A lot of them... of you... nod and smile and think, "I've got it worse than that." A lot of them/you sit and listen and understand to some extent, but do nothing. That's fine. I mean, really, what CAN you do? What can anyone do? I appreciate very much those of you who don't immediately decide that I'm a liar or an attention-seeking bitch, because I'm not. I don't make up the stories I tell. My mother is a cruel, selfish, neglectful, emotionally and occasionally physically abusive person. Those of you who have met her know this. I don't come to school with black eyes and broken bones, or even bruises (mostly), and so what she does is disregarded. I tell funny, though slightly disturbing, stories about her... mostly to make you disregard things she does. That's because I don't want to seem like a whining, miserable, helpless, pathetic child. I want to laugh it off and be above it. But do you know how hard it is to come home every day and be treated like she treats me? To be called a little bitch, a wanna-be slut, stupid and lazy and useless and selfish and worthless and ungrateful and monster? To be expected to put aside everything, schoolwork and dinner and sleep included, to run and fetch, and to be screamed at when you're not fast enough? To have things that are yours, that you've worked for, taken away from you on a whim?

She does these things to me every day. When I get home from school, with homework and tests to prepare for, I'm expected first to take care of the animals. That's fine. Then, once my necessary chores are done, I try to get to my room to do homework. Out of sight, out of mind... with luck. But she'll be working on some paperwork, always at the last minute because she sleeps most of the time, and will be yelling at me for not helping her. There's no way TO help, though. If I make myself available to run and fetch, she snarls at me for being useless and in her way. I am told to run downstairs and plug in the fax, or grab a folder, or get her coffee, or get her cigarettes, or go next door and fax stuff (I'm screamed at if the neighbors aren't home). If I don't go fast enough, I'm yelled at and often punished, always insulted. I never get my homework done, or the chance to study in peace. Then, when I'm hungry, I try to fix something to eat and she yells at me for getting into the fridge or cabinet. She says she'll cook for me later. But time goes on and on... twelve, one, two... and I give up and go to bed without dinner. I cannot even do that unmolested. I'm yelled at for 'avoiding my chores'. When I ask which chores I'm supposed to do, she tells me to figure it out. But the house is already as clean as it can be, so I find nothing and sneak into my bed. An hour or so later, I am hauled out of my bed, screamed at, told I'm a stupid little liar because I said I did the floors or some other such chore... which I did. But she has tracked in leaves from outside, and therefore I must not have done it all, so I'd better do it again if I want to get to sleep ever. So I do it again... and then again... and finally I crack with frustration and slam doors and make it clear that I'm going to bed no matter what. So, three or so hours later, I wake up in the morning at around six now, get ready and everything, and immediately put on my MP3 player so I don't have to hear her. But she will snatch it from my ears if she wants to talk to me, often scratching or hitting my face in the process. Or just aim a smack at my face to get my attention, and say it's my fault for not listening. Finally, I get to school, where I have none of my work done. If I'm lucky, I can do it at lunch. If I'm willing to skip another meal, that is. Because if I go home with bad grades... everything just gets worse. I'm told how stupid I am, how lazy and useless and...

There are times when she goes simply manic, most often in the morning on a holiday or weekend. I'll be coming out of my room and meet her on her way to the bathroom. And, randomly, she'll start screaming and clawing at me, shoving me so that I hit my head on the wall, calling me names and cursing at nothing, screaming that I'm a liar and a monster and a traitor, and then disappearing into the bathroom with a slam of the door that shakes walls. And I'm left, shocked and terrified, to crawl... literally... into my room and under my covers, or stumble down the stairs to hide in the downstairs bathroom, or to simply curl up in a corner and wait until it's over and she goes back to sleep, crying uncontrollably and shaking and not knowing what I've done to spark this or if she'll come back and attack me again. On one such occasion, she stalked downstairs once she was done, and I went to wait out of sight in the kitchen until she went back upstairs. I heard her roar something about my laptop, and I realized I had left it in plain view and ran back into the living room to try to save it from her. She had it in her hands and was going to throw it, and I grabbed it and wrenched it away from her. She snatched the power cord and hit me with it, so that the heavy power adapter caught the side of my face. I grabbed that, too, and ran them both up to my room and hid them while she came up the stairs after me, slower because of her age and girth, and then I stood in the doorway to my room and watched her go back to her room, calling me a little baby and telling me that if I ever grabbed something out of her hands again she'd really give me a reason to cry. I have that instance documented in my diary... it was August 16th, 2008.

I have more. Quoting from a hasty diary entry: "October 25 2008
"Mom just attacked me for drinking a cup of lemonade that she apparently wanted for her Slurpie. I didn’t drink it, though… she tried to rip my laptop in half and I hit her shoulder, and then she tried to punch me in the face and missed, and she wrenched my right wrist really hard and gauged out some flesh on my left arm with her nails and a little on my right, and tried to bite me when I caught her wrists and tried to kick me when I tried to force her back and then I threw her arms away from me and she was screaming at me and called me a monster and a goddamned brat and said she hated me and I don’t even deserve a bed in this house and this is a fucking run on sentence and I’m going to stop now and take a deep breath."

There are so many things like this... I don't get to document them often, though, just because I'm never allowed near my computer for long, and... honestly, I don't want to remember these things. I know I should write them down, but I'd rather pretend they didn't happen. The day that I ran away from home was the first time anyone got a good look at what goes on in my house, including my dad, and even then I tried to downplay it because I was so afraid that he would try to do something about it. My mom has said over and over that no one would take my word over hers, and it's true. She used to work for CPS, for God's sake! And in the courts... the judges are her friends, the caseworkers used to go to lunch with her, and they've all heard what a monster I am. And if even MY friends listen to the little hints I drop and the stories twisted to be funny that I tell and don't believe me, how will HER friends? And like she also says... what about the 5-year old children that are tied to their cribs and left to starve? Wouldn't I be a waste of time?

You know the worst thing about all of this? I believe every word she says. I am a waste of time, I do deserve what she does to me. She says that, over and over when I ask her why she calls me these things and does this stuff, she says that I deserve it. And I believe her, even when I say that I deserve more, I'm saying what I think people want to hear me say, because deep down I know that I'll never be able to do anything about it, because I'm SCARED. I'm scared of her, of all that she could do to make my life worse, of everything that makes me happy that she could take away.

I have wonderful friends. I really do love all of you, more than I ever say or show or even really think about. You make me want to shut up and deal with it, and smile and laugh about all of it, and, even if I'll never get out of the situation that way, it does help. It's better for me to find something funny about it than sit and say 'oh-woe-is-me', isn't it? If I make fun of her often enough, of the things she says to me, they lose a lot of their power... until the next time she says them. And there's always a chance, maybe, a little hope that someone will say something to someone, and then it will get reported, get investigated... that maybe a CPS officer will show up at just the right time and be standing outside our front door listening to her scream at me, and then take me away... take me ANYWHERE. I don't care where. I've thought about so many ways out of here that seem insane... maybe rob a store and go to juvy, maybe stage a suicide attempt and go to a mental facility. Maybe just kill myself and be done with it. Yes-- did you read that properly? I DO consider suicide. I don't want to die. I just want to get out. No, taking me to the fucking counselor and 'intervening' isn't going to help... if I were full-fledged suicidal, that would be the last straw. I'd BS my way out of there and then go home and slice open my wrists. IT DOESN'T FUCKING HELP ANYONE SO STOP DOING IT, YOU IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But... what was I saying? Yes, I have wonderful friends... friends that make things worth it. But let's say I reported her to CPS, they did an investigation and proved nothing, and then left. She's be PISSED. And then she'd take everything away, make my life a living Hell. Move schools, take away my phone, make sure I have no Internet, no way of contact. Take away my books, my laptop, lock me in a room without a window. I'm already not allowed out of the house... even into my own backyard... without special permission. She could even take away the fucking SUN... and she would. She would do it just to 'unish' me. Because, of course, everything she does is technically in the bounds of the law. I'm not malnourished... my dad buys me things I can hide in my room and eat. I eat government-provided lunches at school. I have three days a week where my father takes me out to eat or brings food or whatever. Occasionally friends will give me food, or the library will have a TAG meeting and I'll get dinner there. And she sleeps, of course, so then I can make food. Or she'll be in a good mood and cook before midnight. And lack of sleep... that's hard to prove. Never mind that I've fainted in the middle of school twice now, probably because of a mixture of lack of food, lack of drink, and lack of sleep... (unless I DID have a seizure, in which case lack of medical treatment is to blame). It takes Hell to bruise me, and she doesn't get physical that much. What do I have to do to prove what she is and what she does? Install a video camera in every room? Wear a wire? That's not admissable in court, because she wouldn't KNOW she was being recorded, which would VIOLATE HER RIGHTS.

And, as she often says, I have no rights. I'm a minor. I belong to her. She can do whatever she wants to me.

So... chickens have more rights than gays? Yeah, they have more rights than minors, too.

I'm writing this now... why AM I writing this now? Because I want to try to explain why I'm such a pathetic little bitch, mostly. Because I want you to know why I get the way I get sometimes. Because maybe I kind of hope that someone will be able to do something and help me. I don't know what to do and I have to get out somehow because I just can't stand this any more. She was fine before my father took her to court for partial custody in fifth grade... I told the mediator that I wanted to live with my day, but knew he couldn't provide for me then and thought it was best I live with my mom... just what she told me to say... and she read the 'wants to live with father' part of the report I was told would be confidential, spun around in the car, and screamed that I was a fucking traitor. Everything was normal before then. But it gets worse and worse and it's just going to keep going. It didn't start until fifth grade, so I was used to a normal house. I didn't get jaded to it. And there's always something new, so I'll never be jaded to it. I'm scared, so fucking scared because I can't do anything, because I don't know how to even begin to do anything... the closest I came was leaving the house one time and going to a friend's house... and now I'm forbidden from ever going to her house again, supposedly from even talking to her at school. I want to get out but I don't know how and I have the feeling there ISN'T a way. Because I'm fourteen, I'm a stupid little high school freshman and my mother studied these laws and worked in the system, and she can lie and manipulate with a cool head and straight face while I can barely get through the first few sentences of my side of the story without starting to cry or getting so panicked that I lose track of what I'm saying or worse... lie and negate it all, say I was 'just venting', say it's not that important, or something.

I don't know what to do or who can even do anything, but I have to get out somehow. If nothing else works, I'll so something stupid and reckless, just to get out. Please don't read this and brush it off. Please don't write me off as an attention-seeking liar, or an exaggerating whatever. Please, if you can't do anything about it, at least acknowledge that I'm telling the truth.

I'm going to try to do something... maybe... if I don't lose the nerve. If I do, I'll start something I can't stop, and I'll be scared to death. Then, I'm going to really need you. Then, I'll do things like burst into tears in the middle of a class, or even just cling to my friends, or call too often... because I'll be scared, more than I am now. I'm afraid of her. More than I'm afraid of anything else in the world. She's a little bigger than me and a little stronger than me, but mostly she's unpredictable. I can barely bring myself to fight in self-defense, but I can see her grabbing the iron bar under her bed to hit me with next time she gets a little manic. Maybe I won't be able to stop her the next time she trys to throw my laptop out the window, or to bash my parakeet's head in. Or maybe she'll just strangle me outright. I don't know. I can see her doing it. Or driving us both off of a bridge-- she IS semi-suicidal, and she's... I don't even know. She thinks her former employer is tapping our phones, reading our mail, and digging through our trash. She's paranoid, and violent, and I don't know what else. I'm scared of her. I'm even scared of writing this... I can imagine one of my friends going to a parent or teacher, who then brings it to my mother, who laughs it off and then comes home and does God knows what, and I can't do anything to stop her.

Sorry for writing this, sorry it's so long, if you read it all the way through then I'm also sorry for bothering you with it, but I needed to write it just in case maybe it might make something happen. And I love you, very, very, very much, and depend on you more than you could ever know. Thanks, and I'm sorry again.