Who is Shadowz? (A repost that is important to me)

I had this post on another blog that is now long gone. Well not that long, but it’s gone, but I was able to use the wayback machine website and pull it up, and I thought I wouldn’t want to post it, but it’s the very core of who I am and why I do the things I do from time to time. So without further ado, here is the post in it’s entirely.

I am writing this blog post because it is something that I need to say , and I don’t always let people into my life more then I allow them too. So this post is unlike any other post I’ve ever written in my life. I have given people glimpses of my life, but I have never fully allowed any to know the real me, the one no one knows. I want you to keep in mind that what you are about to read, will most likely be the only time I ever say it, or write it, because just like that I can change my personality to suit my needs in life. I have a hard time letting anyone into my life. To really know me, is not easy, it’s not exactly hard, but I do make things difficult at times.

As many of you know I am a survivor of childhood abuse. Who my abusers are well most know, but they are truly irrelevant for many others to know. They are the people who were at one time the closest to me, but are not anymore because I have placed barriers around myself, and even though I have forgiven them, I can’t forget what was done. Now when I say childhood abuse, I mean it all. From a neighbor taking advantage of me, to even someone I went to school with who tried to rape me at 14 years old. I come from the classic broken home. I have never denied that part of my life. My parents started having issues when I was around 6- 7 years old. I was 8 years old when I first placed into a mental hospital for children, but before that I was placed in special Education classes due to being mentally ill at a young age. I was also during that time misdiagnosed so much that none of the medications they tried really work until I was about 12 years old. I had just started to become a woman in that meaning I started to get my menstruation cycle monthly, my father had mental health issues he was dealing with, and his abuse was harsh. Hmm, maybe I’m being to nice, harsh wasn’t exactly the word I should be using, but I’m trying. Not to forget him, but it was sometime between 10 and 12 that I met the guy who would later be the father of my children, one I’d spend first 5 years with, then later break up only to be reunited 13 years later. By then he was in his early 20’s and treated me like an equal, didn’t treat me as a child, or someone who had issues, and we’d talk for hours, and my father hated that even more because of two reasons, his skin color, and the age gap. My father still to this day calls him a child molester, even though I have told my father nothing happened until I was 16, going on 17 years old.

It was right before my 12th birthday that my father decided to put me into the care of child protection services, “CYS” is what we call it here in Pennsylvania, for Children and Youth Social Services. He had dumped me off on my mother’s doorstep on December 31st and did not say a word to her about me, or what he had done. Then again at 12 I went for another trip to the same hospital. My insurance only paid for 30 day treatments in places like this, so that is where I went for 30 days. After there, I went to stay in a local youth shelter until they could find me a place to live because my father had decided he no longer wanted to be dad anymore, and did not want my mother to have me either. My parents were not the greatest, but still I love them even to this day. So I went to live in a youth shelter until they could find me a group home as because of my age, all the foster families they had brought to the hospital for me to meet, I sent them all away confused.

My caseworker had her work cut out with me, because I refused to live with anyone else besides my own family. Still that was not an option so I went to a local youth shelter that allowed me to go to the special school in Pittsburgh that I had been in since middle of my 5th grade. Our own public school system couldn’t handle me, no correction didn’t want to deal with me, so they paid about 10k a year to keep me out of their schools. They had said I was emotionally unstable and that they did not have classes to deal with my kind of issues.

The issues I had then were common for a child coming from a broken home. I did not understand what had happened to me after the sexual abuse, and why my father no longer wanted me, or what even happened to my father, unsure if my mother really ever wanted me back in her life or not, and why was I forced to live in a shelter with other kids who were like me. They believed because I was a child, I wouldn’t understand anything. Little did they know I understood more then they thought. Given my age, and how I was an only child, I learned about life and how ugly it could be real fast, and I always paid attention to the adults even when it seemed like I wasn’t. I was no dummy , and I knew how to find out stuff without asking , or seem like I was eaves dropping on the adults around me.
During the two years I lived in a group home of girls like me that I had learned the neighbor who molested me, also molested 12 more boys and girls. He liked us before puberty hit. It was during one of the therapy sessions that I was informed of this, and asked how I felt. My response was typical, I think it was along the lines of “Good hope he rots in there for all I care.” Which to both my mother and therapist reaction seemed to make them chuckle a little.

I was not one to sugar coat what I thought or felt. Even though I had learned how to work against the medications, and how to say what others wanted or needed to hear from me. I kept my true feelings silent. I guess that is where I learned how to bottle up what I felt, and learned how to hide emotions from others so well. I was then placed on Prozac, where I pretended to be functioning normal for the most part, but I had a killer appetite and rarely slept, and did not gain weight which caused for alarm with the doctors when they saw that, so they switched me over to Lithium, where I could not fight against those drugs, and became a walking zombie. I’d get hit in the arm at school, and did not feel it, nor cared. All I wanted to do was sleep, something I became extremely good at again in life. It was also during this time they had started to talk about me going back into my mother’s custody, and I honestly did not care anymore, because I had no energy to care about anything. I was at the point where I was being run down by the medication, and I just didn’t care.

So in May of 1992 they released me from the group home back into my mother’s custody, but of course that was postponed for a bit because I had beaten up on a resident there, she was a known lesbian and tried to touch me while I was sleeping one night ,and I woke up and began beating on her. It took 3 big men to pull me off her. After that, I went right back to sleep once I calmed down and was put into the padded room they had. I was not allowed to have a roommate after that because I was considered dangerous. The therapist called my mother and told her that my release would be delayed for a while as I had beaten another resident, and they were doing an investigation to see if me beating her badly was justified and if it was, they would reset my release date. Of course it was justified because the girl I had beaten admitted to the staff that she was going to try and rape me that night while I was sleeping. They apologized to me, and reset my release date to go into my mother’s custody. Again I didn’t really care.

By then they said I was manic depressive with Bipolar disorder as well, and that I needed the lithium to function to maintain my stable moods. My moods were stabled as long as no one tried to piss me off. Which was unlikely because I also grew tired of traveling an hour to two hours to and from for schooling, and I started to take myself off the lithium, because I wanted too. I’d keep enough in my system to pass my lithium blood tests, then wouldn’t take them again until it was time to take another blood test which was monthly. So I knew exactly when to take them, and not take them. I don’t think most knew I was off my meds, because I never showed any signs, because even though I was not taking the pills. I still had enough of the drug in my system to maintain the levels needed to function right. So the following school year later in 1992-1993 , I started acting out, I’d get into fights, I started cutting myself with anything I could find that was sharp, even broken ink pens with no ink. I started taking the old fashioned BIC lighters that had a smiley face, and burned them into my skin. I pulled fire alarms, broke doors, threw bricks at a teachers car, and in one of my black out phases, I bit a teacher. I was half way through my 9th grade when I was kicked out of the county the school was in until I was 18 years old. I was then placed in another school closer to home, and I didn’t mind it at all for the first time. I was closer to home, I felt better. I didn’t have to get up and be out the door by 6:00 am to get to school on time. Sadly that school didn’t last long enough for me, because by the time I was half way through my 10th grade, they decided to put me back into public school, and the schools guidance counselor told my mother in front of me , that they really didn’t want me in that school, which made me feel like shit, in all honesty, and I didn’t want to be there. So I finished the 10th grade and was suspended numerous times because I was starting to think for myself, and I no longer want to be in a place that did not want me.

I finished 10th grade with a 3.0 GPA , and I only needed a few credits to graduate but sadly the school did not care. So before my 11th grade year would start. I got into a fight with my mother’s boyfriend, and he chased me in the house we lived in, up the stairs, and right outside my bedroom he grabbed me around the throat. I had a thing for calling him a drunk, because he was. He had asked me to get him a beer from the fridge, and I told him this, “ Get it your damn self you drunk.” , and I walked away not realizing he was behind me. It was also during this time before I went back to live with my father, that the man who molested me when I was a child decided that he would stalk me via Prison. So he sent a few of his friends to stalk me, trying to scare me, or kill me, no one really knows. It was around that time that I started to shield myself from the world, from people. I wanted to run away and hide for good. So I went to live with my father after my mother’s boyfriend and I had that issue. An issue that would forever change the way I looked at people, especially men.

Even before that though I had an idea of a man I did not want to be in my life. I was living in the group home and going home on weekend visits and started dating a boy I was in school with when I was younger, and one night while I was home on a weekend visit he tried to rape me. It was shortly after that my cousins spotted him at a dance the following weekend with another girl and was up on her, and he did this because that was the weekend that I did not get to go home, they called and told my mom, who told me, and I stopped accepting his calls, matter of fact I had his name removed off my call list so the staff knew not to come and get me for his phone calls. I sent all his stuff back home with my mother in a trash bag, and I just ended everything, and I never told anyone because let’s face it. Girls my age that were mentally ill no one would honestly believe them, so I dealt with that all on my own. No one ever knew.

As for the rest of my story, well many know the outcome and how I ended up where I am now.