Where did it begin

As part of using this blog to figure out who I am, why I am this way and how things got to be this way I would have to take a look back.  This is especially true when it comes to the abusive relationships and mentally ill people that tend to walk beside me.  I need to decide, kind of at least get a feel, for whether I am also mentally ill and just unable to recognize that fact.  So I begin in the beginning.

I remember being very young, perhaps four, when my memories begin.  I lived in New Jersey with my mother, father, and younger siblings.  I had three brothers each staggered a year apart, and in the end of my stay in that place, a sister who I really don’t remember living with us. 

We lived upstairs from an elderly couple that, for some reason, I believe to be Greek.  Maybe it was the grape vines in the backyard that put that impression in my mind.  My mother was obsessed with my father and filled with jealousy and games to get his attention.  I remember very little about my father except that I loved him more than I did anyone else.  To me, he was handsome, strong, loving and the man I was going to marry one day.  He would take me out when he went to the City, me, only me.  I was so proud to be by his side.  Later in life my mother would sully those memories by telling me I was merely a tool for him to pick up women – but that’s not how I remember it. 

My love for my father was tested one day when he suddenly, completely out of character in my eyes, tried to drown my brother.  I screamed and pleaded and finally he relented.  Only later in my life, as an adult, did I find out this occurred when he found out that my brother “J” was not his son.  After this event my father left.  Before he did he called me and asked me to meet him in a nearby park – I was to go with him.  I planned to go.  My mother; however, had different plans and tricked me into staying with her to watch “our” favorite show, Creature Features, which came on quite late.  I never saw my father again.

Life in Clifton, New Jersey was anything but ideal.  My mother’s French, Irish and Czeck family despised my Puerto Rican father calling him a drug dealer and a thief.  Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, I will likely never know.  My mother was a lazy, mentally disturbed individual who cared very little for us except as a conduit to my father’s affection.  She had a local man who, when my father was away, would come visit taking my eldest brother and I to the park.  He was at our home constantly – Uncle Tony. 

I remember giving my youngest brother Ray (using his name as he is now gone) his bottle which consisted of curdled milk from whatever bottle was laying around.  I remember both my brothers “R” and Ray sharing a crib, in dirty diapers, crying.  I remember our diet consisted in large part of twinkies and the like.  I remember my mother convincing me that my grandmother stole my money and having me hate her for it – now, in hindsight, I realize it was likely my mother who did this.  I remember a lot of things.

I remember particularly the day my mother decided to go out in search of my father.  She was in the middle of cooking burgers when she turned off the stove and left.  My brother “J” was sick with, what I believe was, the mumps and as he cried and whined that he was hungry I took it upon myself to finish cooking the burgers left on the stove.  At what I believe was 5, I had not yet learned that when flames shoot up from a grease fire, you do NOT throw water.  Quickly the flames licked the walls as the fire department was called.  (Thank God for neighbors).  When the fire was out it was discovered that my brothers (possibly my sister) and I were left abandoned we were removed to foster care.  That was the last I saw of the red brick house, the sweet old couple downstairs, and – for many years – two of my brothers and my mother.  This is where it all began – or, I guess for some of us, ended.