The Unfortunate Life of Marlee Flint: Part One

As an adult, Marlee recaps her stories of addiction, abuse, rejection and failures

I remember the first time I cut myself. I was fourteen and I had just come back from summer camp. I think that is when I first became an addict.

 

 My name is Marlee Flint, and I have never fit in, I noticed that at a very young age. You see, my tan skin didn't match my mother, father or my little brother. I was an accident baby, the product of a hookup my mother had after dropping out of college and moving to the city thousands of miles away from her hometown. I still remember her glamorizing the story of her exciting adventure to the big city and meeting a muscular exotic man and getting swept off her feet. Now that I'm grown and several years older than my mother was when she got pregnant with me, I just feel sorry for her. 

          

She dated the guy three months, got knocked up, cheated on then ran back to her small hillbilly hometown, all right after dropping out of college. She soon married Dan Wilson, I was four. Dan was the only father I knew and raised me as his own, then him and my mother had my little brother Kevin when I was six. We lived in a mountain town, that stayed cold nine month out of the year, I remember the exact feeling of needle pricks of cold on my face when I would make my short walk to elementary school. Woodland Park, to this day I curse you. I was the darkest person in that town, considering all the residents could get lost in the snow. It took me years to appreciate the shade of my skin, but as a kid I was different and I knew it.

         

Dan lost his mind after my mother had cheated on him with a veterinarian named Sean. She pulled me out of school when I was eight, two days before the last day of school with my brother strapped in and our bags packed. We made the eight hour drive back to Hillbilly Marion, home base for my mom and for me too. She's the oldest of seven kids and that made my younger aunts and uncles like my big brothers and sisters. I loved it. 

          Along the way my mother told me that her and Dan were getting a divorce. I remember being happy, because there had been too many nights I would hear him yelling at her, and hear her crying. I would hear her run to the living room sobbing, and my first reaction would always be to go and check on her. My mother was my best friend and I always wanted to look out for her. That is still the case today, the part about looking out for her anyways. My mother was an alcoholic, along with the rest of our family in Marion. It wouldn't take me many more years, to become one too.

            

After the divorce, my mother became a completely different person. She was really truly alive! She moved into a small cottage in a carefree hippy town called Manitou Springs about half an hour from Woodland Park. She wore long skirts, no shoes and took up belly dancing. She played her music loud and she burned incense, she kept the doors open to hear the creek and attended drum circles in the park. That was the happiest I had ever seen her.

         

Kevin and I still went to Dan’s house on the weekends. I dreaded it every time. After my mom left, all the anger and verbal abuse that had once been aimed at her, got shifted to me. To this day I’m not sure what is wrong with Dan. Personally, I think he has split personality disorder, he would lose his mind over the littlest things, and I would hide behind the couch and cry. Then a few minutes later he would be a different person with a bubbly personality asking what I was crying about, then making me laugh.

          Things became much darker however. We lived at the end of a col-du-sac, I had two best friends, one named Jamie and the other named Lily. We would ride our bikes and play with chalk in the street, it was a very safe place to play. Until it wasn’t. while riding my bike with my friends one day, I glanced to my house, where I saw Dan standing naked in the window. Seeing me catching him he ducked away, but then he kept doing it. Horrified that my friends would see, I told them that we should go to the mailboxes, which were out of view of my house. Every time after that, I would be so scared to go outside and have that happen again, that I stopped playing with my friends. I pushed that incident to the back of my brain, and it didn’t get brought up again until years later on my fourteenth birthday.

          

By that point I had stopped staying at Dan’s house, because he was too angry and verbally abusive, so I lived with my mom and her boyfriend Frank. I didn’t like Frank, first he made us move out of Manitou, which I had loved, and back up to another mountain town about ten minutes from Woodland Park. Second, he had a really bad temper. My little bother got sent to the principals office and I forged Dan’s signature because he was too afraid to tell him, but I got caught. Frank had a worse temper than Dan. I can just leave it at that. Third, Frank was purposely putting a rift between my mom and I. We never really spent much time together anymore. I remember her telling me that he was going to be out of town for an entire night, so we could have a girls night, paint our nails, eat junk food and watch a movie. She told him that too as he walked out the door. We started the movie and not five minutes in he called her, and kept her on the phone his entire 3 hour drive. By the time she got off the phone, it was entirely too late to start a movie. She was afraid of him.

         

I had been cast in our school play, The Little Mermaid. Opening night fell on my birthday and I went to Dan’s house prior because my grandmother had sent me some gifts and cause Dan wanted to see the play and celebrate my birthday with me. Dan and I didn’t have much of a relationship at that point, but I still went to his house on occasions, mostly around Christmas or for my birthday,

          The play went great, when the curtain falls, the cast would go down into the audience to take pictures, talk with family, just the basic middle school theater stuff. I went to find my dad and little brother. Kevin had red cheeks like he had been crying, I thought that was weird. Dan looked really sketched out like he was trying to get out of there, which hurt my feelings because I wanted him to meet my friends. It wasn't until i introduced him to the male lead of the play (and my crush) that i realized his penis was out of his zipper and he was covering it with his hand, with all those people around, and while shaking hands with my crush. So I said “Okay let’s go.” To which he replied “Don’t you want me to meet your other friends?” He said it so calmly. I said “They’re not really my friends and I’m sick of them anyways, lets go!” I was so panicked that one of my friends would have seen and made me into "the girl with the sicko dad." I ran out, and Dan and Kevin followed me to the car. Kevin got into the back seat of the car and Dan took an extra few seconds outside the car to which I’m assuming he was getting decent again. In the rearview mirror Kevin’s face was so upset, I can still remember and it’s been twelve years since then.

          Later, when Dan was in the gas station I asked Kevin what was wrong, but he said he didn’t want to talk about it. So I told him what I saw and he started to cry, he said it had been out the whole time. Being his big sister and trying to protect him, I just started laughing really, really hard. He laughed too. This was my responsibility to tell someone. I couldn’t just ignore this one, it affected my brother.

          My 8^th grade year was very rough, Kevin and I had to go the therapy once a week, on top of that I was incredibly bullied at school. Kids can be so mean. Boys didn’t like me and the girls would make fun of my curly hair or my clothes. My mother didn’t work for years, she was a stay at home mom, she looked after Frank’s toddler, and my new baby brother Daniel, and the following year, my little sister Marissa would enter the picture. We were very poor, my mother was very distracted, the court case with Dan took up the entire year and I was stuck in a dumb mountain town away from socialization. I had my music, my journal to write and my sketchpad to draw. I was completely lonely and more broken than I’ve ever given myself credit for. I was pretty damn tough through it all.

 

          My mother had started attending a non-denominational church the spring of my 8^th grade year. They had a youth program and I immediately got accepted in with open arms. Every year they do a trip for a few weeks to meet up with the other “chapters” or groups from different states in one spot. This year it was in Oklahoma. At these meets they teach young people (aged 14-18) about self love, meditation, manifestation and a lot of new-aged metaphysics that have always stuck with me. I met a boy there, he was the first boy to ever make me feel really pretty. He was my first kiss and I fell into a deep puppy dog lust. So naturally when it was time to go home, I was devastated.

         

 

          I don’t know what exactly went on in my brain when I had gotten home and walked into my room. I sat on my bed in a daze of heart break, and something came across me clearer than day that said “cut yourself, you’ll feel better.” So I grabbed a hunting knife Frank had given me for Christmas and ran the blade across my arm. It wasn’t sharp enough to break the skin, but I kept trying. I didn’t feel any better. Maybe that first attempt was a cry for help or attention. To be honest, I needed them both. So the next day I wore my slightly raised pink scratches with pride. I got sent to the guidance counselor after talking about cutting to a super Christian girl, Ashley. Then had a talk with my parents after school, which I think they were less concerned about the matter, because they weren’t cuts, they were scratches.

Scratches that would eventually turn into thick scars that I’ll carry on my body for life.

Author's Note

This is part one of perhaps a four part story
Part 2 will talk about alcohol abuse and promiscuity