Ages 0-10

This documents my entire childhood.

The rest of my mother and grandmother's lives went peacefully, as far as I know. My mother was the only one in my family to actually graduate high school. She could have had a good life if she hadn't made the decisions she did. She hung out with the wrong crowd and dated the wrong people. That's where I come in. At the age of 19, my mother became pregnant.

By the time my mother was 3 months pregnant with me, my father had turned aggressive. He tried to beat her with a frying pan, punch her stomach, slap her, etc.. Eventually she broke up with him. I ask my mother what my father was like, but she never wants to talk about it. She thinks that I'll be traumatized if I learn too much about him, but really, I'm just curious!

My mother never told me anything about the months between her breaking up with my father and my birth, but I suppose that's not important, is it? I was born on March 6^th in a newly built hospital only one mile away from where my mother lived. My mother was only in labor for 45 minutes! There weren't any complications of anything, so she got to take me home the next day.

I don't really remember what the next 5 years of my life were like. All I remember is Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer. My grandmother played a huge role in my upbringing, as my mother had to work long hours in order to care for the two of us.

When I got to be in 3^rd grade, my mother could no longer afford to pay the rent for our apartment, so we had to live with my grandmother. To you, that probably sounds fine, right? But it wasn't! My aunt and uncle live with her. That also probably sounds perfectly fine to you, huh? No! Wrong! My aunt's horrible childhood had caused multiple personality disorders. She's bipolar, has OCD and ADHD, you name it, she probably has it. She is constantly yelling at everyone and everything, swearing, and kicking random objects.

As for my uncle, my mother insists that he's a bad person, but to me, he's just a nice man who's built up a mean outer shell due to his childhood. He's been my father figure for my entire life. He's caring, but you don't notice it until you know him well enough. To the average person, he's just a d****e bag who swears and insults everything. But to me, he's hilarious and oddly caring. He was the one who got me interested in the entire Asian continent in general! He shaped me into the person I am today! Recently, he started teaching me to play the guitar, constantly calling me “chubby hands” and the like whenever I mess up and mute a string that I'm not supposed to. That also makes him sound like a horrible person, calling his niece chubby, but he doesn't really mean it as an insult. Tough love, I suppose.

So, with my uncle meddling in my aunts business and and doing things to purposely piss her off, it was quite the chaotic household for me to grow up it. I enjoyed getting to be around my grandmother, though. She knows me better than my own mother!

The house quieted down once my uncle moved to Seattle. He found a girlfriend, who turned out to be insane, and moved back. He didn't move back in with my grandmother, though! He actually got his own apartment! I suppose I owe his girlfriend a “thank you”, for she was the one that introduced me to anime! Without that, I wouldn't be interested in the things I am today.

Once my mother got enough money to move out of my grandmother's house, we frequently visited my uncle and his girlfriend. I would sit in their bedroom with his girlfriend, cuddling up under the blankets with their cats, and watch anime like Inu Yasha and Sailor Moon. While we did that, my mother would sit in their living room with my uncle and play random online games like City of Heros.

I remember how on New Year's, we went to visit my uncle and his girlfriend, and I stayed up until 4 o'clock in the morning playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on my uncle's PS2. That game didn't phase me one bit! However, all good things must come to an end.

My uncle realized that his girlfriend was insane in way that I don't even want to list, so he dumped her. After that, he moved back in with my grandmother. That didn't change anything, though. He started making annual 5 month long trips to China to visit a friend he had over there.

By the time all of that had happened, I was in 5^th grade. My mother had started dating a man she'd known for 16 years, we lived in a nice apartment, all was well! That is, I thought it was well. Her boyfriend watched porn and chatted with girls behind my mother's back. This caused a lot of fights. I still don't understand why she continued dating him.

Author's Note

I apologize for not indenting the paragraphs. My TAB key appears to hate me at the moment. I'll be sure to fix it later.