Hello Steemians and uLoggers!!
I have no idea what ULOG number I'm up to, but I guess it doesn't really matter; it's a ULOG all the same. :)
The ULOG header for today is my own photo of our newly blooming 🌼plumeria 🌼!
I am writing a ULOG today because....
@owasco wrote a five-minute #freewrite earlier today, about a teacher trying to control her classroom. You can find it here - Day 514: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: control - and reading it sent me into my own past and I left this comment:
...reminded me of my Year 9 Social Studies class almost twenty years ago! Except the wad of paper didn't bounce across our teacher's desk... it landed square in the middle of his forehead.
(It wasn't me! I was a good girl! Until Legal Studies that is. The only teacher who had a problem with me all because I had a note to leave class early to pick my sister up from primary school. She refused to let me leave. I got up anyway because I had permission and it was my duty. Next thing I know, written on my report card was that I'm apparently violent and abusive when asked to follow school procedure. Biggest load of bollocks I've ever heard.)
I had to rummage through the cupboard and find it... first, here is what every. other. teacher had to say about me:
and here is where SHE had to say about me:
I have to note that I was "truant" for most of the thing because after that first incident, I walked into the office and told them I just couldn't handle that teacher or her class and to please make it a free period. WHICH they agreed to and did for me. But I ended up with two timetables, one that had me in her class and one that did not, and as such, I was apparently "truant" when I was legally no longer required to be there.
It still riles me up, sooo many years later. ANYWAY.
I walked my son to school this morning, and then as I walked the 1.5km home my mind drifted off into days of yore.
I didn't have the most conventional childhood. My dad was schizophrenic but I was unaware of the state of his illness until later in life and I just thought he was a bit kooky. I chose to live with him instead of my mother when I was around 8 years old. It's kind of a blur and I don't remember exact years and whatnot, it's all muddled, but I was around 8 or 9.
We moved allllllll over the place and I went to SO many different schools. Some for only a week or two before moving on to the next town and school.
I remember once, even though my birth certificate and whatever had my name as Belinda, my dad managed to enrol me in one of the schools as Angelica Wolfen. That was the name I chose for myself. And it wasn't pronounced Angel-ee-ca, but An-jelly-ca like the brat in the Rugrats cartoon. There was a Belinda in that class and I kept getting confused whenever the teacher called on her, and whenever she called on me, as Anjellyca, I never paid attention. Haha!
If you're going to pretend to have a different name, learn that name!!! Haha! :D
Then... there was this other time when we moved to yet another town, it was a school day, and my dad didn't want to leave the house that morning. He gave me $10, called a taxi, and told me to enrol myself into school...
Which I did.
The office ladies were very surprised. But they let me. Somehow. And told me that my dad had to come in and sign some things the next day or something.
That got me thinking to today. There's no way that would be able to happen today! Child services would've been called immediately. Kid enrolling herself into school, no parent, check what's going on here!
Oh God, and then in Year 7, I TOLD the teachers that things weren't right at home. That my dad had a girlfriend who was angry and throwing things all the time, that they lived in their bedroom smoking weed, that I heard them talking about drugs, that sometimes they'd disappear and leave me by myself for a whole WEEK. My grandma was supposed to be looking after me. She was rarely there or hid in her room herself so as not to deal with us.
They called child services. At last. But my dad bamboozled them. We had an interview with them and he was all, "Oh, she's just salty because we had to get rid of the computer. What she doesn't know is that I was going to buy a new one in a few months. She's just lying and trying to get attention."
I think he hated me after that. Not that it mattered. I no longer cared what he thought. I no longer cared that for one night he believed himself to be the long-dead man who used to live next door and tried to break into their house. I was infuriated that one night he forced us to search every nook and cranny of the house for his prescription medication when he had downed it all earlier that day. I no longer cared that he was hospitalised for overdosing on his medication. And then... I didn't give two hoots when the police knocked at the door and informed my grandma that her son was dead. Didn't even cry.
Until two years ago when the last thing I owned of his -- a glass fruit bowl -- shattered on my kitchen floor. Then the tears were unleashed. Repression, man.
Oh, back to searching every nook and cranny.
My past is what inspired me to start writing fiction (just, loosely based on non-fiction), and I ended up using that very bit for my original protagonist, Alexandria Kael. (Kael - Kaelci, haha!) This was back when she was a girl in the normal world, before getting magicked away into a magical world. Back in its very original form from 2011 before I started refining my writing, and before the story was set ONLY in the fantasy world and not both ours and it. If that makes sense. Sorry. Babbling.
She was so tired. They had been at this for hours. Searching for her father’s medication. He swore to God that someone, i.e. Alexandria, must have taken the medication and hidden it somewhere. They had looked in every bedroom, in every cupboard, on every shelf of every bookcase, under the linen in the cupboards, her father was even investigating the plants! Was he not aware that he took all of his pills earlier that morning? Does he not remember? Angry tears streamed down her face, blurring her vision as she tried in vain to search for his imaginary medication. Why won’t he believe me!? Breathing heavily, she climbed down from the top of the bookcase. “Nope. Not up there.”
“They are somewhere, Alexandria!”
Clenching her fists she felt her blood boil as she yelled, “NO THEY ARE NOT! AAARGHHH!”
There was only so much a nine year old could take. It was nearly midnight and she just wanted to go to bed. Her father’s voice thundered as he stampeded into the room, “Alexandria Marie Kael!”
His face was white with anger and his hands trembled as they held his leather belt tightly, threateningly. Alexandria collapsed onto the ground, her body heaving with her sobs, “You ate all your pills this morning! I swear!”
She sobbed uncontrollably and cowered on the floor as she sensed him take a step towards her. Flinching, she waited for the inevitable whip, but it wasn’t to come. She heard his footsteps thumping away, the front screen-door slamming closed behind him. She trembled on the floor, unable to move for a full minute before she uncurled herself from her ball and ran to her bedroom, locking the door behind her. Throwing herself onto her bed she cried herself to sleep.
Ahhhhhhhh. I'm falling into rambles. This started with school stuff and has ended with my schizophrenic father and childhood stuff.
I guess what comes out will come out, though whether I press the post button is an entirely different matter. On the blockchain forever, but only really seen by those interested enough to be bothered clicking. :)
This is me. This is my past. And this is part of why I am who I am today. I will press the post button.
If you made it all the way down to here, kudos to you. Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate you.
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