I
tried my hand at some fiction to describe my life earlier on. With the
graphic zines, I figured this was a redundant enterprise and focused on
expressing things in drawn form, but kept the writing and decided I
would share it here. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and
GUILTY.
When
Budgie turned 13, the Spyders moved on her birthday yet again. This
time they moved to another state Budgie had never been before. She cried
when her parents told here where they were going and asked, “Why are we
moving to the wilderness?” Peep was sick of moving and cried from
leaving her friends YET AGAIN. She hid out in one's friend's attic only
to get dragged out. Budgie knew running away with no money would not
work. She asked one of her friend's mothers if she could move into their house, but "No"
was the answer. How come no one wanted her and why was she always stuck
with the Spyders? Budgie's birthday was blown off, as the Spyders moved
from a giant hip urban coastal city to a blue collar Midwestern
town in fly-over country. Her father would get a huge promotion.
Budgie's
old classmates would never know poverty and would grow up to
buy 700,000 dollar houses. They would become lawyers, engineers and doctors. Her classmates in her new town, had known
each other since kindergarten and weren't open to new comers. They would
all grow up by the age of 21 to marry high school sweethearts and be
grandmothers by 40. The Spiders became bigger fish in a smaller town.
Budgie's father appeared in the newspaper every time he got an award at
work. The Spyders were in heaven.
Budgie
and Mimi were dropped off at their first public school. For some weeks
before moving into their 3000 square feet suburban home with 5 bedrooms
in the wealthiest neighborhood in town, the Spyders had to wait for the
house to be vacated. Mr. Spyder rented a cheap trailer on the outskirts
of town, where the other kids went to the downtown inner city schools
and drove them to their new junior high school in the wealthier suburban
district. John Jr. started high school. The kids in Peep's new trailer
park neighborhood were friendlier, and loved to play PAC-Man at the
local convenience store.
Budgie
sadly was dressed in very butch clothing. Mom had chosen a plaid
flannel shirt, and Wrangler jeans that were way too hot for the early
September day. Peep knew embarrassing worn patches on her pant's thighs
would start up and she would be yelled at again. She missed her old
school uniform already. Mimi wore her new Jordache jeans and Morris the
Cat T-shirt. She had a Mork and Mindy "rainbow" belt around her waist.
Budgie
was scared to death about the new junior high whose very name
"Highland" brought out giggling among it's small group of stoners, yet
was five times her old Catholic school's size. Budge was not ready to be
grossed out after getting her school schedule and doing battle with her
locker. She walked into a room full of giant vats of formaldehyde which
filled her new science classroom with fumes that made her head feel
like a balloon ready to pop. The odor felt like it came from a horror
movie. Her new teacher, who looked like Lurch, was bringing objects that
looked like pink wrinkled dead babies out of the vat with giant steel
tongs. Budgie focused her eyes through the fume and nausea,til she
recognized the objects. They were dead baby pigs! The teacher was
handing one to each student. They were supposed to cut these things up
with razor blades to look at the guts. Budge ran to the bathroom, she
had to puke and there was no stopping it!
The
kids at her new school seemed to be really hung up on fashion and made
fun of her jeans for not being the right kind. Wranglers didn't pass the
test but Jordache did. Budge went to art class and then to choir class.
She could not sing but since all the classes were full she was shoved
into choir. That crazed choir teacher threatened to beat Peep with her
giant wooden paddle with holes drilled into it for not singing
seriously. She did not believe her when she said that was her real
singing voice. Even the nuns in Peep's former state had been forced to
put away their whips and rulers before Peep entered their domain.
Budgie yelled "I won't take a butt whipping from you!" and
ran out of the room. It creeped Budgie out that a woman who weighed
50lbs less and who was 4 inches shorter then her was going to attempt to
beat her butt. Mr. and Mrs. Spyder as Budge got bigger, now would hit
by surprise and punch her in the arm or pull her hair, rather then
attempting spankings with a belt or being bent over and hit on the butt.
They knew Budgie would fight back by pushing them away and the room
would get torn apart. so they hit her by stealth. Budgie was taller then
both parents by a very young age, and outweighed her mother by 50lbs.
Mrs Spyder loved to slap Budgie, even when she thought everything was
okay. Her father loved to kick her in the butt and punch hard on her
arms, and pull at her hair. She would approach her parents slowly
trying to gauge their moods. Mimi was never touched, ever, Mrs. Spyder
worshiped her and Mr. Spyder wouldn't dare.
Budge
would play "hookey" for the very first time. There was a pizza shop with a
very nosy man outside the front of it. Budgie sat on the curb and
contemplated her descent into juvenile delinquency on her first day of
junior high school.
Budgie
finally had her own bedroom in high school but barely got to see it, as
she had to work, clean, go to school and make lunches. Every morning,
Mrs. Spider laid Mimi's clothes out. and helped her get dressed and
combed her hair. Mimi had her own personal maid and butler, even as Mrs.
Spyder readied herself for the great middle class job her husband had
gotten her at the government agency even thought she had flunked out of
business college long ago. She made cakes, and salads, and spoiled her
office mates while working a job that never seemed short on benefits or
vacation time. Every female at the office dressed alike with curly short
haircuts, and shirts with bows on the front of them and heels.
Budgie
was on her own. No one told the truth about latchkey kids, that they
were really were free maids and chefs for their parents. Budgie still
loved to read but school was a drudge, she was always exhausted. The
Spyders never let her sleep. She was always busy and moving around but
her body never showed it. It just seemed to want to get bigger and
bigger, no matter what she did. This led to crying sessions as she tried
on clothes and Mrs. Spyder insulted her for being fat. She just was
never good enough and her big body was one of the main focuses. The ugly
masculine clothes she was forced into at Lane Bryant's just made her more
depressed.
The
Spyders treated her like a mannishly dressed Cinderella. Mrs. Spyder
told Budge because she was fat, she should dress like a boy. She was not
petite or pretty like other girls who deserved to wear dresses and
those jelly flats that Budgie craved. Budgie would cry about everyone at
her homophobic high school calling her a butch and lesbian, saying "I need to dress like other girls and not always in tight jeans and sneakers.”
Mrs. Spyder would get angry then and say, "They don't make nice clothes
in your size, lose weight!" Shopping trips with Midge were a nightmare.
She yelled at Budge constantly and called her ugly. Budgie definitely
was not the daughter she wanted, Midge got that in Mimi who was her
perfect Mini-Me. Mimi didn't care about clothes and dressed like Mom,
but definitely had far more feminine clothing then Budge
Budgie
hated her parents and had constant guilt-attacks imagining them both
dying in a massive explosive bloody car wreck so she could be free. She
wondered if she would end up in hell for thoughts like this as she read
more books on witchcraft, atheism and mysticism from the library which
she hid from her parents.
At
school, the teachers and counselors always tsked tsked over teenager
rebellion. Teenagers who didn't obey their parents were bad people.
Teenagers who imagined both parents coming to a fiery end were even more
wicked. Teenagers with all the food they ate and costs they incurred
also were a burden to their parents. They were not supposed to drink,
smoke pot or have sex. They were supposed to grow up and be good
Republicans. High school prep rallies prepared the future sports widows
and football nuts for conformity. She thought of applying for
emancipation, but then some friends told her she had to be able to
afford her own rent. She knew paying 500 a month for an apartment on
part time salad girl wages at the local steakhouse wasn't going to cut
it.
She
wanted to go to college, not end up working in restaurants forever. She saw the other underpaid sad adults who lived in the projects and smoked
a lot of cigarettes and held down two and three jobs and was scared of
ending up like one of them. Budgie wasn't allowed to take the bus but
she ran into working class and poorer people at her endless jobs. The
Spyders were always yelling at her to not end up as a “loser”. “Losers”
included Aunt June, who drank too much, lived at home with Grandma at
the age of 25 and who worked at a nursing home. Another "loser" was
cousin Rene who worked at a factory warehouse hauling boxes and lived
with her alcoholic father--the abusive ex-husband of Aunt Maybelline,
she had ran from years earlier. These were "failed" people who couldn't
afford a suburban home, who didn't have nice cars, and who didn't have
enough money.
One
dishwasher who bragged of being in prison for assault, wanted to date
her. He told her, “Fat girls are hot” as he ground against her in the
salad bar cooler, but she turned him down. She liked bad boys, goth,
punk or biker boys gave her a secret thrill inside as she imagined a
cool boyfriend dressed in black, giving her father a middle finger, but
she knew this guy was major trouble and probably would only get her
pregnant, like all the other bad girls and “whores” her parents would
make comments about. The nuns also told her to remain a virgin at all
costs, and that men would just use girls to pleasure themselves and dump
them by the roadside pregnant too. So she thought, "I have to put up with the Spyders for now, and just get myself through college then things will be okay." Little did she know.
Mimi
ordered her around too, nit-picking at the lunches she was forced to
make. Nothing was every good enough for her and Mimi had grown from a
little girl who sometimes smiled into a neat freak-prig who resembled
Midge in personality exactly. She wore her hair in the same tight curls
that formed a helmet hairdo. Mimi ate only Honey Nut Cheerios and no one
still was allowed to touch her gold fish crackers which were bought for
her specially. Mimi never got fat even though she ate lots more snacks
then Peep did and never went hungry. Mimi could eat whatever she wanted
out of the kitchen and was never screamed at to "Get out of the Fridge!".
Mimi
had a scary temper. One day she got mad at Budgie's brother John Jr.
for forgetting to program the VCR for her and her mother's favorite soap
opera “General Hospital” and grabbed a giant serving fork, the
one used for flipping large T-bone steaks on the big gas grill outside,
out of the drawer and ran at him with it. When he dodged the incoming
weapon, she stabbed the wall with such force, it got stuck. Budge walked
into the kitchen seeing the stabbing fork standing out from the wall,
while her siblings screamed at one another.
This
was as bad, as the fight John Jr and Mr. Spyder got into the other
week, where Mr. Spyder started hitting John Jr so hard in the hallway
bloodying his nose, Mrs Spyder threatened to leave. Budgie never got
defended like that. Budge would find out years later that a psychiatrist
had seen his sister at that time and would deem her as not having
normal emotions. The Spyders quit going after one appointment, probably
because the psychiatrist wanted to take a look at the entire family. It
was the case of another professional dropping the ball.
Budgie
took the bus to school. Her brother drove his newer Gold Trans-Am, that he
got for his 16th birthday. He worked at McDonalds and had to pay the
insurance, but when Budge turned 16, she got the 1967 Family station
wagon that was 20 years old. She had to pay her own insurance, too. It
was hard to get to work and school as her car stalled out, and her
father would rail and rage against her every time she got stranded. This
car often would need three sprays of starter fluid in the distributor
cap just to start in the morning. Mr. Spyder would jump up and down and
scream, "Give it enough gas!" and when the engine flooded and would refuse to start at all, he would throw a fit.
Budgie
often hid out in the science hall bathroom to read. It was in the
farthest reaches of the school and she was happier when no one came in.
Her teachers were all rabid Reagan supporters and soon to retire burned out
WWII veterans. Budge fell asleep a lot. School lunches weren't so great
too. She was sick of potato chips and cookies. Green vegetables barely existed. She often ate her bologna
sandwich for a protein boost in the morning. Her sugary cereal had a
life span of maybe only 1-2 hours in abating hunger. Insulin resistance
and future diabetes was already knocking on Budgie's door.
Pizza
and french fries was a cheap but unhealthy lunch her school offered.
Budgie drooled over the salad bar and hot meals but never had enough
money to spare even with her part time job. Midge always had her hand
out for car insurance payments, school fees, gas money and Budge was
already required to buy some of her own clothes but according to Midge's
tastes. French Fries dipped in mayonnaise were not a good healthy diet
choice,
Budge
still got mad at school and fought her bullies and cussed them out but
sadly the teachers agreed with too many of them that she was too fat, so
she would be the one getting in trouble. Budgie due to her obesity,
Aspergers and abuse faced a lot of social rejection. She was constantly
rejected for not being someone else. Everyone wanted her to be a perky
100lb cheerleader, with smiles for everyone and big boobs and a low IQ. A
sad fat bookworm girl wasn't loved by anyone. Budgie never tried to
tell her teachers or counselors she was abused at home. The Spyders told
her years ago that there would be a heavy price to pay if she called up
CPS or told counselors the truth. Also because she never had burns or
broken bones, and no longer got locked in her room, most adults would
just see her as a “complainer”.
She
already knew from dealing with the nuns, no one would believe her, or
would tell her she was a "bad girl" and needed to obey her parents even
more to keep them happy. Some people, like Allison, would pay some
attention to her while bowling at her weekly league, but would ignore
her in the hallways of high school. John Jr. told her "Don't get too
close to me" and Mimi also would pretend not to know Budgie in school
and got mad if she talked to her too much though Mimi was still
bothering her and telling Midge to order Budge to help with her school
work or commandeer her old school reports and projects for recycling.
Budgie
worked as a salad girl in a steakhouse. She was supposed to keep the
1980s-era lavish salad bar full with jello, salads, cut mushrooms,
hardboiled eggs, green peppers, and homemade soups such as cream of
mushroom that Budge made from scratch. Budgie made pink ambrosia salad
with rice and marshmallow sauce, potato salad full of eggs and mayo,
pasta salad, and hot rolls from scratch. Budge was an excellent cook,
and people ate tons of food from her salad bars, but this was not a good
job for a teen with a very low metabolism who liked to take a nibble or
taste her soup to make sure it turned out. She held a career niche as a
salad bar girl and prep cook and when the steakhouse with it's flame
broiled steaks and giant baked potatoes went out of business, She worked
salad bars at two other restaurants including an in house one at a
Holiday Inn and a Big Boy.
Budgie
liked cooking because it meant she could be left alone. Working and not
having to talk to anyone was better. She would try to think of the most
creative salads to create, and at one restaurant she was allowed to get
artistic, with bronze molds of fish and wreaths meant for jello salads.
Sometimes, when she came back from time off, she noticed the other
salad girls were far lazier, the mushrooms would get slimy and the
salads start going "off" since they never cleaned out the containers
properly on the bottom and were too lazy to fill it with all fresh.
Budgie fluffed the kale leaves that beautified salad bars years ago
before anyone started eating it. Her jobs were hard and physically
demanding, there was trash to pick up and during closing she had to
empty, de-ice, drain and scrub down the entire salad bar and wrap
everything up tight for the fridge for the next day.
Budgie's
family in her teens was upper middle class but they were cheap. So
while the country club teens in her neighborhood got to hang out at the
pool or go to camp and wear designers clothes. Budge just worked all
the time like she was stuck in the projects and trying to get out. There
was times she only owned one or two pair of pants that fit and school
could get embarrassing. The other “rich” kids ignored her, since she was
not one of them. The project kids acted nicer, but she lived far from
their neighborhood and never could hang out with them.
She
was tired and burned out by high school. The Spyders treated Budgie
like Cinderella and when she got home 1am from cooking and cleaning, the
next morning they would be shouting for her to get up at 7am to rake
the huge 2 acre yard with dozens of giant trees, or clean or mow. John
Spyder prided himself on a perfect lawn and did not believe in
"resting", "fun" or "leisure", because everything must be kept up
perfect to impress the neighbors. Beatings would ensue if a stick was
left in the yard or if leaves weren't piled into plastic black trash
bags "correctly".
After
8-12 hours of being smacked, screaming, and cussing and outraging the
neighbors who often called the police when things got too noisy, the
Spyders would tell all the kids, including Mimi who was resting her room
after some light dusting and making cookies, to get cleaned up for 5:00
pm Mass. Both were indoctrinated into the view that missing a Mass
meant hell. It never occurred to them that cussing out your kids might
be a sin too.
Budge
could not accept a thin cracker wafer literally being God and got
grossed out imaging "god" sliding down their red throats with their
gross saliva being drooled on "him" en route to their stomachs. Budge didn't like the Catholic church. It reminded her of horror movies. She was an
atheist by age 10 reading Thomas Paine, Mark Twain and Ingersoll books
from the public library. Since reading “Late Great Planet Earth”,
though Budgie had a fascination with bible prophecy and would sneak
read the Bible too. When she asked questions about God, it just made
their parents angry and they told her to shut up. Budge didn't know what
to think of God after all she had been given a such a horrible family
and He didn't seem interested in doing much about it.
Mr.
and Mrs. Spyder wanted to sleep in until 8am on Sunday mornings and
read the newspaper. Midge would scramble some eggs, fry round squares of
hash browns, Bob Evans sausage and cinnamon rolls with orange icing.
Housework and more chores and endless household projects, where they
had to hand tools to Mr Spyder, would then ensue. Escaping to friend's
houses or outside was nearly impossible.
Budgie
went to a hotel party her brother held. Her brother was more popular
but his friends put him down a lot. She never fit in. It troubled her.
Kids even out of school called her a weirdo and spaz during her thinner
times. Drinking seemed really fun to her classmates. They always seemed
eager to laugh at each other's jokes while she cracked a thin-lipped
smile wondering what was so funny. When she used to attempt jokes, the
rooms would screech to silence. Budgie slowly drinked her beer which
tasted like pee without ammonia. Betsy bound in the room. The Spyders
loved Betsy because she was always complimenting them. She had latched
onto Mimi and tagged her home to kiss parental butt like Eddie on “Leave It to Beaver”.
Betsy had dark dead blue eyes but always a wide smile with big teeth
like Cheshire Cat. The Spyders always called her their "second daughter"
leaving Budgie suspiciously out of the count.
Betsy
was supposed to be one of Mimi's friends, but Mimi seemed to pick up
friends that became her parents friends as well, Betsy would stop over
and come to visit like a Pippi Longstocking sent from hell to torture
Budge. Budgie's parents would turn to her and say "Why can't you be more like Betsy, she's so happy why we got to put up with your constant pouting!"
Betsy would grow up to date old men including one boss who was 30 years
older. She married that one after he left his wife, only to dump him
for a man only 20 years older, when he got too sick and his retirement
didn't add up to his previous pay. Betsy always got her needs met, just
like Mimi and Midge, but with more smiles and jokes.
Louie
drank his beer, he was another popular guy full of jokes. Mimi and John
Jr. were there as well as his friend Chuck Coughalot. Budgie wondered
what was she doing there? She was nice with her usual tight smile but no
one seemed to take an interest in her even as she tried to talk and be
friendly. Socially she noticed how everyone was the same, they were so
happy, so spontaneous and so at ease. Even her sister threw back and
laughed out loud after a couple drinks. Her brother flitted around the
room bragging about his car and T-P exploits.
When
Budgie was 13-15, it was the era of Aunt Maybelline, right before she
began her restaurant jobs, Aunt Maybelline moved in. Aunt Maybelline had
been found after disappearing for over 6 years. She had married her
father's younger co-worker at the chemical munitions plant, and he had
taken to beating her, even after they had two kids. They lived at home
with her parents, but neither lifted a finger to stop his drinking or
domestic abuse. Wives were supposed to do what they were told. Mr Spyder
did his wife's bidding but openly in front of Budgie and the other
kids, would say of his older sister, “Well she had what was coming to her!, she's crazy! He was just trying to knock some sense into her.”
Budgie
looked at Aunt Maybelline, and decided if she had gone crazy, someone
had made her that way. She always seemed nervous and smiling and would
say things like “Let's be happy now.” She was always trying to
soothe feelings, and would giggle a lot. But sometimes, things got
scary. One time, Budge was sitting at a family meal at Denny's, the
Spyders had gone to the bathroom, and Maybelline whispered in Peep's
ear, “The Mafia's coming after me.” She shakily emptied around 5
blue bills into her hand from a prescription bottle. and took all of
them. Maybelline seemed to change personalities too, she would act coy
and laugh, and try to be overly friendly but in the next minute switch
to a hardass complaining about women trying to steal her husbands. She
was a product of 1950s New Jersey culture and a cold family.
Maybelline
was taught to worship John. She was told she had to play the accordian
at his 7 year old birthday party where the whole neighborhood was
invited. Her parents never had a party like that for her. John could do
no wrong and he was a math whiz always getting rewards for straight As
and perfect in his parent's eyes. He was a boy, and would one day be the
man to carry the family name while she was just a girl. John put down
Maybelline constantly and this did not change.
To
escape her abusive husband, and parents who never stood up for her,
Maybelline one day, just decided to hit the road, she figured her two
kids could be taken care of by the family, they were teens. She was
tired of black eyes and getting shoved around. She just wanted to
escape.
The
Spyders always told Budgie that Maybelline was a wicked woman for
abandoning her children, but even they admitted her husband beat her.
Peep wondered inside why no one stood up against her husband and told
him to stop hitting her. When Aunt “PeeWee” moved in, with her bad
nickname made up by the family trained to degrade others, Budgie was
kind of scared of her. She was always laughing and she kind of wouldn't
listen. Her eyes would blank out. She carried little baggies of pills in
her purse, and seemed to live in another reality. Her eyes were glassy
all the time. Budgie could tell she was petrified of Midge and John too.
Aunt
Maybelline, had disappeared for six years, and when she got desperate,
in poverty and after being widowed, she called on her brother for his
help, instead of ending up homeless. She had hit the road, and
hitchhiked with truckers to escape her life in New Jersey to the
absolute middle of no where in Budgie's fly-over state. It was
“Wilderness” where Maybelline ended up.
Midge
and John had piled the kids into the car, to drive up to Aunt
“Pee-Wee's”. There seemed to be great consternation about their
discovery that Maybelline had married a black man. They weren't exactly
free-thinking people, Midge forbade Budgie from playing with the black
doctor's daughter down the street in her own neighborhood. You would
have thought Budge was in the deep South with her parents ready to put
on pointy hoods the way they talked about Maybelline's husband. Budgie
inside thought it kind of romantic, that Maybelline had escaped and
found someone to save her. Anyhow her husband who was a trucker had
died. Maybelline was left with only a small truck and a very little
money, since his children had been left his small trailer and the pig
farm. Maybelline had gone “no contact”, disappearing from her family to
marry and enter a new life.
The
Spyders drove up the trailer on the muddy road arguing along the way.
Midge expressed disgust with the rural area, the poverty and everything
else. She didn't like poor people too much even though she had grown up
on a dirt farm herself in Ohio. She told Budgie and her siblings, on
rare occasions when she had a few glasses of Sangria of how she had to
go without shoes and ate popcorn for dinner. Poor people pissed her off
and were “losers” and they were all to blame. They weren't “winners”
like she and her husband who worked so hard. Midge and her favorite
narcissistic brother were budding Tea Party members.
The
deceased trucker's family members came out to say hello, from
neighboring trailers and Midge with a furrowed brow sunk inside the car.
“Ignore them”, she said. Maybelline came to the door giving a shell-shocked wary smile to the Spyder family. “Hi-ya!”
The trailer was in horrible shape and had become a possible site for
the future show Hoadrers, with piles of trash piled up. Bottles, piles
of dirt, rags and newspapers lay scattered all over the floor.
Obviously her grief and new loneliness had pushed Budgie's aunt over a
new edge. Budge walked gingerly in behind her father, and her mother was
there too. The two adult Spyders yelled at her, "What in the hell happened here?". She didn't respond.
Maybelline then laughed and said, "I made youse lunch!, it's in the oven!" Mr Spyder handed Budgie an oven mitt, and said "Go see what roadkill she made for us!",
Budgie was scared but went over to the oven, and opened it, and in it
was a ROTTEN PIG'S HEAD! It had been cooked, but was at least 3-4 days
old and left unattended. It's eyes bugged out, it's ears flopped. Flies
poured out of the oven. "It's still good!" Budgie's aunt cried.
Budgie in horror, this was worse then the baby pigs at school, literally
swooned across the table and almost passed out. Mr. Spyder yelled at
her, "What in the hell is your problem?" but took a few steps closer and looked into the oven.
Aunt
Maybelline would be committed by her brother to a psych ward. That
would happen twice in the few years that followed. Budgie remembered
mutterings about speed induced schizophrenia. She speed loaded diet
pills to remain under 200lbs. This definitely wasn't the full picture.
Psychiatrists didn't know much about narcissism or sociopathy back then
or the severe affects of abuse. No one in the 1980s was warned about personality disorders.
Budge knew she had two aunts on both
sides of the family who were deemed “losers”. Another one would become a
hoarder and disabled by by age 30. Maybelline knew how to hustle and
survive better most of the time, but wasn't all there. Both were put
down by the rest of the family mercilessly just like Budge.
The
Spyders had no mercy for things like mental illness. Maybelline, was an
“embarrassment”, “evil”, and a “burden”. If someone died, you were
supposed to just move on with life. The Sypders didn't ever grieve or
cry when someone died, they just went to the funeral with some
restrained phony smiles, and then the dead person would “disappear”,
never to be spoken of again. Maybelline had broken the cardinal rule of
Sypyder-hood, of having a few emotions.
The
Spyders yelled at Budgie for being too much like Maybelline. Peep
cried, and had emotions but she knew she was nothing like her aunt who
desperately wanted to fit in and wore thick social masks, that an Aspie
never could manage. The Spyders hated Budgie's differences, and
threatened her all the time. A quiet, shy, emotional daughter with
feelings was a burden too. They threatened Budge with shoving her into
an institution. She didn't conform enough to please her parents. If it
had been the 1950s instead of the more enlightened 1980s, Budgie
probably would have found herself in one for life.
Budgie would go to the library and read books like “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”
to see if she was as crazy as the Spyders claimed she was all the time,
but she didn't have hallucinations like that girl, nor take drugs like
Maybelline or go into hysterical laughter. Budge had building anger
inside but was too scared to express much of it. She also was quiet and
dutiful at school with a 3.4 grade point average. Budgie hid her
terrible OCD and extreme panic attacks that caused her feelings of derealization. Knowing her mean parents, would use the smallest excuse
to drag her off to the huge stone psych ward in their medium sized city, she kept her mouth shut.
Later
Aunt Maybelline would be let out of the psych ward, and would be
“stabilized”. She gained weight and seemed to like eating more after her
psych ward stays were over. Budgie would spend a lot of time with
Maybelline when she was moved into one of the trailers at the trailer
park, the same one the Spyders had lived in before moving to their
mammoth house. Even though Aunt Maybelline was “crazy” and “bad”, her
company was preferable to the Spyders.
Budgie's aunt would make her
hamburgers and fried onions to go on top and would give her lots of old
Globes and National Enquirers to read. Sadly Maybelline was too messed
up to ever stand up for Budge. Her mean relatives had led her to crack
up. She was scared of Budgie's parents even more then Budgie was, and
did everything she was told and tossed Budge under the bus at a minute's
notice.
Aunt Maybelline would disappear again and run away. When Budgie
turned 15, her only company away from home vanished with nary a word.
Budge wouldn't know of what became of her aunt until almost 20 years
later. Then she had married a wealthier Italian savior who moved her to
Spring Break land in Florida into a huge rancher just blocks from the ocean.
Dear Peeps, so glad people have access to the Internet. Am glad stories like yours EXPOSE vile people and their evil deeds. And no, I am not strong enough in the Faith to pray for Mr and Mrs Spyder. What prayers I have are for Budgie. The Spyders can go pound sand. Have a great evening Peeps.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sue, me too. Thanks for thinking of me, I appreciate it, even if I don't personally pray anymore. LOL about the pounding sand. You have a great evening too.
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