PRISONER EXPRESS

I am 25 years old, but it still feels like it was yesterday when I was sitting in court, 15 years old, watching my mom take the stand. Family court. She played the perfect role for her situation. She cried, pretended she had a fractured arm, the sympathy she was looking for, she wasn't getting it. Even I, sitting there as I watched her, was disgusted with her performance. And so the judge asked her "Is this what you want?" He asked her three times if she really wanted to give up her parental rights, completely, over me. And she said yes. But you'd think that it would have bothered me deep down but it didn't. Not that I could notice. But as I look back on it now, I suppose it did. I was at the time glad. Cause I felt like I never knew her anyway. At the time I was already in the custody of Child Protective Services. It was just me, my case worker and my lawyer, and they both disliked my mother. So it felt good to have a few people on my side. After court, I was taken back to the children's group home I was staying at. It was a relief to be back. The only people I could connect with were there. We were all "throw aways" by our parents, but there were a few who had family that cared, but their family didn't have what it took to support them, or the child was a major delinquent that C.P.S took away from their family. And it was then them that I subtly despised and unconsciously envied. I say that because at the time I didn't realize it, but it was there within me. But it called to realization when I turned 18. I had plans of releasing myself from C.P.S custody. That's a right we have when we're 18. I didn't even realize where I was gonna go and what I was gonna do. All I knew was I wanted to get away from the last of my past. And on my 18th birthday I was in boot camp, still in custody of C.P.S and my mom called to the facility. I didn't even know what to say. I prepared myself for the defensive, tried to sound like I was in control of my life, but really I wasn't. I had no clue of how my life would begin upon my release. It was Dec. 19th, 19999â€" my birthday. 19 years old and I'm talking with my mom on the phone. She asked me to come back home and I gave up the fight and agreed to. When I went home, it was a new house and my brother and sister were grown. And my mom was totally different. She wasn't always yelling and losing her cool like she always would and of course she wasn't abusive, like she was with me, only me. That's where it all started. As I sat back watching my mom, how she was with the kids, she was just too different, too nice. I missed something. After being gone for 4 years, I came back a stranger to this house. I felt like I didn't know these people anymore and so I felt like I didn't belong there. Something inside of me was begging for me to get away from there. I remember crying in the shower cause it was my only solitude. I had no one to talk to. I wanted to go back to the group home where I was among people of the same situation. I just had to get away, even if it meant sleeping on the streets. It was like my whole 4 years away I was in a coma. I went looking for a job first then I went and told my mom, "I'm leaving, I can't stay here, cause I don't belong here. I don't know you anymore," and I left. And as I walked out, I died completely on the inside. Whatever was left of me of the past, died. Who ever I was, who ever I used to be wasn't me anymore. I needed a new place of my own, that I could inhabit with my own thoughts, my own pain, my own happiness, my own life. And I never wanted to go back to that house again and never see that family again, cause it hurt. When I realized that my spirit, and that spirit of the hellish past I used to know, drifted away. I knew I had to find a dark corner to haunt. Where I could break down over and over. Where I could finally feel that pain of being alone in the world.