The Lion on the Stairs

I have a few memories from my early childhood years. The problem with a few of them is I'm not sure if I'm remember the event itself or the photo of the event. For instance, I remember my parents looking for me all over the neighborhood, frantic, thinking I was lost. I was upstairs in my room having a tea party. I saw them, heard them, looked out the window, but for some reason the thought to say "hey, I'm up here" wasn't something that dawned on me. I don't believe I was being malicious, just I heard them and went oh ok, and back to my business.
Another memory is one of those photo memories. We had a dog, a toy poodle. Pierre, or Lucky Pierre as my dad called him. I believe mom had other names for him as he preferred to pee on the floor in our back room rather than outside! I remember being in my white confirmation dress and Pierre being in the pictures. So, it's not really the event I remember. I remember the photo.
I wonder what a shrink would say if I told them I still remember a recurring nightmare I had when I was 5-6. You realize this was over 35 years ago, right? We had a two story house and in the dream I was on the stairs spying on my mother and her friend in the dining room. And somehow there was a lion crawling up the stairs to pounce on me, my mother oblivious to me, the lion or to my imminent danger. Talk about a prelude. My mother.
One of my earliest memories is me asking my Grandmother why my mom hated me. Mother has never been good with honesty and she's not going to like me writing this, but these are my memories. She says I was jealous of my brother. In one way I've never felt a moment of jealousy towards my brother. In another way maybe, but not in the way she means. She means that he was brought home from the hospital, became the center of attention, and I was jealous. No. On the other hand, anyone who was ever close to my family can and will tell you Brian is her favorite. To this day, he is her favorite. My dad repeatedly said "it doesn't matter what Michele does, from the moment she enters the house till the minute she leaves, it's wrong. her hair, her clothes, her friends, nothing is right". If I was jealous it was because he did everything right in her eyes (no matter what he did wrong), and I did nothing right.
Many would say my dad had a favorite, daddy's little girl. I'd have to disagree. I'd say he had to compensate.  He had to play peacemaker, keep her away from me. My uncle told me one time that all parents have a child they pick on, for him it was his daughter. I don't know if this is true (whether he picked on her, or whether all parents have a kid they pick on). What that statement meant to me was her actions were visible to others, they were confirmed, not just in my head. A few years ago I realized in a way my brother needed her more. Sometimes I think parents have a six sense about this, I've seen it in other parents. They favor the weaker child. I'm very independent, I needed my mother sure. Don't we all, but not in the way my brother did. Trust me I'm not excusing this behavior, it's just something I have witnessed.
I want to say some things changed for me when I went away to college, but more after that when I moved across the country to California. One day I was on the phone, I called the house to talk to my dad and she started yelling at me. I hung up. How liberating was it to realize I was several thousand miles away, I didn't have to listen to it anymore!
I'd had other realizations in the past. Maybe the first one was in high school I was assigned a paper in lit class on mental abuse. Suddenly the remarks "you're fat (all 114 lbs of me) no boy is ever going to like you", and more became all too real, I can't tell you other comments, I don't remember others. What I remember is having a private meeting with my teacher because I didn't think I could finish the assignment. My tears, and her understanding, what a wonderful teacher. True, mother used many of dad's belt buckles, and broke enough wooden spoons she eventually bought a pine paddle and used that and plastic spoons. Trust me plastic hurts even worse.
When I was about 16 I ran away. I'm not sure exactly when. It had to be during my senior year of high school. The summer between my junior and senior year I had gone to a summer immersion Spanish program at Eckerd College. I was going to my friend Debbie's to hang out, my mom was giving me a ride. Now Debbie lived a few miles away, and she didn't really know the name of the streets and neither did I. She gave me directions like "take the second left, then turn right at the first road". I hung up the phone and my mother said "you didn't get the names of the streets" and backhanded me across the face, bruising my cheek. This was a first. Her signature move was digging her fingernails into your arms until they bled, but punching in the face was new. I was hurt and shocked but didn't run away.
Two days later I came home from babysitting. I tried to go straight to my room and avoid her but she had other plans. She stopped me and said "Debbie called, and Jordan called". I started to walk away. She called me back "I'm not through with you yet. Your father and I are getting a divorce and it's all your fault". My fault because she hit me across the face, because she was out of control. I went to my room, afraid she would come to my room I climbed out of the window and walked about a mile to the nearest pay phone. I called my best (and still best) friend to come pick me up. She did. Her parents had me call my dad at the bowling alley and tell him where I was. He picked me up, I'm not sure where we went, but we went to some little diner and talked. He said they were getting a divorce, but it wasn't my fault. He said my mom had mental issues.
I don't know what happened but they did not get a divorce.I spent the night at Debbie's. The divorce was never mentioned again.
My parents met New Years Eve, got knocked up circa Valentines Day, engaged Easter, and married Memorial Day. I think my mom blamed me for her life. She married someone she barely knew, at age 22. A life that wasn't easy, my dad drank in those early years, and she blamed me. She took it out on me. If not for me she would not have had to get married and would not have been stuck in that life. They fought, mostly about me. Eventually, after I moved out of the house, they came to be in a happy loving place, and had a happy marriage. My mother and I, we've never come to that place.
We don't speak now. In fact, my family doesn't speak to her. I've spent my entire life trying to get her to love me, to accept me, to get her approval. Eventually you have to come to the realization that this is not going to happen. I don't think I'm there yet, don't tell my husband but I think deep inside me there is a little flame of hope that refuses to go away. For him, it's simple. The last time she hurt me was the final time for him. He said "that's it! we are not doing this anymore. I am not coming home to find you in tears over her. We've done everything we could. When she was evicted from her house my mom, and I, plus our entire moving crew (plus my cousins) packed her house and moved her stuff into storage, it's never enough for her. I won't see her hurt you anymore. She will not email you, call you, or even facebook you. I'm done". So we're done... for now.

My biggest fear as I went to college was she would start picking on my brother. She had begun to before I left. My father told her if she did he would leave her. I think this may have saved my brother.