Unrealistic Expectations

I've been trying to write this blog post for nine days now. I was very much unaware of the volume of abuse I endured and I was taken aback from the realization that I was being gaslighted earlier than I remembered and that I was being manipulated by more than one person at various parts of my youth/teenagerhood/new adult seasons. I really sat and went through my memory bank of circumstances where my parental units from the LM household. The term that I can say would be a reasonable description would be that they had unrealistic expectations from me. Besides the fact that they didn't provide safety when I experienced trauma in 1996, I was faced with daily belittling. I was often in trouble because rules would change unexpectedly or the fact that I didn't actually know any household rules.

I remember being punished for trying to translate a French report card to non-French speaking parents, and not getting the translation correct or exact, there was room for her to interrupt some different meaning and punish me for bad behavior and for bad hygiene. I was nine and ten years old when I remember these punishments.

In 1998, as I was about to turn 18 years old, I was in my last year of high school, I was doing a high school placement at my hangout Brazil, I was dating someone who I thought was a nice boyfriend, and felt things were kinda together for the first time. After two days of working this placement, there was an emergency school meeting: my placement coordinator, my guidance counselor, LM household parental units, and my biological parental unit from OM household were in attendance to discuss the location of my placement. LM with the support and a statement that the coffee house was a place to worship evil from the placement coordinator. He had told my step-parent that when he visited the coffee house on his last student's placement there, he saw that there was a copy of a book about witches and/or witchcraft. I would like to say that the coffee house had a library, it was two large built-in bookcase cabinets, and there was book on religion, war, love, sci-fi-drama, if you could think of a gendre it may have been there. So, not only did I lose a whole day of placement hours because the adults in the room decided that my placement should be elsewhere, I ended up being placed in an office setting, I was also forbid from going to Brazil Coffee House. I believe this is where the first and long spiral out of control began... Cody sided with my parents, I was able to see Brazil one more time before it closed its doors forever on March 24, 1998, my birthday party drama, the month long grounding (I'm 18 yrs old by this point), the first physical altercation with Cody, guilt shop prom dress, etc. I went from being treated somewhat like a seventeen year old teenage girl to being treated like I was fourteen again (sometime even younger).

Because I was remembering these things from this season of my life, that I had realized yesterday for the first time when I had my mental breakdowns in 1998 from the torment and sadness I was experiencing, both where in the LM household.

I wish I knew what book the teacher saw that day at Brazil, I would buy a copy of it for my coffee table in my chic new apartment. And I will adore reading about witchcraft and wellness over a good café latte, in my beautiful 25+ year old mocha mug from Brazil Coffee House, prepared by my wonderful partner; a fellow regular of Brazil Coffee House. I'll have the last laugh and enjoy all this while listening to 706 (my villain mode playlist).

Any witch book recommendation would be appreciated, I am rebuilding my library in 2023.