Halfway To Somewhere: Entry Two

i remember being sick as a kid, but not much. despite the fact that i was born with a hemangioma, i was a relatively healthy baby! my hemangioma is on my head so i looked like i was abused as a baby, and people told my mom they should she was beating me. the one time i WAS sick as a baby had traumatized me somehow. i remember eating a hot dog, and crying, and then throwing up. my dad held me until i stopped crying. my mom told me i actually had croup, or maybe pneumonia. either way, i had ended up in the hospital, but i don't remember this. i don't remember this to the point that i have flashbacks about it in very minor forms, like every time i see those teal doctor gloves, i get flashbacks of smells. it smells like my childhood. so obviously, something about the hospital scared me! this is basically where my memories of ages 1-3 end.

when i was 4, i was kidnapped. i tell this story a lot, but I'll tell it again. my mom was sick, and wanted to let us play out at the park that was literally RIGHT across the street. she could see us from the window. my brother and i go to the park and this teenage girl approaches me on a motor scooter and says "Do you wanna play at my house?" and i was chronically autistic and didn't know what stranger danger was, so i said yes. i left my brother behind and went into the girls house. i remember the layout of this house so vividly because they gave me a tour. they fed me coco puffs and showed me a doll house, telling me if i stayed, i could keep it. that's when the police started to knock at the door, and when i asked what was happening, she said "It's just the police shooting a milk can" and eventually the police came in, got me, put me and my brother in their car, and took us home. i still think about her words to this day. "The police where shooting a milk can".... excuse me? like i know for a fact that is what this woman told me, and even my mom side eyes me being like "???????" but i have ZERO clue what she meant by this or why she said it, but she did.

when they finally took us home, the police yelled at my mom, and threatened her with a court order because the house was a mess because my mom was sick and, if i recall correctly, had just had surgery. she had trash bags sitting on the counters because we had a big dog named Jackson. she didn't want him to get into bags. on top of this, not even days prior, my brother and i had ripped open a bean bag and strewn beans all over his bedroom floor. the house was a mess to put it simply. in the military, there's rules about the level of cleanliness your house is, because you don't own them. socialist bitches. they're given to you by the military. white glove testing was apart of this, and we didn't pass. they tried to charge my mom, but i never heard the rest of the story. all i know is she has no criminal record...soo... no charges?

it's just the fact that they focused on charging my mom instead of

A. focusing on me being kidnapped or

B. helping us in some way.

but no. the military doesn't help. i mean, just look at the VA if you ever get the chance. the VA hospitals more specifically. that's a topic for another day however.