Ritalin

I came back from my mom's to start the Second Grade. I was always one of the younger students. My birthday is in July and I would turn the age of my fellow students over the summer. I would be 6 when they were 7. Then I would turn 7 during the summer and start school a year younger than everyone else. I also had gone through some things that made me grow up in a hurry. Coming close to death can do that to you. Abuse does as well. Sometimes it feels like I missed a bit of my childhood. I was being groomed to be a "little man" rather than being allowed to grow as a kid. As a result of this, I started acting out. How does a child function as a child when they haven't the nurturing that a child needs. I guess I was more of a free range child. Free ranging is okay for chicken and beef, but not for kids. Somewhere along the way, I met a new babysitter. Her name was "Ritalin". Okay, so it wasn't really an actual babysitter. I remember being on it. It really brings you down. It is supposed to keep you calm, but it just made me really depressed. I felt like I was caring 1000 lbs on my back while trying to cross the Sahara Desert. I also remember just wanting to die.

Dave either 2nd or 3rd Grade 

  I remember having weird dreams. Not just weird dreams like dreaming that you are in front of the class giving a book report with just your underwear on. Nope, these were full blow nightmares. Dreams about people chasing me and hitting me, stabbing me, shooting me while trying to run from them. I remember waking up with muscle spasms. Usually in the dreams, my dad was there in the background just kind of looking up, watching for a second and then going back to working on a car. Other dreams included drowning, falling, bushes growing into hands, clouds turning into giant hands, hands and sometimes faces coming out of walls. The hands were always grabbing and clutching me, squeezing the air out of me and then letting me go. Faces laughing. Faces screaming. I hated going to sleep. 

On a better note, my dad started dating Sheelah and she came to live with us. Sheelah tried to help me get so structure into my life. She tried and I rebelled. I was a kid with no boundries now being introduced to structure.  She told me that it was her idea to get me off the Ritalin.happened to me and just thought I was acting out. She said I was like a zombie. She had no idea what had happened to me before she came along. My dad never wanted to listen and the people who had hurt me warned me not to tell or things would be even worse. I felt like one of these people you see in a horror movie. The ones who know that someone is chasing them and they jump at every little sound, every little movement. In Second Grade, I had to walk to school down a long, scary alley. There were other kids but they did know who I was nor did they care. Dogs jumping out from nowhere, but still behind chain link fencing. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but it was. I'd get to school and sit by myself. Wanting to be somewhere else, wanting to be someone else. This was how most of my scholastic career was. It seemed like I was always the new kid. The new kids never get picked for teams. They never get to sit at the "cool" tables. Kindergarden and First Grades were in  Davis. I don't remember the name of the school in Second Grade, but it was in Fullerton. Third Grade was at Horace Mann, either Anaheim or Fullerton. Fourth Grade was Jonas E. Salk in Anaheim Fifth Grade was split between Salk and Mountain View. Mountain View was in Ontario. Willows School in Rancho Cucamonga for Sixth Grade. Seventh and Eighth was back at Mountain View. First half of my Freshman year was Ontario High. The second half of my Freshman year and my whole Sophomore year was at Camden- Rockport in Camden, Maine. My Junior year was at Rubidoux High in Rubidoux, California and then back to Ontario High for my Senior year. I'll fill in the blanks in future postings