this is me.

Hoo boy, do I have a lot to complain about.

Not that my life is all that bad, you see. It's not. I have a pretty great life. But I certainly seem to find plenty of stuff to bitch about.

Where should I start?

Oh, yeah. My childhood.

Well, my mom's bat shit crazy, so there's that. After her third divorce, she started getting violent with me. That was fun. I lived with it until just before my 22nd birthday, when I finally had the good sense to move out of town and never speak to her again. The last time I saw her was at her trial for assaulting me. She insisted she'd done nothing wrong. Heck, she still insists I'm lying about that day, even though police documented the marks and bruises and she admitted to smashing my electronics. She said since she'd given my VCR to me, it was her right to smash it. Even though it was in my house. And she was in my house, too. And the only reason she was smashing my electronics was because I'd locked myself in my bedroom and she wasn't strong enough to kick the door down. Yup.

But I digress.

So that was just under 15 years of constant emotional and verbal abuse and also the occasional bout of physical abuse. It's been ten years now since I got out of there. She still tries to abuse me over the internet using Facebook and Pinterest, but I have her blocked so she can't do much.

Then, immediately out of that relationship, I met and began dating my now-husband, who has a psycho ex-wife of his very own. Lovely, I know. I did not want to jump on that train, but I was in love with him so I figured I could just marry him and ignore the ex. Admittedly, he contributed to this delusion by never mentioning that his ex-wife was a nutcase.

While not as bat shit crazy as my mom, my husband's ex-wife is a real piece of work. She and my mom are actually a lot alike in that they thought they could physically intimidate me into submission. It worked with my mom, but the ex wasn't scary enough to chase me off even after she got arrested for assaulting me. In all honesty, it wasn't like she beat me up. All she did was get in my face, scream at me, and then slam a car door on me, but that was enough to leave a giant bruise and get her charged with assault and disorderly conduct. I guess she thought she could scare me away if she got mean enough.

Anyway, after my husband got his custody situation with his kids mostly straightened out, thirty thousand dollars later, I resolved to focus more on me and what I wanted out of life. This ended with us adopting a child through foster care, since my husband had a vasectomy after his divorce and had zero interest in getting it reversed.

A year after our son came to live with us, we had paid off enough of my husband's debt so that I could become a stay at home parent. Just in time, too, because our son had all sorts of health problems resulting from his biological mother's drug use during her pregnancy.

Without a job to distract me and no real battles to fight anymore, I came down from survival mode. 15+ years of living with my mother's abuse and another few years of dealing with my husband's ex-wife made me crash hard. I didn't leave the house for weeks at a time. Relax- I showered every day and wore clean clothes, I wasn't one of those moms who insists she has no time for personal hygiene. Eventually, without the adrenaline keeping me going on high alert all the time, I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

I usually call it mild PTSD because frankly, I feel kind of stupid that I developed PTSD from getting beat throughout my childhood. It wasn't fun, I'll admit, but I never feared for my life. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are in real danger of dying- it seems like their PTSD would be more justified than mine. I guess you could say I'm not really all that comfortable with the PTSD diagnosis, but I accept that I have some form of it.

After two years at home, my son was stronger and I had dealt with my demons to the point where I felt ready to go back to work and put him in a preschool program. I got a job working at his preschool and moved to his elementary school once he started kindergarten. I'm almost done with my bachelor's degree and then I'll be a teacher instead of just an aide. I love teaching, mostly because it gives me plenty of time off to spend with him. I also love my husband. Like I said, my life now is pretty great. It's just the past that gets me.

Oh, I forgot one of the most important parts about my mother. Throughout all of this, throughout the abuse, her five marriages and consequent divorces, and even getting arrested, my mother proclaims to be a Christian. If you can believe it, right now she's even leading a Precepts Bible Study for women! That kind of put a sour taste in my mouth regarding religion, and once I went back to college and started taking science classes, I realized there's pretty much an explanation for everything on the planet. And scientific explanations don't involve God. What's more, in my thirty years of life, I've never once seen any evidence of God whatsoever. Initially, all that added up to me being agnostic, admitting I don't know what's true and what's not, but over the years I've become more certain in my lack of belief. I am an atheist.

So that's me. The sarcastic atheist teacher. This blog? Totally my place to rant about shit that ticks me off. Enjoy the ride.