And now, for WAY TO MUCH INFORMATION THEATER. With Silver. (Huge post incoming)
Biological Father was a severe abusive alcoholic that left when I was around 4. Biological Mother was an undiagnosed schizophrenic that I was a catalyst for setting off her bad periods, and a chronic smoker. She also spoiled my biological sister to the point where she literally believed she could not do anything wrong (She freaked out the first time she got in trouble at school. She literally could not comprehend the concept that anything she would do could possible be incorrect).
Biological Father had moved out at this point for a few years, so I would have been around...8? 9? I'm guessing my sister was going through some sort of pyro phase at around 7. Had found my father's old liquor bottles that were still in the house we lived in at the time, and a few of my mother's lighters. Combined the two of them and then left the house to goto a friends. My biological mother can literally sleep through anything, so this scenario did not bode well, even with my two dogs freaking out. I was coming home from my friend's house across the street, smelled smoke, heard burning and dogs barking. I honestly do not remember if the house had a fire alarm or not. My friend had come to the porch to say goodbye, saw it too, ran in to tell his parents.
Ran into house, saw fire was mostly isolated to the hallway leading from the garage. Saw my 2 dogs at the other end of the hallway past the fire whimpering and backing away. There was another exit, but it's a sliding glass door that was barred close. The shed door locks from inside the garage, but I remembered there was a hose with a pressure sprayer on it in there. Ran back out of house and around side of garage, up one of the dog crates on the outside of the home, and busted in a window with one of the garden bricks. Got to the hose, got into the house from the garage, turned in on full force and eventually got the fire out as far as I could see. Got my dogs and tried to call for my biological mother. My friend's parents had called the fire department, and they were arriving at that point. My mother didn't wake up until the fireman was shaking her awake. I was told by the fireman that he didn't know bravery onset at that early age.
Honestly, I don't know whether I'd call that bravery or stupidity, and on the side, the only thing I cared about during that moment was saving the dogs, as they had kept my sanity when dealing with my family for those years. On top of that, my mother refused to accept the idea that my sister had caused the fire, to the point where, even after my friend and his parents vouched for the timetable, I was sent to therapy sessions until my sister finally admitted it after repeated prodding from my older half-brother who had been out of town at the time. On the bright side, the therapist knew pretty much off the bat what was going on, and so all 2 of our meetings had been just us talking about The Legend of Zelda. This lady was awesome, and had literally taken a picture of her TV for every screen that was on the overworld map on the NES game, then had it composited into a scaled down map.
Now, all that nonsense aside, I told you that story so I could tell you this one.
When we moved to Florida around a year later, I met an awesome Native American family initially through a friend, the son in the family, of my half-brother. Through the son (who I consider my surrogate brother), they found out about the general treatment of me and condition of my biological family's house, and took me in. I was at their house probably about 6 months out of the year, then home for a week, then back at their house again, without a care from my biological mother. They helped save my life, basically, and I graduated highschool early thanks to their support.
After being accepted from my testing scores, I moved here to Wichita at 16 back in 2001 to goto WSU for CS(due to their accreditation in the field at the time), and immediately started getting threats from my biological mother that she was going to pull me from school, along with repeated harassing calls to my then new girlfriend's (now wife's) family. I believe the bravest thing I ever did was to go to the district court, and petition for emancipation status and disowning of my biological family.
If you tl;dr my post, the only thing I hope any of the younger bombcasters can get from this: If you're in a terrible situation, and you don't end up lucky like I did with my surrogate family in Florida, consider if you can take care of yourself, and petition with your local court system for emancipation. If your caretakers aren't taking care of you, and you don't want to have to deal with a child services scenario for years until your 18, please don't just stay in the abusive environment. Just because you're living with bad people doesn't mean you're stuck with being like them, or even being with them.
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