MNIAcal

I used to think that all people were good people. Pretty naive, right? But then again, that’s what all children are like. You only see the good in people regardless of what they do. No one can do wrong. If I have one regret in my life it’s being that naive. But every kid does that, So why do I feel so guilty? To answer the question I’m not entirely sure. But I do know that I had to grow up fast and I was in for a rude awakening. Not everyone is a good person. Even those who should be. Those who should always be there for you and in your life. This story starts for me on the day I was born.

I was introduced to my family in the evening of May 24th, 2000. Everyone was excited to see me, my grandparents from Arkansas even came up to Minnesota to see the girl they hadn’t ever met. Everyone except one of the most important people in my life. My own father. No, he was at the nearest fast food place eating a burger and completely missed my birth. I was a small baby. I had jaundice, but nothing majorly wrong.

I got to go home with my mom and my dad, Brian Peterson, before all that long. Sounds pretty perfect, right? Unfortunately I still bear his last name as a constant reminder of the shock I went through growing up. Let me give you some back story here.

My mom, Crystal Podojil (Born Crystal LeAnn Bascue), had just gotten out of her second marriage. It was a dark point and she wasn’t in the best state of mind. Before long, my mom met Brian and they hit it off. For a while, anyway. Before long my mom was pregnant with me and some bad things had already started to surface. Brian was abusive. I’m sure she was scared to tell him she was even pregnant with me. Supposedly she actually put her foot down and didn’t even give him say in my name: Madyson it’d be. She liked the unique spelling which I hated through my childhood, what kid doesn’t want a sippy cup with their name on it? I’ve come to love it. Brian actually told me once that “Had I been a boy he was going to name me Alexander.”

Thanks, dick.

Anyway, He had this way of manipulating people into thinking he had power over them. Despite his sad excuse for a life. He was always able to make you think he’d hurt you if you didn’t make the right move. I felt like I was in danger around him most of my life. I still do, occasionally, even though he’s not in the picture anymore. As for me, he never physically did anything. My mom was another story. He used to throw things when he got angry. Even while she was pregnant.

They lived in a small apartment at the time and my mom told me a few stories of his behavior when they were together.

There was once when her parents (my grandparents) Jana Diane Bascue (Born Hoyle, which is now my middle name) and Marion Bascue, were coming to visit and they would arrive soon. She came home from work only to find him smoking a joint and doing nothing. He didn’t work. Still doesn’t, really. Another story is the time when my mom accidentally locked her keys in the car and called him for help, but he was at home playing a PC game and never answered the phone. She had to call a locksmith. So obviously you can see his neglectfulness and disrespect for everyone around him. He’s a narcissist and thinks he’s God’s gift to Earth. Anyway, there were obviously some issues in this relationship. When my mom became pregnant she was 27 years old and had already learned these horrible things about the father to her child. She was scared of him.

She confessed to me later that she was scared and thought about an abortion. But “the minute she saw me she fell in love with me and would’ve never done it.”

My dad likes to put it out as that “She tried to kill me” which was just one of his many ways of trying to turn me against my mom. He continued being abusive to her and told her she was an “okay” mom but he was a “great” dad. She threatened to throw him out many times, but never actually did it until a few months after I was born. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. My mother ended up physically grabbing him and putting him outside the apartment door, then locking it behind him. And even though she may have been free from him, the hard part was hardly over. After my mom threw him out, he moved back in with his mom, Joan Peterson. (Born Joan Duarte) Now, her story is one to tell.

My grammy was always a frail old woman. She typically had shoulder-length gray hair and she was a pretty quiet person. She was always short and skinny, and overall small. She’s also not been the most fortunate person I’ve ever known. Just to summarize, when she was a young girl, supposedly she witnessed her uncle blow out her aunt’s brains in front of the whole family. Now, this was told to me by my mom, who heard it from my dad, and I have tried to research it but haven’t been able to find a news story at all. So all in all I guess I don’t know if it’s true. However, she hardly ever sleeps because she apparently has nightmares. I know the non-sleeping part to be true. If she sleeps it’s really only a couple hours, and she drinks black coffee all hours of the day. It’d also explain her not-full mental soundness.

When she met my grandpa, Dennis Peterson, I don’t know what it was like at first. I do know that he was harsh on their children though, one of them being Brian. The other was my aunt, Jennifer Hein (Born a Peterson). They were beaten by their parents, but honestly my grammy isn’t the most mentally stable so I’m not sure if she really had control over herself fully. Not that she was ever dangerous to me, she was one of the bright tunnels in my life and I love her. Dennis was emotionally and mentally abusive to her. He yelled at her and got mad when she hid his cigarettes when doctors ordered him to stop smoking due to a cancer threat, I believe (He had his toes amputated). Anyway, this on top of her lack of sleep and her one fucked up son was probably a burden.

According to my dad, her relatives “kidnapped her once and took her to the hospital because she’s crazy.”

I don’t know how true it is. I know she has problems but she isn’t dangerous. When she’s gone, I’ll miss her.

As for my aunt, Jenny, she’s amazing. My dad claims she doesn’t know how to be a mom. But she’s really the normal one of the family. I still keep contact with her, actually.

Her husband used to be a raging stoner and she’s now working three jobs, so she’s really not getting much sleep these days either but she still remains optimistic, at least when talking to me.

There was once my dad tried to make me think she took one of grammy’s records, the soundtrack to West Side Story. When I jokingly mentioned it, (I was about eight or nine I think) she got a little angry and from what I understand, she never had it. My dad apparently sold it for cigarette money during one of the many times he’s been unemployed.

But that’s enough backstory on them for right now.

Anyway, so, he moved back into his mom’s house for awhile. A long time, actually. Life was hard. My mom really didn’t make much money, and even though my dad had signed a certificate of parentage (meaning he was really only financially responsible for me, otherwise he couldn’t care less) and still had visitation rights, I needed a babysitter while she was at work. Keep in mind although he’s financially responsible, he doesn’t pay child support almost ever. So he was pretty much useless. But he was a free babysitter. My mom still lived in the apartment, and her daily life was pretty much as follows:

She would wake up, get ready, then get me up and dressed. She would drive me over to Grammy’s house (which is where my dad lived) and I would stay there all day and get spoiled by my dad, all so I would favor him despite my mom’s hard work. She’d get to work at around 8:00 a.m. and would work until her one hour lunch break, and because her office was only about ten minutes from our apartment, she would typically go home to eat and have her only alone time for about 45 minutes before returning to work. When her day was finally over, she came to get me, and here’s where it can sometimes differ. If my mom did go grocery shopping with me, since she couldn’t leave me in the car or the apartment unattended while she got the groceries and I couldn’t walk yet, she could only really carry one bag up. So, because of that, this lead to having to go grocery shopping about every other day or so. If she got lucky, she could go shopping before getting me, or on her lunch break. But by the time we got home, she played with me for a little bit, gave me a bath, and put me to bed. By now it was about 10 p.m., and she’d have about five minutes to herself before falling asleep. Only to wake up and do it all over again.

Whenever I think back on those days, of course I can’t remember all that much but I do remember hiding in my Grammy’s house and throwing a fit when my mom came to get me. I didn’t want to go home, and I regret that. I feel horrible about that, and I can’t believe that I would’ve done it. But I did, because I loved him. He spoiled me, I thought he was a good person because no one can do wrong at that age.

However, Brian may have spoiled me, but my mom worked hard. She scraped up change to put a 99 cent package of noodles on the table for us to share as a dinner. Sometimes we’d get fancy and get Hamburger Helper instead of the generic noodle packets.

I know she doesn’t blame me, and hell, she knew I had more fun there. But at this point, she was still afraid of him. She thought he could do things like run off with me one day. And let’s be honest, how many kids get abducted every year by one of their parents? She could tell the police but it might be unlikely for anyone to help.

My dad was never a good person. He claims my mom was the one who was mean to him, that she’s a “selfish bitch” and only wants money from him. Like I said, he’s narcissistic and thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. He’s told me I’m brainwashed my my mother, her side of the family, and her “standard lies that she tells absolutely everyone she comes into contact with”. That he was

abusive

an alcoholic

violent

that he had anger issues

But the truth is, my mom never once told me these things until I was older and had already figured most of them out on my own. She never once spoke down on him to me, but he did it all the time, trying to tell me mom was a terrible human being.

To me, it was always obvious who was lying.

I can’t help but think that some of his problems came from his parents’ abuse at times, but then again, Jenny is just fine, and she visits my grammy regularly. She cried when her dad died (Cancer). Brian lives with his mother yet never even comes out of the basement to say hello, according to Jenny. Yet despite not acknowledging his mother’s existence, he gladly lives in her home and eats out of her pocket. You can see how this would confuse me through my entire life. Not exactly knowing for sure what’s right and wrong, what if what I thought was what was wrong? I have no way of knowing.

Anyway, after she threw him out, he moved back in with his mother, and I went over there to be babysat, it didn’t take long for my mom to meet Scott Podojil.

Scott grew up in Arizona and is the son of a sailor. He graduated high school and went into the Navy at 17 years old, where he was eventually stationed overseas to fight in Desert Storm. His family didn’t even really know where he was for a while when he was over there, and he was expecting to die. Scott had been a smoker since age fifteen, and was a ladies’ man all through his teenage and young adult years. He spent some time in Japan and went to college in Hawaii, which he claims he hated. And that’s just a rough outline.

They met when I was two years old, I believe. They met online and hit it off. My mom had met my dad online too, but their relationship was obviously less successful, even though she moved away from her hometown in Arkansas to move in with my dad all the way up North in Minnesota.

Scott and my mom were together for awhile, when they first moved in together, we were all still in Minnesota and rented a house on a farm. Our landlord (and neighbor) had cows, sheep, and chickens. He actually used to slaughter the chickens and bring them to us to eat. I didn’t understand that the chicken on the table came out of the coop when I was little, so I just got confused one day when all the chickens were gone.

Our yellow lab, Max, used to “mark” the sheep, and the cows would constantly get out and eat my mother’s flowers. To get them back into the gated area, we actually had to hit them over the head with a baseball bat, and much to our surprise, you had to do it pretty hard otherwise the dumb things wouldn’t budge.

I loved that farm. My mom was a dental assistant at the time and I still continued going to my Grammy’s house every day for awhile.

Eventually, when my mom and Scott started to talk about getting married, Scott was having to move to Des Moines, Iowa for his job. So we did. We moved to Iowa and we rented a house on Madison Avenue, which I loved because I thought it was named just for me. Our neighbors, especially across the street, weren’t the nicest people.

The lady across the street was constantly rude, and actually backed into my mom’s tail light and broke it at one point without even saying sorry. I didn’t have any friends in Minnesota, so moving was a perfect thing for me, I was so excited. At this point is when my mom contacted our case worker and we arranged that I would go to my dad’s every other weekend, alternating holidays.

Looking back, I’m glad my mom did that. I always felt like I had a designated home, I wasn’t constantly bouncing around from household to household. Plus, it gave me an opportunity to actually make friends and go to school and be happpy.

I had a pretty normal childhood for a long time. I was small, I didn’t really see the big picture and I was even excited to go to my dad’s, I had fun. But coming home was always fun too. I had no real preference. I used to actually play dress up with my dog, Max, all the time. I even put play makeup on him. This and cutting up my sheets to make capes for my stuffed animals were my two favorite things to do. And I did all of it with my two imaginary friends, Jana and Lisa.

I still remember how I pictured them. Lisa was my favorite but I played with both of them. But Max was really the one thing I was inseparable with. I loved that dog more than I loved anything else. He was my best friend, he slept with me every night and sometimes I’d use him as a pillow.

When we’d been in Iowa for a bit, my mom and Scott had a surprise wedding in our backyard when I was three. I got to be the flower girl, obviously, and during the ceremony, a baby of one of my mom’s friend’s started crying, so I sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to it. That was definitely a fun day.

They had champagne glasses filled with pastel chocolate mints, and I made myself sick eating them. My best friend at the time, Kayli Karkiainen, was there with her family, and so were my mom’s friends, and Scott’s brother Alan, who brought his wife, Tammy, and daughter, Taeler.

It was a hot day, and we had a big kiddie pool full of ice that we put beverages in. All of the kids who were there helped max to get cans of soda out, which he would bust with his teeth and lap up. Later, Max actually fell asleep with his head in the ice.

Mom and Scott sure were happy, and they did the classic shoving of the cake into each other’s faces. I say it was a surprise wedding because basically they told everyone it was just going to be a big barbecue, and then poof! They got married. My mom’s dress wasn’t anything fancy, she got married barefoot in our backyard and everyone was in casual dress.

It was a fun day though. A bit boring for me during the ceremony, but nonetheless, I remember being happy. I don’t exactly remember how it ended but I’m sure I fell asleep and was taken to bed.

When I was three or four, I joined dance classes with Kayli. We were in tap, ballet, and jazz together at Betty Hill Dance Studio, and we always performed at the Civic Center of Des Moines for our recitals. The first time I had a recital, I wore a cute little white leotard and matching tutu that had thin white feathers on the rim. I also wore white tights, white ballet slippers, and a white hat that had a big rim and was lined with feathers to match the tutu. My makeup was bright blue eyeshadow, pink blush, and red lipstick. My mom curled my hair and made it all pretty, and I was set to go. Even if I got my ear a little bit burnt by the curling iron.

My mom made a gesture for my first recital. She invited my Grammy and Brian. But things were wrong right from the start. Basically, they showed up, my dad came in the house, and sat down at our table while we were having dinner, just expecting to be fed. Pretty rude. Anyway, I didn’t notice too much.

We then went to the recital and I was terrified but also excited about going on stage. Everything went well though. I remember not being able to see the audience very much, I tried to find everybody but the lights made a shadow and I could barely see who was in front of me. After we were done dancing, my parents came and picked me up and told me how good I did. But my dad wasn’t anywhere to be found.

My mom took me into the next studio to watch “the bigger girls” dance. They were probably juniors or seniors in high school. They were putting on a performance of “Cats!” and I remember being completely awestruck by them. The way they danced and jumped around in their cat outfits, it was so amazing for an aspiring dancer (at the time) to see.

Once they finished their performance, my dad reappeared. He had gone out to get me flowers. And again, at the time, I didn’t think he was a bad person, so I ran into his arms and got my flowers while my mom took our picture. We all visited for awhile but looking back on it, my dad didn’t really talk to anybody. He only talked to me.

When we left I was exhausted and my feet hurt. So we got in the car and on the way out of the parking garage, we saw my dad and Grammy. We pulled up next to them so I could say bye. And that was that.

I don’t remember any more of that night but similar to mom and Scott’s wedding, I’m sure I probably fell asleep in the car and was carried to bed. I honestly don’t remember a hell of a lot of my early childhood. memories stick out but I couldn’t tell you at what point in my life they happened.