Unwanted: Memoirs of a Garbage Person

Written by: Trashlett

Chapter One- The Calm Before the Storm

When I was born, the umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around my neck, strangling me on the way out. The first sign that even on a biological level, I was unwanted. Later in life, I would say this was my first suicide attempt.

I now live trapped in a schism, a life of two pasts. One that I had always known, and one whose truths have only been revealed much later in life. Such is the gravity of the deceits I have lived with.

I was always led to understand that I was born the last of three children: one half-sister, one brother, and myself. All planned. All wanted. The reality, however, was different.

A Fortune Built on Deceit is a House Built on Sand

My father had two daughters before us. He met my mother while she was married to another man; she also had a daughter, my half-sister. She cheated on her husband with my father. He even bonded with my half-sister before her father was aware of the affair.

A love letter between my father and mother that I found, almost twenty years after my father's death, documents him picking out the things he wanted from my mom's ex-husband in the divorce, long before the breakup was ever initiated or the affair was even revealed to the unfortunate man.

My parents did eventually marry, and when they did, my father quickly abandoned his two daughters. He decided he needed to start a new family. He had my half-sister and wanted a child of his own from my mother, specifically a son. My brother was everything he could have asked for.

I was not the next planned child, as I had thought, nor a "bonus child," but an accident. The same kind of accident that you have, that results in spilled water or broken glass. The kind that makes you cry out, "Fuck!" reflexively. It was the accident that ruined something perfect, and they would make sure it would never happen again. My mother's tubes were tied directly after birth. The unplanned nature of my being was broadcast loudly, from inception to birth, apparently. My young siblings were made well aware of the cast of the unwanted intruder, set to invade their lives. The only person who was not told the nature of their indiscretion was the intruder themselves. This was kept from me for 20 years. A small kindness, I suppose, although the knowing would have perhaps solved years of begging the same question over and over.

"Why me?"

How did I find out? My mother had died after a brief but gruesome battle with cancer. She died on Christmas morning, 2002. My brother, sister, and I gathered in her townhome to go through the large Tupperware bins she had kept of pictures, mementos, documents, and anything else that had summed up not only her life but our lives as well. As we dug through the boxes, my sister found three small, sealed letters in aged, yellowed envelopes. One for each of us, addressed in a stylish cursive that she abandoned once she also abandoned being a mother in exchange for becoming a real estate agent in the late '80s. Letters were distributed excitedly, and my brother and sister took turns reading theirs aloud. It detailed all the beautiful things my mother saw in each of them and the potential she saw as each of them grew. The letters were written when I was roughly 3 years old. My brother was 4, my sister 13. When it came to my turn, I opened my letter, expecting the same.

Mine simply said, "You were unplanned and have never made things easy."

The obvious sentiment of dislike was not unknown, although at such a young age, it was a bit of a revelation. I always believed that there was a small time when she had loved me. Being unplanned, however, was a shock. I reread the words in disbelief. My siblings laughed.

“You didn’t know?” “Everyone knew!” “We were great until you came along.” “No one wanted you.”

These were the sentiments of comfort I received in mourning, shortly after saying goodbye to my mother. After losing her, I was doing my best to try to paint my memories with some sort of love or good intentions. Something that would match the pain I felt, but this was the puzzle piece that truly fit. The mother who resented her youngest till the end. The siblings that never cared for their sister, yet clung to each other. "Unwanted," the word replayed again and again. 

Looking back, I think the true grief I was feeling was from never having a mother, a safe place, or a family. Her death was the end of hope for any change, redemption, or ability to gain those things.

It was the death of closure for a life of being unwanted and abused.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles Must Begin with a Single Step

Now we can truly begin my story. But how should I start?

"In the beginning..."

"And then I was born..."

It makes me feel awkward and tawdry, like a Las Vegas magician, to even think about.

In most cases, to begin at birth seems a little too far back. The therapist asks, "When do you think your depression began?" "Well, I was born crying, and I don't think things ever got better after that."

I think there are a few important things to touch on here, so let’s begin. I was born in Walnut Creek, California. To this day, I have no idea why, as we lived in Stockton, hours away. I have now inherited my baby book, although I'm not sure why it was kept for so long. Only the first page is filled out: birth information and a quick mention of how my mother had to miss her “microwave cookery” class, which upset her greatly. Later in life, when having to eat her cooking, I feel I have only my birth to blame, as surely that singular lesson was the linchpin in learning the basics of palatable cuisine from a microwave.

To mark both the momentousness of the class and the insignificance of my birth, as soon as she was handed me, she left the hospital to catch the end of the class to socialize with the ladies whom she had missed so dearly.

Obviously, I have no recollection of my birth in Stockton. When I was 3, we moved to Mobile, Alabama. We lived in a large two-story colonial home in an upper-middle-class suburb. It was the only time I remember my life seeming happy and normal.

It was my honeysuckle and jasmine-scented halcyon days. I played with my siblings and parents. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. She organized birthday parties for us in Star Wars and My Little Pony themes. The only thing that was ever slightly amiss was that my sister, 10 years my and my brother's senior, was given a present at each of our birthdays. Otherwise, things were normal.

I played outside, catching black furry caterpillars to first use as eyebrows and mustaches, then eventually put in jars with branches and leaves to become butterflies under my inquisitive gaze. We caught green anole lizards, small lime green lizards with mild bites, that we would clip to our ears to pretend we were fashionable women. I danced and played dress-up and house.

I had long, beautiful hair that was curled daily into perfect ringlets by my mother. She herself was a beautiful woman with a striking similarity to Meryl Streep. Oddly, as she aged, she only began to look more and more like Meryl as Meryl aged as well. Perhaps they used the same plastic surgeon. My mother even modeled while in Alabama, alongside my sister, who was in middle school and a cheerleader. They were billed as a mother-daughter modeling duo and even made the front page of the local paper for their success. I was entered into a small beauty pageant. I won second place. It was the end of my career.

My father worked on an oil rig in Alaska at the time. He was on a 3-month on, 3-month off schedule. When he was gone, I don't remember missing him, perhaps because when he was home, he was fully available. We had a porch swing in the front yard, and our parents gathered us to watch the sunset every evening when the weather permitted.

We never hurt for money, so we took trips to the Gulf of Mexico to lounge on the beach and to Florida to visit Disney World and the alligator farms scattered throughout. I still have jars of worn and bleached shark teeth and shells found on the white sandy beaches from that time. The cool waters and fresh ocean breezes fill my memories of that time. The ocean remains my favorite place in the world. Perhaps it is because of these early experiences of "happy," "family," and most importantly, "safe" that would become so scarce for the rest of my life.

To See and Listen to the Wicked is Already the Beginning of Wickedness

As much as I would love to focus on this time in my life fondly, without stain, I cannot mention Alabama without acknowledging how life was for others.

As is often the problem with white people, my idyllic time was only so because I did not understand the blatant racism all around me. How could I? It didn't affect my picture-perfect family.

In my white, upper-middle-class neighborhood, houses often employed workers like housekeepers or nannies. The unspoken rule was that you could not hire the wrong race in your home. (I cannot remember if your “help” needed to be dark-skinned or white... as it is ridiculous either way.) If you did, news would travel fast among the gossiping moms. The offending neighbor would quickly become ostracized, and their children would become off-limits for play.

We never hired anyone nor partook in the gossip, but you couldn't help but overhear and see what was going on in a close-knit neighborhood, where all the kids were friends and you ate as many dinners with your neighbors as you did at your own home.

The other, more insidious example was my kindergarten teacher. In a mixed class, she made sure to carefully explain why “black people smell bad.” It was explained, as if she were giving an academic lecture, that “they” all worshipped voodoo, and part of voodoo made them eat raw meat. Of course, that “chem-i-cal-ly” (I can still hear her drawl draw out this word for emphasis on her scientific accuracy) changed their bodies to make them smell.

At the time, it did not feel like a sermon of hate, sitting among the black children, hearing such things, but as if she was instead teaching tolerance.

How carefully the seeds of bigotry are planted in tiny minds. I never felt anger or hatred for minorities when I was in Alabama, but a deep pity. A pity because I was told that they weren't as good, they didn't smell good, they couldn't live good lives like us. At the time, I believed it. And the smell they talked about? I started to smell it. That was how powerful and dangerous the power of suggestion to children is.

I do not know what my siblings went through in their experiences. My sister recounted once that in middle school in Alabama, she threw away a makeup compact because a Black classmate had touched it. My brother: he is his own story, and a mystery that will never be unraveled. Was it Alabama that made him who he was? The abuse that followed? Was it drugs and grooming into the wrong crowd? He has been dead almost twenty-five years now. I will never get the answers to those questions. I will have to settle in the peace of knowing that the world is finally safe from him.

We only stayed in Alabama for 3 years. I was six when we moved to Sacramento, California. I am forever grateful. Moving to California may have been the end of my happy family and the beginning of a nightmare of abuse. However, through it all, I was able to recover and retain my humanity. That is something I would not be able to say had I continued to grow up in the bigotry of the South.

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