Peanut

Growing up, I didn't really have friends. I lived in the Country Club where it was more important to be wearing the right shoes than to be caring for the right people. Ambulances, cop cars, and firetrucks were always over at my house either scooping my mom up pawning her right back off on us and my family was just a big embarrassment. Not to me but to the "Country Club." People talked about our family and my mom all the time and speculated about what was wrong but the consensus was "Stay away from that family and stay away from Tara." I didn't help my case much, either. I never did very well in school, I cheated a lot on math tests, and I faked my way through most of my homework. I was what they call "the class clown" and people looooved my sense of humor until I went one joke too far, as I always did, and people realized I was one big awkward try hard who always managed to piss off the teacher. It'd be the same thing every year- I'd be exceedingly polite and intelligent and helpful in class, I'd do the best on all my projects and turn all my homework in on time. Teachers would EAT ME UP! It was the best. As stuff would progressively get worse at home, as they always did, I would get progressively more flakey in class. I'd bond more with the teacher, associate them more as my parental figure, and the lines would always get blurred for me, as they still do. I'd assume because the teachers loved ME so much and treated specifically ME so kindly, that we had this special "bond." Because I didn't have the bonds at home I so desperately wanted, I tried to make them with my teachers...with my friend's parents.....with any adult figure I could bump into and show I could be lovable too. I'd always get myself into trouble because I'd get too chummy, cross some boundary and make some joke that was too familiar, and end up on yet another persons' shit list.

Besides my lack of social graces, my mom was out there waving our "We're not normal!" flag all too loudly for me to even stand a chance. I remember all the awkward inappropriate moments at school where I would realize....at home I can at least keep this hidden and pretend like home is okay but when you come to school and show everyone just how not okay we are, I'm just fucked. Back to School Night was just a nightmare for me. My mom would show up drunk and spill drinks on people. She'd walk around telling my friends' moms to "be careful" because I was a lesbian and she was "worried" for their daughters. For the record, I was not a lesbian in the third grade, and am still not a lesbian now... She'd talk about how awful my dad was, how he never made enough money. She'd just sit there and immaculate him. She'd talk about what an ungrateful child I was or my sister was  and how she wished she had miscarried me or "kept her legs shut" or how AMAZING I was and what I blessing I ended up being. How I was the only child she really liked. It's a wonder I'm not more confused about my identity than I already am. I could go on and on about all the mommy-faux-pas my mom made (which I do) but the point I try to make is she gave me LITERALLY absolutely no tools to understand what it means to make and maintain relationships, what it means to value yourself, what it looks like to be loved in a healthy unconditional way.....just nothing.

Because all my friends' moms thought I was either a lesbian, incredibly disturbed, or had a highly dysfunctional family (which was accurate), I spent a lot of time by myself. I drew a lot, played with blocks, watched a whole lot of Little Bear (my ideal family model) and snuggled Peanut- my blue stuffed Elephant. I don't know why he's my favorite or why he stuck because I had precisely two other favorite stuffed animals- one's name was Bun-Bun (a skinny white rabbit with floppy ears my mom bought me from Goodwill) and Angel Bear. Angel Bear is something I really really wish I still had because it's just so symbolic and indicative of my relationship with my mother. My mom, obviously, had a drinking problem, and would not only forget to pick me up from school, but would be too busy getting her drank on and listening to our sweet ass Bose system to realize I had walked myself home (at age five) and was waiting on the front doorstep....just ringing the doorbell over and over again, going, "Mommy? Are you okay? I'm home." And I would sit. And wait. For hours. I tell this story over and over again in person and on my blog because this image of this little sweet five year old girl with, sitting on her front doorstep, locked out, waiting for her mom to remember she exists long enough to let her in is so burned into my head. I just don't understand......I watch children for a living and I could never.....just ever put someone through that. In any case, she realized when sober one day, that she had maybe locked little five year old me out one too many times for it to go unnoticed so she bought me this bear named Angel Bear and I remember every time my mom would get far too plastered and end up in the hospital and every time my mom would get far too plastered and would end up ripping my room apart and calling me selfish and ugly and unwanted and unlovable....I would just cling to this stupid little bear like it meant my mom didn't mean any of it. That she really actually loved me. Honestly, my mom can go die in a fire. I think after a certain point, my mom had passed this boundary with me where something snapped inside and I had no more unconditional love to offer her because she had never offered me any. I used to give and give and give and love just hoping she'd love herself one day but no child can give faith in yourself. You have to be strong enough to give it to yourself. You have to be selfless enough. I think I started to understand and resent my mom for all that she wasn't and therefore resent this little bear. Child logic, I know.

Peanut, my blue elephant, is not my original Peanut. Peanut 1.0 was lost at a concert I went to- my dad's concert. It was kind of a fond memory. I went with my dad to watch him play drums in downtown San Jose at the convention center and I remember just sitting there in the front row in my little dress with my little pigtails, a coloring book, crayons, a purse, and Peanut. When the concert was over, I got up to go see my dad and we walked around. I didn't realize you were supposed to take your things with you when you left your spot and so all my things were stolen. I was distraught. My dad stayed for maybe an extra hour just to look and look and look for Peanut and I remember feeling really....looked after and defended when my dad put that effort in. He and my mom got me a replacement Peanut a few weeks later.....Peanut 2.0.

Peanut, as I often say, is my ideal parent. Actually, he's the closest thing I have TO a parent (don't judge.) He loves me, he listens when I cry, and he just snuggles. There are so many memories I have of just horrendous, not okay things happening at home where I would get yelled at, or assaulted, or punished for absolutely no reason other than "Mommy's an alcoholic and mommy and daddy have a dysfunctional dynamic where you get pit against us and your siblings" and I would just go to my room, shut and lock the door, and cry into Peanut and he was basically all that I had to rely on. Peanut is the one rock I have had in my life and I love him like he's people. It's pretty ridiculous.

Peanut now gives me relationship advice, sits with me when I NEED to eat ice cream, comes with me in the car and sits in the passenger seat when I'm having a rough day, and sleeps with me every night. He also makes appearances at close friends houses. If I love you, you've met Peanut.