A hankerin' ?

So I've had this kind of itch to tell you a little bit more about me. Specifically about my past and my life as it has come to be. I'm not sure why but it's been hanging around my noggin. So I think I just might actually oblige, for those of you that may be interested in some of 'the back story'.

  I've thrown a few in the past when having to try to find a word that describes my childhood or rather a description of how it progressed such as; I was raised, I was brought up, or I grew up, etc... I was certainly not raised by anyone but myself. I did not have steady guardians nor were the unsteady ones of continual use.
I am an only child, only not. I have a most wonderful older half sister, by 5 years, that was adopted out to a very stable loving family when she was born. I met her just a few short months before our mother died back in 2007. Here comes the point when someone usually praises my mother for the smart and loving choice she made when she was oh so young. No. She had absolutely no choice in the matter. Not her decision.
Anywho. Then along comes me. I'm worth holding on to and torturing apparently. Just under a year later comes a little brother. I haven't the foggiest idea as to whether or not he's a half or full sibling. He was also adopted out when he was born. Hopefully to a similarly wonderful family as was graced with my sister.
And still, I remained.
Stuck with 2 drug and alcohol dependent parents that couldn't even stay together. They showed, at every imaginable turn, that they were completely incapable of making good decisions for themselves much less an infant in their care.
And still, I remained.
I was shuttled off to fully functioning, yet undeniably alcoholic, grandparents and an aunt/uncle/cousin at a consistently random rate. This predictable pattern of getting bounced around 'tween the fam continued until I was 10 when I was forced to choose, in front of everybody, whom I wanted to live with; my mom and the newest stepdad or the aunt/uncle/cousin grouping.
Yes indeed. 2 sets of alcoholic parents were actually physically fighting in front of me over who got to 'take' me. My mother against her older sister (that practically raised her). Forcing a 10 year old child to pick between stability and uncertainty. Between her mother, that she's "supposed" to live with, love, want to be with, and the aunt who could provide her with any and all necessities, love her, and actually acted like she wanted her around.
Like most kids would in that situation, I picked my mother even though it's not what I wanted. A kid is "supposed" to live with their parents, not their aunt and uncle (or their grandparents as had been the case several times). A kid is "supposed" to love their mom and want to be with them, want to be like them. Well, not this kid. I had learned from a very very early age that everything I saw from my mother was what NOT to do. I had learned to take care of myself from very very early on. So much so that I had had to learn how to take care of and deal with my parent.
A preschooler is NOT supposed to understand that you don't touch the little cut up straws and mirrors on the table. The scales and baggies on the shelf aren't to be played with. That you don't ask if mom's alright when you hear noises coming from the back room of a 'friend's' place. But me? I knew those things. I remember knowing those things. I can't tell you what state I lived in while in any given grade in elementary school, but I can tell you those other things.
Looking back now, while I only spent a little less than a third of my life getting tossed around to whomever would take me for whatever effing reason my mother couldn't, or didn't want to, be a mother, it has still played one of the biggest parts.
Maybe one of the hardest things is that I will NEVER get any answers to any of the bazillions of questions I could possibly ask. My mother (cancer), all 4 grandparents (cancer), 2 step grandparents (cancer too I believe), father (suicide 4 days before my 11th b-day), and 1 stepfather (ruptured ulcers as I was told), are all dead. My aunt and I no longer have a relationship other than that shared by blood. And that was an easy choice on my part. I was told a few years ago that she had stage 4 lung cancer but to my knowledge she is still alive and full of alcohol and attitude.

  So those were my humble beginnings. That's a nutshell of my Back Story. There are innumerable events within but that's the Cliff's Notes version that might give you just a little inkling into my wretched start and progression on this crazy crazy spinning ball of ours.
If you ever wonder how one gets a diagnosis list that reads like mine....there ya go.
 
  Consider yourself schooled in Crazy 101.