Status: Unfinished, but in progress.
Hell and Glory
Since Day One
The story of my birth is nothing short of foreign to me. I don’t know much about it considering I barely even knew my own parents, but from what I was told by the live-in staff at the manor in which I spent the first few years of my life, I wasn’t a particularly planned or welcomed child. One could even say that the day my mother found out she was pregnant was the end of the world as she knew it. As far she was concerned, her life was over.
Her career as a Las Vegas showgirl was reaching it’s peak around the same time she made the discovery that she would be expecting a child (twins, to her dismay). Being a showgirl was everything to her (seeing as she was overshadowed by her rock star husband, she would cling to anything she ever achieved like it was life or death). She gloated about her job like people would actually admire the fact that she was a glorified stripper. My mother was not a particularly intelligent or driven woman, and it was often said that she relied on her charming smile and good looks to get by. No one was surprised when she married 80s rock legend, Richard “Rebel” Chastain.
He was famous for many reasons, most of which had absolutely nothing to do with his music (I can see why; I’ve heard his music, and it’s nothing special). He was just an angry punk rocker that could barely play the bass guitar to save his life and wrote lyrics about getting high and being lost or “depressed.” He looked the part, and I suppose that was all that really mattered in the 80s. Rebel Chastain teased his hair, squeezed himself into tight leather pants, and ran around the stage in spike-heeled boots. He played the role well. He spent more time at parties than he spent writing music, at least until the band broke up when he got his ass thrown in rehab because he was too drugged to pick up his guitar. After that, he supposedly sobered up. I wouldn’t know. He wasn’t really ever around.
People say that the time comes when a child realizes their parents are perfect and that it’s one of the hardest things to get through. I wish I was born with that knowledge. It would have made letting go a lot easier.
My nanny told me that my father at least made an effort. He did his best to be around once my mother was pregnant. He was almost excited, they said, but the happy moments never lasted long. Most of his time was spent working to provide for his pregnant wife, and when he wasn’t working, he was trying to pry the booze and the cigarettes out of her hands while she sobbed in her bedroom.
Everyone thought that on September 15, all of the hell would be over. On the contrary, my birth seemed to do more harm than good.
My mother quickly switched from sitting and sobbing to jogging and sobbing. The indoor gym became a cesspool of depression and self-loathing. She spent hours in the gym and her room or in the kitchen just staring at food and not eating it. She was exercising her willpower, she would say. I guess that was why they hired Ingrid.
For as long as I could remember, Ingrid was the woman I turned to when I needed something. Once my mother was cleared to fly, she had flown to Los Angeles and would stay for extended periods of time, leaving us with the live-in staff: Christoph, the driver, Eva, the maid, Henrik, the chef, and Ingrid, my nanny. My parents had a separate home in Los Angeles. At that home, they also had a separate staff. They even had two separate kids, Carolina and Brooklyn. It felt like they weren’t real. I had never seen them before, and because of that, they just never seemed relevant. They rarely entered my thoughts.
Ingrid loved my brother, Evan, and me like we were her own children. She was there when I went to bed, and she was there when I woke up, not like my mother, who left without warning, often leaving late at night without so much as a goodbye (I never knew why she left, but I assume she was trying to jumpstart her career again). Ingrid taught me how to speak. I learned English first, then German (though I still have reason to believe she taught me to speak German out of spite for my mother, especially since I ended up using German far more than I used English). She put up with all of my crying and whining. She put up with my picky eating habits and my insistence to make a mess wherever I went. She was more like a mother than my actual mother, yet whenever my mother came home, even for a day, I latched onto her. It was like Ingrid no longer existed.
I craved my mother’s acceptance more than anything in the world. I followed her around, trying to show off, trying to impress her any way that I could. I did anything to make her notice. I thought that perhaps if I showed her something worthwhile that she would stay, that maybe she would love me. It never worked.
Well… maybe that’s only half true.
Her career as a Las Vegas showgirl was reaching it’s peak around the same time she made the discovery that she would be expecting a child (twins, to her dismay). Being a showgirl was everything to her (seeing as she was overshadowed by her rock star husband, she would cling to anything she ever achieved like it was life or death). She gloated about her job like people would actually admire the fact that she was a glorified stripper. My mother was not a particularly intelligent or driven woman, and it was often said that she relied on her charming smile and good looks to get by. No one was surprised when she married 80s rock legend, Richard “Rebel” Chastain.
He was famous for many reasons, most of which had absolutely nothing to do with his music (I can see why; I’ve heard his music, and it’s nothing special). He was just an angry punk rocker that could barely play the bass guitar to save his life and wrote lyrics about getting high and being lost or “depressed.” He looked the part, and I suppose that was all that really mattered in the 80s. Rebel Chastain teased his hair, squeezed himself into tight leather pants, and ran around the stage in spike-heeled boots. He played the role well. He spent more time at parties than he spent writing music, at least until the band broke up when he got his ass thrown in rehab because he was too drugged to pick up his guitar. After that, he supposedly sobered up. I wouldn’t know. He wasn’t really ever around.
People say that the time comes when a child realizes their parents are perfect and that it’s one of the hardest things to get through. I wish I was born with that knowledge. It would have made letting go a lot easier.
My nanny told me that my father at least made an effort. He did his best to be around once my mother was pregnant. He was almost excited, they said, but the happy moments never lasted long. Most of his time was spent working to provide for his pregnant wife, and when he wasn’t working, he was trying to pry the booze and the cigarettes out of her hands while she sobbed in her bedroom.
Everyone thought that on September 15, all of the hell would be over. On the contrary, my birth seemed to do more harm than good.
My mother quickly switched from sitting and sobbing to jogging and sobbing. The indoor gym became a cesspool of depression and self-loathing. She spent hours in the gym and her room or in the kitchen just staring at food and not eating it. She was exercising her willpower, she would say. I guess that was why they hired Ingrid.
For as long as I could remember, Ingrid was the woman I turned to when I needed something. Once my mother was cleared to fly, she had flown to Los Angeles and would stay for extended periods of time, leaving us with the live-in staff: Christoph, the driver, Eva, the maid, Henrik, the chef, and Ingrid, my nanny. My parents had a separate home in Los Angeles. At that home, they also had a separate staff. They even had two separate kids, Carolina and Brooklyn. It felt like they weren’t real. I had never seen them before, and because of that, they just never seemed relevant. They rarely entered my thoughts.
Ingrid loved my brother, Evan, and me like we were her own children. She was there when I went to bed, and she was there when I woke up, not like my mother, who left without warning, often leaving late at night without so much as a goodbye (I never knew why she left, but I assume she was trying to jumpstart her career again). Ingrid taught me how to speak. I learned English first, then German (though I still have reason to believe she taught me to speak German out of spite for my mother, especially since I ended up using German far more than I used English). She put up with all of my crying and whining. She put up with my picky eating habits and my insistence to make a mess wherever I went. She was more like a mother than my actual mother, yet whenever my mother came home, even for a day, I latched onto her. It was like Ingrid no longer existed.
I craved my mother’s acceptance more than anything in the world. I followed her around, trying to show off, trying to impress her any way that I could. I did anything to make her notice. I thought that perhaps if I showed her something worthwhile that she would stay, that maybe she would love me. It never worked.
Well… maybe that’s only half true.