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My mother's first marriage (and first love) gave her 10 children.  I have no idea how many boys and how many girls. Of those 10 only 2 lived - the two eldest (my older brother and sister). Her second marriage with my dad gave her 3 more kids - 1 boy, 2 girls, I was my father's 2nd child and my mother's 12th. Yes she certainly was a busy mamma wasn't she :o). My brother died a few months after I was born due to mal-nutrition and lack of medicine when he became extremely ill. So my father has 2 surviving daughters, me and my little brat of a sister whom I love dearly.

My 2 elder siblings were already married and lived separate lives by the time I was old enough to walk so I became big sister. Growing up was hard on me because I was considered the eldest and with the eldest comes many responsibilities and expectations from the parents. My family had a very strict upbringing. My father was a Buddhists while my mother became a Christian shortly after we arrived here in America.  My parents were divorced immediately after we settled which in my opinion was probably their best move since both of them had such extreme differences (kind of made me wonder how they even lasted so long :o)).

Though my mother raised us with Christian teachings she still held a lot of the Cambodian tradition and culture which was very strict especially for young unmarried women. My mother made sure I studied hard, received good grades and honors in school which wasn't very hard since I had always been the studious one in the family; always reading a book or writing one. I loved a good challenge and always competed with other students. But I also longed to be like the other kids, kids at school and in my neighborhood. I couldn't understand why I was always stuck in the house studying when my kid sister was outside playing jump rope or hop scotch with her friends. There was always the constant pressure of being the best and doing so requires extreme training. I was never allowed to play with the other kids, socialize on the phone or have friends sleepover. Basically during the entire time I lived with my mom I was confined to either home, school or church. So I concentrated all my boredom in my own imagination reading book after book. I became known in my school as the little bookworm. In my 7th grade year I won 1st prize for reading the most books for the month - a total of 1,000 and something books!!!

I wish I could say this was enough but I craved attention from my peers. I wanted to be part of the in-crowd and wear make-up, stylish clothing, and have boyfriends. If I thought going through elementary school was tough middle school was a nightmare! Here I was the most awkward looking girl in school. I was skinny, tall (yes I was actually considered tall at one point :)) with a flat chest, no ass and never wore clothes that matched (my mother custom tailored my clothes). The kids were just plain cruel. I was always teased on especially by the boys in my class. They actually held a secret contest: Who had the biggest tits, who had the flattest chest, who had the ghetto booty and who had no ass...well guess which of these I came out first place! I even won 2 of the 4!!!

I simply hated the way I looked but mom controlled what I could wear and she handpicked the clothes I wore to school each day, yes she certainly did! Need I say my mother's taste in fashion was definitely not from this country! She wanted me to wear frilly dresses, silk blouses with poofy shoulders, small girly shoes and socks with ruffles on them....YIKES!!! I owned two pair of jeans which I had to practically beg for and even those were a tad bit too short as I outgrew them quite quickly.

So it comes as no surprise that I had very few friends and absolutely no boy would look at me unless I was the object of their joke. Things at home weren't much better either. At the tender age of 10 I went through what my mother called the preparation for marriage. Most Cambodian women were married at a very early age some as early as 12. My mother, herself, was married at only 13 yrs. old. I learned how to cook gourmet meals, how to properly keep house, greet guests and tend to other womanly duties.

It wasn't until I turned 14, after moving in with my dad, that I finally got to experience some freedom to make my own decisions and boy whoever said that when you live a sheltered life you usually go BUCK WILD when you're out was definitely not kidding!!!

I went from being the innocent, shy girl next door to quite the opposite!  I got to experience with make-up and picked out my own wardrobe for a change. You would think that a girl who'd led a simple life would take it easy but NO WAY, I was making up for lost times! I bought the most sexy jeans, tight little mini-skirts, short blouses, dyed my hair red and bought some pretty shocking jewelry.

Discovering BOYS was the first taste of mischief and it came down hard! After all being a nerdy girl in school to becoming Miss Popular in High School was a very big change so how could I not go crazy and crazy I did become. Started ditching class, hanging with the bad boys, sneaking out at night, smoking and messing with the wrong crowd. I ended up dropping out of High School at 16 and that's when all the big trouble began.