Where I Came From

Everyone looks at me and thinks that I have had everything handed to me my whole life. Everyone thinks that because I am white and I am blond that that means that I must have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. But the facts couldn't be farther from that. The facts are actually much farther from that than I think most people can even fathom. The facts are almost hard to swallow even for me and I have been dealing with them my whole life. This is my reality and it sucks.

This all starts before I was even conceived. My mother is one of those people who likes to manipulate things into what she wants them to be. This has bitten her in the ass over and over again and she still does it to this day and she is pushing 50. One of the major times that it bit her in the ass was when she got pregnant with me. She was 16 when she and my dad started dating. My grandparents didn't like my biological father at all. They tried to tell my mother that he was not good for her and that she needed to at least try to see that. Nonetheless they stayed together for the next however long they stayed together. Their relationship resulted in an unwanted pregnancy when she was 17 and she decided the best course of action was to get rid of the baby and not tell anyone including my father or her parents about the baby. They got married when she graduated high school at 18. They both worked and apparently had an okay relationship. He had told her that he didn't want babies yet, but at 21 she decided that it was time for her to start popping out kids. Little did she know that she would get pregnant almost immediately after taking herself off of birth control and that he would freak out and leave her for his secretary because he really didn't want kids. So I immediately became the baby that no one wanted. This is what I still am to this day.

Then as I grew into my own I had a really messed up relationship with said biological father that never wanted me. He ended up dropping me off at a homeless shelter for teens in the middle of my freshman year of high school. I was just fine and I was taking care of myself. I had good grades. I was still at the top of my class and I was in an advanced band that was usually reserved only for the upperclassmen. I was the only freshman and I was the best. My parents still didn't want me and neither did the rest of my screwed up family but my grandparents couldn't live with the guilt of me living in a homeless shelter so they forced me to move in with them. While I was living at the homeless shelter I met what is possibly one of the most toxic people in my life to date. He was a "bad boy" and was intriguing because his adoptive mom actually cared about him and trusted him. He had a dark and mysterious air to him that sucked me in. I thought that he loved me. I thought we would make it through anything and everything. I was in love with him. I ended up not losing my virginity to him that year, but that is not where the story ends with him.

As I said he is quite possibly the most toxic person I have ever had in my life. I have had toxic people in my life my whole life. The entire explanation on this person will come later. That is just not a conversation and explanation that I can bear to unload or get into right now. When I became pregnant by him at 17, I was asked by my therapist if I was attempting to create the same type of situation for my baby as what my mother created for me. I could've screamed because to this day no one actually knows what type of situation my mother created for me and they never will because it is so horrific I can only remember some of it. My childhood is the stuff of horror movies.

This is where the misunderstandings start. The misunderstandings only build from here though. They start with my childhood and span directly into the recent past. No one truly understands the horror that was my life for the beginning of what is considered adulthood. There is really no way to explain it either. My first marriage happened because my ex-husband told me he cheated on me... less than a month after having our oldest child. Yes, you read that right. It was stupid and a mistake made by my hormone clouded (having recently given birth) teenage brain. I was barely 18. I was in love with him and we had just had a child together. He told me that he had been cheating on me since we had gotten together , a little more than 6 months before we got pregnant. Shortly after getting married we moved into our own place and he got a good job. I was able to stay home with the baby and I was grateful for that. But, that made it easier for him to completely abuse me. He abused me to the point where I wanted nothing more than to just sit and cry all the time but I knew if I didn't get his laundry list of things done to absolute perfection he would just abuse me more. It went on like this for a year and a half. In that time I had some medical issues and then he got me pregnant and I lost that baby. That just made everything worse. Every day I got to hear how worthless I was. Some days it was because the floor didn't shine enough for him to see his face in. Other days it was because I didn't read his mind and immediately know that he wouldn't want whatever it was that I made for dinner that night. On the bad days it was because I just wasn't enough or because I was obviously not good enough to carry another one of his spawn. That marriage ended with me in shambles and him running his mouth to whoever would listen that I had done everything wrong and that it was all my fault.

My second marriage was an even bigger mistake. How do I know this?? I know this because it was to the same worthless sack that I was married to the first time. This time it started out a lot better than the first time. The first time was just all around bad from the beginning. This time He was sweet and promised that he had changed and it really seemed like he had. The first time he never laid his hands on me, he just stuck his appendage into anything that was female and human. The second time we got married because I was pregnant again and he didn't want another baby that was born out of wedlock. Did I mention that my second child was his third? No? Okay, well while we were divorced he got another girl pregnant and she ran off with his former best friend. The cheater got cheated on. He played the victim in that as well. So here I was pregnant again and with the same person again. Everything went alright until he started having issues believing that I was going to stay with him and that I was being faithful to him... guilty conscience much? He ended up breaking all of my ribs in one of his fits of rage over something that was not happening.

So he managed through all of this to get me pregnant a third time. He then convinced me that we should move an hour away from everyone and everything that I have ever known. I actually enjoyed living in the place that we moved to and it was peaceful and stress free so for a while it seemed as though everything might go back to being okay. How incredibly wrong I was. He was constantly angry because the baby would wake him up more than 30 minutes before he had to run out the door to go to work. Mind you at this point I was very pregnant with our third baby. It had gotten back to the point of the abuse in the first marriage. I was expected to have the kids quiet and asleep by the time he got home and dinner had better be on the table with no evidence of where it had come from. He had a thing about dishes being in the sink or the dish drainer, even if they had been used to make dinner 20 minutes prior to him walking in the door. His mom was living with us at the time so he would save his belittling and hurtful abusiveness for after she had gone to bed because the few times that she had heard him belittling me, she lost it on him. He was so malicious that he would find literally anything to be an ass about. We were poor so we had a big box t.v. that we had been given for free from one of our friends. As we all know you cannot see if someone intentionally sticks something behind one of those. It is literally not possible barring the ability to see through solid objects. He decided to take pictures of the mess that was left behind by an already eventful half day before he left for work to, "see if there really was any semblance of a difference when he got home." Little did I know he had also, a week prior, put an empty soda can behind the t.v. to see how long it took me to get it out of there. Well, I was apparently not taught in the proper way to clean a house as it has never occurred to me to pull the damn television out every other day and clean behind it. I pull my television forward and push it back to clean under it and around it about every 6 months at this point unless we have had a particularly dusty season and I can see the dust around the base of the stand which drives me crazy. I thought that was pretty normal. After that whole stunt it became my normal to be overly aware, picky, and skeptical of everything. The abuse was getting worse by the day and as soon as his mother moved out, it increased tenfold. It also extended to his sister that we got custody of and to my children. I didn't know that it had extended to my children or I would have left a whole lot sooner than I did. I would have left and he would have come home to an empty apartment. All of this time, in a town I was not familiar with an hour away from my family, he was cheating on me again. I wouldn't be surprised if he had more children running around out there somewhere with no idea that they even exist. When the abuse finally hit its peak and I left, I left completely broken. I was physically injured, emotionally broken, and forever scarred. I moved back in with my mother with my three kids in tow just to have everyone there abuse me and leave me to attempt to put myself back together again because I had to for my kids. I would not be here if it were not for my kids.

While I was living with my mother I got a very serious surgery and took my ability to have any more children. I was so physically and mentally broken that you could have told me that I didn't deserve my kids and that I should just give them away and I would have believed you. I bought myself a new bra for my birthday and I got my head screamed off of my shoulders because that 8 dollars that I had painstakingly stashed away a penny at a time should have gone to my mother just like every penny of my tax return and all of the 120 dollars in child support I was getting every month did. I didn't have a car so everywhere I went I had to walk with my kids. I asked my mom if she would at least allow me to buy a double stroller with my tax return so I didn't have to double carry my two youngest who were 2 and 6 months old and I got made to feel a fool for asking for such an apparently selfish thing. I am not sure why I came to believe that this was normal. Maybe because that is what my entire life had been. Maybe it is because I had heard it so much that I just believed it all to be true, but I honestly believed that I was not even worth the oxygen that I consumed to live.

3 weeks after my surgery I was told that I needed to get a job because my mother was doing me this "huge favor" and was buying the house that shared a back property line with her house and I was going to have to make the house payments. So, I went against doctor's orders and got a job. Upon getting a job my grandpa bought me a mini van. I had asked him to buy me one. I told him that I would pay him back. I just needed a way to work. So he bought it for my birthday and gave it to me. He bought me the complete polar opposite of what I had asked him for. He had also spent 500 dollars more on the van that he got me than what the one that I asked him to buy for me would have cost him. The one that I had asked him to buy for me just needed a radiator hose. It had been turned off immediately and then had sat in the same spot since it had poured out all of its antifreeze. It had only had one owner and it had less than 80000 miles on it. It was only 1100 dollars and it was a 2008. So he decided, yet again, to cement it home for me that I didn't matter. He went and found a van that was older than I am. It cost him 1600 dollars and it didn't have heat or air-conditioning. The power steering was sketchy at best and it had been run into the ground. He handed me the bill of sale and the key and reminded me that I was expected to pay him back in a timely fashion and then left. I was not actually even supposed to be driving yet, but from the second that he dropped it off my mother expected me to run all of her errands and do everything for her. I did so without complaint because I didn't want to hear it. 3 days later I started working. I had my best friend watching my kids and I was working. My daughter proceeded to get extremely sick as children tend to do in the summer time. At just barely over 1 she was up regularly through the night as it was and the sickness made her be up even more. She would have bouts where she couldn't breathe and her lips would turn purple. It scared me more than I can say.

This is where my life changed. After work for 2 days with my kids in tow I moved myself, my possessions and my life from my mother's house to the new house after work and stayed up all night to ensure that my house got put together. I was exhausted but I was finally starting to believe that I could be worth something. I was finally starting to believe that if I tried hard enough then maybe I could start piecing my life back together and be able to hold my head up and stand on my own two feet. I was doing alright. At this point I had been trying to be civil with my recently ex-husband and I was succeeding at that for the most part. Just enough to keep what sanity I had left. I had managed to keep from him that I had moved and I was finding that I had a little bit of security in the fact that he would have a harder time finding me if he ever decided to show up back in town. I was starting to not have to look over my shoulder at every moment. I was starting to breathe and find my own peace again. I am certain that I actually started to feel like myself a little bit and was a little more confident in my step. That is, right up until he decided to see how much he could mess with me. He told me that since I was working that when I got paid that I owed it to him to fly my kids across the state to him and leave them there for 2 weeks and then fly back and get them and fly back on my days off. He insisted that I do it. When I refused and told him I didn't owe him anything and that I had all of my own bills to pay. He put two and two together and figured out that I had moved out of my mom's house and I hadn't told him about it. He said that he would find out where I was and that I better hope that my death was quick and painless because he was going to come and kill me and take my kids because I was doing him wrong and he wouldn't stand for that. He went on to tell me how much fun it would be to find me when he came to town in 2 weeks. I was physically ill. The next morning I pulled my kids out of bed early and went to the courthouse before work and filed a protection order against him. It was served on him less than 12 hours later. As the realization of what I had done sunk in he called me and threatened me again. He promised that he would kill me when he saw me again and that I better never catch myself alone and that I should watch for people following me home. We had a court hearing 10 days later in which he was told he would never be allowed to own a gun and that he was lucky he was not being thrown immediately in jail as I had documentation of everything he had said to me and that it was punishable under the charges of terroristic threatening. He has since not completely broken the protection order but he has managed to skate the thin line between completely violating it and how much of a bitch I feel like being. Mainly because I don't want to have to see him again. He has done some mild stalking and spreading rumors that he was sure would make it back through the grape vine to me. However, he no longer has the jittery nervous affect on me.

I am now in a much better place. Shortly after the protection order went into place my life started to get better. Before I ever met him I had met this guy. My ex and I met our freshman year of high school. This other guy and I had met in 8th grade. At the time I thought he was too much of a goody two shoes for me and that I would never have actually had a good chance of being with him. When I think back on it, I think it was more not feeling worthy and the possibility of it being something that could be serious and life changing scared the shit out of me. Well, the guy from 8th grade just so happened to be working with me. He would walk me to the car to make sure that I got there safely and that no one messed with me. He made sure that I was safe and comfortable whenever we were at work. He positioned himself to be my protector and my screen between myself and the rest of the world. He made sure that I ate even when I didn't think I needed to and made sure that I knew that no matter what I was taken care of. I went home with a smile on my face every day and my spirits actually began to lift for the first time in forever. Then one night when I leaned in to give him our usual goodbye for the night hug, he surprised me and kissed me. It was the most wonderful thing that I had ever felt in my life. I could feel how much he wanted and cherished me just from that one kiss. To this day he turns my world upside down. He still stands between me and anything that comes at me. He loves me more than anyone ever has in my entire life. He is wonderful and I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I am waiting for him to get tired of me and decide he is done dealing with me. I love him so much and I am so codependent that I fear that if he ever left I would not be able to out myself back together again.

But these are all the places that the current me has come from. These are all the things that make it so hard for anyone and everyone to understand me. There is so much more than I even care to talk about and I don't know that I ever will want to talk about them. That is just another one of the many reasons that no one, including my husband will ever really understand me and the things that I have gone through. That is the issue that comes with trying to not be a burden to anyone and take care of everyone else because that is what has been drilled into you since birth. I had it drilled into every cell of my being that I was a burden because I was breathing so I should absolutely not make anything any harder on anyone else and that if I had any issues to keep them to myself. So I will forever be the person that will never truly have any real expression of anything and will always be waiting for the other shoe to drop or to wake up from the dream that I am currently living and realize that none of it was ever real because nothing else that was ever good was ever real before now. This is my life, and those are the places I came from.