Posted by Cheryl (12.36.128.30) on March 02, 2001 at 10:55:12:
Is this my life and what have I done with it………..
Remembering back as far as I can, I was still very young and remember bits and pieces of a life and girl that seems so very far away. I remember a girl that lived in the black side of town and had lots of fun playing on the streets with her friends. There were train tracks near our house and my brother had to carry the garbage across the tracks to take it out. I can remember being frightened and he had to run back across the tracks to take my hand because I was afraid after I saw the bright headlight on the train (just sitting on the tracks). Momma later told me that one day I came home from one of my friends houses and we had decided to do my hair as hers. We took a whole jar of Vaseline and proceeded to slick down my hair. I don’t remember.
The next I remember was living in a housing project with my family. I was probably around 8 or 9. This was at the time when my mom and dad were getting a divorce. Daddy drank pretty bad from what I was told. I do remember he drove a taxi to support us. A wife and four children, momma had to work back then also. On the nights that my daddy came in roaring drunk and passed out on the couch (which I thought he was sleeping) we children being the kids that we were would take the change out of his pocket and head straight for the store to the candy county. I think the reason I don’t remember the divorce time so clearly there was a boy/young man in the neighborhood that had taken a liken to scaring me I think the fact that he had been in jail added to the fright. He would threaten to cut off my ear everytime he saw me…… I was so terrified I couldn’t stand it. I remember being on a friends porch one day that was lined with a chain link fence and just the narrow walkway to come and go by. Here is was standing on the porch and here HE came. I climbed the fence and made it home to safety. Another time I was on the playground swings and saw him walking our way… once again I scooted off to the side to safety.
Around this time I remember playing with 3 girls in the pool (community). The next thing I knew we were divorced and momma had married Bill my stepfather and low and behold the girls were my step sisters. We moved into a house when I was in third grade and I lived next to my very best friend for life. Becky. My sister and I would beg to go play with Becky. As it was only across one yard we would beg for 10 minutes of play time. There were times in the summers when Rita and I would have to take a nap and since Becky did not she would go out side of our window and we would sit and play through the window screen. Those were the days.
My older sister was getting around the dating age and we certainly were willing to help out. Anything to sneak around Bill. He was shall we say a typical stepfather. I am doing this what you… What have you done for me lately!!!! There was no love in raising us as I would soon realize. We used to go up to our stepsisters house up north and they would try to do the farming the vegetables thing. I enjoyed for awhile but after a summer or two it was old and I wanted to stay inside and watch the baby. Looking back I realized just like in old fashioned time we were cheap labor. If anything got in the way of us and the farming it was a big issue. That was how Bill wanted to get us all involved and make his living off of us so he did not have to work.
I of course was growing older and getting into trouble but what I would call only minor trouble no drugs, no jail. I would walk to school every morning and when I was in the 7th grade I went to junior high with out Becky and with out Rita. I walked with a group of kids from the neighborhood trailer park. We started getting bored in the mornings and one morning I am not sure who did what but all of a sudden I was crawling in the window of the teachers lounge. I got a coke and maybe a dollars worth of change in my pocket and when the bell rang walked out like it was nuthin. I remember in the 4th period class my named was called and then my parents were called. That was the first to two times my stepfather ever spanked me. I could have done without the spanking to learn my lesson. I was expelled for 3 days and a essay. I had to stay with my Granny Brewer during these three days and as religious and she was it was mortifying to have to just have her know what I had done. There was only one more incident of shall we say breaking and entering during this time I was still very young and my cousin and I decided that we could get some candy out of the park concession stand. We made Rita stay back she was just tooo young. I was lifted up being the small one that I am and grabbed the candy that we desired and we ran. We ran back to the yard and got behind the huge bushes in the front yard and ate and ate. After we got home I remember when the call came I was sitting on the floor and listening to momma and then specifically saying a little girl crawled in the window. This was the second and last spanking from Bill.
Around this time I remember I used to get a headache or two (only migraines) and would have to sleep them off. I was over at my cousins spending the night and my older cousin Darrell made Rita and Stan quit jumping on the bed so that I could sleep. He was very special and kind to take care of me I remember thinking.
I also remember the phone call when he died. His lounges(sp) collapsed. There is a thing that separated your two lounges so that if one collapse’s the other one doesn’t. He didn’t have that thing. I was not allowed to go to the funeral. I wanted to.
I am confused as to some of the ages of these events but I do remember when my stepfather started showing just a little more attention to me than normal. There would be times when I would be washing dishes and he would walk up behind me and grab my breasts. (not that I did or do have any)….. and there was time when he was wrestling with me on the floor and he "accidentally" slipped his finger half way up my you know what!! All of this going on I went to school like normal and would continue to fight with Rita to take him his coffee because I didn’t want him to grab my hand and try to make me touch him or see him jerking off while sitting on the couch. While momma slept.
I do remember the first time I kissed a boy or even better "felt" of his thing….. I remember driving home and being so full of excitement that I couldn’t wait until I could tell Becky. Which would have to be in the morning.
I look back at all the boys that were interested and the ones at the time I was not interested in. Boy, was my head in the wrong place. Looks and Body that was it. I sometimes look back and see two of the sweetest boys that I just wasn’t interested in that would have probably given me the world.
As the teenage years kept going by and I was eventually graduating from high school. I moved from the house and got an apartment and realized what it was like to be a member of the working class. It sucked paying bills but I was my own boss and I loved it.
A lot of my friends were into drinking and drugs. I myself at that time did not get into drugs I would drink every so often an get shit faced. But, for some reason I resisted the drugs.
Later, I was working with a girl and she said she wanted to introduce me to a man. She said oh he is into drugs some not bad and is trying to get away from this girl that is bad… Well, I believe this is the start of my "I am woman I can save the world" syndrome. Because I truly believed that I could reform this guy hopefully fall in love, get married and have bunches of kids and live happily ever after. Whew……. A lot to expect for me to do huh!!
Well, as it turns out I did not save his life. I merely let someone into my life that showed me an alternative way of dealing with life. Drugs. He would tease me with them at first. Then when I asked my friends about them and they had all tried well "Why shouldn’t I" So here was a phase in my life I truly wish I could cut out, erase, or chisel out so that I never would have been the person I was at this time and done some of the things that I did. My boyfriend ended up having not 1 but 3 girl friends at one time and I was not the one of choice. So here I was using and dumped. I don’t remember when I quit looking into peoples eyes and faces. I have always heard that the eyes are the gateway to that persons soul. Maybe I believed that if I looked they would see the person that I was becoming.
The next few years was a blur.. of working to use. I had almost lost it all my house everything, I needed to make a house payment for 3 months to keep it and I had no money for Christmas. I was at work one day and things at work were tense and my supervisor who had become friends with all of us, we were yelling at each other all the time. I just couldn’t take it. I was going to explode. I laid my head in my hands and said God I know you have something in mind for me I wish you would go ahead and do it. This was Friday on Monday I was on of 4 employees laid off with severance pay and before I walked out the door that day I was offered an interview with the surety division of my company. I was elated. God saved my house and had Christmas after all.
I finally did not have much of a choice my connection dried up and his wife refused to let him sell. Even to me! I was broken hearted. I thought who am I going to get it from. I was not going to get it of the street like some druggie (that I was), the seconds turned to minutes into weeks into months and finally I realized man it has been 3 years since I used. I realized that I was looking in peoples faces and again and letting people get close to me. God it felt great.
I had gotten a second glance at life and what it was could be like. Another friend introduced me to a man named Donald. We started off talking on the phone every day for a week and then on the weekend we were all going bowling. I remember the first time I went to pick him up as he did not have a car. It was snowing to beat all. And this was the start of something that would change my life forever.
Soon I had gotten pregnant. I could not believe it. I remember when I thought that I was I rushed home to get a test hoping I could get home before Donald and do the test. I stopped at the store and drove and as I rounded the corner there he was in the front yard watering the grass and waving at me. Boy was I nervous. I went in the house and took my bag in the bathroom and waited for Donald to go in and get his shower. When he did I took the test. POSITIVE. What………….. I could not imagine I have never told anyone that before. What was he going to do. As we sat on the couch watching TV I looked at him and told him you know I told you we really needed to be careful and he looked and me and said yea….. Well I took a test … and…… well go look and see … So I marched right behind him to see if he read it correctly.
I of course had two options of which I was married to Donald on Armed Forces day May 16th 1997, and I delivered a beautiful bouncing baby boy on October 30, 1997. Christopher Caleb. The joy of my life. My reason for being. I probably spoil my son tremendously and tell him 20, no 30 or more times a day that I love him.
At this time was the first experience I had with seeing Donald with his cluster headaches. They came from out of nowhere. I remember being in the hospital while having Caleb and Donald staying with me. The headaches had no mercy and didn’t care that this was supposed to be the most wonderful time in Donalds and my life. I had to let Caleb go spend the night one night in the nursery while Donald was in the hospital bathroom yelling obsenities at the beast.
Almost 4 years have past and life still centers around the beast. We try to adapt every day to what is thrown our way. I know some of you have no earthly idea why I did this. I did this for me, my son and for anyone else it helps to get through. We are all human, we all go through life much the same way, one foot in front of the other.
But we will all make it through it. You have to hang on to what you can. I have always had a hard time telling people who I am and what I have done, but look where I am now.