First of all, thank you for reading my blog. I decided to start it because I feel like I have things to say, I have new adventures in my life that I want to share and lastly, I am a stay at home mom that only has an infant and toddler to interact with during the day. I love the life that my husband and I have created for us and our kids, but this hasn't always been my life.
Growing up I went through a lot of struggles, like many of you did I am sure. Up until I was 8 years old my parents were married, we lived in a small town in the Panhandle of Florida, my father worked about an hour from home with a decent job but for some reason we still struggled. My mother did everything she could to ensure that we had what we needed. She had an in home daycare, she she had garage sales almost every weekend....she found a way to make it work. As a young kid I was really close to my father. I would go fishing with him, hunting with him, I basically did everything with him. I was the little boy they never had LOL.
I remember vividly being 8 years old and hiding in the corner, screaming crying because my father was no longer a part of the family. He didn't live with us anymore and wouldn't ever again. My parents were getting a divorce thanks to my father having a long standing affair. I honestly don't remember much from that time period in my life. It effected me greatly and even kept me from spending my days in school. I was sent to school for half a day to complete all my work then I would go home to my mother for the rest of the day. Of course the divorce meant even less money for my mother to support my sister and I. She ended up getting a job and working ALL hours. From what I remember, I spend a lot of days/nights with my sister watching me. My sister is 7 years older than me so she was capable of watching me but to this day I feel bad that she had to spend her teenage years watching me instead of having fun like her friends. It by no means was my mother's fault, she was trying to provide for us even though she had no high school diploma much less any college. That "blame" falls on my father in my opinion.
My mom eventually made the decision to move us down to the Cocoa Beach, Florida area. My grandparents (mom's parents) lived there along with my mom's brother, wife & kids. My sister was furious with my mother simply because she would have to finish her last 2 years of high school at a NEW school. Luckily that worked out well for her and she found some REALLY GREAT friends that she is till close with to this day. She even met her now husband a few years after moving there. I started adjusting well also. I got to spend every weekend at my grandparents which was always a blast, especially since I got to be there with my cousins and sometimes my sister. My grandfather would take us to the grocery store and he would let us pick out ANYTHING we wanted. We were spoiled and loving every minute of it. I attended a great elementary school, junior high and high school. I was involved in the church, met my best friend, and made some lifelong friends. My mother continued to struggle to support us and worked 3 jobs at a time to ensure we had what we needed. She also had her fun too though. She had been married since she was 16 years old to my sisters father and then my father...she never had her teenage fun so I tend to think it was her making up for it (not that I blame her LOL).
Things got a little rough for my grandparents (job lose, etc) so they ended up moving out to the Seattle area to live with my mom's youngest brother. Life continued on for us though. I would spend time doing youth group trips, hanging with my friends, spending time with the numerous family members in our area. Until one day my mother met and married a man that would turn our lives upside down! He was a drunk, extremely abusive, and an overall horrible man. My sister had already moved out of town with her boyfriend (now husband) and my grandparents were already gone and living in Seattle. It was just my mom and I living with a man that tried MANY times to KILL my mother. Each time I had to save her. Whether it was calling the cops, screaming at him to let her go, or having to literally hit him to get him to stop. I specifically remember one day that he was in a drunk rage and was storming towards me. I was standing in the kitchen and just knew he was planning to hit me. I grabbed the iron skillet that my mom kept on the stove and held it up like a bat. I dared him to hit me because I KNEW if he did that I was going to lay him out with that iron skillet. This went on for a couple of years. At one point he drank so much of our money away that we became homeless. I remember it was my fifteenth birthday and we were homeless. His (my mother's abusive husband) parents had a travel trailer and allowed us to move into it. My mom scrounged every bit of money she could so she could take me to Chilis for dinner. We had hit rock bottom. Strangely, I still spoke with my father and would fly to Louisiana to see him during summer and Christmas but he never pursued custody. Not that I wanted to leave my mother but I KNOW that having my kids go through something so horrible, I would FIGHT to the end of the world to ensure they were away from it. One night things got REALLY bad with my mother's husband. She was close to death for the countless time and when the police arrived they finally had enough. The cop was a very close family friend and he was tired of seeing this happen. He told her that either she left him and got out or they were going to take her to jail too. Thankfully that scared her enough to leave. We finally reached the point that we could leave and her husband didn't threaten us this time. Every other time she tried to leave him he threatened to kill us, our family, the list goes on and on. Not this time...we were FREE!
When I reached 11th grade we had ended up in the Seattle area with my grandparents, uncle, aunt and cousins. All of us were living in one house and though I enjoyed the school I attended and the friends I made, I decided that I wanted to move to Louisiana to live with my father. It was extremely hard on my mother but it was something I needed. I missed him and wanted to spend time with him. So my second semester of 11th grade I started at Carencro High School just outside of Lafayette, Louisiana. I was told by my father that I couldn't drive the truck to school so I had to ride the bus. As a junior that sucked but I did it without complaint. I was able to drive to work after school. My father had told me that he would get me my own vehicle once I saved $1,000 for the down payment. I found a job and started working on that right away. I didn't have anything else to pay for so I saved that up quickly. Unfortunately things took a turn quickly after moving in with him. I realized early on that he was an alcoholic. He worked on the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico as Mud Engineer. He made great money and would be gone for a couple weeks at a time and then home for a couple of weeks. His first time home after I moved in he was asking me to make him a Crown Royal and 7up. It was 9 am! We would be in his truck going to his friend's house for lunch or dinner and he would have a Crown & 7 in the cup holder. All he drank was Crown & 7! I was struggling with seeing that so I started making homemade lemonade just to get him to drink something else. That would last for about 1-2 cups and then back to his giant bottle of Crown Royal. He was extremely strict on me. I went to school, came home, did my homework, worked, and if I went to hang out with friends on the weekends then he had to approve of the person and I had to be home by 10 pm. I would be in HUGE trouble if I got a B in a class as well. Those don't sound like horrible things but considering I was moving into my senior year and STILL couldn't stay out past 10 pm was insane to me. I was a trustworthy kid and didn't cause trouble. Then a curve ball got thrown. Him and his fiance decided to buy a second home in Texas, about 4 hours from the house I was living in. They started spending every available moment there "fixing it up". It got to the point that I was literally living by myself. They paid the bills for the house but didn't leave me money for food or school supplies. I had a project due and I had already used the money from my savings to buy food, since he never bought me that car, so I had to call my mother who was now living in Arizona to Western Union me money for my project. I was home alone for WEEKS on end and was STILL abiding by his rules even though he was no where around...that's a good kid! ;-) Things really hit bottom when I got strep throat, bronchitis and the flu all at once. I couldn't even walk and no one was home to take me to the doctor or help me. I called my father and he said he couldn't come home from Texas...are you kidding me?! I called my mother in Arizona and she called my local doctor, explained the situation and the doctor called in a prescription for me. Now how was I going to get my prescription. I couldn't drive! My mother came to the rescue again. She called my friend that lived close to me, asked him to go pick up the prescription and some soup and she sent him the money through Western Union. He did it, dropped it off at the door (rule 5000 - no boys in the house) and I CRAWLED to the door to get my meds and soup.
That Christmas I was visiting my mother and I told her I didn't want to live alone anymore. I wanted to move back in with her. I went back to Louisiana after Christmas and let my school know what was going on. Since I was now 18 I could withdrawal myself and that's just what I did. I went back to my father's house, my soon to be step mom was there and my father was out on the oil rig, and I grabbed my bags and left for the airport. I left his house EXACTLY one year from the day I arrived. Yep, all that happened within a year. I was basically told by my father that he didn't want to speak to me anymore since I was leaving. Unfortunately that was the price I paid...I no longer had a father. Was I right in what I did? I think so. I was living on my own and I didn't want that. I wanted to be the teenager/senior in high school that all my friends were. I finally got that when I moved to Arizona. I made GREAT friends. I still speak to them to this day and I had what I like to think was a normal second half of senior year. I attended prom, I went to parties with friends, I worked because I wanted to and the money I made went to clothes I wanted or trips...not to food.
Things changed, I joined the Army National Guard right out of high school. When I got done with Basic Training & Job Training (AIT) I went back to my unit to find out that I was being deployed. I ended up spending 15 months deployed. I ended up in Kuwait, Iraq & Qatar during those 15 months and they affected me in a way that I am still figuring out to this day.
The cycle of control & abuse didn't stop and I found myself in verbally abusive relationships, controlling relationships and overall in a downward spiral. FINALLY in 2009-2010 I started seeking treatment. After working many hours with my counselor we knew that I not only was suffering PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) and I was still having issues steming from losing my father.
