Do you ever have a day that can’t be labeled as anything more than a shit day? If you answer no then please move along because this blog is for the real ones out there. Today hurt. I am convinced that nothing in life can hurt you more than your grown children. Your own parents or spouse are a close second but the fruit of you loins?? Yeah nothing can destroy you faster. Where did we as a society go wrong with our children? When did it become a never-ending tug of war? How did we teach them to be entitled, lack empathy, and be disrespectfully cruel? I do take 100% of the blame in my case. In my efforts raise my own kids better than I was raised I have failed miserably.

I get that most of us are and have done the best we could with what we were given and I am no exception to that. I did not have a shining example of a mother. I had a mother who loved me but never once chose me first. Boyfriends and husbands always came first. She was always more worried about not being single than she was about us. I ended up moving in with my father and stepmother at the end of Jr High and that’s pretty much where all thoughts of a rose colored world ended. I had a step-mom who was young and closer to my age and made it clear she loathed me. The saddest part that I look back and see now it that I actually admired her and wanted to be like her one day because of how she kept her home, kept herself, and how she treated my step sister and half brother. My dad and the things he let happen to me when I lived there is a topic for another post. I sadly spent 40 years doing everything in my power to get his approval before just accepting it will never happen. I spent what I feel was the most important time for a girl, the early teen years alone. I couldn’t go to my mom when I started my period my step-mom just randomly bought me supplies. There was no one to be excited about a first kiss or date. There was definitely no one involved in school until it took a nose dive. I could go to friends houses but rarely could they come over. When I was 17 it had gotten to the point where it was miserable at my dads and when I went to my mothers on her weekend I could go out and do whatever I wanted as long as I beat her home from the bar. Misguided as it was I desperately needed her to be more. Want me more. I had friends that had moms that were involved and I wanted that badly.

It was at 17 I “ran away” to a friends house after a particularly bad fight with my step-mom. They ended up getting me to talk to all three of them at once and my mom agreed that I could live with her again. This lasted until we got to her house a couple days later and she told me it would best for me to live with my grand parents in another state. I will never forget sitting in my bedroom at my dads when for the first time he started to fight for me. He did not agree with me moving. But the voice that replays over and over in my memories said either she goes or I go…. Whitin a week i was packed and living with my grandparents 9 hours away. This worked at first as I had always been close to them. But it was trading one issue for another. By the time I was a senior I rarely went to class and I was failing. There was no one to notice. Shortly after I moved in with them my grandfather got transferred a few hors away and I was alone a lot. There were money problems no one ever knew about and there was eventually a bank account set up under my name that my grandmother used as her bank account. After failing to graduate my father decided to move me back to the small town I had grown up in. Upon arrived I was taken to a small house that he had paid the first months rent and told to sink or swim. I did eventually get my GED but could not find or hold a job there. This is the time that I really started to struggle with being lonely and never feeling good enough or wanted. I put myself in scary situations and let things happen to me that I have never gotten over. I felt like an embarrassment. After less than a year my grandparents were being transferred to a city several states away and offered for me to go with them. At 18 it sounded like an amazing adventure and I jumped at the opportunity but less than 6 months later they transferred again. I was now in a huge city barely 18 and 15 hours from the town I grew up in. I was being swallowed up and I was scared so once again my dad came to move me back. He brought me a Christmas bear that day as he had when I was younger and that was probably the first time I felt loved in all of my teenage years. It sadly did not last. As soon as we hit the first hotel I was bombarded with how I needed to forgive my step mother and make nice for his sake.

This time I didn’t I go back to the home town for very long. I was there for the Christmas holiday and then it was straight to the neighboring small city for another sink or swim. I was swimming a little better there and that’s when I met him. The man that would give me my worst nightmares along with my biggest blessings. We were not dating long before things got serious and I got pregnant. This was terrifying! I was deathly sick and in and out of the hospital the entire time. When I broke the news to my mother she told me to have an abortion because she didn’t want to tell her friends. My dad yelled at me but did not tell me to give it up. And surprisingly my step mom was the only supportive one at the time. I think she felt it made us more equal as she had my step sister at 16. I was 20 but still scared and not married. Things were ok with HIM throughout my pregnancy. He worked and supported us completely as I had too many medical issues to work. From the moment I found out I was pregnant I begged God for a girl. I wanted to finally have that mother daughter relationship and to know and show unconditional love. When I was 7 months along I found out my prayers had been answered and D1 was born healthy and right on time. They tell you the feeling of becoming a parent is describable and they are so correct!! I remember just sitting in that hospital room staring at her in wonder. I couldn’t believe someone like me had made such a beautiful perfect little human.

To be continued…