This will be my
last column, in the last issue of the year so I wanted to do something a little
different. For that reason I wanted to write about a more personal topic, and
let you in on my life a little bit. This column is about overcoming hardships to
get to where you want to be. I have
overcome all the obstacles in my life to get to where I am today, and know that
I never have to look back. This is what I like to call my testimony.
Most of my closet
friends here know very little of my life that I left behind. Now I want to
share it with anybody who cares to read it for the simple hope that it will
light a candle in some unexpected person and give him or her hope; it is purely
and hopefully meant to be inspirational.
Up until the
fourth grade, I had the perfect life, well, at least perfect for a nine year
old. I had a lot of friends, I liked school at Monroe Elementary, my sister and
brother were only mildly annoying, my best friend lived right next store, and I
always had friends over because I was the kid with the big yard, the swing set,
and all the new Barbies and girly movies. It’s easy enough to say that my
perfect childhood stopped here.
My parents began
fighting uncontrollably and I even remember times when I had to take my
siblings to the neighbors for dinner when things had become too bad, too often.
Yet, I was still a child. Did it make me
sad to see my parents fight? Absolutely, but it was easy enough to jump on top
of the monkey bars, swing, or jump on our four wheeler and get lost in the
woods.
I am sure you
would have guessed that a separation was not far off, so we moved from our
house, and my sanctuary in New Richmond, to a small town house in Amelia with
my mom, while my dad moved around from place to place. Sometimes when we went
to visit him he was at Grandma’s, Aunt Nicole and Uncle Mark’s, or sometimes it
would be a friend of his that we did not know. None of this mattered to us, as
long as we got to see our dad, and he never missed a visit.
On the other hand
we hated our new school and our new house. What we hated most were the people
who mom brought home. Some were strange
men who stayed a night or a maybe a week, some were friends from her job at
Golden Corral; when they came to stay they always stayed for weeks at a time,
sometimes even months. We hated for her friends to come over because that meant
that we couldn’t sleep with her in the only bed in the house. We were kicked
out to camp on the floor with blankets and pillows, sometimes with her friends’
kids.
One particular
friend was Sue who had two boys, Patrick, who was my age, and Adam, who was two
years younger than me but two years older than my brother. At first, it was fun
having the boys around; it gave us someone to hang out with other than the kids
in the complex. By this time, I was the full time mother, although I did not
look at it like that. We spent many nights eating macaroni and cheese and fish
sticks because I knew how to cook them the best. Most nights we ate Pb &
j’s or a bowl of cereal, but we didn’t care about that.
I was in charge
of giving the kids a bath and getting them ready for school. We were always on
the go, swimming in a neighbor’s pool, playing tag, or beating each other at
self made obstacle courses; all the fun
aspects of doing whatever we pleased while the adults were at work or sleeping
or had “guests” over was irrelevant to us.
The boys and Sue
became permanent fixtures in our house, and sometimes I enjoyed it, but most of
the time I didn’t. We had moved past that stage of being friends, we became
enemies. I quickly realized that the more that they went to their dad’s, the
meaner they would be become. It’s safe to say that the boys’ father should have
been thrown in jail for child abuse and molestation. It’s even safer to say
that the oldest carried some of the same traits and became “curious,” in ways
that I personally hated. I never told anyone but my cousin and she said I was
lying. I guess I built a complex and
never told any body about it again until one year at church camp, but that was
only part of the story. Maybe I just
felt sorry because I knew their father was a really rotten man.
My dad became very
angry when he heard about the way we were behaving and getting away with what
ever we pleased, so my mom got us a babysitter. Some babysitter she was; she
got paid to watch us do exactly what we had been doing long before she ever
came along. I still made dinners, only now I had two more plates to fix, one
for her and one for her rotten boy friend.
He got “curious”, too, and I got crazy.
One time I called
the cops and tried to run away but the babysitter wouldn’t let me; she had
unplugged the phone form the wall making it impossible for the cops to get back
through. So they came out to investigate but I was locked in the restroom while
she answered the door and told them of my ‘misbehaving’ and her boyfriend had
long been gone. He never came back, which was an answer to my prayers, too bad
he wasn’t the last.
When my mom first
started doing hard drugs it was not a surprise when we were evicted and I was
living with my dad and grandparents. That lasted all of eleven months. We went
back to New Richmond; my teachers once again liked me. I still remember Mrs.
Paul. I even have a small yearbook picture of her in a diary tucked away that
she traded me for one of mine. I was comfortable here, and although I was able
to do a lot less and get away with little, it felt like home again.
Then the worst
happened. My dad disappeared, although this was the second time he had left but
he came back that time after a month or two.
This time, it was at lot worse. He left with my Aunt Nicole. Talk about breaking a lot of already broken
hearts. There were six children unable
to put the shreds of their lives back together and one broken man who couldn’t
understand his brother’s motives with his wife. That was the day after
Christmas and it was short lived a holiday.
For three months
we were clueless to where they were; angry, hurt, but wanting things to be fixed
more than anything. Then we were shipped of to Newport with my mom again. That
was a slap in the face; even at our young age we knew that this was not a life
for a child.
Mom’s new roommate
was named Brandy and she was a stripper whom we had known for quite some time;
her son was 19 and weird. I remember he used to make me watch movies with him,
movies I didn’t like and I know mom would have been angry. He said that his
“curiosity” was normal, and if I ever told, no one would ever believe me anyway/
I never told. I acted out, yet I have never told anybody again about my painful
secrets. Till this day I have never told anybody all my secrets, never until
now.
After a while my
dad came back with my aunt at his side.
To top it all off, they moved in with us, our mom and her friends. They lived upstairs, we lived downstairs. I
was angry, stubborn, and hurt, and refused to speak to them. After living with
someone you learn to give in, no matter how hard and hurtful it is. I had a real hatred for my aunt and my
cousins and uncle had the same kind of hatred for my dad. They got out of
it; I had to live with them and face it
every day. My mom had started taking the rent money from my dad and buying
drugs from the people at the bar she worked at. There would be days at a time I
wouldn’t see her, and then she would show back up and act as if nothing was
wrong. Soon she stopped coming back at all.
I took to the life
in the city, and I felt that I had to keep up with the older people I hung out
with. That meant sneaking out just about every night and attending parties. I
have seen things that I still cannot believe. My so called best friend jumped
out of the car on the way to the party one night and beat this girl up and left
her on the side walk in a fetal position, all for fun. She thought it was
hilarious. I don’t think I will ever stop regretting sitting there and
watching. There was never a party with out alcohol, and drugs, some worse than
the others. I am glad to this day that drugs never became part of my
experiences; I guess I was just a little smarter, plus, I had already lost my
mother to them, not me, too. Depression was the way I lived my life, and I had
suicidal thoughts and cuts to prove it. I took a lot of bad turns and walked
down paths that no one should ever walk down.
Then four years
ago something amazing happened; it was
called Faith Chapel. The pastor, Jamie
Taylor, was my cousin and my grandparents took me whenever I was with them. I
wavered in and out of the church life for a few years, never feeling like I had
found my place. Although I drastically calmed down, I was still living with a
lot of my old ways. It felt good to have someone to lean on, the church. I had good friends who really cared but it
was hard for me to leave the life behind that was hidden from all these people.
I felt none of them really understood, in a way I still feel that way, but it’s
okay because no one can never fully understand unless he or she has been in
those shoes.
Eventually
everything fell into place, all that was left was to leave Newport schools and
move in with the grandparents (by this time I had forgiven my dad and mostly
forgiven my aunt. It took five years
but I still wanted to get out more than anything, this wasn’t my home).
Things started
slowly; after years of begging my dad to
transfer us to New Richmond, he finally
did my junior year. Although many
students take New Richmond for granted and can’t wait to get away, I fought my whole life to come back. This was
huge for me, it meant getting up at 5:30 every morning to get ready and drive
to New Richmond and back to Newport, which was okay. It didn’t matter to me
that I was nowhere near as popular here as I was there, the work was a lot
harder and my honor roll grades and effort for Newport no longer worked, or
that I lost a lot of friends in Newport.
I was back on track. I still had battles to fight, such as getting to
church (my dad did everything in his power to keep us away) which had become my
strong hold. God had become my stronghold and I wanted to be in His house every
day all day. Then there was dealing with my mom being gone, but I had already
won the largest battle. Senior year was the ultimate, I moved in with my
grandparents in September and everything just felt right. I had finally found my home again, no matter
that it took nine years to do so.
After I found my
place, I started turning the bad into good.
My mom’s disappearance no longer held me back nor was she an excuse for my failures, but
she was the presence in my head pushing
me forward. She had become my
inspiration in a way I have never known. I knew that I wanted to become
everything that she was not. I was an
overcomer.
All the same that
didn’t stop me from missing my mom. I
wanted someone to help me get ready for dances and braid my hair, someone to
cheer me on, but that was no longer an anchor holding me back. It had been four
years since we heard from her. I mean,
every once in a while we would get something in the mail where she had used our
address, but that was it.
In 2006 the woman
that use to be the mother above all others reached an all time low, even in my
eyes. She was flashed across all the
news stations for multiple reasons, among them she had stolen a cop car in
Anderson township. She got away, she was
put on the Wheel of Justice, and became one of the most wanted women in
Ohio. Hey, at least we knew she was
alive. Then she was flashed across the news again in April of 2009. After six years of running, she has been caught.
First, she will spend some time in jail in Tennessee, then she will be sent
back here to do her time for her crimes in 2006. That’s what inspired me to
write this; a burden that I thought I
let go of is just now being lifted. I hope that she will come out of jail the
person that she used to be, but I am prepared if she doesn’t. I no longer feel
like I have to hold things in that are painful.
I have overcome,
and I continue to do so each and every day. In August, I am off to college at
Shawnee State University to become a child psychologist. I want to help the
kids who have had a poor childhood. I
hope that I will be able to help them talk about their fears and leave them
behind, instead of living in them every day. I have overcome and I want to continue
to help others overcome for the rest of my life.
When you look at
me now, there maybe something that you can’t place, a past that you may not
understand, nor would you have guessed. The simple fact is that I am a changed
person, I am quiet when I used to be loud, happy when I use to be hurt, whole
where I used to be empty. I honestly believe that I would never have found my
place if I would not have kept fighting, but I overcame the odds, and I believe
I have triumphed.
The moral of my
story in is that when you set your mind to something you have to press forward
to achieve it, defeat all the odds and obstacles set before you. Have
confidence in yourself when no one else can. Set your goal high and don’t you
dare stop until you get there. Leave your past behind and set your future in
front of you and you can achieve anything.
Overcome!
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