FreshCaffeine

At 14, I grew up. I shouldn't have and I vow that my daughter and my son will not have to grow up before their time. I had to know how to take care of myself and pay bills. I had 2 jobs and sometimes 3. I quit school at 16, I was smart but my mother thought that I didn't need to go to school anymore so she pulled me out. Admittedly, I skipped school a lot but I still passed all of my tests when they were given. I could have made it if my parents had made my education more important. To my mother I don’t think education mattered much.

They even took my brother out of school in 6th grade and said she said she was going to home school him but she didn’t do any work with him. She left it up to him and now he has a 6th grade education. I don’t even think he can get his GED and that isn’t his fault, it’s my mother’s. When I had Jayson with me for a few weeks (he was 15 I think) I took over his home schooling and he was doing work everyday, and he was doing good. He just needed someone to give him attention and help him to do the work. She would rather be on the computer than do that and that is why Jayson can’t get a GED now.

I think her pulling me out of school had something to do with the fact that she was a drop out and she didn't want me to graduate and not her. I always felt like she was jealous of me for different things, friends, school, my art, boys and my looks. I knew that I was good at these things, my friends and teachers would tell me so but she would tell me that Heidi was better then me.

When I had friends over when I was younger, she would tell them stories about me to make them laugh at me. She would stay in my room when I was having a sleepover and tell my friends that I had been talking about them behind their backs just to make them mad at me.

She would never tell me that I looked nice; she would always make me wear the ugliest clothes to school so that boys wouldn’t think I was pretty. I quickly learned how to take clothes to school and change there. If I had a boy friend, she would get them drunk, no matter what the age, and see what they would tell her. She did this with a lot of my friends too. She used alcohol to both get information and make my friends her friends. So I stopped having friends over.

I ran away many times over the years trying to get away from her. My father was in jail most of the time so she focused all of her anger on me. I always assumed it was because she got pregnant with me, she had to marry my father, and she hated him. She was always pretty nice to my brother except when she got really angry. She would throw things at him and hit him with things. I usually only got choked or slapped or hit with a belt. My brother got hit with his own crutches one time.

I do remember one time, I had a boyfriend who had moved away and I had run up the phone bill pretty high and my mom way really pissed at me. She came in to the apartment and started kicking me from one end of the apartment all the way out the back. I was pregnant at the time. My grandmother had to stop her or she was going to kill me I think. I don’t think that she was going to stop otherwise.

When I had Sierra, she told me that I could never be a good mother. She wanted me to give Sierra to Heidi (her girlfriend that she thought no one else knew she was sleeping with). She said it so much that I believed her for a while and I even left Sierra with her for a very long time. I finally came to my senses though when I meet Jemal.

Jemal and I decided that we were going to get Sierra back and keep her full time. When I tried to get Sierra back from her, I had to call the police because she tried to hide her from me. She called the police when we tried to get Sierra's furniture that I bought. We did get her and Sierra never went back there again. And since then, I haven't let my mother keep her or take her anywhere. I haven’t let her watch either of my kids because I realize just how crazy of a person she is.

Since Jemal and I have been married, my mother and I have gotten into a few arguments. I don't like to fight with her, I am afraid to fight with her because she is crazy and does crazy things to get me back.

The last time we fought, she called Jemal's job (he works for the government) and told them that Jemal and I had threatened to kill her over the phone. Jemal was called to his boss’s office for this and if they didn't already know that mom was crazy there, (from the stories that Jemal tells them) he would have been put on suspension for 30 days because of it, without pay. She was trying to make him lose his job and he feeds this whole family one salary. This household includes her only two grandchildren and her very own mother. We all would have been on the streets if her plan had worked.

Then there is my father who is always going to be a drunk. I finally came to this realization a few days ago when he called me a bitch on the phone. I don't know why I put up with his shit. I don't know why I have for so long. He has been in re-hab 7 times since he got out of jail in August and in jail overnight 4 times (that I know of) since then too.

He keeps promising things that he will never do and I kept on believed him. I kept trying to help him. I was sending him money, care packages and gift cards to Target. I wanted him to get better but all he was doing was using me. He doesn't try to do anything for himself. He thinks that his life was so bad that he has an excuse to get drunk everyday.
He says he is self-medicating and he thinks that is a good thing. I have tried to explain to him exactly what that means but he thinks that I read too many books. I think that means I know more then him but whatever he thinks is all he is going to think.

My life was shitty to and I choose not to drink, I know that a beer or two would probably make everything seem so much better but it only gets better if you actually face it and get over it. I think that is why I am writing all of this now. Getting it out makes it better, keeping it in and drinking it down doesn't fix the fact that you are depressed or angry about something. Dad needs to see a shrink and he needs real medication. If he doesn't want to do that and he wants to keep on drinking then he has to stop calling me.

I sent dad a letter today telling him that I don't want to talk to him until he gets his shit together. I don't want to hear from him until he quits drinking. I don't want to be his secretary and make calls that annoy everyone in the family or call people I don't even know for him anymore. I had to be very firm in the letter because I know that dad doesn't take subtlety very well.

Basically, I had to tell my father good-bye. I know that he will never get his life together but I can’t keep dealing with him or I will never get better. I know that and everyone around me knows that. I think my friends and family are sick of seeing me be abuse and used by my father over and over again. The relationship is not worth it for me. I am not getting anything out of it except a hope that my father might be a good grandfather someday. And I can wait for that without dealing with the stress.

I also explained to my father in the letter that just in the 5 days of not talking to him I have been getting better, I feel stronger and I can breath better again. I really think the stress of talking to him was making me worse or at least not letting me heal.

That is why I am taking a 3-week vacation from stress. No phone calls and no letters from Dad. I am going to avoid talking to my mother and anyone else who causes me stress. I will get out of conversations that bother me and try to only do things that make me feel comfortable. It's better then a trip to the Bahamas I think. At the end of it all, I hope to be back in good health.

It has been years since I have been able to relax and just think about myself. I know it sounds very selfish but I think 3 weeks of being selfish is a lot better then a lifetime of being miserable and treating my family terrible because I am always upset about one thing or another or having my health be so bad.

Sure, I will still be at home but I have everything planned out and at the end I will be the Kellie that I was 8 years ago before all of this stress started to take effect on me. I can always pretend that I am in a fancy hotel, I bought enough pillows and relaxation stuff to make it a fancy and relaxing place.

I think that I am going to try everyday to write a new blog post about something in my life that has been stressful so that I can get it out and let it go. I would appreciate comments from my friends and family to encourage me to do more writing like this. Feel free to share your own life stories and let it out. It really does make you feel better to tell other people.

For now, I must go I have some relaxing to do today. It’s day one of my 3 week vacation.