Mother 1

I've been putting off writing the past couple days for a couple reasons. I'm not really sure how to attack this ^ topic, my kids have been sick so I don't get a chance to write, and I've been lazy about it. Again I'm going to stick with not using real names of people or places.

My mother grew up in Little/Big town (has the characteristics of a little, closed minded, stuck in their ways town but is one of the biggest in the area with several different school districts and tons of big businesses). She has two brothers one older (Ogre) and one younger (Mr. Perfect). Ogre was not very nice to my mother, he would beat her up, treat her as if she were scum and disowned friends that attempted to be friends with her. He married a woman and had two daughters with her, one exactly 6 months older than me (Bitch) and the other a couple years younger (Lush). When Bitch was in her teens Ogre and his wife divorced because he was cheating on her with Sweet Willow. He then moved into the house he grew up in with Sweet Willow, Mr. Perfect owns it but their mother still lives in the upstairs. To this day Ogre still lives there with Sweet Willow and their mother upstairs. Mr. Perfect went into civil service first working as a police officer then transferring to the fire department, now he's retired from the fire department and got his nursing degree. He married this one woman who cheated on him and then married again when I was in elementary school, he married Disney. Disney had two boys from a previous marriage one my age and one two years older, Mr. Perfect wound up adopting them from their biological father a year after they got married. Disney is also a nurse and with both kids out of the house they spend a lot of time traveling (to Disney World at least once a year plus many other places).

My mother's relationship with her father wasn't the greatest. He was very old school and believed women belonged in the kitchen, he also had a drinking and temper problem. He died when my mother was in her twenties before I was born. My mother and her mother weren't close until the past couple years. My grandmother always favored the boys, they could do nothing wrong. And I guess the years of my mother throwing herself at my grandmother's feet finally worked. The family as a whole isn't very warm and welcoming. I've heard from numerous people coming in from the outside that they felt very excluded and uncomfortable. They aren't the type to run into your arms and hug you and swing side to side saying how much they missed you into your ear before giving you a huge wet kiss on the cheek. They are the type that tries to touch the least amount when giving a hug or kiss and for the shortest amount of time. At this point in time the siblings all live within 5 minutes of each other and only get together on holidays or events. My mother does see my grandmother at least once a week for lunch and/or breakfast at this luncheonette they have been going to since they were children. Sometimes Ogre goes there with Sweet Willow and he will barely say hi and never sit with them.

When my mother graduated high school she was given a full ride to a very good art school but since her parents were very old school hey didn't believe in girls going to college let alone for art. She started working for a big company in the utilities field doing blue collar work. This is where she met my father, you all know what happens there. I have mixed info about when they divorced and why but basically I was a toddler and he was drinking a lot and cheating on her. The story she told me was that one day she left for her morning shift (8am-4pm) and when she returned he was passed out with an empty six pack next to him and I had been in my crib crying, hadn't been touched all day, no diaper change and no food and that was her breaking point.

Almost immediately after divorcing my father she started dating Girly Voice. He had three children from his first marriage, all older than me, two boys and a girl. Not long after they started dating we moved into his parent's house, in Money Town, it was right before I started elementary school. Money Town was higher economic status than we were, none of the women worked and looked down on us because my mother did. Not long after we moved in his parents moved to Florida full time, his daughter then moved in with us, his sons stayed with their mother. When I was about halfway through second grade my mother caught him cheating with his ex-sister-in-law (kinda Jerry Springer, a lot of my mother's crap is very trashy), there was a message left on our answering machine that told her. So she quickly moved us back to Little/Big Town, at first we stayed with her best friend (Ditzy) who I always referred to as my aunt and her kids as my cousins, just until she finished closing on a house and we could move in, December 1992. Ditzy and her daughter moved in with us. Years later my father asked me if Girly Voice ever touched me, said that people around work (Girly Voice and my father still worked with my mother), talked and said he touched his boys. As far as I can remember he never touched me, I wouldn't have let him either (I just want to clarify this, at a very young age I knew what was ok and what wasn't, I knew what sex was and I was very independent). Kinda of funny that my father waited several years to ask about it and not make a bigger deal about me living with him.

At the time we moved in my mother had a new boyfriend, he was a guy that hung out at the bar she went to with her coworkers. He was a low-life that lived in his friend's basement and didn't work for a living.

Then one morning, spring/summer time, I was sitting in the kitchen and a man came walking out of my mother's bedroom in just a pair of boxers. I shall call him Piece of Shit (POS), sometime that afternoon my mother asked me if I liked him and I told her straight out no. She then asked me why and I said I didn't know, keep in mind I'm only 8, I just had a weird feeling about him. Her response was to tell me that I needed to have a reason, well it was more of a yell at me. She then explained to me that they did a bad thing and they would have to talk to the other low-life, POS was his best friend. Low-life and POS basically hung out in bars all the time with each other and somehow my mother wound up bringing POS home and sleeping with him. POS moved in with us almost right away and I had to start calling him dad. POS didn't work, he would spend a week or two at a job and then quit (later my mother found out that he was just avoiding child support). He had two daughters from a marriage, who we didn't meet until I was in college. POS liked to spend my mother's money, remodeling the kitchen and deciding to breed fancy tail guppies and sell them. He bought more guppies and tanks than he ever came close to selling. I still to this day have a fear of fish because of this. There were about 1,200 fish in our basement and I would have to go down there and feed them or help him out. The smell was horrible and the fish would jump out of the tanks and I would step on them all the time. That fall my mother made the announcement that she was pregnant...

Dad - Emotions

I've taken a couple days off from writing to just recoup a little and I haven't really had time to sit and think/write. I tried to keep as much emotion out of the first couple blogs about my father just so I could actually get through them without giving up again. So in this I'm gonna kinda go back through and talk about what exactly I went through. I have mentioned before that my mother forced me to keep everything kinda of hush hush, and I really think that forced me to suppress my feelings about it and thats why over a decade later I am still having a hard time. I don't expect that there will be a time I will ever be able to say that I don't get sad or angry about it but I want it to not turn into a dark place for me. I don't want to have April 11th be my dark day for the rest of my life, I'd much rather it be the day I remember my son crawling for the first time or the day my daughter says I love you (clearly). 
Most of those letters I haven't read in almost 10 years, so it was really hard rereading them and reliving it all. Reading the explanation of how it happened was just as horrifying, maybe more because I am older, as the first time I read it. So I definitely needed a break. 
Back to the beginning, I never wished my parents never got divorced. My mother didn't keep much from me and I knew about a lot of adult things going on so I was kinda forced to grow up early. So I understood that my parents were better off apart, my father got sober and might a nice woman and they were able to get past their issues and become friends. When my father would pick me up he would actually come inside and talk to my mother, he would even play with my little brother a little. The other thing is other then a couple pictures of their wedding I do not have any memory of them being a couple. Yeah sure I would have loved to have a normal life and definitely envied families of other kids I knew but I never pictured that normal life with my parents together. 
For a long time I have felt a lot of regret. One mainly being all the time I had missed out on with them before things went bad. I let the distance, my teenager-ness, work and my life come between us. He was my father and I only spoke to him on holidays, towards the end I wouldn't call him. I would wait around for him to call, to see if he remembered. He would never call on my birthday it would always be a couple days later, he would say that he didn't want to call me on my birthday in case I was doing something but I know he just forgot. I have a lot of regret about not being nicer to my stepmom, I wasn't movie mean to her, but I didn't give her a break sometimes. I just wish she knew how I felt, and that it wasn't her that I didn't like but that I was upset with my father for not being around enough. I regret not spending enough time with her when she came to visit and I regret not speaking up when I thought something was off with her during that visit. Maybe if I said something, my dad would have been more inclined to push her to get help. Maybe if I was around more in their lives I could have seen things going wrong. There was talk of me going to visit right around when all of it happened and I always wondered if I had that trip planned would it all never have happened because my dad knew I was coming. Or had I been down there around the time it happened could my presence changed the course of those days? I regret talking so long to start communicating with my dad after he went to jail, it would have given me a couple more months with him. I wish that I had written him more consistently once I did start writing, had he had the constant communication maybe he wouldn't have withdrawn, maybe I would have gotten a chance to see him or talk to him, maybe he wouldn't have died of a heart attack, maybe he would have been a little more at peace when he did die. I regret not pushing to go see him. I know all these regrets are irrational, I know I was a child, I know that I couldn't have possibly changed or prevented fate but I still can't help but think them. 
I have a ton of anger. Anger with my father, stepmom, mother, druggy burnout loser, myself (above) and god. My dad, first how could he let my stepmom get so bad without getting her help, how could he let things go that far that night, how come he couldn't control his temper, how come he didn't handle things differently after (call 911), how could he stop writing me, how could he leave me? My mom, that's for another post. My stepmom, it was her "fault", she attacked him first. Druggy burnout loser, I know he was the cause of a lot of their problems and fights. I have a lot of mixed emotions about religion, not very religious, but how could god let something like this happen. I was a good kid, treated people well, responsible, hardworking but I got crap after crap thrown at me over and over again and now this.    
Sadness is obviously a major emotion I experienced. Sad for the loss of my stepmom, and how she went. I often think a lot about all the things both of them missed out on. High school graduation, college graduation, my husband and our wedding, my children... I'm sad my kids will miss out on knowing the good side of their grandpa. 
Like I said in my last post I never went down the wrong path. I didn't turn to drugs or negative people. I didn't always make the greatest choices when it came to other things in my life, again another post, but I think those things had more to do with control of my life than anything else. I did deal with a lot of depression, I was always sick and in pain. My activity level decreased and I ate more. I gained 60 pounds from the time I found out until when I went for my physical before going to college. After that I continued to gain, not as quickly but 11 years later I'm over 100 pounds more than I was then. 
One of things I've changed about myself in the past year is to not hold things in. So a over a month ago I decided to send my stepmom's brother a message on facebook, I recently found him on there. This is what I sent him:

Hi, 
Throughout the years I have searched for your family and it wasn't until this past summer that I came across your daughter's profile but I didn't think it would be appropriate to contact her. Just a few days ago I came across your profile and since them have been trying to decide whether or not to write you. Then it was trying to figure out how to say what I wanted to say for so many years. So this may be choppy but if you decide you would like to answer me back I can go into more detail. I understand if you don't want to communicate with me but at least I know that you will "hear" what's been on my mind for so many years. 
I need to let you know I cared a lot for my stepmom. She was in my life a long time and treated me as if I was her own. Your family also made me feel very included. The day my mom told me everything, I lost two parents. 
I really wanted to be at the memorial for her. I was told I shouldn't attend, which to an extent I understand but I was grieving as well and didn't feel like I got to say goodbye. 
I had a very hard time with all this. I have not turned down any wrong roads in my life. I've done my best with what's been handed to me. I don't think I will ever be able to wrap my head around it or get over it. 
I have never been on my dad's side with this. I know I was told not to go to the memorial and I don't know exactly where that came from but I always feared your family thought I was taking sides because I did not come. Or I was on his side because he was my father. 
I am not my father and I didn't do what he did. However over the decade plus I have been ostracized from my father's family (my aunt hasn't completely ostracized me) and my siblings. And I have felt that is because I am his daughter. 
I am sorry if this has brought back pain to you. I just wanted you to know these things (I'm sure I've left a ton out) and to know that I've always thought about your family and wished them well. Like I said before I understand if you have nothing to say and don't respond. 

He never responded. Which like I said I understood and at least I have been able to say what I needed to but it's unfair to be shut out by everyone just because he was my father. 
For my 21st birthday my mother's present to me was tickets to a John Edwards reading. First off, yay you turned 21 now I'm gonna take you to try and communicate with your murdered stepmom. Secondly, I would have never agreed to go with my mother had I known where she was taking me. Of course I was read, the woman in front of us was nice enough to write down what he said, so I'm going to list what was said and explain each thing. 

• Called me out by saying Monkey Girl. When I was in elementary school I had a monkey for a short period of time and had brought the monkey into school a couple times. I was in this program where we were placed in classes based on our abilities instead of our age and we switched classrooms during the day like in middle and high school, so I had known a lot of older kids. Instead of them learning my name they called me monkey girl. And it actually stuck for a very long time, just with those certain older kids, when I was in my freshman year of college I ran into one of them and they remembered me by it. 
• Had to give up monkey. Shortly after my little brother was born we had to give up the monkey because my mother was afraid my brother would accidentally hurt the monkey and then the monkey would bite him. So we gave him to a natural compound in Oregon. 
• Grandmother passed. Both my father's mother and my stepdad's mother had passed. At first we thought it was one of them that came through but later started thinking it was my stepmom.
• Contemplate suicide, work through it, stay here, you escape nothing, work through them. Yes there were times throughout my teen years that I thought about suicide however I would have never acted on it, it was more of a it would be so much easier if...
• A lot to be appreciative of, stop being negative, this is who you are. I had a negative attitude, who wouldn't. 
• Engaged twice? Committed twice? At the time I was seeing someone and we were very serious but then later that year we broke up and I met my husband. 
• Paternity issue, uncertain about who dad is, stepdad. I think this was talking about my closeness with my stepdad and him being more of a father to me than my own dad.
• Miscarriage- son. No idea what this means. 
• 11th of the month. The number 11 has a lot of importance to me, April 11th, it's my father's birthday...
• Stepmother, help raise you, were you mean to her, did not cut her any slack, Sound of Music. I think I've already explained this one.
• Education component. I thought about becoming a teacher decided not to but most of the jobs I've had a major responsibility was teaching something.

I'm sure I have more to add to this particular post but right now I need to get dinner on the table, I will update this as I think of things. 

Update:

After I was told about what my father did I started having really bad sleeping problems. I just couldn't fall asleep, I couldn't stop thinking. Thinking about what happened, how things could have been different, about what is going to happen in the future, what I am going to say to my father when I got to see him... When I started therapy this was obviously something we discussed. She diagnosed me with obsessive preoccupation disorder, basically I can't stop thinking about things that are bothering me and it was causing me to lose a lot of sleep. Nothing other then time and sleeping pills helped this. I know I didn't stay in therapy long enough to make a difference when it came to it but I didn't have a choice since I was going off to school. Now it's not nearly as big of a problem except in a situation when something bothers me. So while writing those last couple posts, I had a very hard time falling asleep, no matter what I do I can't shut it off. If I get into a fight with someone or someone does me wrong in some kind of way, it triggers it. I haven't taken a sleeping pill since I got pregnant with my son and before that I tried to limit them as much as possible. I never wanted to rely on them to get to sleep and the sleep you get when you take a sleeping pill isn't as refreshing as without. 

Dad - Letters 2

I was originally going to go through all the rest of the letters again but the kids aren't going to let me plus I realize that would probably get boring and there's a lot more I need to write about than just what's in those letters. The letters continued somewhat regularly for the next couple months. We discussed graduating high school, going to college, work, his living arrangements, just kept it light. I was able to find out when it happened, the 11 year anniversary is coming up this month. I also found out that my stepmom had some kind of psychological disorder (lawyer told us bipolar) but that her family wouldn't talk about what it was even to my father. Something I started to notice was that his letters were very repetitive and his spelling ability started to decline. We talked about me coming to visit sometime and he talked a lot about things we would do when he got out; like he would look through all of my pictures from big events and we would discuss what happened in more detail. He had also mentioned the biggest mistake of his life was leaving my mother and I, that he should have never done that. Then around the end of my first semester of my freshman year the letters stopped coming. At that point I stopped copying the letters I sent him so I have no idea what I said or how often I wrote. When I would get bored in class I would start writing something and then never finish it or would think the letter was too harsh. I also figured out I could go to the criminal justice website for his state and look him up, it just said where he was, how long his sentence was, his charge and how long he had left. Eventually my mother sent him a letter, kinda of kicking him in the butt to start writing again. I got a letter from him on March 25th 2004, he was very depressed and withdrawn. He hadn't written anyone in a while and promised me he would be better about it. The next letter I received was March 7th 2005, I had written him a letter saying that if I didn't hear from him it would be my last letter. I had so much going on in my life, I couldn't be worried about his condition all the time if he couldn't bother letting me know he was ok. I also couldn't take the feeling of disappointment every time I went to check my mailbox and there wasn't anything from him. He apologized for not writing and promised he would write every other week. He was still very depressed and withdrawn, he stated several times that he was never going to be able to forgive himself in many of the letters I received.

I stopped hearing from him again. At some point after his last letter we had gotten word that the druggy burnout loser had refiled a wrongful death lawsuit against my dad, he had filed one right after it happened but he left didn't pay the lawyer and it disappeared for a while. Instead of fighting it my dad just signed over everything to him. So I wrote him a letter chewing him apart because my mother was left to pay for my college on her own and all druggy burnout loser was going to do was waste all the money on drugs. I sent letters begging him to write back just so I knew he was ok and nothing. I tried not to let it consume my life so there were times I "forgot" about it, but a lot of times I would start writing and stop or forget to send it. I have saved all my college notebooks and I could probably find at least 20 letters I never sent if not more.

One day I was at work, Sunday November 25th 2007 and I had this overwhelming feeling. One of my coworkers was an ex-cop, so I gave him a brief run down of the situation and asked him if I could call the prison to find out what was going on with him. I went home that day and put it out of my mind, I was finishing up my last semester of college and I only had two weeks left of classes. One day during the week I decided to look up him up on that website and for some reason it wasn't working, it displayed nothing when I searched his name, but the site was also having problems loading correctly. The following Friday I decided to call the prison an hour before heading to class, my husband (at the time only my boyfriend) was at work an hour away. The woman I spoke with explained that he had passed away that Sunday before. I immediately broke down, I tried calling my husband and no luck so I sent him numerous text messages and called my mother. She was at the mall with my grandmother (who only thought my father and I had a falling out and that was why he never came to graduation and she never heard me talking about him, my mother's excuse was that my grandmother could not handle something like that), hysterically I tell her what happened, she had really bad service and I had to scream "dad is dead" about 10 times before she figured out what I was saying. Once she got it she said she couldn't talk and would call me back later, who says that to their daughter that just found out their father died?!?!? Oh yeah my mother. As soon as I was able to get a hold of my husband he left work and came home. Once my mother finally called me back she told me she would call my uncle, she was able to get a hold of him rather quickly which is very unusual so part of me thinks she already knew and was just not telling me. Something I learned she did a lot.
Apparently he had gotten up Sunday morning and wasn't feeling well so he laid back down and never woke up. He died of a heart attack which only took over 6 months to find out, it took a very long time to get the death certificate.
My uncle had him cremated and held onto his ashes. He said that when he got time he would try to get his siblings together and me and we would have a like service and spread his ashes. Then he would tell me that he was just gonna spread them the next time he went on one of his jobs, he does something with shipping over water. I had several times asked him for the ashes or at least some of them. I didn't have an opportunity to put either of them to rest the right way or even say goodbye, so if everyone getting together wasn't going to happen then I wanted to do something on my own. I know he didn't make great choices but how his siblings couldn't make time to say goodbye is beyond me. One day in the fall of 2011 I got a message from my aunt asking what my address was, I gave it to her thinking she was gonna send something for my daughter. A few days pass and when I got home from work there was a package waiting. I opened it up and there was this crappy plastic box which was open and a bag of ashes hanging out of it.
The ashes are currently siting in that same box on my windowsill covered up by other things. Part of me wants to go and spread them somewhere (that's not as easy as they make it in the movies, need to get permission and it's not allowed at a lot of places). Then part of me isn't ready, we had so much left unsaid, so much time lost, and letting them go is gonna make it real.

My Stepmom

She was a little kooky at times. I remember getting a Muppet Babies cassette tape from her when I was a preteen. When she walked her dog she always carried something with her, afraid another dog might attack her, whether it was a stick or an empty gallon milk container she had to have something. When I went to visit them after they moved and I was 15, she wouldn't let me sit in the locked car while she ran into the store to grab milk, afraid something might happen to me. I couldn't sit near the window and look out to watch a far off thunderstorm. She always gave me socks. She had these notebooks all over with little notes scribbled in them and she would continually trace over some of the words. My dad had a sailboat and when we would go out on it, I would fall asleep on the deck and wake up covered in towels, she didn't want me to get sunburned not realizing she could have given me a heat stroke. After all that I knew she meant well. She was good to me, and clearly cared about me. When they lived by me we would cook special meals together, like lasagna and cookies and cakes.
Sometimes I wasn't always the nicest to her, I felt like she would get in the way of my time with my dad. I was resentful of her moving across the country with him and getting him all to herself.
The last time she came up to visit, the February before she died, she seemed off. Aside from her usual kookiness, there was something not right. She kept over and over again asking me if I was afraid to live in NY after 9-11. She was very focused on it.

Druggy Burnout Loser 

I swear I have many reasons to be as hard on him as I have been throughout my blog. Again trying to stay as anonymous as I can I won't use names and I have such a confusing family as it is (I have two other stepbrothers) that just calling him stepbrother wouldn't work. When my dad and stepmom first got married DBL was away at boarding school. He was a trouble maker and kept getting kicked out of schools. Even managed to get kicked out of the boarding school. So he was back and forth living with them and living with his father and was absolutely out of control. My dad was from a strict background so he didn't tolerate it but my stepmom just let DBL run all over her. He would only come around if he needed money and would steal from their home. He was usually nice to me, however I ran into him shortly after our parents moved and he didn't even recognize me.
Part of the reason I decided to make the changes in my life was because of him. We moved back to my hometown a little over a year ago and just shy of a year ago I was reading the newspaper one night and came across this article. It was about a body being found in the woods and that the boyfriend confessed to dumping the body, which was his girlfriend, after she ODed on drugs he gave her... Yup you got it DBL killed his girlfriend then dumped her body. I almost stopped breathing when I read his name in the paper. I was so angry with him, one because my fear of him using my father's money on drugs was right, two because he sued my father for doing almost the same thing and three because he wasn't even getting charged with more than a littering charge.
So I started going back to therapy and realized I never dealt with everything else. Being that my insurance sucks I had to stop therapy, but I decided I needed to do something still. I wasted too much time of my life in and out of depression; gaining weight, not doing things, being in physical and emotional pain, feeling sick all the time... Not all of that comes from what my father did, I went through bouts of depression long before that, and I will continue to write about those things.
I may not have always made the right choices and I did go through a very short party period in college but despite everything I went through I did the right thing, I went down the right path in life. I never did anything to harm myself (except my eating habits) or anyone else. Someone had commented on a news article online about DBL, that he had a rough time in life, kinda went into a little more detail than I was comfortable with, and thats why he's so messed up. Everyone has gone through shit in their lives but that doesn't make you who you are, you have a choice to either learn and grow from those experiences or allow those experiences to run your life. I choose to grow.

*I am going to try to add some pictures to the other posts so check them out in a little.

Dad - Letters

Yesterday my husband was off so went spent the day out and about, which is why no blog. He is off today as well, so we went grocery shopping and then relaxed at home. Hopefully he can entertain the kids for a little so I can write this. 

This afternoon I dug out my plastic tote that contains all my mementos from my dad and stepmom. It has a pair of ridding boots (he bought me when we went down to visit my aunts and uncles when I was 10), Easter bunny (received in my last care package), couple pictures, a couple letters I saved that my stepmom wrote me when she would send me care packages, a couple news articles that I found, all the letters (envelops included) and pictures he sent me from jail. 

I started reading through things, and wow it's tough. All these years and it still stops my heart when I read my father's name in the same sentence as murderer. The first thing I read was an article from their local newspaper, in college I actually called the newspaper (back then, not as many things were on the internet) and asked to have any articles sent to me and the woman kinda gave me a hard time and asked why I wanted them, when I told her I was his daughter she asked for my address and ended the call. As I was reading the one letter I had to turn away from my husband so he didn't see the tears well up in my eyes. I've gotten myself so far past all this by hiding, not letting people see me break down for the most part. Obviously that was not the right way or 11 years later I wouldn't feel the need to rehash everything, but as a teenager with limited resources I did what I knew best, smile and keep moving, cry in the shower. I am gonna do my best to go through this in one shot but I may have to break this up into to two posts just for my sanity. When I had packed all this stuff up I had the good sense to put everything in order, so that should help the process. I am not giving out all the details just yet because I am still not ready for everyone to know that he is my father and my father did this, I was very lucky that it happened in a state very far from my home and the media did not bring it up here

The first letter I received from my dad was May 12th 2002, a month after I found everything out and almost a year before he was officially sentenced. Everything was very matter-of-fact what the weather was like, what the food was like, his next court date and him possibly being able to get out for a little while. His bail was set at $1.5 million, no one was getting him out, not that we thought he would run (he had had plenty of time to run before going to jail) but no one in his family could afford it. 

The second letter (don't worry I'm not going to go through everyone or I might be here for a week), on May 26th, was again very matter-of-fact, weather and food. He had some concern about his flowers, he loved gardening and took pride in being able to grow his flowers in the hot dry climate. He mentioned to stay away from my stepmom's family because they weren't being very nice. At some point that summer my car window was smashed and we received a lot of hang ups, probably due to the druggy burnout loser son of hers. He goes into great length about my future career, for a long time I wanted to be a criminal lawyer, he tells me that I shouldn't go down that path and that I should do something that will make me happy and someone else happy because that wont. I didn't choose that path, I went into the social welfare field but that's another post. 

July 7th, asking about my summer plans, talked about how boring it was and what he's been reading, saying he wasn't sure what was going on in the media about what happened, saying he understood why I hadn't written back to him but one day he would be able to explain what happened that night and he wasn't a monster.

July 24th, he actually wrote a letter to myself and my mother (which of course I snatched, after she read it). My mother had written him first, this was the time my mother was pushing me very hard to communicate with him so I guess she took it upon herself to communicate. In my letter he wrote about me working at the pool, my name "change" Jenny to Jenn, about me still not writing and being angry which was fine but one day we would be able to sit down and he would tell me his side and I would see it wasn't as horrible as the media was making it out to be. My mother's letter was about how his other kids don't want anything to do with him, asking if we've had any trouble with the druggy burnout loser, talking about my boyfriend breaking up with me over him, and that my uncle had to brief her on things that might come out in court because they will be very surprising to her. 

October 5th, he again sent a letter to my mother and myself. All still the same things, actually repeats himself a lot. Asked me to look up a book and take a look at a picture in it, which I did but don't really remember it guess I should do it again. 

For his birthday in November I finally decided to respond, I sent him a card with a couple updated pictures of myself, he hadn't seen me since I was 15 and I was getting close to 18. He responded November 25th, happy that he finally heard from me, talked about his Thanksgiving, asked how school was going, his cricket friends he had made. My mother's letter was full of the same things, he noted that I looked like I was putting on a little weight. I gained 60 pounds from the time I found out until the time I graduated. It was a mixture of my mother pushing me to diet so I was hiding food from her and everything that was going on. I hated being home and would spend as much time at work or school or with friends, I also ate most of my food out. However I was not turning to alcohol or drugs. 

March 3 2003, after he took the plea deal. He had moved from the county jail to a prison after being sentenced and went over some of the rules on what can be sent and what couldn't. He begged me to write back, about whatever I wanted we could get into the heavy stuff whenever I was ready for it (now that trial was over he could discuss things). He talked about taking the sentence he did was the best decision for everyone, that the amount of time he got wasn't bad and that because of the deal he was placed in a better jail. My stepmom's family, was pushing for the death penalty. He told me that provided he had good behavior, which he should, that in 90 days he would be able to make a phone call and 120 days he would be allowed visitors. 

Me trying to hold on to anything I could dealing with him, I kept copies of the letters I sent him (not all but some). My first real letter was April 4th 2003, I wrote about what was going on in school, my job teaching lifeguarding, and I asked him to tell me about what happened. April 15th his response, lost the nerve to tell me what happened but he would try the next week. He told me he was proud of me for getting into a good university, working and keeping good grades despite what was going on. Another common thing he asked for was everyone's addresses and phone numbers, the problem was I either didn't have them or they asked me not to give them to him.   

April 21, I discussed the war going on (for some reason in my mind it was almost over ?!?!?!), told him about a tattoo I had gotten for my stepmom, it is a purple rose with a teardrop coming off the stem. For prom the year before my boyfriend got me a purple rose (prom was shortly after I found out about what happened) and for some reason the rose lasted for weeks which is not common for dyed roses. I took it as a sign of strength for me, plus purple was my favorite color so I wouldn't have to be forced to explain it to everyone, and the teardrop was for my stepmom. Later my dad told me that before my stepmom died she did some strange things one of which was pulling up all of his plants and replacing them with purple roses, that purple and roses were her favorite thing. Strange how things workout. At the end of my letter to him I explain why I haven't sent him the addresses and numbers for my siblings, that they didn't want to have anything to do with him. 

May 6th, the explanation...  

"First of all I want you to understand that I am completely responsible for what happened. There were no outside motives, nothing to do with money (there isn't much anyway) or affairs (hers or mine) or anything else like that. Basically this is about two people who just never should have been together on that day.

To give you a little background, stepmom (keeping names out of this) and I hadn't been seeing eye to eye for quite a while. I don't know if you noticed anything different when she last came up to visit but she was not herself those last few months. The 9-11 attack had really upset her. We hadn't heard from druggy burnout loser for a few days after and when he did call he only made things worse. The Holidays were absolutely miserable, she cried most of Thanksgiving when we were not at uncle's and threw a temper tantrum when it was time to go there at Christmas.

As January and February came and went things went from bad to worse. She had managed to get herself fired from her job and wasn't interested in looking for something else. All she seemed to want to do was make messes in the house and disappear when I was home from work so that we couldn't talk. I wanted her to try some professional help but she wanted no part of it. 

If you remember at the time my company was on shift, 12 hour days 3 one week and 4 the next. It was my turn to work the friday, saturday and sunday from 6am to 6pm shift. I had one person out for saturday and sunday vacation I think so I was left with just 3 people including myself and we had some large jobs to do, one of which did not turn out well. Despite the fact that increasingly stepmom preferred to be home alone she didn't like it when I worked the 3 days straight. I still don't know why. 

On saturday I came home about 7:15pm to an empty house, all the lights on doors front and back unlocked. I took a shower and dressed in clothes to go back outside. I took a walk around but could not find her. When I got home she was waiting by the cars and I didn't see her. She was locked out and angry, she hit me with Pops stick in the area between my shoulders. It scared me more than hurt because I was busy unlocking the door and didn't hear her. She then hit me 2 more times in the arms but not effectively. Then she stopped and it seemed like until just then she had not known who I was. The outside light was off. She was really scaring me at this point all wild eyed and sweaty looking so I just got my breath back and tried to calm her down. When she calmed down and we were back inside I asked her what was up and she said that she thought I was a robber coming out of the house and she wanted to stop me. As upset as she was I just let it go, we ate our dinner and went to bed. I had been sleeping on the couch most of the time since Christmas because she said I disturbed her sleep. Needless to say I didn't get a good nights sleep. 

The next day at work was a disaster. Nothing I did worked out right. I even left my slim fast in the truck so I had to drink it warm at lunch. There was a very heavy fog on the way home so I was running late. On sundays I would usually stop in town to pick up something to eat and a movie but almost everything was closed except the sandwich shop and I did not know what she might eat. I tried to call home but there was no answer. When I got to the house once again it was wide open with all the inside lights on but no body home. I closed but did not lock the doors, took a shower and once again dressed to go outside. I let anger get the best of me at this point turned the TV on and sat on the couch. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is getting hit this time to the side of the head. By the time I got up and turned around she had hit me 3 or 4 times but once again nothing life threatening. I reached out while standing by the lamp in the living room and took the club away from her. She turned and now out the door still holding the dogs leash. The light was off outside so I couldn't see anything but I heard a loud thump. When I went to the door she was trying to come back in. She was bleeding apparently she had run into the central porch post in the dark. When I tried to pull her hand away to see where she was hurt she screamed to "get away from her" and started to hit and scratch me on the arms. She was very angry. I put the club on the picnic table and followed her inside still trying to see where she was hurt but she beat me to the bathroom and slammed the door. 

I went to the bedroom to look at myself in the mirror (face) but I wasn't hurt. She left the bath and went outside calling for the dog. I let her go hoping she would calm down. Then she came back in swinging that damn club. I'd almost thrown it into the woods, I wish I had. She hit me again I took it away and for some reason hit her back several times, unfortunately. 

From then on most of what happened is still something of a blur. I know I slipped and fell myself on my back and probably went out. The next time I looked at the clock it was after 2am. I'd been on the floor next to her for some time because my clothes were stuck to the floor. I could hardly stand up straight so I knew my back was out but at that point I already knew she was dead. I panicked, totally lost it at that point. All I could think about was hiding what I had done from the world.

I could barely move her but I knew I had to do something before daylight. I got her into the tub and cleaned up the house as best I could. Then I put her in the jeep and went out to the spot where I'd left her. Two weeks later when I took the cops out there at first I had no idea what they meant when they said she wasn't complete. It wasn't until several weeks later that I'd realized what I'd done in the tub that night. I still don't know what I did with the rest of her. I must think about it a thousand times a day but I still can't remember I'd like to, for somebodys sake. 

For the following two weeks I tried to hide from the truth. I must have lied to everybody about what had happened. I'll never be able to forgive myself for what I did and I certainly don't expect anyone else to.

I feel very grateful for the sentence I got, not so much for myself, but maybe I can do some good somewhere to make up for what I did. That's why I took the plea bargain. Just so I wouldn't hurt anyone anymore."

Ok that's enough for me. It's 3am and I doubt I'll be able to get much sleep the rest of the night but my emotions need a break. I had to remove all emotion to get through this, my next blog will do more letters and go into some of my emotions.  

Dad - Crumbling World

This April 11th will be 11 years from that Thursday. The day my world was turned completely upside down, and not in the way most 17 year olds worlds get turned upside down. Just the September before I was a girl going into my junior year of school, a couple weeks after the start of the year the twin towers were attacked. I lost the sense of security I always felt growing up in this country. April 11th I lost so much more. 

After leaving home I went to the SAT prep course and started balling the second I saw my friend. My mother had called her to tell her I wasn't coming because she had to talk to me about something, my friend later told me she thought I was pregnant or something. That night I wound up sitting in a parking lot with another friend of mine, both of us crying on and off for hours. The next day was a big blood drive at our school and I had pledged to donate a couple weeks earlier, plus I couldn't stay home I needed the support of friends and my teachers. I immediately went to my favorite teacher's classroom when I arrived at school, he took one look at me and kicked everyone out of his room, I sat there and cried for the first two periods of the day. He had already known, my mother had told my guidance counselor and he spoke with that teacher knowing I would go to him for support. I donated blood and then left for the day, most of the students that donated had permission to only stay half the day. After I left my friend's mother took us to get our nails done. Everywhere I went I saw someone that looked like or had mannerisms like my stepmom. I hoped and hoped that it was all made up, that my stepmom really ran away and was back in my town hiding out. That Saturday I went back to work, I was working as a lifeguard and swim instructor at the YMCA, I was closer to my bosses than my mother and found that being around them and the kids helped me to not think about it. 

At some point that weekend my mother took me to visit a couple that were friends with my dad and stepmom. They very sternly said that I should not attend any kind of memorial service that my stepmom's family had from her, and my mother agreed. I wanted to go, I wanted to say goodbye, I did not do anything wrong. A week or two later I found her obituary in the newspaper and it had a memorial service listed but I didn't go. 

Time started passing, every once in a while my mother would tell me she spoke with my dad's lawyer or my aunt or uncle. I was never very close to his family, nor was I close to my half siblings from his first marriage, and after this we were pushed even farther apart. My mother would tell me if there was a hearing or any new information she found out. However over time she started keeping more and more from me, and even took it to some extremes when I was older but that's for another post. I finished up that school year with absences totaling higher than all my years in school and grades my lowest ever. I wasn't allowed to tell people, I told a couple close friends and my bosses at work. My mother only told my one aunt (on her side of the family) because I went to school with my cousins and in case people started talking at school. But my mother did not want my grandmother to know and wanted to limit as many people knowing as she could. 

So here I was 17 years old, I just lost two parents in one day and I had a very weak support system. I had my mother (who was at first telling me he could have never done it, then telling me I owed it to him to be there for him, then completely flipping again as I got older which is also for another post), my stepdad (who was always great but was the life isn't fair get over it type), my bosses and teachers, my teenage friends, and a boyfriend. 

My friends were as good of a support as 17 year olds would be. They listened to me but had no idea what to say to me. I was also the one they always came to for advice, which they stopped doing because they felt their "little" problems weren't something they could "bother" me with. Over time a distance grew between us. They wanted to go out and be young and stupid but knew I was going through a rough time so instead of doing something that I wanted to do they would just go out without me. They didn't want to think of it and nor should they have had to. My guidance counselor didn't even know what to do with me, the last time I visited my high school he saw me and quickly put his head down and walked past me as fast as he could. My boyfriend stuck around for two more months and then disappeared, my mother worked with his father and heard rumors that his dad made him break up with me. My world that was flipped upside down was now crashing down around me. 

I started receiving letters from my dad, there would be this little piece of paper in the envelop (like a fortune from a fortune cookie) that said the letter was from an inmate at a correctional facility. At first I could barely read them, there was no way I would write him back. But my mother pushed me to, telling me I was all he had, my siblings and his weren't there for him so I should be (even though I was by far the youngest). The letters wouldn't say much, maybe one day I will dig them out and post portions of them, he would also include pictures he would draw. 

Some point over the summer my stepbrother (stepmom's only son) traveled to their home, he was older and had lived by me still, and had the local sheriff drove to the house (crime scene) so he could break in and steal important documents. My stepbrother is a lovely person... As my high school health teacher would have said he's a druggy burnout loser. When my dad and stepmom lived by me he would break into their home and steal things and he only came around his mom when he needed money. So I know he broke into the house to get whatever money he could and not to get things that were important to remember his mother. I have a small plastic tote that can fit under a bed, that has my mementos from both of them, that's it. 

The summer ended and my senior year began, my circle of friends completely changed and I spent as little time as I could at home. I would get letters from my dad every once in a while, he would promise me he would call me as soon as he was allowed to make calls. We had heard a couple different stories from the sheriff and my father's lawyer, the usual insurance money or an affair stories as to why. That February came and my father took a plea deal. The lawyer told my mom that they would have called us as witnesses, my mother because he called her the couple days before and me as a character witness, but my father didn't want me to go through that so he took the plea deal. He was sentenced to 35 years and could go up for parole after 17 years. 

My dad did it, he killed my stepmom. He took her life and ruined so many others in the process. I loved my stepmom and I loved my dad. How could I love my dad and not be on his side at the same time? Was I a horrible person for not turning my back and hating him? Did I betray my stepmom? 

Dad - The Beginning

When I was in middle school my father moved with my stepmom to another state far away in the south. He moved because he was sick of the cold weather, the expense of living in NY, and he wanted to be closer to his siblings. I never really understood why he didn't want to be closer to me his daughter and his other children, but he did spend a good deal of time trying to push me to go to college by him.

When I was little we weren't that close, wasn't until I was in fourth grade and started playing soccer that I started seeing him twice a week, despite him living less than 5 minutes from me. He would take me to soccer practice during the week and then I would go to his house for dinner with him. We would work on my homework together and then my stepmom would come home from work and we would hang out/watch TV for a little before he brought me home. Then on the weekends we would go to my soccer games and I would go back to his house for dinner and whatever else he had going on. When it wasn't soccer season I would just go to his house, in the spring and summer we would go sailing in the harbor by our town. The winter we would watch hockey and football on TV. As I got a little older and closer to my teen years, I started making friends in his neighborhood (it was a different school district even though it was so close) and my mom would spend time at my future stepdad's house so I would cancel on him more often. Then he moved, I went for the drive with him down stayed a couple days then flew back home, I cried the entire flight. Our relationship was so new and he was leaving, I never had the guts to tell him how much it hurt that he left, so I didn't even let him see that I cried when I left. We would talk on the phone every once in a while and he would write me letters some times. The time between our calls got farther and farther apart as I got older and did more things with my friends and worked a lot. He came back to visit when I was in 8th grade for my half brother's wedding and when I was in 9th grade I went to visit him for a week during spring break. It got to the point that I would only talk to him around holidays. My stepmom would send me care packages, which usually included a novelty item for whatever holiday was coming and a package of socks.

Around my junior year of high school we talked about me coming for a visit but time would pass and it would never happen. February of my junior year of high school my stepmom came back to see her family and friends. I was able to get together with her twice, at the time I tried to make it for as short as I possibly could, I was a teenager and would rather be with my friends. Plus as much as I loved my stepmom I was jealous that she had my dad all to herself. During her visit I spoke with my dad once on the phone and that was the last time I ever spoke with him. A couple weeks after my stepmom went back I received a care package with Valentine's Day chocolates, an Easter bunny and a package of socks. I never got around to calling her and thanking her.

April was a very busy month, I was preparing for prom (I was the only one of my friends that was actually looking forward to going), I was preparing to pick and apply for colleges, I had even toured a bunch of them, I had a boyfriend and worked 5 days a week. Our spring break was in the beginning of April that year and the day before it started a peer was pulled out of our classroom to be told his father had suffered two heart attacks only hours apart but passed away during the second one. I wasn't close to this peer but we had a lot of classes together, I remember thinking to myself I have no idea what I'd do if I lost a parent (not so much my mother as we have never been close). So I spent the entire break contacting our class teacher and other students to try and do something for him.

Sunday evening before school started back up my mother sat me down to tell me that the night before she received a call from my dad. He told her that him and my stepmom had gotten into an argument over the phone one night while he was at work and when he returned from work she wasn't home. It had been a couple weeks and she hadn't come home, she had called him once and told him she was fine but since he hadn't heard anything. My uncle convinced him to file a missing persons report with the police and he was wondering if we had heard anything from her. She left the house with the dog but didn't take her car. The next day when I went to school I hung around after my one class to talk with my favorite teacher. I told him what was going on and broke down, I told him it didn't seem right (my stepmom was a very nervous person and I could not see her leaving the house late at night with the dog and no mode of transportation) and that I was thinking the worst. My teacher calmed me down and told me not to think like that and that she was fine. One of my biggest mistakes in life was not calling my father to talk to him after that.

That Thursday I had a guidance counselor appointment with my mother to pick colleges to apply to. I walked in the room and my mother was shockingly on time and already there, she was also wiping tears from her eyes. I didn't think more of it other then it was her crying because I was planning on going away to school. Later that day I went to see my favorite teacher about a project I owed him and he quickly shooed my off and said we would talk about it another time. That day after school I had a staff meeting at work and then I was picking up a friend to go to a SAT prep course. On my way to go pick up my friend my mom called me and demanded that I came home so we could go and drop off the deposit with the limo company for prom night. So I went back home and she told me we had to talk but not in front of my little brother so we went up to her room.

She sat me down and immediately starting crying. She told me that a couple days before she got a call from a police officer and he told her that my stepmom wasn't alive. He told her that she was murdered and that they brought my father in for a lie-detector test which he failed. My mother then told me the police officer told him that he confessed to killing her. All I could say was no you are lying to me, she kept trying to hug me but I just kept pushing her away. I finally left her room and said I needed to get out, my stepdad was at the bottom of the stairs, we hugged forever while I cried into his chest. I left to go be with my friends....  

Little More Detail

I want to make a commitment to writing in this at least once a day even if it is a short blog. I have been trying to figure out where to start and I think I might have figured it out. 

I have been making changes in my life and some of the things I have done haven't turned out how I would want them but I am still happy about doing them because it is about time. I want a whole new me, I want to make sure I can be the best mom and give my kids everything they deserve. I don't want them to have a life at all close to mine as a child. 

Let me start from the beginning. My father was married to a woman, who he had 3 kids with (two boys and a girl). I'm not sure why their marriage ended but it did and then he married my mother. They had me, my father was an alcoholic and cheated on my mother. He would bring me over to his girlfriend's house, which I actually remember. My parents divorced when I was young, my mother had told me they were divorced by the time I was two and my father has told me I was three. My father got sober and married again, but not to the girlfriend he had, a couple years later (I was 5 or 6 when they married). 

Shortly after they divorced my mother moved us in with her boyfriend in a different town. That didn't work out and we moved back to the town I was born in, when I was in second grade. By the time we had a house and we moved in my mother had another boyfriend. Which didn't last long, she started dating his best friend. My mother had my little brother with him, I was nine years old. A year after my brother was born the boyfriend beat up my mother and aunt. Right after she ended things with my brother's father she got into a short lived relationship with a co-worker. Then she started dating the man that turned into my stepdad. My stepdad had three children from a previous marriage (2 boys and a girl) who were all a bit older than me. They got married my freshman year of high school. When I was in college they got divorced. My stepdad was a good guy, one of the only guys my mother dated that was actually a good guy. 

Ok so that's a little more detailed than yesterday's post. It will just make it easier to write about the things I need to write about. 

Just a Quick About Me

Over the years I have started blogs, probably about three different ones total. I would post in them a couple times then stop. Last summer I decided to make some changes in my life, basically I'm gonna start speaking up. Recently I started a weight loss journey as well, and have been blogging on that site. I realized how helpful blogging has been and decided that I should start again. This will be my form of therapy. I think everyone needs/has a form of therapy. 

In the middle of January I started Nutrisystem, I have lost 18.5 pounds since and have a little more than 100 pounds to go. It is gonna be a long journey but I am doing this for my children. I want to be healthy for them, I want to be around as long as I can, I want to be comfortable with being in pictures with them, I want them to have healthy lives. 

So a little about myself, I'm in my twenties, I have two kids (2 years old and 5 months old). I am married but neither of our families know (story for another post). We have two dogs. I have a bachelors degree in psychology. Currently I am a stay at home mom but I have had several different jobs. Throughout high school and college I was a lifeguard and swim instructor. I worked for a short time, after college, as a preschool teacher. Then I worked at a child and family center, started as a direct care worker in a RTC and then became a family support worker. As a direct care worker I worked with teenagers that were either hard to place, taken from their homes or their parents gave up their rights. As a family support worker I went into peoples homes and taught them about parent-child interaction, child development, put them in touch with community resources and monitored for any abuse. Both we very emotionally challenging but I have learned a lot from them. 

After high school I went to a college in upstate NY, once I graduated I stayed in the city my college was located for about 10 years. Just over a year ago we moved back downstate and are living with my mother. We are here to save money so we can move south and buy a house, which we are planning on doing in the next couple years. 

Gonna get going for now, need to get a couple more things done before the kids wake up from their naps.