My mother had my little brother at the end of my 4th grade year. The day she brought him home from the hospital we sat and watched the news coverage of O.J. Simpson in the white Bronco. After that POS was obsessed with the entire trial. He took notes and recorded all of TV coverage. Back then he had to record it on VHS so there was no changing the channel, so the TV was either on that or OTB. He had started spending a lot of time and money on betting on the ponies as he would say. There were times he would take me and my cousin and sometimes my little brother to OTB. But we wouldn't be allowed to go in so we had to sit in the car, we would sit there for hours. Had that happened now-a-days he would have been arrested for child abuse. To this day I cannot turn on the OTB channel without getting a chill. The OTB was also next to this run down hotel that tended to have sex offenders living there, no nothing ever happened but he clearly did not care if something did. POS turned into the stay at home father once my mother went back to work.
The summer before I went into 5th grade my mom was hanging out with a guy that lived around the block a lot. I don't know exactly how they met but he had the crappy run down house in the neighborhood. One night we went to a BBQ at one of his friend's houses. POS stayed home with my little brother because he was sick or something, being a mother now I couldn't imagine going to some guy's friend's BBQ while my boyfriend was home with my sick one year old. At the end of the BBQ my mother decided that she should drive the guy home since he had a little too much/more than her to drink. When we got to his house they insisted on going in so they could have another drink. I just wanted to go home, be in my own bed and his house was very cluttered and disgusting I did not want to be there. But they set me up on his couch and gave me the remote and told me they were just gonna go out on the back porch to have a drink. I couldn't find anything on and badly wanted to go home, so I called for my mother a couple times and no response.
I had learned very quickly in life how to get around without making much noise and even to this day (at my overweight size) I can still maneuver very easily unheard, my mother stomps everywhere and it's a huge pet peeve of mine. At the bottom of the stairs to our basement there were doors on either side one went into a room set up for my mother, POS and a nursery for my brother and the other side went to the laundry/fish room. When Ditzy would be doing laundry I would sneak down the stairs and just stand there waiting for her to go from room to room and scare the crap out of her. Her reactions to being scared were the best and she was so easy to get, I couldn't resist.
So I went quietly to the sliding glass doors to the porch to get my mother and go. There was my mother with her pants on the ground and the creepy guy on his knees in front of her. Obviously my sudden appearance alarmed them and they jumped up, I stated I wanted to go home and went back to the couch. Sadly at the very young age of 10 I knew exactly what I had just interrupted and had no idea what to do with this. We walked back to the house and nothing was ever said about what I saw.
Towards the end of that summer my mother and POS organized a family trip. We were to spend two weeks driving the East coast. However my mother couldn't get the entire time off work and POS wanted to spend time camping at this lake upstate he would go to as a child. The trip started out with myself, POS and my little brother taking a train into NYC carrying all of our things, including a play yard, car seat, a "tent", and everything else we all needed from Penn Station to Port Authority. We then took a bus several hours to this town in which we had to take a cab the rest of the way to the camp ground. Neither POS nor my mother thought to open the "tent" before leaving so when we got to the camp ground and he opened it we discovered it was only a tarp. So we set up the tarp over the picnic table, put our sleeping bags under it and my little brother's play yard. POS didn't bring a lot of money with him so we were limited in what we could buy for food and there was no way we could spend extra money on getting a cab to transport us to the local general store. We had to walk, it was probably 2-3 miles from the camp, I think he had it in his head that we would fish and that's what we would eat, despite knowing that I was completely disgusted by fish. So for the couple days we were there I eat nothing but cold cut sandwiches. Shortly after getting there is started raining and didn't stop raining until the day we left. Not only that but my little brother cried almost the entire time as well. I was put in my usual position of caring for him. The crying got so bad that a trooper came by because people from nearby were concerned, no shit a baby and a small child under a tarp for days while it wont stop raining and the baby wont stop crying. I am so glad my brother was too little to remember this because no one should have this vacation as a memory. He had rented a small row boat and we went out on it the one day so he could fish, I was holding my brother who was crying and out of no where he ripped him out of my arms started shaking him and screaming at him to stop crying. He took my back to shore and left us while he went out fishing on his own, I remember standing there shaking from what had just happened. One of the nights myself and POS were sitting in front of the fire talking and I opened up to him about what happened after the BBQ. I was so young and confused, I knew what she did was wrong but she made it clear that she wasn't going to talk to me about it. POS had told me he had a feeling things like that were going on so he hired a private investigator to follow my mother around while we were gone and if they stayed together he wouldn't bother looking at what the investigator found but if they broke up he would. On what I think was the 3rd or 4th day there my mother joined us, she rented an astrovan and drove up, thank god we had a place to sleep that night. The rest of the trip was filled with ups and downs, they fought constantly but then were happy the next moment. We drove up to Canada then down to the Carolinas.
Two weeks before my fifth grade year started... It was early morning, I was sleeping in my room. I heard POS come home from an overnight shift or a late night out, then I heard some yelling. Fighting wasn't unusual to hear but there was something different about this. I heard POS stomp down the stairs to their basement room and a couple minutes later Ditzy went down with my little brother, I guess to get him something to change into or a diaper. Then I heard Ditzy screaming, I flew out of bed and down the stairs, he was on top of her on the bed wailing on her. She was still holding my little brother, I started screaming to get off her, my little brother crying. My mother came down the stairs and into her room, jumped on his back, and he pulled her off and threw her across the room into a wall. My mother slammed the door closed on her room so I couldn't see what was going on, I began pounding on the door and screaming. It felt like forever but I'm sure it was only a couple minutes, Ditzy came out of the room and we ran up to her room and locked the door, shortly after my mother came up and locked herself in the bathroom. He started pounding on the door and begging for me to let him in, saying that it was gonna be ok and he was better. I remember standing in the middle of the room looking from Ditzy who was passed out on the bed holding my screaming brother to the door having no idea what to do. We called 911 while in her room. He then gave up and went to our driveway which on the side of our house had the bedroom and bathroom windows looking onto it and the other side is the back of my neighbors house. He stood in the driveway for about 5 minutes screaming and cursing and calling my mother various names. I saw my neighbor close her bedroom window. After the 5 or so minutes he left, it took the police 2 hours to show up after that. We live less than 1 mile from the police station, apparently screaming babies and children aren't a priority. I later found out that the people across the street called the cops, my mother called the low-life when Ditzy first went downstairs and then the cops when she started screaming. We were told that because we didn't call the police station directly, that we called 911, it took them longer. I also found out that the entire argument started because when my little brother woke up my mother just brought him into the bed and didn't change his diaper first.
The rest of the day Ditzy, my little brother and I sat in her car a block away from our house, we waited for Ditzy's boyfriend to come and stay with us while my mother was at the hospital.
A couple days later POS turned himself in to the cops, he was able to come with a police officer to the house to get some of his belongings and I thought that would be the last I saw of him. A few weeks later I came home from my dad's house and everyone was in our backyard, my father and I walked up the driveway and into the backyard, only to see POS sitting there. I had an overwhelming feeling to run but I knew I couldn't just leave my brother, he was too little and I needed to protect him from them. I would think of it daily, I would pack him up in his wagon with my cat in her carrier and we would walk the couple miles to my dad's house. Only problem was my dad would just return us and I wouldn't want my mother to yell at me, so I just stuck it out. POS only showed his face a couple times after that. I think Ditzy basically told my mother that if he came back she was leaving and my mother knew she couldn't work her hours and afford everything on her own without Ditzy helping care for us. I think my mother would have dropped the criminal charges against him if it wasn't for her. At some point my mother allowed POS to take my brother for an overnight visit and he was out driving around and got pulled over and was arrested for a warrant, after that he never saw my brother again.
Over the years POS has only contacted my mother to try and get the child support lowered, never to see my brother. I actually found a letter he must have written my mother a couple years later apologizing and begging for her to take him back, saying that she overlooked all his wrong doings when they first got together (drug, criminal, drinking... problems, what a great guy to bring around your young daughter and have a child with) and that no one has ever done that before. Back in the spring of 2008 he brought my mother back to court to get the child support lowered, so my mother and myself looked up where he was living, found the closest OTB and camped out in front of it. Sure enough after the first race ended he came out for a smoke break, we got some pictures of his living off the government self spending our tax money very wisely. He didn't show for court which was typical so nothing happened with child support. I think over the years my mother has been brought to court about 12 times for this issue. This past Christmas a letter came in the mail addressed to myself and my brother, it had a money order in it for a decent amount from Secret Santa. We figured out it was from POS because he sent the same thing to his two daughters. I am grateful for the money, but I wasn't nor would I ever want to be his kid. Plus where has he been? My brother, as much of a pain in the ass as he came be, is a smart and decent almost 19 year old and POS missed out on almost all of his life. My thoughts were that he wanted something from us all. Found out a couple weeks ago, his one daughter spoke with him because he was calling their mother, he wanted to settle the back child support he owes because he cannot get his drivers license back until he no longer owes child support. I told my mother she would be an idiot to settle it.
Not long after she really ended things with POS she started dating another man she worked with. They only dated a short period of time and I found out that they broke up because he wouldn't stop drinking and and doing drugs. What I knew of him and saw I liked, he was always very nice to my brother and I. A couple afters later, after he almost lost his job he cleaned up his life, got engaged and got a dog. While at work he was up on a utility pole and his partner accidentally re-energized the wire and he was electrocuted to death.
Right after they broke up my mother started dating a Really Good Guy (RGG), also someone she worked with. He was in the process of getting divorced from a woman he had three kids with (two boys and a girl all about 10 years older than me). He was a recovered alcoholic and had been for a number of years. At first he lived in an apartment about an hour away from our house. We would go there on weekends and just about any other time my mother could get out there. This is the point in my life that I felt like my brother and I were second in life that the boyfriend and sex became her first priority. Even though she would always tell people that we came first. Even though, later I could see RGG as a good addition to the family, in the beginning I resented him. He took the time I had with my mother away, I had to spend time at his place away from my friends and father, and I was getting tired of bouncing from guy to guy. I think the point I stopped resenting him was the point I started pulling away from my mother, I realized he was a better parent and would gravitate more to him. Around the time I started 6th grade he started living with us and their bedroom was still in the basement directly under mine. At night if I didn't manage to get to sleep before them I would be kept up from their "noises". There were times I would ask them to keep it down, yes a preteen was having to ask her mother to stop being so loud when she was having sex, but my mother's response was to tell me to stop listening to the floor. I eventually gave up and would sleep in the living room every night and most nights I would cry myself to sleep. How my mother didn't see something was wrong is beyond me. This is also the first time in my life I had started thinking about taking my own life. My fear was that my brother would find me and that kept me from ever acting on it.
Towards the end of 6th grade they decided they were gonna sell the house and move out to were RGG's children lived and our house was way too small for us to live in. I put up a pretty big protest about leaving my friends and school and eventually they decided to instead of move add a second floor to the house. The up stairs would have two decent size bedrooms (one for me and one for my brother) a bathroom and then one large room that would be a makeshift apartment for Ditzy. That next school year, everything got finished and sometime during winter I had gotten a pretty bad cold and was out of school for a week. During this week my mother and RGG fought almost everyday, then one night my mother and him sat me down to tell me he was moving out. His ex-wife had up and left his kids in his old house, his youngest was in his senior year of high school so they needed a parent around. He had purchased his house back from his ex-wife and was moving back and didn't tell my mother till the deal was final. I understood, these were his kids and he had to be there for him, he should have told my mother the right way and it wasn't like he was ending their relationship, but I think regardless my mother would have reacted the same way. Sometime during my 8th grade year RGG proposed to my mother and he moved back. They got married in April of my freshman year of high school. It was almost like the day they got married they lost their passion for each other and their relationship went down hill. They fought a lot, didn't talk a lot, and by the time I was getting ready to go away for college they would see who could stay awake the longest to claim a spot on the couch that night.
Once I was older RGG and I would talk a lot and mostly about our issues with my mother. He was a rational person and I could confide in him. He told me one time after things with my father happened that he wasn't a believer in kids going away to school that they should stay home and go to community college first but that I needed to get away or he was afraid I would take my life. He admitted that my mother mentally and emotionally abused us.
A month after I started college RGG was forced into an early retirement. He didn't get a great payout but he had a small side business he was trying to get going. There was more and more stress between them and they never talked. When I would come home from school for breaks it was miserable. They were hardly in the same room as each other, when they did talk there was always a sigh or grunt under their breaths. Halfway through my sophomore year she told me that he wanted a divorce and he told her in a letter, I don't blame him one bit for that one.
He told her that he wanted to stay apart of mine and my brother's lives since he had been in them for so long. He had been going to dinner every wednesday night with my brother for sometime and wanted to continue that, it was a night my mother normally worked. For some reason, "my brother" didn't care to continue the relationship and every quickly lost contact with him. Myself on the other hand would talk to him occasionally, I was living in my own apartment up by school and didn't come home often. But he started to back off because she would check my call history and then yell at him and myself for keeping in contact with each other, like we were betraying her.
Over the years my mother did a lot of hurtful things but one of the things that stands out the most was one time I was home from school on break and I was on the phone with my boyfriend in my room and she came in and started yelling at me for something. It turned into her telling me I didn't appreciate her and then that I changed after everything happened with my father. She said that I started hating her and that wasn't fair because she didn't do anything wrong. Then she said "Don't you ever think about me? How I felt? When he did what he did. Don't you ever think about that it could have been me??". I just sat there staring at her.
I am sure I will update this at some point. I covered a long period of time in this one blog but I wanted to get past my mother's story and on to more important things. I know I have missed a lot but I will add things as they come back to me.
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