••Warning!! Explicit Content: DO NOT READ if you are sensitive or easily offended!!!!••
What??!??
Really???
This one is angry. This one is full of truth. And this one is uncensored. You’ve been warned.
My original intentions with this post were to rag on the scum of the earth who use their childhood experiences as excuses for their own poor decisions in life. I believe people have the CHOICE to be scum or to not be scum. My life has been hard. One ridiculously overwhelming trial after another. So my new intention is to show you what is possible when you make the Choice to be better after all the crappy experiences life possesses.
I see druggies, alcoholics, abusers, liars, thieves, cheaters, the uneducated, the ignorant, and the just plain stupid use excuses like the title of this post all the fucking time. Really?? Well, get over it!
Here’s a brief history of my life, as brief as I could cut it down to.
Mom and Dad were alcoholics and Mom eventually morphed into a druggie. Mom left dad, taking my brother and I with her while we were very young. We lived with my mom’s side of the family, all big drinkers, pot smokers, and pill poppers, including my 2 grandmothers. Mom would get drunk, I mean really drunk, at least once a week with one of her boyfriends, they’d duke it out, he’d beat the fuck out of her, neighbors would call the cops, brother and I would spend the night or nights at the Police Station or in Foster Care. Mom finally remarried, but the fights didn’t stop. My step-dad has never hit my mom, but she sure tries her best to get him to.
No one in my family has ever had any kind of aspirations. Ever. Barely had jobs, they’ve mostly lived off the government because the government lets them. We moved around a lot, somehow. There was a time when no one in the family could even make the rent payment on our home, so we were ALL homeless: my mom and her new man, aunts, uncles, 2 grandmothers, and my brother. I was 10. We camped at the river in tents for the entire summer, and summers in Arizona are long. It was an adventure to me, but pretty messed up when I look back. It happened because none of the adults would get a job.
After the summer, mom and her new man took off, left us with my 2 grandmothers. With their social security checks, they managed to rent a single-wide trailer for the 4 of us. We got comfortable there, then mom shows up out of the blue and wants us back. We move again, bringing grandmothers, and end up with the only aunt who had a life and home. She’s the one I always looked up to. She’s a crack whore now.
Well, Mom fucked this home up too, got drunk and tried to kill her sister, destroyed her house in the process. Cops didn’t take us away this time, but we were ordered to leave with mom. Then we ended up back in Nevada. We were both approaching our teens, and Mom hates teenagers. She had money for her liquor cabinet, her drugs, her dogs, her cats, my brother, then me, in that order. My only sanctuary throughout my childhood was school. People picked on me because I never had new clothes, and apparently looked poor. That’s a good reason to taunt someone. So, in the eleven elementary schools I went to, I didn’t always have friends. Neither did my brother. But I had the schoolwork, which was what I loved. So I excelled.
After a few years in the Muc’ I got really tired of my mom’s BS. I hated her. She was a self-destructive, narcissistic addict who didn’t know a single thing about loving anyone. A friend and I got a wild hair up our asses and decided to run away. She had an incredibly fucked up childhood also. As did her husband. There are things that happened to them that are so obscene I can’t even talk about them. But keep them in mind when I get to the point of this story.
I can do a lot of whining here, but I won’t. We ended up turning ourselves in and both of us got the fuck beat out of us by our loving mothers. I wanted more than anything to go live with Dad, whom I hadn’t seen in over 10 years at this point. Mom called him while she was beating me up to tell him what a piece of shit his daughter was and he needed to come get her. Well, he didn’t have room for me at that time. I spent a few nights in Foster care, then went back to AZ to live with my grandmothers. And here we were again, 12 people living in a single-wide trailer living off my Grandmothers’ SS checks. I still loved school, because it was still my sanctuary. Once in high school, I involved myself in every activity I could that would keep me there longer. When I was home I was watching my 5 younger cousins while all their parents went out partying almost nightly. I believe I forgot to mention one of my grandmother’s was blind, and the other was due for a hip replacement. So while they were there with me, well, they were just there.
And then our house burned down. We lost everything. The LDS church and Red Cross helped us to put a home back together again. After we were settled, just my grandmothers, myself, and my younger cousins, things were great again, for a while. Then my aunt, the one I looked up to, went of the deep end. Left her husband, which devastated him. So during their awkward phase, their SEVEN kids came to live with us. And I’m not even exaggerating. I was 16 and taking care 12 children, ok 11 cause the 2nd oldest was just 2 years younger than me. But I managed it just fine, kept my grades up, and went into the summer with them all. My aunt, 15 years later, is still sinking in the deep end.
Then we moved again across town. My uncle’s wife left him (smart move on her part) and he found himself a crackwhore. Her 5 kids came to stay with us often. The eldest, Brandi, and I were pretty close, she was 4 years my junior. One warm fall evening after everyone had gone to bed, she got a wild hair up her ass and thought it would be a blast to hop on a train with her other cousin. Tara made the leap, but Brandi didn’t. I heard screaming, ran out across the road and found Brandi lying there in the dirt, smothered in blood, missing one leg. I held her until the ambulance arrived, sang to her, made her pray out loud. And I can still remember everything. Her mom and my uncle had to be pryed away from the bar to join her in the ER.
After Brandi returned home I really took her under my wing. One time her mom was physically attacking her, I stepped in and shoved her aside and picked Brandi up off the ground. My uncle, drunk as ever, came up to the house raging mad and ready to attack Brandi. I stepped in again and he head butted me, I blacked out. I was 17.
With the utmost dedication and single thought of having a better life of my own, I graduated with flying colors, with 2 scholarships to a law school in New Mexico. But they weren’t enough to get me in. I moved, lost a love, fell in love, lost another love, repeated that mistake with a few more men, started working on my own, started supporting myself, then met a new guy. He wasn’t the one.
Dad offered to pay for my college if I moved out to Florida. Couldn’t pass that up. 20 and single and near the Florida beaches, I was stoked. But before I left, I met the one. The one I’ve spent the last 12 years with, the one I promised an eternity with, the one who still makes me melt even after all the hell we’ve been through together.
I went to college, I got to know Dad very well, he was everything I imagined he’d be. I watched my mother, who couldn’t even raise my brother and I, adopt FOUR other children!!! Todd and I struggled, him working one full-time job, and me working several part-time jobs while in school to support ourselves. We were broke, but we were doing it on our own. We bought our first house at age 24, I broke my back at 26, got married, then lost my Dad.
Nothing about my life has ever been easy. Nothing. My first pregnancy was painful and ended with no developing baby. My second pregnancy ended with a broken pelvis, my third pregnancy ended with my husband telling me he met a younger woman while I was away, and my fourth pregnancy ended 15 weeks early. I have 2 healthy, wonderful and busy toddlers, and one beautiful baby boy who started out at 1 pound 6 ounces and is growing stronger and stronger every day in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Vegas. He’s almost 10 weeks old, and I’ve held him about 8 times. I only get to see him at night after my kids are sleeping because I have no child care in Vegas. I live 3 hours away where my husband stays throughout the weeks because that is where he works. I have no support from my family, save from my mom, not even a single call to say ‘Hi, how’s the baby?’
And then just last week, a couple of white trash scumbags drilled a hole into my truck and stole my purse. They tapped out and completely overdrew my business account, tapped into our personal checking account, have mine and my 3 kids’ SS cards, among many other personal things. Even though they’ve been reported, they will probably never be found.
No part of this life is easy. Some people get breaks, others never do. Some people really do get things handed to them, and the rest of us have to bust our asses just to keep our heads above water. When someone comes to me and tells me that they are the loser they are because of the way they were raised, I want to punch them square in the face. I have zero sympathy for people who blame everyone else for their own mistakes.
The people I grew up with, the people who raised me, who were around me my whole life, until I was 18 at least, were violent alcoholics, druggies, thieves, trouble-makers, liars, drop outs, criminals, and every other bad thing you can imagine in a person. My mom and aunts had male friends over who would try to “touch” me when I was a child!
Through all the Bull Shit I experienced firsthand growing up, Guess what?? I’m not a druggie. Nor am I an alcoholic, or a felon. I’m a college graduate. I own my own business. My kids are healthy and clean and have everything they need. My husband and I get along, we’ve never once hit each other. We have a home, 2 cars, and a truck. We have a life. A Healthy one. And do you know why? Because it’s what I chose.
I chose to rise above the sleazy lifestyle I was raised in.
I chose to be clean.
I chose to be educated.
I chose to be a positive influence for my kids.
I chose to be honest and not steal from anyone.
I CHOSE.
And my friends who I mentioned earlier, also chose. Neither of them are junkies. I don’t even believe I’ve seen either of them drink for some time. They take very good care of their kids and both have amazing jobs to be proud of. They are wonderful people.
So people who live in slums, and bitch and moan because that’s the way they were raised, are just lazy bastards who are incapable of accepting the blame for their own conditions.
I’m a bitch, I'll be the first to admit it, especially when someone wants to fuck with me. I have zero tolerance for free-loaders and beggars. This life has made my skin tough and I don’t take shit from any one. I’m offensive to some, and overly honest to others. I don’t care if someone dislikes me. I’m proud to be who I am, because it’s who I choose to be.
Not making a choice is still making a choice. Life is hard. No one ever promised us it would be easy. But if you can get passed the gutters and stay afloat in the tides, life is beautiful.
