Happy Wednesday everybody! So this will be my 4th post using Blogger and I'm still trying to get the hang of this. I'm trying to positively influence others to excel through their daily life with a positive attitude and a goal in mind. This not only helps me excel through my daily life but it makes me happy to influence others. I want to attain a sort of fan base of regular readers so I want to let you know a little bit about my personal life.
My parents were never married. My father was 22 and my mother was 20 when I was born, they were both drug addicts (and currently still are as far as I know). I grew up in and out of meth houses, hotels, cars, etc. while I was under the "care" of my parents. At the age of 2 my grandparents (fathers parents) fought a custody battle over me so my mother could not have full custody over me (she lived in her fathers house which was a meth house, people in and out on the daily, drugs being sold and done inside the house at various times of the day every day). Thankfully, they won the custody battle and a new path was made for me to go down. I lived with them while my father got sober, I went to my mothers every week and was regularly neglected. I'd always go back to my grandparents in the same clothes I went in (unwashed) and most of the time sick and hungry. My father was in and out of my life while I was living with my grandparents and this was tough.
My father went to rehab, met all the requirements the court had, and obtained custody over me (was about 4). My father quickly relapsed and a quick slope of neglect came my way. He mentioned that he was going to move out of the state to my great aunt (while he was high on drugs) and she gestured to him that they would take care of me so he could do his thing. At the age of 4, I moved in with my great aunt, uncle, and cousin (who has down syndrome and is 18 years older than I). This was the closest thing to family that I had ever had, it was not normal to me. I was a very insecure child and always aware of my surroundings, constantly looking around the room and knowing when somebody entered and who was in the room. My great aunt told me that there were multiple times when I would have a little stash of food in my room (at the age of 4) because I wasn't used to having food and never knew when my next meal might be.
I didn't see my mother again until I was about 6 or 7. I went to her house every other weekend for a few days and visited. As I mentioned, my mother and father were into drugs. At the time, I never even knew what drugs were but I did recognize that I was always in a dirty/unclean environment and that I wore dirty old clothes that were always too big on me. Looking back, I realize the impact the drugs had on everyday life for me as a child and on my mother, who probably didn't give too much of a care about me. This went on until I was about 8, it turned into me visiting her once a month, once every couple months, and then I finally stopped seeing her when I was about 10 years old.
All the while, my dad had met and married a woman who I now call my step mother (even though her and my father are no longer together). They moved in together when I was about 6 and she had a daughter that was a year younger than me. My father never knew how to take care of me, I moved straight in with him from my great aunts house (where he rarely came by and never knew how to take care of me in the first place). I was happy to be around my father, though. He worked 9pm-5am in a warehouse and made a decent wage, only problem was that he slept all day and whenever I saw him he was irritable. That's one thing I'll always remember about him when I was a child, he rarely had patience for me and seemed to be irritable most of the time. I'm going to skip most of this because I respect my step mother very much for taking care of me but she didn't go about it the best way and I think that affected me negatively in a way growing up as a teen.
Her and my father divorced when I was about 12 and my father moved in with his new girlfriend a few months later. This lady had two children, a daughter a year younger and a son that was about 3 years younger than me.
Note: Growing up, my family never had much money. None of them were too educated but they were very hard workers. My father never made a respectable wage but I respect him for working his ass off every night to provide for his family, something my mother never did.
So my fathers new girlfriend didn't have much money either, she lived off of the government (illegally) and didn't work a day in her life as far as I know. She spoiled her children as much as she could from the money she obtained when her mother died and the money she regularly got from the government. I was always on my own in a way growing up and never thought too much of it. I came and left as I pleased, riding my bike to whatever destination I wanted. After living there for about a year, she sold her mothers house and moved into a small mobile home park. She had a brand new home built that we were all to move into.
This is a more recent part of my life that I really take from and see as a big adversity in my life...
We moved into her newly built house, it was small but nice. She had 3 bedrooms built but here's the twist, I didn't get a room. Her and my father shared the master bedroom and then each of her children got their own room. She made sure to build me an uncarpeted/uninsulated room in the garage, it was 9x4 feet. This may be smaller than some of your closets. Lol. There was enough space in the room to fit a folded up futon and a small T.V. stand for my television. I had a small dresser outside my room and that was it. Life got a little bit harder when we moved into her new house. She began to treat me worse, restricting me from doing certain things in her house. She wouldn't allow me to eat any of her food (my father never bought food and he ate her food), began locking her fridge, and regularly told me that my father didn't love me. She thought I was jealous about how she treated her children, saying that she loves them and smothers them with her undying love and affection while my father didn't show me much love at all.
I would find myself buying my own groceries with whatever money my family would give me for my birthday and Christmas. I don't know many 12 year olds that buy their own groceries at that age. I lived there for a couple years until high school. I played baseball my whole life and wanted to try out football in high school. Over the summer going into freshman year, I made friends with somebody I had known through out my life but never actually talked to him. He lived right behind my high school and I would go over to his house after football and play video games (much better than riding my bike 2 miles home with all my gear after practice in the dark). I spent numerous days at his house and finally his mother asked me about my situation. I explained and she asked if I would like to move in with them and explained that they would take care of me. This was my chance and I took it.
I'm going to leave off there for now, I need to get to my studying and I've spent a while on this passage. I constantly reflect on my life and I think it's something good to do as regularly as you can.
If you forget your past, you might as well forget who you are. Our past makes us who we are today, whether you want to believe it or not. I never want to lose sight of what I went through in life and how far my journey has gone.
Have a great day everybody, I'll try to get another post in today. If not today, then sometime over the next couple days. I have my first exam in environmental biology tomorrow and I'm shooting for straight A's in my 6 classes this semester.
Carpe Diem!
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