One hell of a woman

Tonight was movie night with my kiddoes. We went and watched "The Lorax". They had a great time and enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed sharing a big bag of popcorn and my diet Coke with them. I didn't care that I had little fingers (dear God, I hope they were clean, haha) eating out of the same bag as I was. I was happy to hear them laugh during parts of the movie and to have a smile on their face. Besides, it is the little things that make me proud to be their Mommy.

When I was a child, I recall going and seeing "The Lion King" when it came out in theaters. Only problem is, is that I do not recall my Mom being there. She wasn't there for much. She was too consumed in her own addictions, drugs and alcohol. She was too busy sleeping all day, after working at the bar all night long. I remember being 5 or 6 years old, my Mom sleeping on the bed in her boyfriends trailer, and my sister, brother, and I having to fend for ourselves. I remember putting some lil' smokies in a frying pan and taking them out on the front porch and trying to heat them up with just the heat from the sun. As I know now, as an adult, I know that that was definitely not the way to cook them. Sure, they are a precooked food, but that still is not the point. Our Mom should have been the one who was awake and cooking for us. I also recall going up to the store, purchasing a can of cream style corn, going home and eating it straight out of the can. She wasn't so much of a cook, as I would put it.

My mom was a drunk and she did whatever drugs she could get her hands on. I recall being at a Halloween party when I was about 7 years old. The night that my brothers shirt sleeve got stuck in the tire of a moving trailer on the back of a truck while going on a hayride. This same night, we were playing on a trampoline and someone had snuck a beer and the kids were all drinking it and jumping on the trampoline. We were KIDS. Where were the parents? Shortly following this, my mom got into an argument with someone (NO WAY! Not her!), and decided that her drunk ass was going to drive us home or wherever she planned on taking us that night. Well, she ended up in a car accident, which broke my sisters nose for the SECOND time. (I can't recall the first time this happened, but I am positive it was from a car accident caused by her drinking and driving.) Nothing happened to my Mom that night, nothing ever managed to get this woman put in jail for longer than 24 hours.

My Mom wasn't too good of a person. I remember being in grade school, a new school of course, we always managed to switch schools and never had a steady environment. Well she forgot to pick us up from school on numerous occasions and we always got picked up by one of her new boyfriends. Who the hell forgets to pick their kids up from school?

The last memory I have of living with my Mom was when I was 8 years old. We took a family trip up to Ohio to see her family with her new boyfriend, PV, or whatever his name was. We got back to Alabama, in which my Mom noticed a hole in the bedroom wall that my sister, brother, and I shared. While we were in Ohio visiting family, her boyfriends grandchildren had free reign of his house. The hole happened when we were out of state. Well, of course, it was our fault. My Mom and her boyfriend decided that our punishment would be to walk around the living room table, while her and her boyfriend sat on the couch, with a belt and a kitchen utensil and beat us, for hours. They decided that my sister was too small to put a hole in the wall, so they then handed her something to beat my brother and I with. My brother and I continued to get beat and finally when my Mom was too tired of hitting us, she sent us to our room.

The next week, I went to a friends house for a sleepover. I recall my Mom telling me "You better not let anyone see the marks on you". I was wearing a velvet green bodysuit, kinda like what gymnasts wear. When I changed my clothes, I had to turn my body the other way so my friends couldn't see the marks on my backside. That same night, my friends mom noticed that I had head lice. She took me back to my Mom and explained the situation to her. Fast forward the next day or so. My Mom's boyfriend was no where to be found. My Mom, drunk, early on in the day, decided that she wanted to go and find him, loading all three of us kids into the car and driving down the street in her boyfriends Camero, until she found him. She found him at another bar, kept us out in the car, went inside and then came back outside a few minutes later. While she was in there, I believe that she found her boyfriend with another woman and busted some sort of glass over the womans head.

My Mom takes off with us in the car, and starts heading back towards her house. We never made it back to the house though. We got a couple of miles away from the incident and she got in a car wreck, which included a couple of other cars, and took the life of a pastor. My Mom gathered the three of us kids, and took off in the woods from the scene of the accident. I remember waking up in the woods, and my Mom scattering trying to figure out what to do. My right eye was completely swollen shut from the impact of hitting the ashtray that was built into the back seat. My sister's head was split open and I believe my brother had some sort of injury to his chest. I can't really recall.

We ended up going to someone's house, and they took us to the bar that her boyfriend owned and that's when I am assuming the ambulance was called. We were taken to the hospital and released the following day. While my Mom was in jail (which didn't last long, she must have been really good at something because she has never spent more than a week in jail, that I can recall), my dad and now Stepmom came to her boyfriends house and took us away. Thank God! We no longer had to deal with the physical and emotional abuse that this "Woman" had done to us. My Dad took us to his house and this is where the story evolved even more.

We were told to give ourselves a bath, and my stepmom came in the bathroom because we weren't bathing properly. She turns us around to wash our backsides, in which she finds out that our whole backside was completely bruised. The bruises were not from the car wreck, but from where my Mom beat the crap out of us the week before. How on earth did the hospital not notice this, I am not so sure of, but it took for us to get a bath from our stepmom to notice the marks on us. Child Protective Services was of course called, and they came and interviewed my sister and I and took pictures of our backsides.

My dad went through a pretty harsh custody battle with this crazy woman. He ended up winning custody of us on his birthday in 95, I believe. This was probably one of the best things that could have ever have happened to my sister and I. This was a step away from an abusive Mom, and a part of our life where we were actually showed love.

We went through a rough patch during our teenage years with our Dad and Stepmom, because we did end up turning into disobedient little shits. We had a pretty hard time at the new school system in Ohio though. There were some really judgmental people that went to those schools, and really had no idea what my sister and I had been through. They made fun of the scars on my sisters forehead, not knowing that they were caused by an alcoholic who did not care for the safety of her children. We are past those years though, and it just built us into the strong, caring people we are today.

My freshman and sophomore years of high school ended up with me not really giving a damn about it. Who needed school? As an adult now, I know that school is one of the most important things in your life. My junior year I had a 4.0 GPA, talk about a turnaround. Then, I turned 18. Whoo hoo! I could make my own decisions as an adult and I knew everything! I ended up getting pregnant in March of my Senior year and I thought that my life was over. Honestly, that had to be the reality check that I needed.

Becoming a Mom myself, and having another human being depend on you for their every need, was one of the hardest, yet greatest things to experience. I tried to reconnect with my own Mom when I was pregnant with my first. Worst mistake of my life! She had denied of any wrong doing to my sister and I. She denied ever laying a hand on us. Even now at 25, I remember every single detail from my childhood. None of those memories were good ones with her. The only thing I can remember is just how horrible of a human being she was.

I know that chances are, that my Mom's family members are going to run across this blog. It really doesn't matter though. It may seem harsh that I have dedicated my first blog to her, but this is the truth behind everything. This is the reason why I do not ever care to see her in my life again. She has never tried to reconcile with us, or to so much as offer an apology. She was the one who missed out on her children growing up. She was the one who never sent a birthday card, nor a phone call, or paid my dad a penny of child support all those years. She is the one who is responsible for her mistakes, and until she can straighten her life up and start taking care of the children she had, she will not waste away anymore of my life.

I honestly would like to thank her though. I would like to thank her for not being there for us and to let a REAL woman raise her daughters. If it were not for my dad and stepmom, my sister and I would probably not be alive today. I would not be able to enjoy being a parent and to have the joys of raising my children and showing them the love, support, and comfort that I have been able to since I found out I was going to be a Mother. I would like to thank her for making me realize exactly the kind of Mom I did not want to be. I want to be able to enjoy going to the movies with my kids, I want to be able to ask my children how their day at school went, and all in all I want to thank her for letting my Stepmom take care of us, and show us how to be a woman. My stepmom is one hell of a Mother. Most of all, I want to thank her because I am damn proud of the woman I am today by her not being there for me. After all of this, I am one hell of a woman. <3