August 3rd, 2023

We will start at the beginning of my story. My parents got married young, my mom only 16 and my dad 20 or 21. They were not married long when I came along, I would say about a year. Neither one of them ready to be married or have a child. I believe they met in some type of treatment or group. My dad an alcoholic and my mom an addict of some type, from my childhood I remember the problem being men.  They had moved out of state and hours away from either of their parents making it easy for things to go unseen. I have heard many stories of the fights that would happen with me either on the floor or in my crib with the family dog protecting me. It didn't take long for their relationship to fall apart leaving me in limbo. My grandparents ended up having me a lot of the time and luckily for me both sets of my grandparents got a long great and ended up being friends. I always knew it was a lot of back and forth, but it never really sunk in until my uncle talked about having my first birthday at their place which was in an entirely different state due to the fact that my dad's parents would go to Arizona for the winter at that time and that is where my uncle and his family lived. As a parent myself now I do not understand at all how you could allow your baby to leave for the entire winter without seeing them, let alone missing their 1st birthday. I at one point asked my mom about this and her response was I was couch surfing and your grandparents both sides decided that would be best for you. I turned 1 in January and by July my mom was having her second child by a different man not even divorced from my dad yet. Let me tell you I have never been one of those people who wanted their parents together, I have a hard enough time dealing with them separately. From their my mom went on to have 3 more children none of us having the same dad. My dad went on to have 3 more children with 2 having the same mom. Like I mentioned in my first post I have also had many step siblings. Life was never normal from the beginning, thankfully I have had some good influences. We will dive into the rest over the next few blog posts.