My Story --------to be continued....

As I think about everything that has happened so far in 2015 I feel blessed because my husband and I have so much to be thankful for but I also can't help but feel 2015 has been one of the worst years ever. The series of events we have gone through have been one heck of an emotional rollercoaster, especially after losing Josh's little brother. When I look back I realize everything bad that has happened recently with our families somehow has to do with drugs. It seems as though drugs are taking over the world. It makes me so sick to my stomach because the people who do drugs don’t realize how many people they are hurting. We all have a story, we all have some sort of past that has left us with scars, a past that has helped form who we are today……I believe, in order to heal, you should talk about these things. Here is a bit of my story and the hurt I struggle with...

Growing up everyone thought we had the perfect family. We had nice things, lived a better than average life, my mom was a stay at home mom who made sure breakfast, lunch and dinner was always freshly made and that her kids were never in the care of someone else. My dad worked full-time, he owned his own business and made sure we were financially set so that my mom never had to leave us. My mom had me when she was 21 and married my dad when she found out she was pregnant with me. They met at a party and didn’t date very long before she became pregnant. I was an “oops baby” and the reason they got married. My dad wanted a little girl so bad. When he found out I was a girl he was so happy. He spoiled the heck out of me. I don’t remember most of my childhood, but dad reminds me of it often. He would always tell me how jealous my mom was of our father daughter relationship. She would get so mad at him for picking me up from school early the days he left work early.

My brother was born exactly six years after me (we share the same birthday). My mom said she didn’t want another baby but that my dad and I begged her to have a sibling for me. At 18 months old my brother was burned over 50% of his body with a deep fryer full of hot grease. I remember the day like it was yesterday. We were running around the house and jumping on the couches, my mom kept telling me to settle down. She was on the phone with a girlfriend and my dad was cooking French fries in a deep fryer in the kitchen. As my brother and I ran through the kitchen, he stopped, and pulled the cord to the deep fryer. All of the grease in the deep fryer fell on top of him burning over 50% of his body. He was flown from our house to Torrance Memorial Hospital by helicopter. He spent months in the hospital. We are very lucky he made it. My mom spent those months in the hospital with him. She never left his side. Because of his accident, he was babied by all of us for many years, which is totally understandable after all he had went through and all the guilt we all felt for what had happened.

When I was in middle school we moved. I started a new school mid-year and had to make new friends. I remember not really feeling like I fit in because I came from a school that was pretty much every race except white and now was in a school full of white people. Eventually I made friends with some great people. One of those friends is my husband and another is still my best friend to this day.

In middle school my house was the house everyone went to for breakfast before school and the house that everyone hung out at after school because we had a pool. My mom would make us pancakes in the morning and would often host pool parties for us. Everyone though my mom was the best. She got along with everyone’s parents and was good to all of my friends. My dad was a little more reserved. He would work a lot and when he’d come home he would go straight to his room because he would be annoyed that we had so many people over (especially if I had guys over). Not too many people knew my dad, unless they were really close to me, then they knew him.

What everyone didn’t know was how much my mom didn’t care for me and how much I always felt that. How much she resented me for how much my dad “spoiled” me with love. How she was nice to all of my friends but not the nicest to me. It wasn’t until recently that I learned her issues were much further than her being jealous of my relationship with my dad. She had so many hidden secrets, she wasn’t the person everyone thought she was…

To be continued….