All of Me – Part 2

By admin

Part 1 is here.

My Dad’s a mess, his wife is a mess.  They both drink… a lot and both have various drug addictions ranging from pain killers to weed to goodness knows what else.  They live a relatively normal life and are very hard working but it’s a bit of a roller coaster ride dealing with them.  Really I should have been a statistic.  As a teenager I lived with them and ran away a few times because Dad’s wife wasn’t very nice to us (this is an understatement – I’m not going into detail).  Every time I ran away I called my Mom and every time my Mom called my Dad to come and get me.

After a few times I realized it wasn’t going to get better so I ventured out on my own at the age of 16. I lived with a friend from school and her parents for a while.  I lived with a family of 5 who I consider my family and who I’ve know since I was 13.  Then I lived on my own in a rental suite that was a converted garage while I finished high school.  I was on government assistance, got special permission from the school district to live outside of my school’s catchment area because I was sick of changing schools.  Determined to get my diploma and not change schools during the important last years of school was my main objective – I was a band geek and a good kid.

You’d think that because I was so young and on my own I would have drank or partied or been into drugs or boys but I was determined not to become a statistic so none of that started until I was 20 and even then it wasn’t to excess.  I had my first boyfriend and my first drink at 20 – to this day I have never touched drugs. I rarely even take prescription drugs or pain killers.

After graduating high school in 1994, I worked at a video store while completing an Administrative Assistant’s program at the local community college in 1995.  I went to work in my first office job in March of 1996.  Shortly after starting this job I met the man who would become my first of two husbands.

More on him and the second husband next!