My mother married the man I call dad when I was just a year old. We never really had the best relationship, I was treated much differently than his own children; “the red headed step child” is what he always called me with a laugh. Mom used to say he was just fooling around but I knew better than that. He might as well have called me the “nigger” baby. He used the term on rare occasions, usually during a drunken rant.
I love him though, he is my dad. Isn’t that crazy this man who used to make me stand in the corner with a diaper on and soap in my mouth while the other kids played. I slept in the bath tub with sewer roaches because “my sister” peed in the bed. I ate oatmeal that I had vomited in. I was blamed for everything that went wrong. My mother never would say much and my grandparents tried to stand up for me but it only seemed to make things worse.
I know now that it’s the way he was raised, in a racist home with a mother and stepfather who used to beat him. Of course, he would think it was okay to treat me that way, after all he was taught that was okay. I forgave him and love him any way.
At sixteen I moved out and was living from house to house and at seventeen I settled in with my boyfriend of a year. He was a few years older than I was and for a brief while my life seemed almost perfect.
Four months in, his drinking and constant drug use became too much for me to handle. It made me think of all the reasons why my biological father wasn’t in my life, and I began to resent him. A month later I decided to leave but he didn’t take that too well. I don’t think I have ever felt pain like that before. I had been beat but this was so different, I have no idea how I survived. For a year and a half I walked on egg shells around this man, nothing made him happy and I dreaded the moments he picked up a drink. There was always hell to pay for one thing or another.
I left one evening while he was working. I walked 25 miles into town and was able to catch a ride to my parent’s house an hour away. One week later I was on a bus to Texas. I felt such relief at that point; I was free, free from my past and able to start anew.
A new start meant a new role… MOM. Shortly after moving to Texas I became pregnant. Nine months later my beautiful baby boy was born, four months after that I became a wife. Me a wife, it’s crazy I didn’t even know the meaning of the word. There I was a new mom and wife and like before my life seemed almost perfect.
The new husband seemed jealous of our son. All the time that I had previously focused on him had now been dedicated to our son.
We didn’t know how to deal with that. We started to fight all the time and he chose to stay out with his friends and not come home until four o’clock in the morning. I then became resentful of him. He said he purposefully got me pregnant and then he wanted to act like a bachelor. Who does that? He had so many other things going on that I didn’t know the half of it until later years. We stayed married for four years until I moved out in December of 2008 and filed for divorce in April of 2009. My divorce became finalized in October of 2009 and I am now a single mother.
Now I need to raise my son to be a good man. How on Earth will I do that? I’ve asked myself this a hundred times. All my examples have been less than what I want for my son. They have however shown me all the things I will teach my son not to be. I am in no way saying that they are bad men I just know I wouldn’t mold “my little man” after them. They all have good qualities.
I will never let all the bad in this life outweigh all the great and wonderful things the LORD has blessed me with. I've learned a lesson from everything I've gone through and find something positive in it- from being beat and made to feel worthless to now knowing the greatest joy in life,
I know that all that I have gone through was to make me stronger and bring me closer to GOD. My son will be just fine! The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 27:1
free from my past and able to start anew
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