Life has always been a series of waiting for the next step in my life to start. Well not always, once I realized that I was on my own and working towards a goal it started to be that way. When I was young and up until getting my GED, like most kids I lived in the moment and didn’t think much about the future. Maybe I day dreamed and imagined myself older with a career or a husband and family, but I didn’t constantly put myself into a mind game of when is this part of my life going to end and the next part start until I was in my early twenties. Since then life has always been a constant of when will this stage of my life be over and the next step begins? I never stopped to think about where I was and take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.

I remember the morning I was moving into the student apartments at FIU. I was all packed up and my mom and brother where driving me down to move me in and help me. My relationship with my Mom was pretty good at this point. I think she was actually pretty proud of me, considering I would be the first person in our family to make it this far in college and actually having a chance to graduate with a degree. This is something she and my dad never did since they never attended college. My brother Shane on the other hand went for a few semesters but dropped out. He had a hard time with it since he did have an auditory processing disorder, among other things I figured out later on in life.

Once I was all moved in and settled, I said my goodbyes and reveled in my new found freedom. I was on my own completely for the first time ever. No parent, no boyfriend, it was just myself and I was ok with that. I also knew how alone I was going to be, being in Miami I was an hour away from my brother and a couple of hours away from my mom, with one exception. My mom had agreed to go into rehab with my Aunt Lindsay in Philadelphia. She only agreed to do it because her boyfriend Jerry wanted her to do it. It had nothing to do with her kids, how out of control the drinking was getting or the relationships she was burning because of it. It was all for Jerry. As much as I hated the guy, at least this was something positive coming from their relationship.

When classes started, I felt like I was in my element. I was becoming more organized and OCD about everything. I always had my room clean and organized, classes, homework, study materials and life all in front of me and controlled. I liked having control over my life for the first time ever, that feeling of feeling out of control and not knowing when my life would start was always in my past. My life was starting on my terms and I controlled it. This definitely wasn’t community college that was so easy to me that I had a 4.0 GPA. My classes were harder and I would really have to work at multitasking and studying. I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Nothing was getting in the way of me graduating with a degree.

I was sitting in a hallway since I wasn’t fully admitted but I had to sign myself in. I was surrounded by other people talking to themselves or making weird noises. It was a long white hallway, with white walls, white linoleum floors and bright fluorescent lights. I was sitting in the hallway of purgatory and I didn’t even know it. I don’t remember how my Mom found out I was in the mental hospital but she came later in the morning to drop off cigarettes and try to get me out. The only problem was there was no getting out until you saw the head psychiatrist and I was behind a lot of people waiting to see him. At least she came, I mean that shows she cares right? I felt like I was trapped in a cage. The only places I had access to was the white hallway or the concrete square where people were permitted to smoke. It was literally a concrete square, from the walls with tiny slats for air to allow some sort of airflow, to the concrete ceiling and floors. It was like a prison within a prison. Even the seating was made of concrete. Concrete benches were attached around every side. Even though it was pretty glum, it beat being in the white hallway with nowhere to sit except the dirty floors among those talking to themselves.

All I had to keep me occupied where my cigarettes and my thoughts. How did I end up in this place? I was supposed to start school in a month. Would I even be there for the start of the semester? Was all this hard work for nothing? No it couldn’t be, I worked my ass off to get into a good school when I didn’t even graduate high school. I did things I didn’t want to do so I could pay for community college to get to this point and nobody was going to take that away from me. I filled out all those student loan applications, got my dorm assignment and was registered into the Ecology program. I wasn’t going to let this hold me back. So I sat in the concrete prison and contemplated my life, what I had been through, what I had lost and gained and what I had in front of me. When I was finally called to see the head psychiatrist, who determined if you were released to go or you got a one way ticket to check in, I knew I had to be calm and cool. I looked past all the other people in the place and observed them. I knew if I remained rational and could convince this doctor I wasn’t suicidal, which I wasn’t, I would gain my freedom.

When I was released from the hospital about eight hours later, my Mom was there to pick me up. She took me back to her and Jerry’s place which was 45 minutes north. We both smoked cigarettes on the car ride back to her place and I explained what really happened. She was actually not upset. She loved Thomas though, so I know she wouldn’t harbor any ill feelings toward him for this. I looked out the window of the car and lost myself in thought. What would happen next? Would Thomas and I be ok? Did it matter anyway? In four weeks I was starting a new journey in my life, one that was going to make an impact on the rest of my life. What I didn’t know then was how different life was going to be and that the decision to attend FIU would change my life forever. When we finally reached our destination all I could think about then was taking a long nap.

 

Thomas and I were fighting more. I had just graduated from community college with my AA and a 4.0 GPA. I had applied and got accepted to FIU and would be starting the fall semester there and living on campus. Whether this was the cause of our fighting or the fact that I was starting to mentally, emotionally and eventually physically detach from him I’m sure were major problems. I didn’t intentionally try to hurt him. It wasn’t my game plan. I will admit that I was being selfish and thinking about myself and my own growth. The summer before I was starting FIU in Miami was rough for Thomas and I. One night we fought so bad I was so sick of it I didn’t know what else to do. Thomas had a gun license and kept guns in the house. His father was a Vietnam Vet, so he taught Thomas how to use and clean guns. It was a hobby for Thomas. I at that time didn’t like guns and didn’t like having them in the house. That night in particular I can’t even remember what we were fighting about. It could have been anything to be honest. I just wanted to stop fighting, shut down and go to sleep. He wasn’t having any of it. Whenever I fight with someone and I’ve reached a breaking point, I need to go into my space and calm down. Thomas wasn’t one to leave things unfinished. I went into the bedroom to go to sleep and laid down in bed and just ignored him. He was having none of that. I heard him raising his voice next to me, just getting more and more angry as I ignored him.  If he wasn’t going to get me to acknowledge him by yelling at me then he was going to force the issue by going over to the other side of the bed and flipping the mattress over with me on it. I spilled onto the floor and banged my head on a nightstand. At this point I was fed up. I didn’t even know what I was feeling anymore, anger, hurt, fear? All I had in me in that moment was to react, he wasn’t going to leave me alone so in my mind there was only one way to stop it all. I opened the closest door and grabbed one of his guns and pointed it to my head. I had no idea if the gun was loaded or not, it didn’t matter at that point. I told him to leave me alone or I was going to blow my head off. When I think back to this moment in my life, I knew I wasn’t suicidal. It was an extreme empty threat that I was using to make him back off. I think deep down he did too. He tried to reach for the gun and told me I was acting crazy, and I was, who in their right mind does that unless they want to put a bullet in their head? I was unrelenting though. Once I hit a certain level of being pushed over the line, there was no coming back. So he did what he thought was either the safest thing to do, or he did something in spite. either way he called the cops. When I heard him talking to the cops my first reaction was to leave and run away. I ran down our building steps from the third floor and ran to the back of the building, knowing if I went towards the front I would be in the parking lot. It was late at night and behind our apartment building was dark with trees and bushes to hide behind. I hide behind a tree behind the next building over and watched a cop car stop in front of our apartment building. My heart was beating so hard I thought I could hear it and tried not to breathe. What the hell was Thomas trying to do, get me locked up? It wasn’t long before the cops were looking for me. Thomas obviously told them I didn’t take our car, so I must have taken off on foot somewhere. They had flashlights looking behind the buildings, it brought me back to a time when the cops were using their flashlights in my backyard looking for someone else, my mom. I methodically hid behind trees and then bushes when I saw the lights move. It was like playing cat and mouse, except I was the mouse and I didn’t like that. I took a deep breath and decided I might as well give myself up, I mean where was I going to go? So I started walking toward a cop closest to me and went blind with the bright light in my eyes. “Are you Leigh”? he questioned. I nodded yes. He yelled to the others that he found me and walked me over to the cop car. Then the questioning began, Why did I have a gun? Why did I want to kill myself? etc. I tried to explain I wasn’t suicidal and that It was in the heat of the moment during an argument. I might as well have been speaking another language because they didn’t believe me. I had two choices. I could come voluntarily, or unvoluntary. Go where? I asked. “To the hospital, and if you decide to go unwilling it will only be harder on you”. One of the cops replied to my question. So I took the easier way, I went willingly.

 

It seemed as was at a cross road in my life. I loved Thomas but I also wanted more and to explore. I wanted to stretch my wings and go to a university when I graduated community college. My mom had sold our house in Boca Raton, the one we first moved into in 1993, to move farther up the coast to the Treasure Coast because Jerry wanted to move there because the surfing was better. I was upset when she decided to do that, not only because it was our home but it had sentimental value to me. True, I haven’t lived there for several year, give and take a few short stays since I was 17 but it was ours. She made the decision because a man she didn’t want to lose wanted her to do it and also because later I heard she was having financial problems. She first moved to Jensen Beach, rented a house there with him for a while and later rented another house. Thomas and I would visit on weekends and holidays but it never felt the same. It wasn’t my home anymore. It didn’t have that comfort feeling that sometimes you need as a young adult, like a security blanket to a baby.

My apartment with Thomas kind of had that feeling but not completely. It wasn’t just my space, it was his as well. We didn’t owe each other anything, we weren’t engaged or married. I thought for a long time that he was going to end up being the one. I thought I would marry him someday, until I started having my doubts. Once I knew that graduating from community college was looming in the near future and having a life outside of him already, that’s when those doubts started taking roots. I was starting to get better slowly from my panic attacks. The klonopin did help with that. They did kind of become my security blanket for a while. I would bring a couple with me everywhere just in case. Not that I had a problem with them, I think just knowing that I had them and I felt something coming on I had a little pill that would stop it all. Everything in my life, shit even in my world was in a tale spin. Nothing seemed normal anymore. After 9/11, it wasn’t just the worry and anxiety of my life anymore, it was of the whole world. I know the world was never at peace, but after that attack, at least for my generation nothing was the same. We were too young to remember the cold war and the war in the Persian Gulf. I know things happened in the 1990s but if you were young or a teenager that didn’t watch much TV and spent time out of the house doing things unlike most kids today you didn’t really know what was going on. The world seemed quiet then. When those two towers fell the world as I knew it fell as well.

journal Entry: July 8, 2002

” Sometimes I can’t even fathom the insanity in my head. I’ve increased my Zoloft from 50mg to 75mg and then I will go to 100mg. Its been 12 days now, almost 2 weeks but not quite yet. I’m so sick of feeling anxious and nervous. Sometimes I think about suicide. I want to be better! I want to live and be normal! why can’t I be normal?”

Thomas and I moved into a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment with a co-worker of his in Boynton Beach. It was in a nice apartment complex, the kind that made you feel like a grown up when your only 19. The carpet was new, the walls had fresh paint and everything was white like a virgin. This was my new beginning, this is where I was meant to be. Thomas worked as a cook in a restaurant and one of the servers, Hannah, needed to find an apartment as well, so it all kind of worked out. The two bedrooms were divided by a large living room and the kitchen and both bedrooms had their own bathroom. Hannah and I got along great. I loved having a female roommate, it gave me someone to talk to when Thomas wasn’t home. Plus I never had a sister so in a really weird fucking way it felt like that. Thomas and I shared my car, so things were kind of difficult there but having Hannah there and the fact that they worked together made things easier. I was excelling in school, which I had never done before. I was on the Dean’s list, which was a good thing, where in high school it meant I was in trouble. I never thought I would have a 4.0 GPA. I loved school. I went to classes, came home for the day and immediately did my homework.

One Tuesday morning I was getting in my car and leaving to go to school like any other day. Back in 2001 people either listened to the radio or CD’s if they were lucky enough to have a CD player in their cars. I was listening to my favorite alternative rock radio station 103.1 the buzz. As I was listening to the radio station a woman called the radio station and told the DJs they should put the TV on because a plane had just crashed into one of the World Trade buildings in downtown NYC. I kept listening driving south on I-95 wondering what could have possibly happened. The DJs had the TV on and were taking callers, not playing music anymore. It was like a was in a daze, hearing that another plane hit the building. I was driving but completely on auto pilot. Hearing the screams and “oh my god” of the voices on the radio made me right then feel a panic I never felt before. When I arrived to campus, people were getting back in their cars and leaving. I asked what was going on and was told the campus was closed due to the terror attacks in NYC. Terror attacks? What does that mean? What does this mean? I got back into my car and drove home with the radio on listening to everything unfold until I finally got home and raced inside to put the news on and call my Mom. I was scared like never before. Was the country under attack? Would I die? There was still another plane unaccounted for and another hit the pentagon in DC. The phone lines were overloaded. I couldn’t even reach my mom who was living an hour north of me. When I finally did get in touch with her I was crying and scared and felt she was the only on that could soothe me and tell me everything would be ok. Somehow she did still have that effect on me, maybe it was Stockholm syndrome?

It was the last year of our relationship that was the hardest. I don’t know if the normalcy got to be too much, I was too young for all this or it was the fact that Thomas and I were just too much alike. Around the time I turned 21, I started having major panic attacks again. One night when I couldn’t sleep I decided to do yoga to help me relax. Not long into the DVD I started to feel the beginnings of a panic attack coming on. This one was a full blown major one, nothing I used to do to make myself feel better seemed to work. I tried breathing, I tried a bath, then a shower. Thomas was home at the time and couldn’t find a way to get me out of it either. As silly as it sounds sometimes sex worked. It makes your mind go other places, but this night my mind was not going to be distracted from the horrendous route it was taking me on. I was up all night and waited for what seemed like an eternity to call my psychiatrist and get answers for what the hell was happening to me. He didn’t even make me come into the office, he sent in a prescription to my pharmacy for a low dose of Klonopin.

I talked to my mom about moving back in with her and starting community college and rebuilding a relationship with her. She was feeling averse to the situation since she and Jerry got back together and he was once again living in the house. I can remember thinking “here we go again”. I wasn’t about to lose the chance to have a relationship with my own mom over some loser pothead. So I got Lindsay to convince her and tell her how great I was doing. I had talked to another aunt on my dad’s side of the family and her husband was getting a new car and offered to give me his old car for free! I was so stoked. Finally my mom agreed. I moved into my brother’s old room since Jerry took over the other two rooms with his belongings.  I was pretty devastated, I missed my old room and it was the biggest of all the rooms on the other side of the house. My Aunt Eileen were having my car shipped down from Pennsylvania so I had to wait for
the title to get the tag. I also needed to go take the CPT, (College Placement Test) at
Palm Beach Community College since I never took the SAT’s. This would determine
what classes I would be placed into, either regular or advanced English or regular or
intermediate math etc. I took the test and the results were good except for math, I placed
below average which wasn’t a surprise to me, I had always struggled with this subject.
I registered for the fall semester which started in August but it was still only May. I
looked for jobs but when my mom’s good friend Maria asked me to watch her one year
old son; I was like “sure”. Maria is an awesome lady. My mom and she met at her ex-
husband’s salon. They became friends instantly. I also looked up to her because she was
so stylish and down to earth. At first I had no idea what I was doing. It was fun but a little
overwhelming, I mean I was 19, what did I know about being a parent? A year ago I was
still strung out on drugs. As time went on though I got the hang of it and loved that little
boy, I felt like his big sister.

I started seeing friends that I hadn’t seen since before my drug hole. It was great. I had a
car, I had friends, I was making money, and I had a life! Everything wasn’t peaches and
cream though. Things with my mom and I weren’t exactly going as planned. She still
drank more than ever and every night in our household it was judgment time. She would
pick me apart if Jerry wasn’t getting a thrashing. She would tell me how much of a
loser I was; she would complain about my social life, she would complain about Thomas
coming over. It never ended and nothing made her happy no matter how hard I tried. At
the time Thomas was living a few towns away in Boynton Beach with his grandparents
and he worked nights, so I didn’t see him everyday. When the shit hit the fan at home
the person I usually got a hold of was Kane. I would beep him on his pager and when he
called me back he told me he was going to come and get me. When he pulled up I jumped
in his car and we would just keep driving. We would sometimes drive around for hours
talk and listen to music. Our usual place was to drive up and down A1A by the beach and
look at all the mansions and high condo buildings. I felt so safe and refreshed being in the car with him just talking about anything and everything. I would make him laugh and he would make me laugh.

In my life everything always came to some end and some conclusion. Kane died in June. Thomas and I started our relationship again. In the Fall of 2001 I started community college. As I stated before nothing I did was good enough for my mom at that time. I was doing everything she would bitch about before I moved in with Aunt Lindsay. I had a car, I had a job, I was in school, which I paid for. Still nothing I did was worth a damn. Once night-time fell upon our household and she already had a few drinks in her, it was like a demon was released. She would complain about everything, blame me for everything and wish I didn’t exist. I wrote a poem during this time period.

Children

Children protected, innocent souls

guidance needed, laughter heard

imaginations run, questions asked

happiness felt, playing necessary

Fucked parents, children beaten

innocence lost, guidance stops

crying heard, sadness felt

scars form, evil starts, hate begins, cause of fucked up parents.

In October my Mom kicked me out again. This time it was for good. I had to find somewhere to go. That’s when Thomas and I got our own apartment once again. Things would be different this time.

 

When I got back down to South Florida,  Kane came and picked me up in Deerfield Beach. We were still close friends and he was driving me to Thomas’s apartment since Thomas didn’t have a car. He lived with two roommates, one who wasn’t too pleased by my presence. Therefore, I was soon on the move again looking for a place to stay. My Aunt Ellen invited me to come and stay with her since the holidays were close even though room was tight. She had my cousin Sophie still living with her since she was still in high school and Sophie’s boyfriend who she met online and somehow managed to move in. I wasn’t too thrilled with the arrangement since I was never too close to either  Ellen or Sophie and felt their judging eyes watching me like a hawk. I had the worst time sleeping; I would be up writing in my journal or on their computer until 4 in the morning when I couldn’t see Thomas. I was also having bad panic attacks and the medication I was taking at the time, Serzone, really wasn’t doing too much for me. I had a conversation with my aunt about since she was a nurse back in the day and her advice was just too completely stop taking the medication! I was 18 years old and didn’t know any better so I took her advice and remember getting so sick that on Christmas Day I couldn’t even eat dinner with them because if I stood up I would just fall to the ground and faint. How is it that someone in the medical field wouldn’t know that completely stopping taking any kind of medication is very dangerous and leads to horrible withdrawals is beyond me! That was strike one of my anger and resentment towards her. I know I should have been more thankful and appreciate that she took me in, but I felt more like an inconvenience to her than anything and I was family. The guy living downstairs wasn’t family yet he was treated as if he outranked me. Strike two. Thomas and I were able to see each other but not all the time like I would have thought. He would have to borrow people’s cars to come and see me when he could. One night he
came over and he and I fell asleep. That pissed my aunt off like you wouldn’t believe, but
her teenage boyfriend living in her house was ok. He was eventually banned from the house. Not long after that I was getting the boot too. that’s when the cavalry were
called; My Aunt Lindsay was summoned to bring me back to North Florida because
obviously there was no place for me there. While all of this was happening, they were in
contact with my mother. I had mixed feelings about talking to her. I felt so betrayed and
hurt, yet I wanted her love and a normal relationship with her. I think that’s what always drove me back to her was the hope of a normal loving relationship. My Aunt flew in after new years and was staying with my mom but she and I still weren’t supposed to be talking to each other. She still had her court date in the next couple of days. During that time I was in agony knowing I would have to leave again. I felt lonely, hopeless and
totally lost in the world without a soul to turn to. When my mom did go to court, I’m not
completely sure what the outcome was but I knew that they removed the no contact
order. So I was invited to come say goodbye to my mother the day before my flight left
to go back to Jacksonville Beach. When I saw my mom for the first time in a month, after
what she did to me, I didn’t get an apology. I was to blame. She was writing it off as
something that should have never happened to “her” and that she should sue the police
for the inhumane way they treated her. It was like getting punched in the gut. Was this
really all my fault? Maybe if I was a better daughter or turned out better maybe she
wouldn’t have been so angry with me? Whatever the case, it was a bittersweet reunion
and when she took my aunt and me to the airport I was hysterical. I didn’t want to get on
that plane, I was afraid of having a panic attack; I wanted to be comforted by my mother.
I wanted her to tell me that I didn’t need to go anywhere that I could stay at home and
everything would be normal. She was the one that was practically pushing me down the
tarmac to get on the plane. No amount of pleading, sobbing or begging was going to
change anything. So off I went into the bright blue skies.

 

 

Ok, now that I made 2 chapters about 2 very important people in my life lets continue on this journey.

One weekend my mom made plans to meet old friends in Orlando and decided to bring
Thomas and me with her, Jerry didn’t go and the reason was revealed when we got
back from the weekend. When we walked into the house all of his stuff was gone. He left
her without a word and I knew in that moment things were to get really bad. I was still
living with my mother and now I was living with her alone. She was completely
devastated by Jerry moving out on her that she dealt with it in the only way she knew
how and that was to drink. One night she had been drinking and I was home of course, I
did something that set her off. I couldn’t tell you what it was it could have been anything.
She was looking to punish someone that night and I was just there. In my mind it all seems to be pictures of moments that I remember but from what I can best recall from my memories of this night, she beat me bad. At first it started out with yelling at me, telling me I was a piece of shit and a loser. I wouldn’t amount to anything. Then objects began flying at me like candles, vases or anything she could pick up and throw. Then she pounced on me like a lion charges at their prey. The punching, grabbing of hair and kicking. I never had someone try to hurt me with such force. When I was able to get up and run she chased after me like a rabid animal.  At one point she was sitting on me with a pillow over my face suffocating me. I fought hard to get her off but at the same time I can remember thinking, “This is it, I’m going to die”. I almost gave in and just let my own mother suffocate me to death until the adrenaline finally kicked in. I guess it was a survival mechanism and when I was finally able to fight her off I ran into the bathroom locked the door and started screaming. She was banging on the door so hard I thought she was going to break the damn thing down. I began pulling at the screen on the window and trying to break the glass while screaming someone help me from the top of my lungs. In between scratching away at the screen and screaming I heard my mother go into my bedroom and start throwing things around the room. That’s when I took my chance to get away. I opened the bathroom door and ran out of the house as fast as I could. I ran five blocks to where my Aunt Ellen lived and banged on her door crying. From there I lose all form of memory. Everything’s so blurry like trying to look at something underwater. I know the cops came to my Aunt’s house, but before they did that they made a trip to my mother’s house and arrested her. The story I heard is that the neighbors heard me screaming and called the police but I was gone by the time they got there. They saw how intoxicated she was and she actually became abusive with them and they had to use their pepper spray to take her into custody. When the cops were at my Aunt’s house they took pictures of my whole body, took a police statement and then told me that I wasn’t going to be able to go back to the house, a no contact order was put between us. That’s when my other Aunt, my saving grace, Aunt Lindsay came into my life to rescue me and set my life straight.

When my Aunt Lindsay took me back with her to Ponte Vedra Beach I was more worried
about being away from my boyfriend Thomas at the time that nothing else seemed to
matter. Not even the fact that my mom beat the shit out of me and now I was living 8 hours north up the state. Don’t get me wrong I was depressed and was having bad panic
attacks. I wouldn’t leave my aunt’s guest room which became my room, unless I needed
to go to the bathroom or eat. She told me when the bedroom door was open she could
see me from the living room couch sitting in my “cave” and moping. I didn’t know what
to do or what to feel all I did was listen to music and write in my journal. I would get
phone calls from Thomas when he wasn’t working and bought a calling card but it just
wasn’t good enough for me. I needed to run, find some comfort for the first time in a
long time. What I wasn’t realizing was that I could get that comforting where I was if I
could get myself out of the depression hole long enough to poke my head out and see the
opportunities. Instead of doing the obvious, I devised an escape to be with Thomas and
found myself on an Amtrak heading back towards south Florida.

Before I get a head of myself, I should explain who this person was to me in my life at the time and for a long time after. I did meet Thomas at a rave and we shared a love for parties and drugs but it wasn’t just those things that brought us together. We had a deep connection. We both were broken kids with broken parents looking for love. We loved the same music, style of clothing such as Jncos and had very similar beliefs. I’m not saying we were exactly the same person but pretty damn close. He was beautiful also. I had loved the band Korn and even had a crush on the lead singer of the band Jonathan Davis and at the time I met Thomas you would have thought he did too. He loved to wear Adidas track suits, had long hair past his shoulders with it being shaved underneath. He had two eyebrow piercings and his tongue pierced. I remember taking of picture of him in front of a Korn poster and seeing the similarities between him and the singer.

Not only was he very attractive in my eyes but he seemed to have a heart of gold. Before we even got together we would talk online for hours and then he would stop by my house before he went into work and hand me a pack of Marlboro lights, we smoked the same cigarettes too. He took me to get my eyebrow pierced and paid for it even though we weren’t even together yet. He did little things like that not only because he was a sweet guy but also to show me he cared. When I was with him I felt safe and secure like I never felt before, like nobody could hurt me because he had some magic power to make everything melt away. Whatever I wanted he would get for me or do the best he could since we were just two kids living off his income of minimum wage.

Like I explained in a previous chapter, Thomas lived in an apartment with roommates. He didn’t live with his parents since they were both in rehab or a half way house at the time. I moved in with him when I was 17 until we got evicted from our apartment and I started having daily panic attacks. I had no choice but to move back in with my mom. I thought the comfort of home would save me from the horrible attacks and calm my soul but I was wrong. My mom turned my old room into the new computer room. So I had to move into my brothers old room. It felt like treason. How could she take my room away? It didn’t matter very much later I would find out and I’ll clarify later in subsequent chapters.

Thomas and I ended up living together on and off for 5 years. Most of that time he was making all of the money,(that he knew of). He loved me, took care of me and put a roof over my head. I went to school and he worked his ass off. He was and is a truly amazing person. In the beginning of our living together in our first real apartment with no drugs, both of us clean and acting like grown adults at 19 things were good. I went to school, cleaned the apartment, even made dinners. I guess being so young, plus having a horrible role model for relationships and being the asshole I kind of was all of that lasted for only a period of time. After I turned 21, I started drinking again. Not like my mom drank but I went out with my friends and partied a lot. There were times I was unfaithful and he knew it. I feel horrible for the way I treated him today, but back then I was either being selfish or just plain vindictive. When I graduated from community college in the summer of 2003, I had already made plans to attend FIU, Florida International University. FIU is in Miami. He obviously wasn’t happy with my decision but I felt for the first time I needed to figure out what I truly wanted to do with my life and live on campus since we had a place in Boynton Beach and that was a good two hour drive south to the campus. There was a local university but they didn’t have a good program for what I was looking to get into. If I wanted to pursue the sciences I would have to go somewhere else in the state. We had a difficult period before I left and when I did move into the campus apartments things between us became even more strained. Even though our relationship finally ended not long after my move to Miami, we still stayed in contact. At first not so much, he met a girl who was living here through a work visa from England and he was and is a very loyal guy. He limited our contact during their relationship but over the years we still found a way back in contact. Even as I was getting married we still remained close. It wasn’t until I became pregnant with my daughter that he completely shut down communication between us. I’m sure it had something to do with finally moving on with his life and seeing that I was having a kid probably sealed the deal that there wouldn’t be another chance for us. It was very difficult and painful on my end, I don’t have any idea how it was for him. It took me a long time to get over that connection. It was like I knew him since we were kids and we had this bond of dysfunction. We grew up together in a sense. We went through so much together, whether good or bad it was memories, experiences, pain, growth, everything. I still miss him and miss talking to him I’m not going to lie. I feel I’ve finally gotten over the pain of losing him in my life, like losing a limb. It doesn’t mean I still don’t think of him from time to time and hope he is doing well. I did hear from mutual friends that he is engaged and living with his fiancé and doing well. I’m very happy for him I truly am. I hope one day we can call each other and just talk like we used. Maybe one day.