Chapter four: Get me outta Here

Around this time my mom was not only drinking heavily but she began to become
abusive. I had become the scapegoat for all her problems. I remember being fully asleep
when she barged into my bedroom in the middle of the night turning on the light,
grabbing me by my hair and telling me we had to go see the priest because I was
possessed by the devil. I was confused and terrified. What the fuck? I was 10. All I could do is scream and cry. It was like I was in the movie Mommie Dearest but the cast was different and my mom didn’t give a shit about wire hangers. The next morning it was as if it never happened. That wasn’t because she was embarrassed about her actions it was because she didn’t even remember what the fuck she did. So this cycle would play out again and again getting worse over time. What happened to the mother that
used to tuck me in at night, make me feel secure and safe? What I didn’t realize then was
that I was never getting that mother back and things would only get worse as time went
on. When I look at pictures of myself from this time in my life I can’t help but cringe. I
see a little girl who was so lost and desperate for love but also so confused about what
love was. Was love something that you earned because you were good? Was it something
that came and went like night and day? School was the only place I felt safe even though I hated it. At night I would hide in my closet that I turned into a reading cubby since it was big enough to put a small chair in and had a light. But there was still no escaping my mother’s wrath when she was pissed off about something. She fought with her boyfriend Jay, yes even psychically. One instance I can remember clearly was them fighting in the driveway about who the hell knows. My mom took a 2 by 4 to his truck and then he punched her in the face. She ran into the house and demanded that my brother punch her jaw back into place because she was convinced he knocked it out-of-place.

Chapter three: Hell Hole

My mom had a new boyfriend as soon as we unloaded the moving truck. He was a winner let me tell you. My mom was always fashionable, beautiful, funny and intelligent and this guy was a straight up redneck living in a garage. I couldn’t stand him or understand the appeal that attracted her to him. She would later call him her band-aid. He owned a garage down the street from where my Aunt and Uncle lived. He fucking lived in it. It had no running water in it, so he had to shit in a bucket. no lie. He didn’t have any kids, was never married of course and was a total red neck. I couldn’t believe my mom went from my dad to this loser.

They fought a lot and had sex a lot, which to a 9-year-old hearing such things and seeing
such things were confusing after losing her father only less than a year ago. She didn’t waste any time filling the void that was left behind. I remember fists being thrown and yelling and screaming. One instance that stands out in my mind was a night my mother brought us over to her sister’s house to be with another man, I don’t see how this could have been such a great idea since Jason lived down the road from my aunt! Well he got wind of what was going on and crashed the party. Let’s just say I remember watching my mom, Jason, my aunt and uncle fighting outside the house from a window. I saw my aunt
get punched in the face by Jason for interfering and before I knew it my uncle got his
shotgun out and pointed it at him and told him to leave before he blew his head off.

Either during the summer of 1990 or summer of 1991, I can’t be completely sure even though there is a home movie of this trip, we went to the Bahamas. My mom, brother and I along with my Aunt Lindsay, Uncle James, Jason, my Aunt Ellen, her boyfriend and my cousin Sophie. I remember spending much of our vacation during the day in a bar where the adults were drinking and spending nights watching them all walk around naked and partying. My mother and Aunts even founded “the vagina club” and encouraged my cousin and me to walk around naked as well. At age 10 I saw my first adult male penis in the flesh. We did take breaks from the bar though. We rented a boat and took it out to ocean but of course not without a cooler of liquor. I to this day don’t understand why we kids were even brought on this vacation. It was more traumatic and scary than fun. The sad part is that there is still a video of this vacation in my home movie collection.

Chapter two: November Rain

My Dad died on November 9th, 1989. I was told that about an hour after he passed a giant rainbow could be seen from my backyard and it was a clear day with no rain. The funeral is foggy to me as well. I know that there was a lot of people there including my entire third grade class. I went to the Catholic school across the street that was associated with the church where the funeral was held, so on that day my whole third grade class got to leave school and attend the mass. Talk about awkward. The school knew what was going on with my family and I was ripped out of school on several occasions in case it was “that time”. The nuns and the teachers were very gracious to me and I’ll never forget their kindness. I remember seeing my dad in the coffin, emaciated, sunken and looking like someone drew on his face with a crayon. I couldn’t believe the man I once looked up to and cuddled with was in this box looking like a different person. I don’t remember anything after the funeral except having to go to my Nana and pops house before the lunch and flicking off one of my cousins and trying to run away. Other than that its like a black hole. Like someone turned the lights off in my head where those memories reside.

My Mom saw the death of my father as a dead end for her and us in PA and since she had two sisters living in Florida, it would be a great opportunity at a new life. What my older brother and I didn’t realize is that we moved closer to her younger sister, Lindsay who was married to an alcoholic and would be the fuel to my mother’s addiction. We moved when my brother and I finished school for the year in the summer of 1990.

My brother and I were excited about moving to Florida. We thought about beaches, palm
trees and an easier life. What we didn’t know was that where we were going was over
an hour from the beach, was more of a swamp land but there were palm trees. Adjusting
to our new life was hard for me. I had a hard time fitting in at my new school, were I
effortlessly had many friends before. I was in the awkward stage between child and
preteen, the years 9-12. We spent a lot of time at my aunt and uncle’s house where parties and drinking were a constant and where my mother met her new boyfriend.

We rented a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house in a nice development. My moms younger sister Lindsay and her husband James lived on a big creek that was called Black Creek. It was only about 15 or 20 minutes away from where we were living but we might as well lived there. It was a nice house but it was on a lot of land that was landscaped so the backyard consisted of dirt that led down to the water where there was a lot of sand. My Aunt and Uncle had two Dalmatians that were good dogs but if you ever had one you know they shed! So the house had a lot of dirt, sand and dog hair everywhere. Uncle James was cool though, at one time he was a professional water skier. So he would take my brother and I out on the boat and teach us how to ski and hydro-slide. The major problem was that my Uncle James was a drinker and the trigger to my mothers pistol that was loaded was about to unload.

Chapter one: The Beginning

My Pop Pop told my Mom she was going to have her baby on the 22nd because that was his lucky number. He told her this because it was the 18th, her due date and she knew she was going to be late again, like she was with her first child, my brother. She was almost three weeks late with him and she was frantic that it was going to happen again. My parents already had a name picked out, Ryan Patrick, all they need was for my mom to go into labor. It wasn’t until sometime on the 21st that she did go into labor and you would think her anxiety about having a long labor last time would make her rush to the hospital, but she didn’t. Instead her sister Lindsay drove her over the railroad tracks half a dozen times and even pick up dinner for my dad and herself. My mom wouldn’t eat with all the contractions and breathing. When the three of them finally did make it to the hospital, the nurses were surprised they made it in time. Less than two hours later I was born and to my parents shock, I was a girl. I wasn’t born on the 22nd though, I was born at 10:22pm just an hour and 38 minutes shy of making it to my Pop pops lucky number. I wonder now if that was a bad sign?

I was born in May of 1981 into a middle class family outside of Philadelphia. My parents were married and had my brother in 1978. my mother actually got knocked up by my dad and they planned a wedding in 6 weeks. They had been dating on and off for years though, since high school. my mom had me at 25 and my dad was 26.I had the perfect childhood. My mother was a stay at home mom while my dad worked. He owned his own business and worked long hours. I went to Catholic school and my brother to a private school that helped kids with learning disabilities. He was diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder. My brother and I got along well as children, of course we had our fights but otherwise we were pretty tight. Things were simple. Extended family was around a lot, even if it wasn’t a holiday. I fondly remember playing with my cousins on weekends and having family vacations to visit family out-of-state. My Mom was the third child out of five and my Dad was third out of four kids so they both came from somewhat big families. I always remembered love, comfort and safety as a young child. one day that would all change. The time I had with my dad in the 8 years that I did was precious. He would take me for rides in his truck, take me to his favorite diner and read me bedtime stories. I was his little girl, I could do no wrong. When he died, my mother had a hard time and understandably so. He died a long hard death, a battle lost to ALS.

Sometime around 1987, I was too young to remember, my Dad was diagnosed with ALS. I don’t have a clear memory of when my mom sat my brother and I down to have this talk about my Dads disease and impending death but I know it happened at some point. the details are fuzzy to me now like waking up from a dream and trying to remember everything. I only have the few memories during that time and what I’ve been told of what happened during that time. My Mom tried to make life as normal as possible for us kids when life was anything but. I remember my dad always had a mustache, my whole life. then one day he decided to shave it off because he knew he was starting chemotherapy and I was actually afraid of him. I hide behind a chair in our family room because he didn’t look like dad anymore. Little did I know that was only the beginning. After a while he lost a lot of weight. Then he had a hard time speaking and eating. My mom had to make him smoothies because he couldn’t swallow regular food. Then he wasn’t able to walk anymore. Our deck had to have a ramp built onto it so the wheelchair he was in could get in and out of the house. I watched my healthy, handsome and hard-working father slowly deteriorate before my eyes. Soon my parents bedroom was turned into a hospital room. I was told he didn’t want any intervention or ventilator to keep him breathing and who could blame him? He was being held hostage in a body that was decaying while his mind was left to take it all in. That’s what ALS does, it leaves your brain intact and destroys every muscle in your body until your just a mind and soul left to linger in a dead body. The day my dad died I only have one memory, my mom , brother and I got into the hospital bed with him, in my parents room and felt his heart slowly stop.

How did I get here?

I’ll be a wife for 5 years in October and my daughter will be 3 on Friday. I own a home and I’m a housewife. I seem to have it all and I do, but then why do I feel so unfulfilled sometimes? Sometimes I wonder even if I deserve this semi normal life. It wasn’t always this normal for me. Most of my life was pretty dysfunctional and chaotic. Within the last several months I’ve learned a lot of new things about this world and this country. A lot of it hasn’t been good things. Its been hard to digest all the new things that have come into my existence. Life seems to be a continuous journey of learning and self awareness. Maybe the best way to start all of this is to go to the beginning, like 36 years ago……