Short Stories Made Long

I want to bitch about something, but in order to do so I should give you a bit of Joe's back story, and if I am going to do that then I may as well give you mine too. This could take a while, but if it gets too long I'll break it up. Also, I don't lie about where I've been. Some of this may seem shocking from someone who you think of primarily as a mommy.

When I was 17 I had a lot of problems. To be fair, I still have a lot of problems and some of them are the same ones, but boy howdy was I messed up at that point. I was cutting school a lot, drinking and smoking a lot of pot back then, often at the same time. I also had a bit of a klepto issue. Actually, I was really good at it. I might not have ever gotten caught if I hadn't been with someone who wasn't any good at it. But I was, and we were getting followed. I realized this, and we ditched what we had, but still got stopped by store security. They messed up in that I was one of those criminals who knew their rights. They wrote up a statement saying we'd been stopped outside the store with the items and tried to get us to sign it. I wouldn't and told my friends not to as well. Then the police officer began to question us. I'd not been Marandized and since my two compatriots were only 16, they couldn't be questioned without parents present. When I pointed this out I was arrested and handcuffed, but at the station the charges were dropped.

This did actually scare me straight, and I suppose it's a very good thing that this happened when I was still technically a minor. However, the police called the school to make sure I went back, and the school (who didn't like how I always managed to slip out of their grasp) called my parents to tell them I'd been arrested. This resulted in a huge fight that ended in me moving out of their house. I started a new job the next day, where I met a guy named Thomas. I tell you all the other to give you an idea of where I was in my life. It wasn't pretty.

Thomas was a sociopath. I didn't realize it at the time, since like most sociopaths he was good at pretending to be what he was not. We dated for a while. Most of that time was spent getting high with two other friends who were also dating. I felt like I was playing a role more than I was living my life. I lost more and more of who I was as a person, and became more and more cowed by his whims and anger. In the meantime I turned 18. And got pregnant.

After vacillating between saying he was leaving, and saying he would stay and we would get married, Thomas took off and hid. His parents, and were they ever winners, helped him to hide. To this day I don't know where he lives. I haven't seen him since August of 1996. I know now that this is a good thing, and that him taking off was the best thing that could happen. At the time, I was crushed. I didn't have an identity outside of him anymore.

My roommate back then was one of the people I'd been arrested with. Her drug problem had spread to meth and coke, and more often than not the TV was in the pawn shop. We lived for a few weeks off cold roast beef sandwiches she brought home from work. I was with it enough to know that this was no life I could live, and no life for a child, so I swallowed my pride and called my parents. They'd moved to Missouri while all this was going on, so I packed up what I could and moved back home.

Yes, I was living with my parents, and it's true that this meant I wasn't drinking or smoking pot anymore, but it doesn't mean that I was sane. I remember just being numb for so much of that time, and terrified that the baby would be a miniature version of Thomas. Towards the end of December I decided I couldn't give this baby the things it deserved, especially love. I've been criticized a lot for that decision over the years, but people don't know where I was at that time. People couldn't see in my head and my heart to know why I made those choices. Which is a nice way of saying if you think I made a mistake keep it to yourself.

My mom helped my contact an adoption agency, and I chose the parents from a stack of biographies that prospective parents put together. Justin was born on April 27th 1997. His parents are wonderful people and I've never had a doubt that things turned out exactly as they were supposed to. It's an open adoption, Justin has always known who I am and I've always been part of his life. He's met Joe, and he knows about Jack who he calls his half-brother.

Joe's story is much shorter, since it's his and I can't write about it as in depth. He was dating a girl named Alicia, and it was a terrible mistake. She left him for a friend of his and found out she was pregnant. Caleb was born and a DNA test confirmed that Joe was the father. Caleb will be four next month, and Joe (and I) see him whenever we go back home, and will be living with us half the time once we move back and have a room for him. He's an okay kid considering how much upheaval he lives in. Alicia is pregnant with her third child in four years. They've moved five times in the last year, and she's had at least 4 different boyfriends and jobs. When she works. She primarily lives off of Joe's child support. Have you figured out what I want to bitch about yet?

Caleb stayed with us at my parents house when we were visiting last weekend. When Caleb stays with us he is expected to say please and thank you. I put him in time out once for throwing a banana when he got mad that Joe'd opened it and not let him. Nobody spanked him, nothing traumatic happened. Well, Alicia calls yesterday to bitch. "Caleb has bugbites, how did he get bugbites?" Well, moron, he went outside. There are bugs outside. Yes, we used bug spray. He's a four year old boy. He's gonna get bug bites. " Caleb is having nightmares and won't sleep through the night. Did we let him play scary video games? Did we tell him there were monsters? " No you dumbass. We did not emotionally scar your child. Caleb had no trouble sleeping when he was with us. No one told him there were monsters, and he couldn't have played scary video games since my brother is the only one with a game system and he is not allowed to play violent games. Caleb has nightmares when he goes back to Alicia because he leaves a structured environment where people don't yell and scream and curse one another out all the time.

The poor child has no sense of stability with her. They move every few months, the last time DFS ordered them to move or they would remove the kids because the apartment was substandard. Alicia won't keep a steady job or boyfriend, she's not even with the guy who got her pregnant this time, and she's only 8 weeks along. She's trash and I can't stand her. I hate that for Joe to have anything to do with his child he has to have contact with her. I hate that him having contact with her means that I have to. She walks all over him and takes advantage of his kindness, and I've already told him that it will no longer occur when we move back. She's not going to treat me like crap, I have no reason and no patience to put up with it. She wanted me to keep my baby up until past midnight and drive an extra three hours with him after we just drove 8 hours from Omaha so that she could see the baby. Then got upset when I didn't. I don't mind the child support, except that she doesn't spend it on Caleb. Every time we see her she has a new ring or clothing to show off, and there is no way for DFS to enforce how she spends the money.
I really, really hate her.
The End.