The January of my tenth-grade year, my stepfather took a job offered to him by an old boss and moved to Pelham, Alabama. (We would move down to meet him after the school year ended.) This excited me at the time. Because now he wouldn’t be home to make things so hard. He would be gone. And maybe then, my mom would be easier to get along with.
After he left, our house was a lot quieter. He wasn’t there to yell all the time. He wasn’t there to stomp around. And most of all he, wasn’t there to control or be unkind to me. That did not initially stop my mom from being mean. She continued on the nightly tradition of “glove checking” after our chores were complete. And still, we would have to stay until they were done according to how she liked them. I became good at cleaning after this. In fact, if you come to my house today, most times it is always in place. Unless my kids are home alone, and then, well, NO CLEAN house. LOL.
A month or so later my mom eased up a bit on her strictness. I’m not sure if it was because she was tired after getting home from work. Or if it was because she had felt bad from how we were previously treated by her husband. Or if she had just stopped caring because my stepfather wasn’t there. But she did. She started to let me go hang out with some new friends I had made. I was allowed to go to their house. I was allowed to go to the movies. She even let me go out a couple of times at night to some school functions we had. Things finally started to feel good at home. Until about two months after he had left, she had informed me that my checks from Wendy’s would now go towards helping the house. And that my stepdad in Alabama was staying at a campsite and needed my money to live off of. I had no choice in the matter. I cried and felt that it was completely unfair that she would take the little money I was making and send it to the man who always treated me so terribly. I hated this man. I didn’t want to help him. I did not have a choice in whether he moved to Alabama to take a job. So why, now do I have to give him MY money to live off of? But I did. Every time I got paid, I would sign over my check to her so that she could deposit it into her account for him to use. She promised me that she would pay me back after we moved. I believed her. To this day I have yet to see any of that money. Which totaled to more than a $1000.00
The last of the school year rolled on, and I ended up having a crush on this senior named Chad. He was in my computer science class. Where he and his friend Patrick always flirted and messed with me every day. I enjoyed the attention. I felt like someone valued me. And I was important (Remember, I found my value in what a male thought of me). Because of his daily flirting and attention, I really started to like my new school. I started to put the effort into doing my schoolwork. I started making friends with the kids that I disliked in the beginning. I found myself even having a little bit of school spirit.
When I finally processed that I was going to soon be leaving this school, I struggled. I did not want to move again during my high school years, to a new school. To a new town. To a new state. And to a new region of the country. In which the only thing I knew about the South was that the people were uneducated and hilbillies, thanks to the tv shows I had seen. I wanted to stay. I didn’t want to have to live with him again and feel controlled. My mom had eased upon us. I finally started to feel like my life was good. My school life was good. My home life was good. And now again, because of stepdad number two, my life was going to be unhappy.
When the end of the school year came, my mom decided that because we were moving to Alabama before my birthday, she was going to let me have a party to celebrate turning 16. AND I was going to be allowed to invite whomever I wanted. Even my friends from Cleveland. I was SOOO excited, I invited all my friends, from Cleveland and Olmsted. It was so surreal to me. I had fought so hard all this time to keep in communication with my friends from Cleveland. And now, they were going to be allowed to come over to see me. A whole year had gone by since I saw them. But when they came, it was like no time had passed at all. We ended up having the party outside that day because the house was small. Which didn’t seem to matter in those moments. I was just so thankful to have the opportunity to see and reconnect with the friends that I had missed so much. I was appreciative that my mom allowed me to have that sendoff that would close one chapter of my life. And start a new one once we moved to Alabama. The countdown continues…..
Just Being Dee 