Chapter 17 & 18

Dear Readers, When I wrote Chapter 17, I was preoccupied. I want to tell the whole story. There are Trigger Warnings Suicide, Drugs, and Death in this story so beware.

When I turned seventeen, I was a junior in high school and worked at McDonald's full time. My home life was tense because when I was growing up, I was still considered a child. I wasn't supposed to know what 'adults' talked about. Yes, there were family secrets. Things I wasn't prepared for by any means.

I had a best friend John, who had my back through all my bad decisions. We met our sophomore year and also worked together. As far as hanging out, well we mainly used the land line as our way of hanging out.

During the week, I was daddy's little girl. We tended the three large gardens, mowed the acre of land and worked on vehicles. On Saturday's I would go shopping with my mom.

I went to the doctor with my mom and dad one day and boy did I finally understand what I wasn't supposed to know. My father was dying of pancreatic cancer and only had six months left to live. He was already in a wheelchair and on oxygen so that meant no smoking in the house for him. My life pretty much went downhill from there.

There was a co-worker at McDonald's that John, nor I liked and gave him a hard time but one night he asked me out on a date. At the time I thought it was harmless, just one date, you never know he may not be as bad as we had originally thought. I just wanted an escape from my reality.

Aiden and I went to Golden Corral for dinner before going to see the movie Gangstas Paradise. I guess deep down I couldn't put aside my feelings toward that man, so I had a glass of iced tea while I let him eat a T-bone steak. The looks that others gave him were priceless. Honestly, I wasn't hungry, but he got a lot of dirty looks.

I knew he was in a gang because he always wore his blue flag in his back pocket at work. He also had one hanging from his rearview mirror. I was a sheltered child. I didn't know what gangs really were other than bad, and I had no clue as to what drugs were. He introduced me to both. I think the movie helped him explain some of what he wanted to tell me without having to say it. After the movie, we cruised around Asheboro, North Carolina blaring hip hop music, which I was new to also. He gave me his class ring. Since he was four years older, I figured I could use him to buy my alcohol.

We dated for a few weeks before I finally gave in to having sex with him. I think it was our one-month anniversary. That's when I found out that this twenty-one-year-old man was a virgin. We hung out at his place almost every night after work. He worked two jobs with Klaussner Furniture being his primary source of income. I knew he could take care of me financially, although I was raised to not need a man for anything.

One day I showed up at his place and he had scattered papers and magazines full of engagement rings all over his living room. I was shocked. Did I love him, no. I did however, like him so I thought that maybe we could move in together and see where things go. When I presented my argument to my parents, they shot me down. We had to get married if I left home. Guess what, they signed the papers for me to get married.

My young mind could not wrap my head around what was going on at home and dealing with my dad dying. I was his little girl. I wasn't prepared to lose the main man in my life. The man I looked up to, the man who loved me unconditionally. I had less than five months left with him and all I wanted to do was run away from my problems.

I started drinking when I was around Aiden, but my dad didn't care. He used to buy me alcohol too, as long as I wasn't driving. What happens when you tell a teenager not to do something, well they test your limits. When I drank at work, I would drive home alone. Maybe my stalker that followed me home each night would help me if I got into a wreck, who knows.

Yes, I had a stalker to deal with too. He used to work with my mom and was almost twice my age. At night he would bang on my window trying to get my attention. He even followed me to Aiden's house one night while he had friends over. After I pulled in Aiden's driveway, he stopped by the fence, cut off his headlights and creped by slowly. It was a dead-end street so when he came back through again, they were all waiting on him with guns. His car got shot up and he never followed me over there again.

The day before our three-month anniversary, Aiden and I said, "I Do". We went to Cape Hatteras for our honeymoon with his best friend and his wife. It was the beginning of December and there were no tourists around which made it so much better. The light house was beautiful that time of year. It has since been moved inland.

I skipped school that Friday to get married. On the following Monday I skipped again to go to the doctor to get put on birth control. I may have been stupid but I wasn't ready to be a mother yet. Also, due to Aiden having leukemia when he was nine, he couldn't have children anyway. I just wanted to be safe.

Since we were finally married and I had moved in with Aiden, I found out that he smoked marijuana. I didn't know what it was until then. Very soon I found out that I liked it too. I would smoke a blunt in the morning before school, one on the way to school, one during break in my truck, one on the way to work, one on break at work, one on the way home and then after I got home again. I became a true pothead. It helped numb my pain from my circumstances with my dad. My grades didn't drop, and I always went to school.

An ex-best friend of mine tried rolling me over, so when I found out, I shoved my gun and weed into her locker. Guess who got busted, not me.

Aiden and I wound up moving in with my parents to help my mom take care of dad. He was getting worse, but he could still function. I would give him back massages while he cut off the oxygen to smoke a cigarette.

I had a Nokia cellphone flip phone in school for my dad to reach me. Well, he did. He called me one day and said, 'goodbye'. I rushed the thirty minutes' drive home in ten minutes only to find him with a shotgun under his chin. I begged him not to pull the trigger. This tramatized me. We sat and talked for awhile. He couldn't take it anymore especially with us just finding out that mom was dying of ovarian cancer also. She looked nine months pregnant over one weekend and went to the doctor. That's when they told her she had only a couple years to live.

A couple months later my aunt, his sister, rushed him to the hospital. I stayed with him all day and night. The next morning, she came by and run me off to go home and get some rest. I didn't want to leave. Aiden took me home. About five minutes later, my brother Roger called and wanted to talk to Aiden. They didn't get along, so I knew something was up.

Aiden rushed me back to the hospital. Dad was laying there with his mouth open from taking his last breath. Everyone was standing outside the room crying. A couple nurses run me out because I had just got there and wanted to tell him bye. There was someone downstairs that needed my dad's eyes. It was the only thing that wasn't eat up with cancer. The nurses called security and I was escorted out.

When dad died, I started drinking heavily. I went to the funeral sober but collapsed three pews from the back as they walked the family to the front. Aiden had to carry me the rest of the way. I don't remember much of the funeral.

It wasn't long after dad died that my mom wanted us to move out. My aunt sold real estate, so she found us a house in Seagrove that was sixteen thousand dollars. We paid it off the first year.

Mom was the type of person to shop at Winn-Dixie and buy one and get two free. She turned one of my old bedrooms into a pantry. When we would visit, she would send us home with a truck load of groceries. I would leave her money in the bottom of her candy dish because she wouldn't out right take it from us. We would mow the yard for her and do what she needed taking care of around the house.

When mine and Aiden's one year anniversary come up, I left him and went home to mom. She let me stay the night but said I would have to go back and couldn't stay there. When I went back, he begged me to stay.

It wasn't long after that that his anger began to show. Then the bruises on me. I fought back each time. He would bust my lip and I would bust his nose. He put his fist through our back door busting the glass. He accused me of cheating on him. I finally got tired of him accusing me, so I finally went out and done it. One time he came home, and I had the day off. He was angry when he walked in the door. Without saying a word, he picked me up by my throat and slammed me up against the mahogany wood wall. I cracked the back of my skull. I had to clean up the blood from our white carpet before I could go to the ER.

I never let my mom know any of this. She was going through enough as it was. If I had of told her then maybe she would have let me stay.

My mom went to Roanoke, to visit her sister, Lisa. She got sick again but this time I got a call from my cousin to tell my mom good-bye. I spoke to mom on the phone while I packed my bags. We made the trip in record time.

When we got to the hospital, I stayed almost all week. Wednesday night, I spoke to her at 9:45 PM. We said our good-byes and told her that she could go on without me. At 10PM, the nurse checked on her and she had slipped into a coma. My cousin let me stay at her place until the last night we were there. We had a disagreement that caused friction. So, after the funeral at the cemetery, I rushed backed to my aunt's house and sat in my car and waited until people started arriving. When we went back to the cemetery, I played Sarah McLachlan's song, "In the Arms of the Angel". I played it loud while I cried on her grave.

My brother Roger and I spoke at our mom's funeral. That was the last time we spoke for twenty-five years but for other reason's than my drug use.

I went even further downhill this time around. I began doing cocaine. It kept me awake the whole week after mom passed away. I wrecked my car going down the interstate on cruise control. I fell asleep at the wheel, when I came to, I was looking at the median. I managed to get my car off the road on the right side in between two polls that should have torn my car in two. My mom was definitely watching over me. A state trooper stopped and waited until AAA showed up. I had a kilo of cocaine in my glovebox, but he didn't search my car.

For the next year, I done cocaine and got into lots of trouble because of it. Luckily, I never got arrested because I had just lost both my parents. If it wasn't for Aiden getting me out of the state to Georgia, there's no telling where I would be. He got me off of all the drugs just not alcohol.

I have recently been in therapy dealing with my parents' deaths. This has been very therapeutic for me. I hope that my circumstances can help someone that reads this. There is help out there, all you have to do is ask for it.