Everything Changes

“The only thing that stays the same is that everything changes.” A quote by someone but boy was I ever intimately familiar with that concept. I had already moved several times in my young life. Up until fifth grade most had been before I was five and so didn’t significantly impact my life. That was until the Fall of 2005 when we had to move from Minnesota to Oklahoma. Mom and Dad had really rubbed salt in the wounds with that one. Not only did they make us move states but we also had to move on Halloween night. My older brother and I didn’t get to trick or treat one last time in our small newly developed neighborhood full of new young families. It was the ideal place growing up. We were safe to walk by ourselves and most houses had kids so participated in holidays like Halloween. Making it the ideal place to go door to door getting candy from strangers. That move however wasn’t even the biggest change to happen in my life, merely a precursor.

It was a culture shock moving from Minnesota to where we lived in Oklahoma. I had always been a bit of an oddball and unfortunately always the fat kid in class. Which meant I liked the indoors and basically hated sports. Also we come to find out that there are big differences in education standards between Minnesota and Oklahoma. This meant my brother and I were grades ahead of the kids we were going to be taking classes with. An example of it was when we enrolled in classes and my brother was taking intro to physics in ninth grade and the administrators asked ‘Intro to physics is that like real physics?’ They then proceed to inform my mom that they only offer physics in twelfth grade and only a handful of students take it. So let’s add nerd to the growing social outcast checklist. To top it off my family, to my dad’s disapproval, were the Christmas Easter type of Christans that had moved to the bible belt. I personally was never fond of church even from a young age and only had a forced connection to it through family members. Needless to say, I had more than a several things working against me when I started classes in a small tight knit school where almost everyone was more passionate about football and Christ than they were about, well, anything else. It showed in the funding when it came to the football team getting a new field and the art department struggling to get supplies. Our reference art bin was overly picked through magazines that already had the good stuff cut out of them. I suffered for several years with the only thing staying the same was that everything always changed. What few friends I managed to make moved away leaving me to deal with the bullying alone. Unfortunately for me far bigger changes were still to come.

It was towards the end of the ninth grade when my parents sat me down and told me they were getting a divorce. It took me completely by surprise at the time. Subconsciously I knew my parents didn’t have the best relationship due to the nature of my father’s job, he was a mechanic for a cargo airplane and traveled twenty days out of the month on it. That absence also meant I didn't have the best relationship with him either even though I desperately wanted one. Thankfully for my brother and my sake they separated amicably and refused to talk negatively about the other letting us form our own opinions. That however was the only thing they did right when it came to the divorce. My dad moved to Arkansas, a four hour trip from where we lived, to be closer to his side of the family. It felt like ink had just dried on the divorce papers when my dad had started dating a new woman. My brother and I didn’t even have the chance to process the grief of the loss of our family unit when my dad brought us to go and meet his new woman.

This woman was the definition of not judging a book by it’s cover. She was kind and overly ecstatic when she first met my brother and I. If only for my sake it hadn’t just been a facade. I was informed she has four kids, three sons and a daughter. The daughter was less than a year younger than me and her youngest son was roughly my brother's age. The two older sons were over the age of eighteen and out of highschool. Over the summer she had moved her and her two youngest kid’s lives from Washington to go and live with my dad in Arkansas in a small old three bedroom two bath trailer. During that time my mom and I made the decision to try online homeschooling. The decision was made partly because my school life was garbage from the bullying with no teacher intervention but also because it'd give me the flexibility to see my dad when he was home for the ten days out of the month. So for the first couple of months of the semester I’d spend three weeks with my mom and one week with my dad couch surfing.

Well come to learn the hard way that online schooling is not for me. I had fallen behind in a lot of subjects and my social anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t reach out to the online teachers that were there to help. I didn’t have the social safety net to help me get through. All my friends had moved away and there were never any nearby family members that I was close to. My brother wasn’t an option either. He and I were never close and he had just dropped out and got his GED so he could attend a technical college in avionics. The only person I had was my mom and she was swamped with work and her own depression. With all these factors stacked against me and my deep desire to have a bond with my dad I decided to go and move in with him and the woman that would come to make my life a living hell. By this time the woman’s son expressed how unhappy he was and how he wanted to graduate with friends so he had moved back up north to live with some family to finish out the school year leaving a room empty for me.

When I first moved in with my dad everything was okay for the most part. No real problems between me and my dad's woman's family. Most of my problems still laid with my lack of relationship between me and my father. One of the highlights now being my sixteenth birthday where he thought going out with his brother to a restaurant I didn't like instead of spending the day with me was a good idea. School however was finally going well. I had a group of friends, was making almost straight A’s, and about to have my first in person boyfriend. Things however started to change again and for the worse. It had just been a little over six months when my dad had the brilliant idea of getting married to the woman he immediately started dating after his divorce. My now stepmother, whom I’d come to call stepmonster, and I started to rub each other the wrong way. This caused tension in the household. It felt like walking on eggshells.

I was raised to be independent and also absorbed both my mom and dad’s four S’s skepticism, sarcasm, snark, and smart assery. All of which my stepmonster hated because it prevented her from being able to control me like she did with her other children. One of which, she told me, she threw down a set of stairs after calling her a bitch I guess as a means of intimidation. Me not immediately complying with her drove her mad. This compounded the problems she was already having which would later be taken out on me. She was socially isolated after moving from Washington to Arkansas and my dad was still gone twenty days out of the month. This led her to relying on the church for comfort. Most of her comfort was found there and so I was forced to go despite hating it. This caused the tension between us to grow even faster.

To make home matters even worse for me was that my step sister and I didn’t always get along. This was mostly due to the fact she always had either a friend or her boyfriend over almost every night which caused me to get little sleep with their noise and the thin trailer walls. It often felt like it was two against one while living there. My dad made for a poor referee which caused me to feel like I was hung out to dry and alone. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. Living with my mom my home life was great but my school life was trash but now living with my father it was reversed and I didn’t know which I hated more. Everything that was happening at home was made worse by the fact that my father knew about the verbal and mental abuse that was taking place. One night while he was out of the states he called to talk to me. I was crying while I told him about something that happened between me and my stepmonster when she burst into my room and started to verbally abuse me. He heard what she said and talked to her about it but nothing really changed. I still wasn’t being protected, not even by my own father. Little did I know the biggest worst change was still to come.

I lived in that trailer for almost a year cooking, cleaning, taking care of the multiplying animals that we couldn’t afford to get fixed all while getting almost straight A’s and staying out of trouble while maintaining a relationship with my boyfriend. I only had one mental breakdown where I repeatedly slammed my wrist against a concrete wall to feel something other than my mental anguish but other than that I felt like a redneck Cinderella. My relationship with my father in that time hadn’t grown any stronger despite all my efforts. If anything it was weaker. Even when he was home I was last on the totem pole when it came to his attention. My step sister even got his attention before I did a lot of the time. The only reason I was staying at that point was because of how well my school life was going. I didn’t want to leave my boyfriend and go back to the shit storm that is my old school.

However that choice was made for me one night when my dad was out of the states for work. It happened when I was part way through the second semester of my eleventh grade and I had just spent the day before home sick with a cold. My step sister, stepmonster and I were in the living room watching Bad Girls Club when one of the girls started to talk about Jesus. This somehow sparked my stepmonster into loudly saying, to the point of shouting, “Jesus” over and over again in a form of praise and worship. I being a smart ass who wasn’t feeling well turned to her and said “Ow my ears are bleeding can you please be quieter.” That little sentence sent my stepmonster into a frenzy.

Next thing I knew she was up in my face demanding my cell phone. I, being a teenager whose phone was their lifeline, refused and tried to keep it out of her reach when she went to grab it. That’s when for the first and only time did it get physically abusive. She twisted my wrist until I forced to let go, otherwise I would have risked breaking something. I would realize days later that she actually sprained my wrist in the process. Once she had my phone she stormed off to her room and called my mom. She cursed my mother out before telling her to come pick me up because she wasn’t going to allow me to live there any longer. My stepmonster then handed me my phone back with my mom still on the phone who told me I need to start packing and that she’ll be there in about four hours to come get me.

I then, with tears in my eyes, proceeded to pack all my belongings into trash bags. Everything that is besides my six drawer dresser. Silverlining for me was that I had already moved so many times in my life that I had downsized my belongings to the point it all could fit in half a dozen black trash bags. My mom being in mama bear mode made the four hour drive in three and a half. Partly due to it being night and no traffic but the other bigger part being blind protective rage. Once she got there she helped me load my trash bags of belongings into her car. Lucky for my stepmonster that she stayed in her room when my mom came, otherwise my mom would have been wearing the color orange. My mom wanted to go home that night but instead got us a hotel room so she could withdraw me from school the next day and give me a chance to say goodbye to my friends and boyfriend.

That next morning I, with my eyes puffy and sore from crying, went to the high school to withdraw and return all my books. It was just before first period was going to start and my boyfriend happened to be walking by when this was taking place. He was thankfully allowed to come with me while I stopped by all my classes to drop off my textbooks. When I told my teachers what was happening many of them expressed feelings of sadness at my sudden unexpected departure. Some of them happened to come across my mom while she was withdrawing me and told her it was a joy having me in their classes. Those moments gave me and my boyfriend a few more precious minutes with each other before being separated. Those minutes, however, didn’t last and I unfortunately had to leave.

After that sleepless night and exhausting morning we made the trip back home to my mom’s place. Those first few days I felt like a lost little puppy dog and stuck to my mom’s side when she was home. I was emotionally distraught as my father had done nothing to bring me any comfort. I didn’t feel like a priority to him and that I wasn’t good enough. This feeling would only be cemented when my father had the bright idea to bring everyone with him when he came to drop off my dresser that I couldn’t take with me when I was kicked out. Instead of him and I getting to sit and have a heart to heart I was forced to face my abuser. The first thing she said after hello was that she wasn’t going to tolerate my disrespect when I didn’t verbally acknowledge her back instead giving her a simple head nod. Thankfully my father did quickly pull her away when she said that but we immediately went to a restaurant to have dinner. I was made to sit at a table with my abuser and eat when all I wanted was my dad to myself. His betrayal sealed the greatest change in my young life.

I was no longer daddy’s little girl, I was merely something to be tossed to the side and forgotten about. I had taken care of the house, got near perfect grades, and stayed out of trouble but it wasn’t enough. I did everything I could do right and it still somehow wasn’t good enough. It felt like I wasn’t worth his love and protection and he did nothing in the time after to make me feel any different. His betrayal made me realize two things however. The first being that I’d never be good enough for him. The second and most importantly being that the only thing to never change in my life is my mother’s love and support. Even with a thousand lifetimes I’d never be able to repay her for all that she has done for me. But I try everyday with the strength of the knowledge that I’m worth it because of her.