Story of My Life

FOREWARNING: THIS STORY MAY HAVE TRIGGERS SO TRIGGER WARNING BEFORE READING. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Everyone has always told me that they think I have an interesting life. But do I? Let's all find out in this little story I have created all based on true events.

I grew up in a small town called Henagar, Alabama. As a baby, I didn't know much about anything. Obviously. Growing up and gaining knowledge of who I was as a person, I had found out that I was adopted. I didn't think anything about being adopted growing up. I didn't really care about my biological family, simply because there had to have been some reason that I was put in the system at birth. There had to have been some reason why my biological family didn't want me or couldn't keep me.

As I get into my early years, I start wondering who my parents were, why was I put in the system? I still didn't care about them. I just want to know the whole story. When I was old enough to understand things, I decided to ask my adoptive parents some questions about my family. They knew some of the family due to when they went to legally adopt me in court, my biological family had to be there.

After getting some answers, I knew I didn't want anything to do with my biological family. But it took a turn. I had two sisters. I sorta grew up with one of them. She was also put into the system. My adoptive parents started fostering her but had decided they could not continue with the fostering of her so they made way to where someone in the biological family could adopt her. She is my younger sister. I had another sister. She was a little bit older I believe. I didn't know much about her. I still to this day don't know much other than her name. One day, we had received a letter in the mail with my name on it. I opened it up and it ended up being an invitation to the funeral of my older sister. I was eight or nine years old at this time. I didn't end up going because I just had so much going on with school and I lived too far away to attend.

During the mix of all of this happening, my adoptive parents got divorced. I went to live with my mother instead of my father. I got to see my father just about every weekend, if not every two weeks. It was fun going to see my dad. We would play games, we would go to grandmothers house, we would just have a lot of fun while we could. Then, my parents started dating other people. I didn't know much about who my dad was dating, but my mom was dating this one guy. I really liked him. Well actually, I liked him because of his dog. She was the sweetest golden retriever ever! He was a pretty cool dude though. He would have been perfect for mom and I but he said he didn't want to raise another kid. He had a son of his own who was in college when he and my mom were dating. My mom had to make the decision to leave him because I was more important to her than he was. Thankfully.

After him, my mom stopped dating for a while just so she could focus on mine and her relationship and her work. She worked a super stressful office job. She would come home every day and be super stressed out, but she would still make time to cook and help me with my homework and everything that was going on in my life as well. Up until one day, this day was thanksgiving. We spent every thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle's house in Knoxville, TN. My aunt and uncle had invited someone who they consider a family friend this thanksgiving. As soon as he and my mom met, it was like love at first sight. He would come over a lot and play with mom and I and he would sometimes bring his daughter over. I really liked her. We became besties the first night. He even let her spend the night with me on the night we met! He was super cool. I liked the both of them very well, until I figured out what was going on. I grew up basically having all my mom's attention with it being just her and I for so long, so when she wasn't giving me all that attention like I was used to, it was just a burst of reality that hit me. They were dating.. and I didn't like the fact that he was taking up all of my attention. I started to dislike him for a good while.

A few years later, my mom and him decided to get married. I was going to be stuck with this man that was taking everything I had gotten used to all those years alone with mom. Well... there isn't anything I can do about it now. But as time went on, he started to grow on me. I was just excited because I now had a sister that I could annoy all the time. The wedding was super cool though. They got married in the Florida Keys. We had all my favorite family members at the wedding. After we finished the whole wedding thing and reality set in, we decided to move from where we were living to this fancy neighborhood. We had to build the house we were going to be living in and let me tell you, IT WAS FANCY!!!! My stepdad had designed it from the ground up. It was like a small mansion! we had a movie room, a bar, a pool and a hot tub.. everything a kid could ever want! My now stepsister and I even had our own rooms! We didn't have to share a room anymore.

I'm approaching my time to be in high school. Im thirteen, turning fourteen soon at the time. These are the years where life starts to get rough. When I turned fourteen, mental illness decided to take over my brain. My innocent little fourteen year old brain. I tried to kill myself. I hated myself so much that I just did not want to live anymore. I didn't look how society wanted me to look. I was considered not normal because of the things that I liked. I didn't have the "normal" family life because my parents were divorced and I was adopted. I just didn't get treated the same as a kid my age who had the same birth parents and their parents still being together.

After I decided that I had more to live for, at this time of my life, I had decided that I wanted to be true to who I was. I was who I was and nobody could get in the way of that. I decided to come out of my shell and first come out to myself. I liked girls. I had known this before because I had this childhood best friend. We had a bond that nobody could step through. But I had felt that there was more than just our inseparable bond we had. I didn't know how to explain it even to myself. Sadly, her and I had fallen out because I had to move.

Now that I am reflecting back on it, I knew I had a crush on her. She made me realize that I liked girls. But it wasn't as glorified as it is by my generation and younger as it is now. I kept it to myself though because I knew it wouldn't be the same if i decided to tell people. My family especially. My family has always been the church going, super religious, southern baptist, women wore dresses and men wore suits and ties type people. I knew in the back of my mind that if I had said I liked women, satan would send them hell-hounds to eat me alive. But hey, at least I came out to myself right? I ended up making some friends in high school. Really good friends actually. I ended up coming out to the ones I had all my trust in not to tell my family. That was the best thing I could have done because I didn't have to suffer in silence anymore.

During my high school years, I had a lot of here and there relationships with people. Rather it be dating or just plain ole friendships, I knew who were the real ones from the start. I not only had some good times throughout high school, but I also had some really bad ones. I lost friends due to a certain person I had liked and started dating at the time. I look back at it now because it honestly wasn't worth all the things I went through during that period of time. I had almost been in a fight because of that also. If you know me, you know good and well I would have never laid a hand on anybody. I couldn't even hurt a fly. A lot of things have changed since those days. Mentally and physically. I still wasn't fully out of the closet. In result of not being fully out of the closet, I had to hide my feelings. I started dating guys to cover my tracks to keep myself close to my family. I was afraid that if I came out to them, they would disown me and make me leave. I was young, I needed them to not only keep a roof over my head but I just needed them because I love my family. I wouldn't trade them for anything.

As time passes by, I slowly start to decide not to date dudes anymore. I dated my first girl my junior year of high school. I met her in this class we had together. We were originally best friends. Well, we had to be at least. The class we had together was called JROTC. It was an army class that you could choose to take. They had rules in the class similar to the military so it was hard to date people if they were in your class. If they weren't in your class, it didn't really matter. But we kept it strictly friends, until she moved schools. We had decided to take it to another level and start dating. i had never been happier. Thats when I realized it was all true and not just a fantasy thing. Her and I didn't end up lasting long due to we weren't able to see each other because the both of us weren't out to our families.

I had went through the rest of the time in high school just me doing me. I liked people here and there, but just quit dating all together. It was time for college to come around. The year is 2018. I just turned eighteen and I was ready to get the show on the road. I had a best friend that I brought from high school into my college years with me also. I was so thankful for her. She was literally the person that kept me out of depression. I don't know what it was about her, but she just made every day worth getting up for. She was literally my pride and joy. We had hung out basically all day every day all throughout the summer up until college hit. But college didn't stop us from hanging out. We had mainly the same classes so we just sat with each other and then when it was time for us to part for classes, we did so and met up after. It didn't take long for us to realize that college wasn't for us. We started skipping classes and just doing random things until it was time for us to "get out of our last class". We had went on a day that we could make up things that we missed in class but we didn't go to make things up in class. We went to school, then made the weird random decision to go get tattoos together. We left to go to the tattoo shop and sure enough we got tattoos. We thought we were the coolest in town. After that day, we had just realized that we needed to just get a job and quit the college life because we are grown ups now. We still spent so much time together. We took trips together. We did everything together. She was truly my best friend. One thing led to another and some unfortunate circumstances came in and destroyed everything her and I had together.

I regret every day for not trying hard enough and fighting for our friendship. It was the worst day of my life. It was the day of my birthday, I invited a seemingly jealous friend to my party. One thing led to another and to sum it all up, my best friend and I sadly had to go opposite ways.For the rest of that day, I couldn't put into words how sad I was without her. But life had to move on. I had to move on.

Fast forward a couple years. It's year 2019. I got this sick new job. I am really close with the "seemingly jealous friend" who also works at this job. Her and I become best friends. One day something unfortunate once again had happened with my family and I which resulted in me moving out of my parents house and moving in with my best friend and her parents and brother. Life seemed to be going perfect. I decided that I was ready to get back out into the dating world. It was a hassle starting back. I went through so many roller coasters of emotions with some of these women I had liked.

Finally, my life turns around. I got on a dating app called Taimi, Swiped a few, then matched with this BEAUTIFUL melanin queen of a lady she is. Everything about this woman just made everything feel right. We had decided one night to FaceTime because we wanted to talk to each other and also make sure we weren't catfishes because we all know about them people catfishing. We both obviously were real people. During that call, she asked me to be her girlfriend. I had to say yes because I fell in love with this woman over the first call we had.

We kept dating and as her and I were dating, I had noticed some behavioral changes in my best friend. The vibes just weren't as they used to be, but we went along with it. My best friend and I had decided to move out of her parents house and get our own apartment so we can live more independently and freely. So we got our apartment and moved in. We had adopted a cat during the time living with her parents, so we brought him to the apartments with us as well. We loved the apartment and independent life. Everything was going so smooth until we had met this new group of people that started working with us. My best friend became best friends with them. I didn't really care because I knew where her and I stood in our friendship. Plus I had a girlfriend so I had it all made.

I had invited my girlfriend over one day and she spent the night with me. We had woke up the next morning and we had decided to get married. We had went to the courthouse and got married. we didn't invite anyone to the wedding but one person as a witness. It was the best day of my life. Until I got a call from my best friend. She had seen my location and asked what I was up to and I had told her we had just got married. She was bashing on us, saying we were so stupid and all these other things. I thought she would be happy for me. I thought so wrong. on top pf that, I didn't realize how toxic these new friends were. They were feeding lies and just all types of made up stories about me to my best friend... and my best friend.. we had known each other since 2014.. she believed these people whom she just met over a friend she has had over six years. All of this resorted in my best friend hating me.

She moved out of the apartment that we had gotten together, I had lost my job, the rent was $1105, we had to pay the electric bill, nothing was included in the rent.. how was I, unemployed, going to pay all of this? She wasn't going to help because she didn't live there anymore. The end result in all of this was.. I got evicted. I had nowhere to go. I had 30 days to get my stuff and get out of the apartment. I had told my new wife the whole situation I was going through and if I didn't have her, I would have been out on the streets. But she got us an apartment together so we could finally live together like we had planned. Only bad thing about it was I couldn't bring my cat along with me. I either had to have someone I trusted to take him or I had to give him to my best friend who at this time is my ex best friend.. I really didn't want to do that so I tried everything I could to find someone to take him. My ex best friend had sent me a message saying she will take me to court over my cat if she doesn't get him, so I had no choice but to give him to her. I couldn't afford the court fees.

All of this happening at once was the worst thing I could have ever had happen to me. But I at least had a roof over my head and someone to love. It is now july of 2022 and we are currently still married, we have a dog named piglet, I am blessed enough to not have to work so I get to stay at home with piglet and i have all the time in the world to do whatever whenever. I am blessed to have people who care about me in my life. I have found out who was real and who was fake and had dropped everyone who was giving off negative energy. I have found something I take so much pride and joy in doing. I have realized my self worth, my sense of being, and my happiness.

The moral of this story is to show that you can go through so much in life but in the end, when you have reached your goal, when you find who you are, it gets better. Life gets so much better. Yes, I still get depressed.. but that doesn't mean to stop there. There's so much more to life than what you're living in. Make the best of your life. Do what scares you. Overcome your fears. Try something new. Anything. Just DON'T GIVE UP! Your life is precious to someone even when you don't think it is. I promise. I have lived to tell you this so all I ask is for you to believe me and believe in yourself.

With all the love <3 - AMY