No matter how perfect anything or anyone seems at any given time, you MUST remember that you never see the whole story. People (just like icebergs) leave so much under the surface for no one to see unless someone is willing to dive deep enough and figure out what is hidden underneath the seemingly beautiful waves. I have spent the day thinking about just how much I have hidden underneath my surface waves. There is SO much that people don't know about me and honestly, I hate it. With every experience comes a gain of knowledge. I have this knowledge, but why do I find it necessary to hide it from the world? Knowledge can be shared. I'm okay with the world becoming a little more intelligent in dealing with the stormy waters they must endure. So here it is. Here is my life story.
I feel the need to begin this story with a few things I have accomplished in my life. I graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA, I was a varsity captain, I was being recruited for college sports, I was involved in every club that ever existed, I had a great friend group, I did not drink or have sex until I was 18, and I was never a rebel child who tried to run away from home (except that one time I hopped onto my bike at age 11 with a backpack containing one huge bag of chips, rode to the end of the driveway and then turned around because I chickened out). All-in-all I was a textbook perfect child, but my life was FAR from perfect.
I was quite the surprise for my 19-year old unmarried parents. In fact, my mother refers to me as the best mistake she ever made, if this gives you any indication of how the rest of this story is going to go. My parents eventually got married after my birth and decided to have two more children despite the suffering marriage they were now a part of. I love my baby sisters. They are my world, but I do not think my parents were thinking clearly when they decided to create them. My dad worked the night shift and spent a lot of time traveling for job training, sometimes he spent over a year in foreign countries. This was difficult for my mother which I completely understand. Not everyone is built for the "married, but rarely see my husband" life. It takes a special kind of person to be able to handle that. I can't blame her for having difficulty dealing with this situation, but what I do blame her for is what happens next.
My mother cheated on my father with one of the guys she met out at bars while she left my 8-year old self in charge for one for the many overnight babysittings of my little sisters. Who would have known this male mistress would work his way into my life in the form of an evil stepfather. I remember bawling my eyes out when my mom told me that he and she were getting married. I was laying on the bathroom floor disgustingly covering my face with the bathroom carpet, because no matter how gross that rug was, it did not compare to how gross I felt at that moment. That was the moment my young life shattered. My world wasn't my world any more. There was no chance of my mom and dad getting back together and you can't expect any 9 1/2 year old to be okay with that. The one redeeming quality about my soon to be stepdad that my mother had to offer at this time of my despair was, "but he takes you to Chuck-E-Cheese". HE TAKES ME TO FUCKING CHUCK-E-CHEESE. Whoop-dee-doo-da-day! I guess everything is okay in the world because he takes me to a playground of gross sweaty kids playing in a pile of balls and shoving pizza down their throats. The worst part about this is that she knew Chuck-E-Cheese was sacred to me. That was my one escape from the problems in my little girl world. I think the time my mom knew shit was going to hit the fan was when I responded to her mention of the ever so redeeming quality of my future stepdad with, "I SPIT on Chuck-E-Cheese". She proceeded with the marriage despite my effort to make her realize the error of her ways. My sister's and I lives were about to get a LOT different. This was the very beginning of the point in my life where I was forced to grow up too quickly. I am the older sister, I had to take charge of the situation! I was the voice of the little people in my family. Something had to be done and it had to be done quickly.
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