My Miserable Life (a work in progress)

This is my story………so far

MY MISERABLE LIFE

Happiest time of my life.

IT STARTED THE DAY I WAS BORN.

IT STILL CONTINUES TO THIS DAY

LET’S START AT THE BEGINNING…………………I WAS BORN OCTOBER 01, 1963 TO SOMEONE I DON’T EVEN KNOW. I NEVER WILL.

I was adopted at 18 months of age. I am not sure how old I was when I was given up. I am sure I can look it up but I don’t feel like getting up right now.

The adoption was a good thing at the start. I am sure that my adoptive parents loved me very much. They took good care of me. Gave me whatever a little girl could want, within reason. Loved me like their own.

They had a son, by birth, that was 10 years older than me. We used to play. He taught me to play football and baseball. We would play catch. When he was old enough to drive he would bring me candy home. I really liked that.

I was a happy kid. Until he decided to use me to practice having sex with, and oral sex. I remember it vividly. I am not sure of my age at the time but I do know he had been through puberty and was well developed. At least it seemed so at my age.

He used to pay me off for my silence by giving me silver dollars. I saved them for a while after I grew up. I think I didn’t really realize or acknowledge what they were for until I was older.

I figure that I had to be around 7 or 8 years old because we lived in California at the time. We moved when I was turning 9. And my brother got married when he was 19. He was living at home at the time of the incidents.

We got caught once. I think the episodes ended after that time. I remember how we were in his room on his bed when my mother came into the room. I was pushed off the bed onto the floor opposite the door by my brother and then he tried to explain his way out of it.

I don’t really remember what happened after that except that my brother was sent to stay the summer with our grandparents. Lucky him, he got a vacation at the lake.

I don’t recall anyone having any discussion or talk with me. I sure didn’t receive any kind of therapy. After all it was in the early 70’s and I’m sure not much talked about.

We moved to Illinois in 1972. Things started going well I suppose. I remember it was not long after the move when my mother told me that I was adopted. I remember that I cried. There was a lot of talk in school and among friends about what nationality everyone was and where their parents came from, etc. I guess my questioning got my mother to finally explain things to me.

Well, the second half of grammar school and junior high years were good. I had fun, made decent grades, got into a little trouble. I think it was all pretty good.

Then, right before my freshman year of high school, we moved to Florida.

I liked Florida. warm, sunny. We had a pool. Nice house, nice neighborhood. We went to Disney World, Sea World, Busch Gardens, every tourist place you can go in Central Florida.

I did my first year of high school in Longwood, FL. It was ok. It is hard for me to make friends right off. I was kind of shy. Mostly hung around the boy who lived next door to me.

Now we come to the summer before my Sophomore year, August 1977.

I was awaken by my mom bursting into my bedroom, throwing the dog in. Saying to me in a hurried upset voice………Lisa, something’s wrong with your father.

My heart started beating as fast as I ever remember, up to that time. I was afraid to come out of my room, but I did anyway. I knew they were in the family room, somehow, but I didn’t really look in there.

I ran out the front door across the street. I knew that one of the neighbor ladies was a nurse. But I couldn’t remember which one. I knocked on the door. The lady answered.

I asked her if she was a nurse. No, she wasn’t. I told her that something was the matter with my dad. I guess she went over there. I have to say that my memories are kind of sketchy.

I remember sitting on the big green electrical box, waiting for the ambulance to come. Seemed to take forever. Finally I saw it coming down the street. I stood up and waved to them. Right here!!

They rolled the stretcher in. The neighbor lady came out to get me to come into her house. I wasn’t going anywhere. She was the mom of the boy who was my friend.

I waited until they rolled my dad out into the ambulance. Everything seemed to be alright. He was on the stretcher, not covered up, not a bunch of tubes or anything.

So the neighbor has me come into her house to wait. My mom went with the ambulance, obviously.

A few hours go by and the neighbor says that I can go home now. I walk in the house and my mother and grandmother are there. Lisa, dad died. HOLY SHIT!! I am not sure I knew how to process that. I remember there was a lot of crying. A lot of disbelief.

I can’t even relate any time period now. I just remember being in that house. My Aunt flew in from Indiana to help my mom.

I remember talking to my Aunt late one night. She was laying on the couch in the den and I was sitting on the floor in front of her. I remember her telling me that I had to be strong for my mother. I felt that in a way that was right because I didn’t want my mom to worry or cause her any more pain then she already had. In another way I’m like, WAIT, I am hurting too. My dad just died.

Next, the funeral. Not really a funeral, a church service. My father was cremated.

Now the big black cars pull up to the house. We get in. Go to the church. I was ok until we parked and started walking to the church. All of a sudden I stopped. No, I don’t want to go in. I started crying. I suppose I was making a scene. I didn’t want to make a scene. But then again, I didn’t want to go in either.

I was convinced quickly that it was ok to go in. We walk down the aisle towards the coffin draped with an American flag at the front. My dad was cremated though.

I don’t remember much of the service itself. Once it was over, someone folded the flag into that triangle and gave it to me and my mother. My dad was in the Navy when he was younger.

Back to the house.

We stayed in that house for a little while. Not long. My mother sold it and bought a townhouse. That was a lot closer to my school. The house was too big for the two of us. I suppose it had too many memories for her too.

The townhouse was nice. Two bedrooms upstairs each with its own full bath. I liked my private bathroom

By Christmas that year it was discovered that my mother had ovarian cancer. My family never was the greatest at discussing these things. Or maybe it was just because I was a kid. I remember when my parents would have parties or a family get together…….kids have their place……..not with the adults.

My mom went through treatments. At first my grandmother stayed over. I guess that was when mom had her surgery. Then when my mom was getting chemo they left me to stay by myself. Too much bother for the grandparents. I don’t know, should a 15 year old stay for 2 or 3 days by herself? I remember I would take the car………go visit friends…….go to parties. Ya, great idea a 15 year old taking the car to parties. Well I never got caught. I did scrape the car once against a post, after a party, but I managed to clean it up good enough.

My mom would come home from the treatments and be sick for 3 days. There I was taking care of her. Getting her energy milkshakes, whatever she could eat and keep down. Doing the dishes, the laundry, cleaning up the house, helping her do her lung exercises. I remember my mom being in the bed a lot.

I didn’t mind helping out and doing those things. Looking back though, I think that’s too much for a kid. You would think I would have grown up and matured faster than I did. I read once that people, children, who suffer a loss of a parent kind of get stuck emotionally in that time. I guess I never finished getting the love and attention I feel I deserved.

Somewhere in my junior year we moved up to Indiana to live with my Aunt so she could take care of my mother.

Mom lived in the basement so she could have her privacy. I didn’t go down there as much as I should have. I was scared. I regret that now.

I would visit my brother and his wife and kids on the weekends sometimes. I wasn’t afraid of him. I don’t even think I remembered what he did at that time. I didn’t really remember it until I was in college.

One weekend an ambulance came to pick my mom up to go to the hospital. I went to visit her there. She was really skinny and in a kind of fetal position. She looked almost dead. Little did I know she was almost dead.

I went to my brothers that weekend.

Then the next morning upon waking up, the phone rings. Must have been my Aunt. My sister-in-law comes in the living room, where I slept, and told me that my mother was dead. WHAT THE FUCK!! I can hardly take this.

So, I drove myself home to my Aunts. I was using my moms car and would drive myself to my brothers. Once again, I may be wrong, but maybe just maybe I shouldn’t have driven myself home after that. Whatever!!

Ok, now I really don’t remember what happened. I just remember going to another church service. I saw some people that I knew from before when we lived in Illinois.

I know I didn’t step into another hospital until many years after that. And I didn’t like church too much either.

I didn’t go back to school for a couple of weeks. Everybody looked at me funny. It was a small town and a small school. I kept to myself. Didn’t talk much. I didn’t really have any friends before and I wasn’t really feeling like making any at that time.

Back at my Aunt and Uncles house. They tried to make me feel at home. My Uncle would introduce me to his friends as his daughter. Hello! I’m not your daughter. I have my own parents who just so happen to be dead. Nice try though.

I know that I had to pay rent out of my inheritance to live there, $500.00 a month. And this was in like 1979-80. I personally think that they should have taken care of me for free. Out of respect for my mother, my Aunts sister. Isn’t that what a family should do? Did I really cost that much.?

That next Mothers Day my Aunt wanted me to go to church with her. I didn’t want to. I didn’t have a mother. In fact my mother had died just one month earlier. I didn’t quite feel like celebrating Mothers Day. I tried to tell her this but she just got upset saying, you know it was my sister that died also. Well, I am so sorry, How mature are you? You are a 40 something year old woman who’s sister died and I am a 16 year old kid who’s mother just died, who’s father just died a little over one year before that. I am so insensitive.

Can’t remember if I went with her or not.

I did a lot of partying in high school. I thought I was just doing what it seemed everybody else was doing. Now, I think I was just trying to escape. I didn’t spend much time at home. I did have a lot of fun with my friends. Did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done. I do miss those times and friends.

I pretty much left everything behind when I went to college. I chose a small private college about 2 ½ hour from Lowell, where I lived. It was there that I saw my first counselor. A friend made me an appointment with the school psychologist. She was worried about me, I spent too much time drunk and then I would get depressed and cry. I never cried like that in high school.

That first year of college was hard for me. My aunt just dropped me off and that was it. You know how kids parents take them to their room, say goodbye maybe a hug and a kiss? Nope! I got dropped off in the parking lot.

I went home that Christmas and that is when she told me that at the end of the year I needed someplace to stay. No coming home for the summer like most kids get to do. I didn’t really know what to do. I got a job that summer at the school and got to stay there. I thought I was going to keep going to school there.

After my Christmas visit at “home”, I went back to my college life as normal. Not any happier of a kid, that’s for sure. I went to a lot of frat parties. Indiana State University was in the same town. Once again I was having fun, but doing nothing serious to take care of my life. My grades were not so good and my Aunt told me that I would not be allowed to go back to that school. I had to find another. It wasn’t the money…there was plenty of that even though she said it was because it was too expensive.

Another shock to my system.

She didn’t understand me. How I needed to be close to someone. Everyone that I cared for that I loved kept getting taken away from me. Now I have to leave my school, my friends. To go to some other college, a bigger college, with everyone I don’t know, huge classes. That was not for me. That is why I chose the college I did. I hate being in new situations like that….new schools, new jobs, new people. I am still like that to this day.

Maybe there is something wrong with my Aunt. One day at college I called home, like I did a few times a month, and she told me that my Grandfather died, her father. She didn’t even want me to come back home for that. He had died a few days prior and no one even told me. She did the same thing when my dog that I had from childhood died. So nonchalant, maybe no big deal to her but it was to me. She must have hated taking care of that dog.

Funny, whatever I feel inside right now, I have to keep to myself. No one really wants to hear it. So therefore I will keep writing.

I AM EVERYTHING I NEVER WANTED TO BE

I have no job, no car, no really close friends, no home to call my own. I do have some friends, don’t anyone be offended. But I keep them at some distance for some reason. I wrap myself up in my little world that I am living in at the moment and exclude everything else. I don’t know why I keep doing that, it doesn’t seem to really work out for me.

I wonder how different things, or I, would be if somebody would have recognized that I needed some help when I was a teenager.

I spent what feels like the majority of my time since my parents died in a fog, either from alcohol or drugs. I had a lot of fun, I think. That is what I wanted to do. Nobody could stop me and I don’t think anybody tried. It is only now, at 48 years of age with no drugs and no more drunkenness, that I can reflect back on my life, and I have to say that I am not liking it very much.

I have nothing to show for my life. I have recently been in contact with some of my friends from high school and my twenties and I am jealous of what their lives have become. One friend happily married for years, kids, house, own their own business. Another friend with the same partner for 25 years, they have a son, a house, a business. Such stability and yet I have none.

I am currently in a spot in my life that I don’t know how to get out of. I have no car, no job. I can’t find a job……….how do I fix the rest of my life. I am so tired of living like this. Yes, I have a roof over my head. I can eat and drink. My animals are being taken care of. I have someone that loves me. But I am very discouraged and depressed that I cannot take care of myself. I have been on my own since I was 17. Granted, I did not do the greatest job taking care of myself, but I didn’t have to depend on anybody else to live.

I have recently been laid off, again, from the same temporary, seasonal job that I have had for the past 3 years. I am angry when I am working there. Wondering why I let myself get into this position. I am angry when I get let go every year. Wondering why I am not good enough to be kept on permanently. I went from being a Manager at Wal-Mart to not being able to be hired by anybody. Working for people who I am capable of being supervisor of, yet they don’t even feel that I am able to work in the lowest rungs of their company. Every year I feel worse about it. My life needs to change.

This past year I did “find” my brother and niece on face book. Both are my friends now. My brother just accepted my friend request, which I was surprised at, and my niece and I are developing a relationship. We started writing back and forth on face book then email, then texts. Last week she surprised me and called me. I was nervous when I saw it was her on the phone. What would I say? Would I be my normal nervous self and not be able to say much at all? It was a pleasantly easy conversation. I cannot tell you how happy I am that she called and that I will hopefully have her in my life forever. I am always expecting/used to people just throwing me away when they are tired of me or dissatisfied with me.

Here I sit, months since the last paragraph. Not much has really changed. I haven’t been writing, just don’t feel like it. The happiness is that I am still talking to my niece.

A few months ago while writing and calling back and forth to my niece, I discovered that my brother had molested her also. It was something that I had feared my whole life. I knew that the chance of him doing other incestuous child abuse was great.

Anna, my niece, and I kind of danced around the subject of child abuse. I think we were both afraid to discuss it with the other. She had first told me that her father was verbally and somewhat physically abusive to her and her brothers. That angered me. But when she told me that he had sexually abused her when she was 17 just made me sick. I just started shaking and crying. I was so mad at him I swear if he lived here and I had a gun I probably would have shot him. (my only homicidal thought)

I hate my brother SO much!! There is this song by Godsmack “I Fucking Hate You”.

I Fucking Hate You lyrics

Songwriters: Erna, Salvatore;

For everything you do, I’d like to swallow you
And everyday I’m gonna blame you
Even if you justify every fucking bullshit lie
It only makes me want to break you

You pull me down and you crucify my name
You make me insane
It’s broken now don’t ever look my way
Don’t even think I’m playin’

‘Cause I fucking hate you, you’re such a liar
And I love to hate you, you’re all the same to me

When you repeated me take advantage of me
The only thought I get of you sickens me
Everybody knows your fate, you’re everything I fucking hate
And I’m everything that you could never be

You pull me down and you crucify my name
You make me insane
It’s broken now don’t ever look my way
Don’t even think I’m playin’

‘Cause I fucking hate you, you’re such a liar
And I love to hate you, you’re all the same to me
I fucking you hate you, you’re such a liar
And I love to hate you, you’re all the same to me

Fuck you, fuck you
Fuck you, fuck you

You pull me down and you crucify my name
You make me insane
It’s broken now don’t ever look my way
Don’t even think I’m playin’

‘Cause I fucking hate you, you’re such a liar
And I love to hate you, you’re all the same to me
And I fucking hate, you’re such a liar
And I love to hate you, you’re all the same to me

Fuck you
(Fuck you)
Fuck you
(Fuck you)
Fuck you
(Fuck you)
Fuck you
(Fuck you)

That is exactly how I feel about my brother. I play that song a lot when I think of him and visa versa.

O.K., back to the front. (Metallica)

1986.….My Aunt informed me that I was no longer allowed to talk to her and my Uncle. I had sufficiently pissed them off with my bad behavior. Great! Now I don’t even have any fake parents. Next is the conversation with my brother. He and his wife have sided with my Aunt and I am not to contact them either.

What the hell?

It was close to Christmas time and I had my tree up, decorated with presents for my niece and nephews. I threw away all of their presents. I was already lonely enough around the holidays.

Christmas

So I was trying to “work” on myself. I had started studying the bible. I was happy and excited about it and about the new friends I had made. Almost like a new family. I remember talking to my Grandmother about it a few times. Next thing I know my aunt calls me and tells me not to talk to grandma anymore, that I was just upsetting her.

Doesn’t anybody care? Did no one have any feelings about me? Did you even think that I might have a problem and maybe try to help me? No. Let’s just kick Lisa out of the family until she straightens up.

August 1987 I move to Florida with a friend.

I called my brother before I left. They, he and his wife, didn’t really want to talk to me.

I mostly remember a lot of yelling on their part and a lot of crying on mine. He told me that I was lucky to get anything left to me from my parents because I wasn’t even part of the family because I was adopted.

After my mom died and I went to college, my aunt was tired of storing the items I had picked out that were my parents. My brother and I did split everything and we managed to pick out the items we liked amicably. My aunt decided to ask my brother to hold onto my items for me until I was done with school and got my own apartment. Needless to say, after I did get my own apartment and contacted my brother about retrieving my items, he told me that he was not giving them to me and they were his. Asshole!