Growing Up Without My Father

To start the story off on why I grew up without my father. I was only 3-years-old and my sister was 2 when our father was in a fatal car accident. I can only tell what it was like for me to grow up without and think that she had a hard time too. I didn't know him very well, just remembered him enough to know he wasn't here. I like to think he is watching over me and proud of how far I've come.

As for my mother, it is hard being a single mother a lot of the time but my mom got lucky and found a man to take care of her and the two of us. He was kind, but very strict. He only wanted us to grow up and do great things. We never really struggled. My step father had a nice job and made enough money for us to live comfortably, and my mother got supplemental income from my father's death.

Most single mothers tend to over compensate with love when the other parent isn't around anymore, but it was like she didn't love at all. Almost like she didn't like me. Now I know most people are like she is just being spoiled or ungrateful, and I'll try my best to tell the story as good as possible but it was a life you had to live to understand. I love my mother, but she is borderline psychotic. I remember from a very young age, maybe 5 or 6, following her everywhere and telling her how much I loved her until she turned to me and said, "If you keep telling me you love me all the time it loses its meaning" so I stopped telling her so much, never understanding why she said that. That was just the beginning of the distancing between us.

I got older into my preteen and early teen years. I wasn't nearly as naive as I was as kid. I picked up on the fact that mom was an alcoholic and not a pleasant. She liked to get physical, yelling, hitting, and throwing anything she could. She would take her "happy pills" which I later found out were not what they were advertised as by her. Her drinking only got worse, the fights got worse, and the distance between us continued to grow. She hung out with boys a few years older than myself and my cousins. They would drink and smoke weed and take the "happy pills." I never thought much of it until I noticed she liked one boy even more than me, always saying, "you are the son I never had" and taking him on trips while telling me there isn't room for me. This hurt me and started a resentment I couldn't control.

Again I state I love my mother despite her faults. At age 15 my mom left the man and we moved to an apartment where she later met someone else who actually would change my life for the better later on. I learned that the "happy pills" were actually Xanax and Vicodin that she actually had an addiction too. I learned she had been doing other drugs in secret as well, like crack and meth. I learned my mother had more than just the acholic issue. The distance continued to grow as we continued to fight. We fought all the time even though I was not a problem child. I got A's and B's, was in National honor society, basketball for three years, volleyball for two, softball for a year, track for two, pantherettes (drill team) for three, national Spanish honor society, and one act play for a year. She griped I was too involved. She hated driving me or picking me up. I was jealous of the other kids' moms always supporting them, pushing them to join, and loving that they were involved. My mom hardly ever showed up at any of my games or dance performances.

I was super close to my grandmother since my father wasn't here and I had problems with my mom. My grandma was my cheerleader and my best friend. We always hung out and she was the one I went to when I needed a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to. When my mom got with the other guy I got close to him. He took me to work with him and we started hanging out all the time going everywhere together. He was the father bond I'd subconsciously wanted and our bond was strong and quick to form. He saw the problems with my mom and he tried to push me to make things work so I did. I tried and tried.

My senior year in high school I wanted to get a job to save for a car, but my mom didn't want me to. So I asked my grandmother to run me by the grocery store to put in an application, and then later that evening I went to a baseball game with a friend. She brought me home. I barely made it in the door and didn't even get to shut it when my mom started yelling about how I applied for a job. I told her I didn't want to tell her for this reason. I had told my step dad, and he accidentally told her, thinking I had already told her because I didn't tell him that I didn't tell her. I just ignored her and went on. I ended up not getting the job, graduated, and couldn't start college because I hadn't completed all the mandatory forms. I still needed my meningitis vaccine but my mom kept putting it off. So in the meantime I continued to work with my stepdad, doing electrical work. I got my shots and turned in the paperwork before I turned 19 but missed the deadline for the spring semester because my mom, who didn't have a job, said "she was busy and couldn't get it done 'til the 10th of January" and the deadline was the 1st.

In February, my sister got a job her senior year of high school around the same time I had tried to get one. My mom was so happy for her and told me, "why can't you be more like your sister, she went and got a job." Again I brushed it off, and went to visit my grandmother and talk about the double standards of the job issue. She told me not to worry to much about it. Later that month my mom told me to call subway about a job, I got busy that day working. We had to dig a trench and had to do some digging with our hands because the space was between a wall and a/c unit. We were tried and hungry when we got home around nine at night. My mother asks if I called subway. I said no, she started yelling, and my step dad and her started fighting too. He went to take a shower and she flipped the main breaker off, he flipped it on and went to pack a bag, she started in on me again grabbing me by my hair and slinging me around. I grabbed her to get her off. I had enough. Step dad pulled us apart and told me to go get some clothes and we left and went to our RV to stay the night. The next day he said that she needed to move out, it was his house, and that things weren't​ working. He gave me the option of staying since I had such a hard time living with her. She moved out. I hoped not living together would improve our relationship.