Glad you made it.  Ok shall we begin?

As I said before, I was born in 
Springfield, Massachusetts.  My mom was
young when she married.  The man
she chose to marry, was not parenting 
material.  To make matters worse, 
he was physically and mentally abusive.  
My mom did all she could to maintain 
the failing relationship because she 
felt that my brother and I needed a father
no matter what it cost her in the long run.  
Admirable I agree, but not exactly the 
smartest thing to do.  But then again, 
who am I to talk. But I'm getting ahead 
of myself here.  When I was only 2 years old, 
I witnessed one of the acts of physical abuse 
by my father to my mother.  Unfortunately, 
my mother didn't find out until many years 
later that I had witnessed this event.

When I was 4 yrs old, my mother finally made that 
painful choice.  She was terrified that my 
brother and I would grow up without a mother 
if she stayed in the relationship, so she left.  
That took a lot of courage.

We moved in with my grandparents, 
and I ended up growing up without the 
presence of my biological father in my life. 
For some unknown reason, my father chose
to forget he had children.  Every now and then
we would end up with a visit from him, but those
visits were few and far between.  I can actually
count the number of times that I saw my father
while growing up on one hand.  Each time
he would appear in my life, he'd want us to put
him first, above and beyond anything we had
going on extra curricular wise.  I was
supposed to give up bowling, choir,
girl scouts, you name it.  All because he
decided one day to reappear in my life.
We knew it wouldn't last, and I wasn't
about to stop living my life, because he
decided one day that he was going to play
"daddy" again.  Needless to say, this lasted
until I was a senior in high school.

 By this point, I was about as well adjusted as I
could be, all things considered.  In addition to
the lack  of my biological father's presence
in my life, I was contending with physical
abuse from my brother, and moving around a lot
because my mother was constantly trying to
better our lives.  My grandfather did all he could
 to be a father to my brother and I, but he could
never be the father to us that we really needed.


As a result of all of this, I was forced to grow up
a lot sooner than I should have.  This caused me
many problems throughout my life, because I had
a lot of difficulty relating to people my own age.
I was unable to really "enjoy" being a child. 
I had to pick up where my mom left off and more
or less raise myself and my brother, as well as
take care of the cooking, cleaning and other
household tasks. My mother was working
2 jobs just to keep food on the table, a roof over
our heads, and clothes on our backs.
A part of me resented my mother's lack of
involvement in my life, and it made me turn more
and more to my grandmother.  A girl needs her
mother her whole life, for one reason or another
and here I was having to fight for the attention
I felt I should have been getting, but wasn't. 
It wasn't until I became a parent myself that
 I  began to understand and really learn to
appreciate everything she had done while I was
growing up.