Sixteen and On My Own
We moved to Atlanta when I was 14 years old. The distance from my father, whom we left in SC, was helpful. I didn’t see him or talk to him very often during my high school years, although every contact I remember having with him was stressful and usually ended in a fight. He took every opportunity to malign my mother and her family and, as I grew angrier and angrier with his brainwashing attempts, I became stronger and stronger in standing up to him. Since my father is not one to be crossed, we didn’t get along well. If it wasn’t about my mother, it was criticisms of me or someone else. He was always negative and it was miserable to be around him. I just wanted him out of my life.
I remember when he called to tell me he was getting married again, a couple of years after my parents’ divorced. I asked him who he was marrying and he told me it was between two women, but one of them was a sloppy housekeeper, so he was leaning toward the neater one. My father is one who must have a woman to take care of him, so it was no surprise. I wondered what kind of woman would marry under those circumstances. I didn’t go to the wedding.
Mom got a job in Atlanta, and threw herself into her job and an active social life. She was hardly ever home. We struggled to get by on her small salary and had to do without luxuries. She couldn’t even afford to buy furniture so we had only what little we took in the divorce. My mom refused to fight my dad in court, therefore he got most of the possessions and agreed to only a minimal amount of child support, with which he thought we should be able to live like kings. I remember that our living room furniture was actually lawn chairs for a long time. I didn’t care. I was proud of my mom for not stooping to Dad’s level and for making it on her own.
At first, I tried to make a fresh start in my life, putting behind the bad habits I had started in SC. But I had too much freedom, too little supervision, and way too much heartache that I wanted to escape. In time, I found the “bad” kids and joined the party. My sister often came along with me, even though she probably didn’t want to follow my path, because she didn’t want to be alone. I completely surrendered myself to the life of escapism.
After struggling for two years to make it on her own, my mother regretfully conceded the need for help. She decided that we needed to move in with her parents in Pensacola. I did not want to move again, but I knew we had no choice. We just couldn’t get by on Mom’s salary. My mother, having to this point been carefully oblivious to my increasingly wild lifestyle, was finally forced to face the problem one night when I came home quite evidently drunk. As a result, my sister and I were immediately sent to Pensacola, while my mother stayed in Atlanta to work. It was, no doubt, a relief to hand over her troubled daughter to the parents she trusted. But my poor grandparents, having raised three sweet daughters in the innocent 1950s, were not prepared for dealing with a problem like me. It was two years before my mother actually joined us in Pensacola. She worked and lived in Atlanta, and even became involved in a serious relationship there. It didn’t take long for me to fall right back in with the bad crowd. They are never hard to find. And I needed escape more than ever. Because, while I might have told myself it didn’t really matter to me, the truth is that, while my mother had long been something of an absent parent, this time I truly was abandoned.
I wasn’t ready for the story to end. I was just starting to get to know the girl in the story.
hey, okay so i guess it’s okay if you share the memories with me, since i have none. i don’t really remember us going to p’cola before mom. i remember she was working diasters and wasn’t around, but i didn’t remember her staying in atlanta. your rememberances force me to realize my childhood is apparently lost forever. just random things here and there, and most of what i know is because you remember. love you!
hey, okay so i guess it’s okay if you share the memories with me, since i have none. i don’t really remember us going to p’cola before mom. i remember she was working diasters and wasn’t around, but i didn’t remember her staying in atlanta. your rememberances force me to realize my childhood is apparently lost forever. just random things here and there, and most of what i know is because you remember. love you!