Hi, my name is Misery.
Starting this post with a super quick recap, lol.
Papaw died
Kids are mean unless you pay them not to be
Nanny married a FRIEND (lol i can laugh about it now thank You, Jesus)
I had a couch to myself
Moving forward lol
I went back and forth about who I was going to live with (like I had a choice lol) At first, I wanted to stay with my dad. When nanny got married she left the trailer I grew up in to him and it was familiar. My dad and I didn’t vibe, but I was willing to deal with it rather than go to the unknown. Living with my mom was out of the question because I barely knew her at this point. Our relationship had always been so on again and off again that I really didn’t even know who she was. I also didn’t speak to her at this point so even if I had wanted to go live with her, I didn’t really know how to go about asking. I really wanted to live with my mammaw and papaw (nanny’s mom and dad who lived beside us) but when I brought it up to them I could sense their hesitancy…so rather than pressuring them to make a decision I knew they really didn’t want to make…I made the decision to not bring it up anymore.
I’ve cried OVER my dad a million times in my life, but I’ve only cried FOR him one time. The day I left everything I knew to move in with nanny and her new family…I cried like a baby for my dad. I remember him not saying much and all I wanted was for him to say “STOP! She can stay with me!” If he had said that I would’ve been out of the car in half a millisecond and my life would have probably been a lot different…good different or bad different, I’m not sure. Instead, I got the look I knew all too well. I call it the this is uncomfortable I want this to be over already look. It’s my dad’s signature look bless his heart lol.
So I went with nanny to the hell that was called the double wide. This place gave me the creeps. It was in the BACKWOODS and it got so dark at night that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face while outside. It felt like a whole days trek to get to town and I was used to living right outside of town so that took a lot of getting used to.
I knew how my life was going to go after my first night at the double wide when my nanny’s two step sons had their room all decked out and decorated. They had their beds and furniture all nicely fit in their room and it looked so cozy. I walked past their room to the end of the double wide and opened my door to find an air mattress sitting on plywood flooring (nervous laugh).
I should’ve ran away right then lol.
It was all down hill from there. I never saw my neurologist again.I can’t really tell you why. I didn’t go to the doctor regularly. If my glasses broke, I didn’t have the privilege of getting new ones, I had to tie them together with fish wire and live with it. As a matter of fact, I didn’t see a neurologist again until I almost went blind from a pseudo tumor flare up right after the girls were born. I didn’t see the family I left on the hill much and regardless of how they felt about me, I missed them. The only silver lining in moving was I got away from the creeps that liked me TOO much. It was always either people didn’t like me at all or liked me TOO much. It was never in between.
I was still on homebound when we moved but the county we moved to was really poor and it didn’t have the resources my old county had so eventually after the homebound teacher was a no show for a solid month, the school made the choice to do away with my homebound and require me to come to school.
I tried everything I knew to get out of that one lol. I pretended to trip and fall down a hill. I made my it look like a gnarly injury with purple eyeshadow. I would’ve got away with it, too, if the school hadn’t threatened truancy so nanny took me to the office to prove my foot was basically broken and when the teacher touched my foot glittery purple eyeshadow came off on her finger lol. Nanny was shook. She had no idea that I was faking it lol.
I ended up going to school, but still got in trouble for truancy because I couldn’t get to school on time. I got smart with the judge while in court so he ordered me to ride the 6am bus 2 miles to school every morning to ensure I would be on time. I didn’t know he was doing me a favor at that time. I was mad cause I had to wake up earlier but I’m glad now that he did that for me.
I’ve never understood why the kid gets in trouble for truancy. Shouldn’t the person responsible for the kid get the stern talking to? Lol I mean I was 13 I couldn’t drive myself to school lol.
After awhile I realized that the new school wasn’t as bad as my last one. It was much smaller and had less kids so there were not near as many bullies at this school. The worst thing I got called at this school was “Merina McDonalds” and I couldn’t even get mad at that one lol. It was so stupid that even I laughed when they said it lol. These kids’ vocabulary wasn’t anything like the kids’ from my last school. For some reason, most of the new kids at the new school ended up liking me. One time the bullying was brought up to the principal by a kid who felt bad for me. The principal called me in to ask me about it and I denied it all. I lied and told him nobody made fun of me and that everyone was super nice and welcoming. I think they came to like me because I didn’t rat them out. I had learned that telling on kids like that only made it worst for me when adults weren’t around.
I thrived at that school fort a short while and found myself excited to get to school and not excited to get home in the afternoons. My nanny’s husband and I didn’t vibe at all and at first I didn’t get a long with nanny’s step sons either. Eventually I came to really like one of them and we became pretty good friends but it took awhile to get to that point.
That school semester went by far too fast. Before I knew it, it was time to go to high school. Things changed even more then. I hated home and did anything to not be there. I showed my tail all the time and I’m sure I made everyone around me miserable. I was miserable myself and I loved the company. Me and nanny were always butting heads. It was me against everyone in that house and I did everything I possibly could to make them mad. I ran with the wrong crowd.I was very into the alternative thing and I wore black head to toe. I searched out troubled people to befriend. They understood me more than anybody at this point in my life. My whole freshman year was a blur. I’m pretty sure I passed my classes because my teachers didn’t want to deal with me or see me again. I had F’s all across the board all semester until the end and somehow I made it out of freshman year with straight D’s….
While freshman year was an interesting year for me…It was my sophomore year that really paved the way for me to meet Shane. My sophomore year was rough and I hate looking back on it. The only good thing I can take from it is it directly led me to Shane. If the things that went down hadn’t have went down, I might be in a totally different place…with a totally different person right now.
We’re about to get into the deep part of my story. The part that’s hard to tell. And you’re about to meet someone who is like a reoccurring character in a book. There’s nothing I want more than to skip over this whole era, but if I really want to tell my whole story…I gotta tell it all.