I Remember...

My Dad left in 2004, I don’t remember the day he left, just he was gone and everything was different. I remember sitting in my room waiting for him to open the door and come home.  I remember the days turning into nights and nights bringing the pain, I remember tears streaming down my face hoping my dad would pick up the phone. I remember the weeks turning into weekends, the three of us, plus our 150lb coon hound, piling into our 1999 suburban at 5 am to see him. I remember the endless boat rides and car rides. I remember the phone calls to the attorney’s, them trying explaining the situation. I remember never staying in one place. I remember each house we ever lived in. I remember the evictions, the constant moving, the bills not being payed because my dad couldn’t put down a bottle. I remember nights with my grandma, falling asleep on her lap watching Showtime. I remember having to sleep in a VW van behind our house because it was either that or the floor. I remember the 13th birthday I spent sitting in the car, not allowed to come out all day, a pancake thrown in the window at one point. I remember the screaming, the contact of his hand to my face when I couldn’t do what he asked, the fear I felt constantly as I hid from him. I remember the relief I felt being back in my mother’s beat up suburban, hugging the seats the whole way home. I remember the lights going out and the water turning off and our surprise sleepovers at Mrs. Jeanne’s house. I remembered it all. I remembered when it changed. 

*FULL DISCLOSURE*

HAS BEEN EXAGGERATED SIGNIFIGATLEY

My Island

I never like to leave the small island I grew up on. It’s my home, it’s been my home for as long as I can remember. It’s where my mom and dad met, where they got married, where I was born and where I was Baptist, where I had my first kiss, my first job. It’s where I can go, walk around and see my friends, my parent’s friends and my grandparent’s friends, grabbing their morning coffee or their daily donut at the Downy flake. It’s a place where I can go and feel safe in a world that doesn’t seem to like me very much. So I don’t like to leave the little sanctuary I've built very often.

My family has been on the island since the early 1940’s. My grandmother went out there to escape the war. She bought an old fisherman’s cottage about a mile down surfside road. Back in those days, Nantucket was uninhabited, she had one neighbor on her left and marshland on her right. The nearest store was 6 miles away, but for the island, that’s was pretty far. They still had the railroad then to get around, so every Sunday she would take it into town, collect her weekly rations and be on her way. It became her home, which later became my mother’s home, which later became mine. I grew up listening to her stories and as a bug eyed child longed for the day that I could go home again and start my own adventure.

We moved around a lot as a kid. After my dad left, it was just the three of us, my mom, my sister and I. He moved back out to the island to live with my grandparents and we ended up staying in North Andover, a town surrounded by highways and corrupt with drugs. So my mom did what her mom did before her, and sent us to the safest place she knew, Nantucket. By then my dad had started drinking heavily and couldn’t be bothers with his two little kids, so we spent most of our time with my grandmother. We were her babies, she love us just as much as we loved her. She taught me everything. How to sew, how to garden, how to get gum out of my hair when I accidently cut a huge chunk out and how to hide my bra strap in a dress that didn’t fit right. She was our world. When she died last October I was distraught, I had lost the only person, other than my mom, who thought I could be somebody one day. I was left disowned by my grandfather, shut out by real father with nowhere left to turn but back to My Island.

I moved out to the island on my own when I was 17. My grandmother sick and my grandfather unattached, I was unable to stay with them for the last time. So I did what I had to do. I lied about my age, I found a room to rent in the ice skating coaches house, packed up my little dolly mobile and moved out there. I had finally had a place on my own, making real money to support myself. I got a job at the local bike shop working on bikes and found out I was pretty good at it. Before that I had never really been good at anything other than being a screw up. I had a ton of people waiting to watch me fail, so I did the only thing I really know how to do, I proved them wrong. I went out my first summer spent five months on the island working as hard as I could, became really good at my job and by the time I left that summer, I had a win under my belt. For the first time ever, I wasn’t a screw up. There I was respected and looked to as a leader and a mentor. My past experiences helping me gain the confidence to get through the next year.        

But here, in the real world, I’m a nobody. I’m the girl who dropped out of high school, the girl who went to rehab, I'm the girl that nobody believed in. But this past year, I did something I never thought I would do, I went back to high school. And this time I am going to finish.

Leaving the island this year, I was terrified, for the first time in my life I had chance to change my path. No longer was my life going to be managing the local Cumberland farms or Stop&Shop.  It was college, it was my dream of becoming a teacher or a writer, starting to become a reality. For the first time I had someone other than my mom tell me I was going to amount to something someday. It’s a lot of pressure, but it’s the good kind, the kind that makes you want it more, and I’m honestly terrified. On Nantucket, I was a somebody, and now once again I’m a nobody. But that’s okay, because this time, I’m ready to become somebody again. But this time in the real world.

Stuck inside for Eternity

What's up? How’s life? How you been? Miss me?

Yeah me either

Well I'm just gonna keep typing anyway

So it’s been a while since vie put anything really substantial on this here shindig, i tell everyone

"Oh yea i write a blog it’s pretty cool" 

More like i post a few things a couple times a month.

BUT

That will change. Recently, and unexpectedly, i now have way too much time on my hands. So basically that means i will be sitting on the floor of my room, staring at my computer screen, counting down the days until i get to go back to Nantucket again.

94 days to be exact...

But ANYWAY not much has really been going on with me, doing the same old. I about to finally graduate, which i think is pretty cool, it’s taken me too long but my health has been in steady decline since i got back from Nantucket. I guess there is just something healing about the air there. So i have been trying to get that back on track before i make any rash decisions and move myself across the country for no reason. Before i make any decision on where i want to go to college i want to know exactly what those four years will look like and know exactly in my head what i want to do. 

Kathy kind of opened up my eyes this past week, about my college experience, she said to me;

"Nothing about your life is conventional... so how do you expect your college one to be?"

And that hit me. She was right. I had to stop pressuring myself, i was pressuring myself to meet a certain timeline, to follow my friends to college and follow the path they created for me. I have focused on others for so long that i think it’s time i worked on myself a little bit. Get my own stuff sorted out before i tackle anybody else’s.