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.

I guess you could say I'm a "Lifer"

So tell me about you?

In every application/ Interview/ Website sign up/whatever or what have you, they always ask an "About you" type question
 Well I don't really know about me. And in 144 characters or less I really couldn't tell you. If I took a gander, I would say I am a musician, a "student" if that counts, a daughter....but really I'm a "lifer."Somebody who lets life take them where its meant to go.
My dad use to say if he could define his life in one phrase it would be "Pura Vida." A Costa Rican phrase that means Pure Life. For the past ten years my dad has said a big F*** you to the corporate world and has done well,what ever the hell he has wants to do. In the past ten years, my dad has ran the Boston marathon and the dominated in the Marine Corps Marathon, built hundreds of houses for Habitat for Humanity, Went back to college, Learned a whole new trade, Explored and surfed Costa Rica and Renovated two "green" houses. 

My dad has friends all over the world. Every city we go to all around the world my dad has had a story of your mothers cousins aunts friends new business idea  or mets an incredibly hipster chick on the sidewalk who is really into poetry … Even though my dad and I have chosen to go our separate ways. My dad is an extraordinary human being.  Fifty percent of the time my dad is the cool dad. He is the smartest man I have ever met in my entire life which also makes him the most annoying man because hes always right and you cant argue cause he just knows everything.Like any little girl, growing up, my dad was "God".I had the "cool dad." He wasn't around, so I could make him out to be any way I wanted.  Because no little girl wants to hate their daddy.

 In a lot of ways my dad has gifted me with a very special childhood.From his backyard tie dye parties to his unnecessarily big blue pick up truck, my dad did a pretty good job when he could. Like come on I had hippy parents. I still do. Look at my mom she a freaking fruit loop. (JK mom, you're super cute <3)

He taught me a very good life lesson in my unconventional childhood. 
He showed me that no matter what life threw at you; no matter how bad it got; it would be okay. He taught me to trust my decisions. He taught me to take the unconventional route. Though our relationship isn't what it used to be or even how I wished it would be. In a way I admire his choice; even though in a thousand words or less I could tell you otherwise, He showed me the right way of life.

 I love that part of my dad, just by being him he could change someone's outlook on life; The special part of him whose pure motto in life is to solely live it happily. 
So I guess in 144 characters or less I couldn't really define myself as well as my dad could.But I'm working on it. I'm getting there, it took me a while to start to listen but now I am.I guess you could say, I'm on my way to becoming a "Lifer"