My Teenage Dream Ended (24 page)

At three o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t handle so many argumentative topics, so I would just block her out, but
when I didn’t answer her she would just get angrier. I couldn’t handle it. She was driving me nuts and I wasn’t getting any extra sleep, so Sophia and I moved back upstairs into my room.

When I stopped nursing Sophia, my boobs began hurting again. They would get so painfully engorged that even showers became a painful experience. The water made my boobs get really hard and my muscles would tense up. That lasted until my milk finally dried up.

It was so overwhelming how my body was changing, how my life had changed, how my relationship with my parents had changed. I just wanted to get back some control over my life.

PARTY GIRL

Two and a half weeks after Sophia was born, I went back to work at Applebee’s. Diapers and baby formula were expensive, and I knew after a while my parents would get fed up with having to pay for everything.

I needed the money, but I also needed to get out of the house. I wanted my independence back and to be out there in the world again. I went back to school and started working more and more. I wanted to save up for a car and not have to put up with all the complaining from my parents.

After two months, I finally got my own car and that helped a lot. I think that took a little of the stress off my parents, too. Now I could take Sophia out and we could have our own time together. I would take her to the park and show her the places that her dad and I had gone together.

By the time Sophia was three months old, my life was starting to settle into a relatively normal routine. I decided to try dating again. It had been so long since I had gone on a date. I was lonely and I thought that if I started going out a little bit, maybe I it would help me move on and get over Derek.

But as soon as I started dating again I felt horrible, like I was a bad mom for going out. My parents got on my case, which made me feel worse. Any time I told them that I was going on a date or just out with friends, they would make me feel guilty for not staying home with Sophia and accuse me of taking advantage of their help.

On top of that, I got a little insecure about my body, literally everything from my face to my tummy, to my legs. I was always second-guessing: do I look good enough? Even relatively innocent comments made me feel insecure. One night, I went out on a group date with some friends. When I got up to go to the bathroom, one of the guys said, “Look at that booty.” I was still in my post-pregnancy “fat jeans” at that point and I thought
, Oh God, my butt is out of control.

I wasn’t comfortable with myself, so I dated random guys but I didn’t pay much attention to them because I was working, going to school, trying to spend as much time as possible with Sophia, dealing with the stress of living with my parents, and taking on the role of a single mom.

I was partying too much; going out to just drink, mingle, and escape the stress of my life. It quickly became an issue. I would tell my parents that I was going out with friends to hang out, because I wasn’t old enough to drink, but they knew that I was lying because I was coming home at two or three
AM
every weekend. There was no getting around the truth that I had gone out to party.

My parents saw it as a problem, which I understand now, but at the time I couldn’t stand being around them. I hated them hovering over me, criticizing me and trying to control how I was parenting Sophia and how much I worked and went out. I felt like they were always in my business. I needed an escape and at the time I felt like a couple of hours out with my friends on the weekend was what I needed and deserved.

One night, I finally realized that being a party girl wasn’t who I really was. I had met up with my weekend friends and we went downtown to some bars and clubs. I drank too much and did some coke. I had been partying a lot, but this was a whole new level for me. I couldn’t handle the effect of the alcohol and drugs. I started crying about Derek to some guy I was kind of into, and everything I had been holding down for months came spewing out of me like vomit.

To make matters worse, after being an emotional basket case and telling this poor guy about how I was still in love with my dead ex-boyfriend, I suddenly got angry and started yelling at him about how he wasn’t like Derek. The next morning I woke up looking and feeling like a mess, and my nose hurt from the coke. I’m not proud of this episode, but it was a good wake up call for me. From that night on I quit partying. I can look back at it now as something to learn and grow from.

But the complaining from my parents continued. They told me I was sleeping too much, that I wasn’t communicating with them about my schedule. I sank into a depression. I started crying a lot at night and just wanted to be left alone. I was dating, but I didn’t really care about the guys. I wanted to be in a relationship so that I didn’t feel alone. But everything was wrong.

THE BREAKING POINT

There were days when it felt like I was taking on the role of six different people. I was a mother, a daughter, a girlfriend, a student, an employee, and a teenager all rolled up in one exhausted and confused package. Then at night I would think about Derek and become just a lonely girl with a broken heart.

Often, though, the hardest part for me was just being a daughter. I resented my parents for having caused so much stress between me and Derek.

I resented them for telling me I couldn’t see him any more. At the time I blamed them for a lot of the problems Derek and I had experienced, but now I can see that I was directing a lot of anger at them because I had nowhere else to put it. The fact that I was living with them and completely dependent on them made it all the more stressful.

I definitely had some hate towards my parents in those days, especially when they started having issues and talking every day about getting a divorce. I didn’t want to hear it. This had been going on my whole life and I was sick of it. It seemed like they would fight and my dad would move out and then they would make up and he would move back in again. They were always on and off, always traveling and not spending much time together.

I felt like they should have gotten a divorce when I was way younger. They had major fights and issues, but they didn’t want to go to counseling. I now suspect that the only reason they stayed together as long as they did was for me, because as soon as I turned eighteen and was out of the house they got divorced.

I think their rocky marriage has a lot to do with why I always believed Derek and I would eventually get back together. To me the cycle of fighting, breaking up, and getting back together was normal in a relationship. It never occurred to me then that these were serious signs that a relationship is not going to work.

Having the baby in the house brought my parents together for a little while, but by the time Sophia was almost a year old, it seemed like they were arguing all the time again. I was already over it the day their fighting started up again. Just like they had told me to quit talking to Derek, I felt like telling them to quit talking to each other, but I knew it wasn’t my place. I just didn’t want to be around it anymore or hear about it anymore and when they fought around Sophia I really couldn’t handle it.

One afternoon, when it was gray and cold outside, my parents began fighting in the car. My dad and I wanted to go get groceries, but Sophia was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her up. We asked my mom to watch Sophia, but she didn’t want to because she wanted to study for her executive MBA program. She got angry, got out of the car in the driveway and went into the house and locked the door. I took Sophia out of the car and my dad left.

I unlocked the door and went inside. My mom was in the kitchen, talking loudly. I said, “Sophia is sleeping,” meaning,
Shut up before you wake her up
. My mom kept talking and trying to get at me, so I left the room. As I was walking upstairs, I saw that she was going through my mail. I got pissed. I had told her many times not to go through my mail. I didn’t have anything to hide; it just felt like an invasion. It represented everything about living with my parents that was driving me crazy, how they never gave me space or stayed out of my business.

I snapped, “Get out of my mail!” and she got mad and threw a shirt that I had gotten in the mail at me. I was holding Sophia in my arms and the shirt hit her and frightened her. I sat Sophia down in the other room, because I felt a fight coming on with my mom and I didn’t want Sophia to be around it.

I went back to the kitchen to get the rest of my mail, but she refused to give it to me. It got physical, punches were thrown, hair was jerked, and threats were made. I had my mom to the point where I was holding her and she was saying “Ow” and “Let go.” I knew at this point I was way too angry, so I grabbed Sophia and went upstairs. I laid her down and that’s when I looked in the mirror and saw my face. My lip was busted and bloody, and I thought,

I don’t want this around my child.

My mom had always had these damn selfish fits with my sister and I. Now it had escalated to punching, and Sophia had been caught in the middle of it. Enough was enough. I wanted to send my mother a message that I wasn’t going to take her overbearing, controlling selfishness anymore, so I called the police.

After I made the call, I waited upstairs in my room. Maybe five minutes went by and then I heard a knock on the front door. I walked out of my room and down the front staircase. My room was right by the front door, but my mom had rushed to the door so fast that she beat me there. I was still walking down the stairs, when I heard the click and swish of the front door being unlocked and opened.

I was expecting to hear the routine sound of an officer saying, “We received a report of a fight, what seems to be the problem?” Instead, I heard what sounded to be an introduction that got cut off, and man’s voice yelling, “Put the knives down!” By the time I got to the door, I saw an officer holding a gun pointed directly at my mom

I said, “What’s going on? Put your gun down.”

The officer said something like, “Your mom needs to put down her knives. She won’t put down her knives!”

I looked over at my mom. She was standing there holding two knives, one in each hand. “Mom what are you doing with knives?” I asked and, again, the officer yelled, “Put your knives down!”

She didn’t move.

I said, “Mom put the knives down!”

At this point I was truly terrified because, from what I was seeing, my mom was about to get shot in the head because, for some reason, she couldn’t just put the knives down.

This was out of control. I said one last time, “Mom put your knives on the ground.” Finally, something in her brain clicked. She put the knives on the ground and the police officer lowered his gun. In seconds the police had my mom restrained. She was yelling “Let me go,” and “Farrah, look at what you’ve done.”

She was blaming me for what was happening to her, but I was thinking,
You almost got yourself killed because for some unknown reason you rushed to open the door with two knives. Even if they weren’t cops what the fuck were you thinking?
I truly felt bad for my mom. But I felt like she had gone so far off the deep end that she really need a reality check to learn how to treat others, quit fighting, quit manipulating, and begin acting like the parent I needed her to be.

I was in such shock that it all almost seemed to be happening in slow motion or somewhere far away. I snapped myself back into the scene in our front room when one of officers began asking me questions about the fight I had had earlier with my mom. As this point I was so taken aback by what had just happened that I had almost completely forgotten about our fight, which was the whole reason the police were there in the first place.