Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos (16 page)

Plus Barbara often brought men home and was typically too hung over to wake up before noon. I wanted Barbara to take responsibility for her son, but every morning Travis began crying from her room and I ended up going in to get him so I could care for him for the day. My job at McDonald’s became a thing of the past.

To make up for the furniture we had to leave in Anderson, Barbara and I had rented some pieces from a nearby Rent-a-Center. Our bill was $70 a week, and before long we couldn’t pay. I remember hiding under the couch when their bill collectors came banging on the door looking for their money. What could I say? We didn’t have it.

I also was very conflicted about my role in life during this time. I was just beginning to realize all I was missing by being a teen mom. I didn’t get to go on dates or have sleepover parties with girlfriends. I didn’t get to be that giggly teen girl who whispers secrets to her friend as they walk down the hallway at school or fill out college applications and hold my breath while I hoped for good
news. Instead I was a destitute mom, but I also desperately wanted to be the kid I still was. It seemed that the only time I fit in with kids my age was with other drug users, or on the rare occasions when Barbara brought the party home with her and I mingled.

On top of this, I was still taking prescribed medications to balance my moods. I had been taking Trazodone since I was twelve, but more recently other antianxiety and antidepressant medications had been added. I felt like I had been taking prescription medicines all my life. Uppers, downers, anything the doctors could find to balance my mood or energy they prescribed for me, and all of it ended up messing with my head more than it helped. I was also mixing cocaine, street pills, alcohol, Ecstasy, and mushrooms—anything to make me feel better and relieve the overwhelming stress of responsibility. I am embarrassed to say that any money left over after we paid for rent, food, and diapers was spent on cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs.

One day I snapped. Barbara was with the kids at home one evening when I went to a party. There was an array of drugs there—as there were at most of the parties I went to. We never went to a party to celebrate anything or anyone, or even really to visit with one another. The main purpose of the parties I went to was to get high.

As things began to wind down I found that I didn’t want to go home, so I hitchhiked to a party that I knew was going on in another town. Once I got there I got into a fight with an older guy I barely knew and for a reason I no longer remember he slapped
me hard across the face. I started to hitchhike home but ended up getting into a car going the other way and wound up far away from Barbara, Abbie, and Travis—and I still didn’t want to go back.

I called a friend, a guy I had met at bluegrass festival who I knew partied like I did. He gave me directions to his house out in the country, an older two-story house with rickety steps. I stayed there for three days thinking about my life, and those three days were the only days I ever thought about giving Abbie up. I thought about that a lot during those hours. While I was still drunk and high I called my mother and told her I couldn’t handle being a parent. I don’t remember what she said to me but I do know that after I sobered up I went home and was very glad I did.

My lovely daughter really was, and is, everything to me. It was only the dangerous combination of drugs, alcohol, stress, and being overwhelmed financially and emotionally that made me doubt my ability to parent her. I am so humiliated about this time in my life, and am very glad Abbie was too young to remember it.

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G
rowing up in today’s
society is so difficult. I hear horror stories from other moms about their daughters getting pregnant and doing drugs, and this is one of my biggest fears when it comes to my daughters. Recently, I went on a school field trip with Abbie and I was shocked to see the contrast between Abbie and the other girls in her class. Even more shocking, however, was the contrast in age between the other fifth-grade moms and me. Here I was, twenty-five years old, standing next to women who were mostly in their late thirties or early forties. It was a bit intimidating to say the least.

My age is something that I knew was going to be an issue one day. “Abbie, your mom is so young,” one of the girls said as we all stood in line. Abbie just looked at me and smiled. She knows
without a doubt that I love her. Then Abbie giggled and said, “I know.” I have never lied to her. I have told her that I was a young teenager when she was born. I also told her that I missed out on so much, but I wouldn’t change a single day of it because she is one of the greatest things to happen to me. Abbie knows that the struggles I went through is not the life that I want for her. Being a teen mother is not easy, but that’s the thing about being a parent at any age. It’s a hard job and all you can do is your best.

Abbie is ten, and is at an age when her horizons are rapidly expanding. One purpose of community service, middle school dances, church socials, and the like is to give kids the opportunity to explore relationships with the opposite sex while adults look on. If any relationship hints of the inappropriate, or if parents do not approve of the person their son or daughter sets their sights on, the teen is gently redirected. I never had that guidance, and it affects me in relationships to this day. I am just now learning to take things slow, and to consider before moving ahead. Instead of a date for the sophomore spring fling, I had a baby to look after.

However, even though I was way too young, I loved being a mom. I loved looking into my daughter’s eyes and seeing her smile. I also loved snuggling with her, loving her, and taking care of her. Abbie especially loved it when I played hand games with her and we laughed and laughed. She really was such a smart baby.

We had always had pets when I was growing up, and I had become pretty adept at training them. When it came time to teach
Abbie, I approached the same concepts with her that I used to teach my pets to sit, stay, and come. I really didn’t have anything else to draw from, but you know what? It worked just fine. This was also during a time when Disney and other channels, such as PBS, had a lot of educational television for young kids, and Abbie watched many episodes of those kinds of shows.

But as any single parent knows, being a mom or dad is exceptionally hard when there is only one of you. On top of my youth and lack of financial resources, another part of my difficulty in caring for Abbie was that her father had been jailed for molestation of a minor: me.

When I was still pregnant with Abbie I had to appear in front of a grand jury and testify about my relationship with Brendan. I was positive that I could convince the members of the jury that we were in love, and that that fact would make a difference. The truth was, in spite of all the adult attempts to keep us away from each other, we were still a couple. Brendan was not allowed in the hospital for Abbie’s birth, nor was he there when any of my family or friends were around, but he did sneak in to see us when no one else was there.

Brendan also drove me from Anderson to Fairbanks for my grand jury appearance. The grand jury met in a huge building with lots of balconies. It was probably a courthouse of some sort, but it was really intimidating to a young girl like me. After I walked through the metal detectors I was led down a long hallway and instructed to sit outside the grand jury room in a chair where
I stayed for a long time. When they were ready for me the door opened and I walked in.

I think there are only twelve people on a grand jury, but it seemed to me that there was a sea of about eighty faces. Everyone was seated at a huge, round table, and there was a thirteenth seat with a microphone in front of it for me.

It felt like the questioning went on for hours, but it probably was only ten to fifteen minutes. I remember seeing the eyes of every member of the grand jury boring into me, but I can’t remember a single face. They asked a lot of questions along the lines of how Brendan and I met, if I knew how old he was, if he knew how old I was, where we had sex, and how often. I told them that the number of times we were together was easily a hundred times or more; that Brendan and I had been a couple for several years and that that was what couples did. Brendan had encouraged me to be honest, and I was. Then I added, “You are taking away the only person who will help me. He is the only stable person I have in my life.” And that was the truth.

Later, after Abbie was born, a trooper came to my house and swabbed the inside of her cheek. The result of that swab proved that Brendan was indeed Abbie’s father. This meant that Brendan had to go to court, and I was frightened that he would do jail time. Even though we were not living in the same house and could not be together publicly, in my mind we were a family.

Brendan had a habit of drinking Bacardi and Coke. When we sat down in the courtroom for his hearing he swirled a sixteen-ounce
bottle of Coke in a familiar manner that made me suspect that he may have added a load of rum to it. Brendan pled guilty, and because of that instead of one hundred counts of sexual molestation of a minor, the charges were dropped to two: the first time we were intimate and the time I got pregnant.

I was devastated. He was sentenced to fifteen months, but ended up serving just under twelve, as he was released early for good behavior.

I understood the reason for laws like the one used to convict Brendan, but I found the decision difficult to accept because Brendan was the only one who provided me with stability and normalcy during that time. I definitely believed there should be laws to protect minors from predators, but in this instance the illicit relationship I had with Brendan was my only safety net. It was another huge source of conflict for me, and to be honest I’m not sure I have completely worked through it yet.

It should have been a simple thing. A twenty-three-year old man had relations with a thirteen-year-old girl. He should not have done that. He should not have taken advantage of my youth and inexperience in the ways of life. Even though I had seen and done a lot more than I should have in my thirteen years, I was still the vulnerable one. I was still a child.

On the other hand, Brendan provided me with more solidity than anyone else at the time. He was my rock, my sounding board, and we really did love each other. Why else would he have agreed to that crazy plan of my mother’s that would have shipped us off to
Alabama to get married? He didn’t have to agree to it, and there was no good incentive in it for him other than his feelings for me.

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With Brendan in jail, I felt totally alone. In my conflict, I didn’t understand why Brendan could not be there to wake up with the baby in the middle of the night or help me with other areas of child care. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t console me after a bad day or why we couldn’t spend time together as other couples did.

Plus when you are fifteen a year is a really long time. Brendan wrote us several letters and sent a birthday card to Abbie for her first birthday, but this was so not the life I had envisioned for us as a family. Brendan and I had an understanding that whenever he got through with whatever punishment he was given we would be together. That was all that mattered to me, and that’s why it was so important to Brendan that we tell the truth whenever we were questioned about our relationship. He didn’t want the authorities to come back on him with something new. He wanted it all out in the open and dealt with as quickly as possible.

I can see now that my confusion led directly back to the extreme dysfunction of the people in my life, family and friends alike. I had never known normalcy. Instead, this craziness was all I knew, and the ways of regular people didn’t make sense to me. At all.

Needing comfort, I reverted to the behavior I had learned from other women in my life and began seeing a new boyfriend, whom
I’ll call Allen. Allen was the boy I had lost my virginity to and was the total opposite of Brendan in both appearance and personality. Where Brendan was comfortable and fun, Allen and I were like fire together. My time with him was exhilarating.

Allen also was married, and I find it interesting now that I didn’t see his marriage as a problem in us being together. It was totally wrong, but here again, Allen was older. Not as old as Brendan was, but Allen was in his twenties. Marriage is a sacred commitment before God, and neither of us was honoring his commitment to that. Then again, my self-esteem was so low, and I was so needy that I was thrilled by any attention an older boy or man gave me. Besides, the adults in my life had regularly slept with married people, or they had been married when they slept with other people, so I didn’t understand the seriousness.

One day Allen and I were in a trailer his mother had purchased a few days before. Neighbors, believing the trailer where we were had been broken into, called the police.

When the police showed up they didn’t believe us when we told them that Allen’s mother owned the trailer, and things quickly got ugly. One officer snatched me by my hair, dragged me through the house, down a set of seven steps, and then kicked me in the ribs. If you’ve never had that happen to you I can tell you it hurts. A lot. He then proceeded to kick me in the face and beat me so brutally that my shoes came off.

To top it off, I was charged with resisting arrest, trespassing, and assault. When they shoved me into the police car someone
handcuffed me, but I am not the daughter of the world’s best bounty hunter for nothing. Early on I learned to remove any kind of handcuff put on my wrists, and I slipped this set off very easily.

I was first taken to the hospital, as my injuries were that severe. Then I was taken to juvenile court, but rather than stay in jail, I was released to the Family Focus program in Fairbanks. This program has since closed but was a shelter for runaway, throwaway, and homeless kids.

Despite my initial reluctance about being in the shelter, I loved it there. We had three good, hot meals every day, and the staff led classes in life skills that I found very helpful. It was the most structured environment I had been in in many years.