BLAWG.: March 2010

My dad is driving me nuts. I wish he would just realize the effect he's had on me my entire life and that I've been running away from it since I was old enough to know that marijuana is illegal. That age was older than it should have been.
Sometimes I wish my childhood were drastically different than it was. I feel bad that a majority of my memories are negative and involving punishment, yelling, alcohol, marijuana, and stiff gestures. Of course, dad wasn't always this way. When mom and him were still together, right after we moved to La Crosse from Chicago, I thought everything was good! I'm sure it was only because I was 6 when we moved and I didn't realize that my mom was going through what my dad has put everyone through. She would work 12 to 15 hour days to stay away from him as long as possible. I remember always being really excited to spend time with mom because she was always gone. Sometimes she would bring me to the hotel with her while she worked. I remember sitting in the big chairs in the lobby and playing in the elevators. At the time I just thought it was because no one could watch me or that she missed me, but I know she was just afraid to leave me at home with dad all day.
I remember when they told me they were getting divorced. I was sitting on my bed with the Jasmine comforter and they came in and just said it. "Melissa, we're getting a divorce." I cried a lot even though I think I was only 7 or 8. I didn't know why I was crying because I didn't know what a divorce actually was, but I knew it was bad and that I should cry. Then mom moved out and into grandma's for awhile. That was weird to me too. To see her back in the house she grew up in. The house that she tried to escape and get out of during her childhood just like I would do too. I lived at home and visited mom at grandma's all the time. I didn't like going there to see her though, she didn't fit there at all.
Mom finally got a better job that paid more and following that, another place to live so that I could be with her half of the time and with dad half of the time. It was an upstairs apartment on Redfield Street by the hospital because that's where she got a job. I stayed with mom Sunday night until Wednesday night and then Wednesday night to Sunday morning I stayed at home with dad. That living situation was terrible but I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know that while I was at school, dad was following mom to work and trying to get her to take him back. She never would. It's not worth it to stay with someone who mentally abuses you the way he did to her. I'll never forget his yell. It wasn't even a yell either, it was more of a scryell that made you feel like he was reaching inside your soul and telling you you're worthless and stupid. Poor mom.
When I was in elementary school I think the reason mom kept me at Blessed Sacrament was because she was afraid I would lose the only friends I had and then have nothing. No family, friends, or a real place to stay. Blessed Sacrament was way too expensive for both of them. Thanks mom.
My two best friends there always told me I was spoiled. It made me feel really bad because I knew at the time that I kind of was, but I didn't know why because we didn't have much money at the time. Dad never had much money ever. Mom was just trying to make sure I was happy and now I realize that she's spent her entire life just trying to make sure my life is nothing like hers was. She bought me a guinea pig when I was 9. I was happy.
Mom dated and dad dated and I hated it. I felt like there were strangers trying to take over my life and I just wanted to leave. At dad's house I was never inside for very long. I spent at least 75% of the time that I spent at that house in my entire life outside or down the street at Rachael's house. When dad would yell at me for something I would get on my bike and ride down all the ally's until I found the brick street with the vintage Volkswagen Beetle. Then I sat there until I thought he was asleep or done being mad and I would ride back because I knew I would be in even more trouble if I came back after dark.
He eventually found Michelle who I didn't know at the time, but would be the reason I would be so negatively affected by my dad's actions until the day I am not on this Earth anymore. Before her dad was in therapy and went to AA meetings every week. I would always make him drink Pepsi instead of beer and I remember being really proud of him. Michelle was just an enforcer of everything that he had just gotten rid of. She brought her 3 year old son, Mike, and her stupid film canisters into our life way too fast. After about a year they got married. She and dad would go out on the weekdays and ask me to watch Mike until they got home. I would always say yes because if I said no I would get yelled at, so I didn't really have a choice. I remember falling asleep on all of our blankets and pillows on the living room floor with Mike because we were watching a movie and he wanted to wait for his mom to come home. They came home after 1 every time they went out so he always fell asleep but I stayed up to make sure they got home okay. I was 13.
Eventually dad and Michelle started fighting more and more. Mike would come into my room and I would let him play Vice City with me on my Playstation even though dad didn't allow him to. At this point Mike was lashing out because of all the screaming that was going on in the house. I was the only person he ever listened to and got along with.
Dad would get mad at Mike when he would refuse to do something. He never touched me, but he wasn't afraid to grab Mike because he was a boy so he could handle it. I would sit there and not be able to do anything while 7 year old Mike would get yanked around and pushed by my dad. Now when I think about it all I can picture is dad's huge strong hand wrapped around Mike's tiny 7 year old wrist. That was the worst. Every time I stuck up for Mike, I ended up running upstairs screaming at the top of my lungs at dad in me and Mike's defense, and slamming the door behind me. He always stayed at the bottom of the stairs and continued to scream at me until he couldn't hear me anymore. I remember he was never really a comforting person. When I cried with mom she would let me hug her and get her shirt all wet with my tears and brush my hair to make me calm down. When I would cry with dad he would just say, "Stop crying, Melissa. Just stop your crying." Thanks, dad.
So middle school rolls around and they kept me at Aquinas because I refused to leave my friends at that point. I became addicted to anyway I could remain in contact with my friends all day and all night. I remember finding "marijuana" as a frequently searched item on Google... That was weird. I knew why it was there but I didn't want to believe that they would actually do that. So, I asked Michelle why it was there and she told me to ask my dad. Dad said he didn't know either. I knew... those idiots.
I think it was when I was in 8th grade that I found weed in our house. So I was 12 or 13. The worst thing was that I wasn't sure what to do with it. Michelle kept it in her purse in a film canister and dad kept it in the dark brown night stand he kept next to the window in his bedroom. They don't know to this day that I know that.
Dad smoked every morning in the bathroom when he woke up. I would be getting ready for school at this time and the bathroom was next door to my room. I would walk by and stand outside the door and say, "Dad I have to get ready now!" Before I would say it I would wait a few seconds though so I could hear what he was doing. I'll never forget that sound. Lighter, inhale, hold, exhale. Sometimes he would answer mid-hit without breathing it out and say, "Okay, just a second kid." He's always called me kid and that bathroom always smelled like weed.
The reason I have such a negative connotation with weed now though, is because of his anger. He was still trying not to drink as much so that was never a fall back plan, but if he didn't have his weed nothing stood in his way. He would do absolutely anything to get it and spend any amount of money to have it always. Let's just say mom was buying me clothes at this point.
High school came and I finally decided to go to a public school. What a relief on my mom, I'm sure. I didn't know anyone there except Eva and Alex and I was afraid of meeting anyone else at that point. Just before school started, dad filed for bankruptcy and all four of us moved into an apartment. At this point I was still living with mom too for half of the week. She moved out of the apartment and bought a trailer on Mormon Coulee by grandma's house. It was the nicest trailer I've ever seen, but a trailer nonetheless. It was also the only time I've ever had a bathroom to myself.
We moved into the apartment and everything exploded. Michelle and dad had moved on from marijuana to vicodin and other drugs I still don't know about and I don't want to. Mike was turning into a wild child and I stayed at Tripp's house everyday because I finally found someone who liked me despite my crazy life and what it had done to me so far. What a life saver, really.
The last day, Michelle came home drunk or high and she was just a mess. She screamed at me and told me how bad of a daughter I was and that I never did anything to help anyone there. She told me I was bad in school and not only was I a bad daughter, but I had a terrible father as well. I ran into my room hysterical and slammed the door. Of course, family trend, she stood outside the closed door and kept yelling things at me. Dad had picked Mike up from school and they just walked in when she was there.
I heard her walk into the kitchen after my dad had told her to calm down and I was not having some woman who I never wanted in my life in the first place, telling me I was a bad daughter and that I had a bad father. She shouldn't have been talking...
I threw that door open harder than I remember grabbing anything. Everything was in slow motion and I saw my dad NICELY push Mike back away from me, which I had never seen him do before. He was genuinely afraid of what I was going to do to her.
Don't worry, I didn't hurt her. But I did scream at her, in my generously passed down "scryell" from dad, that if she ever talked to me that way again she would regret it. I told her that she has no right to ever talk to me that way or say the things she did and that all of her yelling and screaming everyday wasn't helping any of our lives at all. She replied with this quote exactly, "You're right." I walked back into my room, had a panic attack, and called my mom to come pick me up.
That was the last day I lived with that family. What a relief.

Dad went moderately crazy after that. Michelle left him and he lost the apartment and his job. He would get really high or drunk all night and call my cell phone and mom's house phone and leave messages telling us he was going to leave La Crosse forever. Eventually he called saying he was never going to see me again but that he loved me and he was sorry. Obviously I thought he was going to kill himself.
That was not a good night.
He moved to Omaha for awhile with his family and they helped him but no one can ever make him okay again. He moved back my junior year at Central when I moved into mom's new house with her new husband Scott. Scott is a good guy who loves me and is more of a dad than I could ever ask for.
I'll never forget my junior prom thanks to dad, though. We watched the simulation of a drunk driving accident in the parking lot at Central the day before prom. It made me kind of nervous thinking that could be one of my friends getting hurt or hurting anyone else. Prom night came and went and everyone was fine, until 9 the following day.
Michelle called me and she never called me because she knew I hated her. "Melissa, you have to come to the hospital. You're dad got in a car accident this morning." Guess who got into a drunk driving accident! Thanks dad, for crashing your car into a house on Losey Blvd, the main road going through La Crosse. Not only do you lose your license and maybe go to jail, but every person in my high school knows that his happened. Shit. He was mostly fine, which is a miracle, but he still doesn't have his license.
I graduated and he left me alone, until I came to St. Cloud when he began calling me every night until I would answer to tell me how sorry he was for everything. Drunk or high enough to forget the conversation, he would do it at least 3 times a week, forgetting that he had asked everything already.
Freshman year I more or less thought dad was going to die by drinking himself to death or overdosing on drugs. He still hasn't.
He stopped calling me after I told him I knew that he was smoking in the bathroom everyday and that he ruined my early childhood and changed my life forever. Until this month. He calls me and doesn't realize it and then I get a 5 minute message on my phone of him with his one friend smoking and watching stupid tv. I can't worry about it anymore.

I think if it starts happening again I might change my number or tell him not to talk to me anymore, but that will probably just stir more drama up. Despite my moderately crazy life, I'm glad that it all happened. And I'm insanely thankful that I have a mom who knows what she's doing and how to raise a child. It's only because of her, Tripp Watson, and Eva Klug that I'm not a crazy girl.

Thanks for listening internet.