Starting in January of 1984.
I’ve recently been looking at a box of old photos, and thinking about my life up until this point, so I figured I’d share some of my past here too.
Starting at the very beginning…
my mom and dad were together on and off for a few years starting in high school, and obviously so in love that they decided to get married after my mom got pregnant. She was 19 at the time, so she dropped out of college, and they moved in together. Their marriage lasted less than a year, and by the time I was 6 months old, they were going through divorce proceedings. My mom moved back home so me and her could live with her parents and her youngest sister (my mom has two younger sisters and the youngest is 9 years older than me, while the middle sister was already married herself and living on her own).
My dad disappeared, and remarried, and had 3 more kids, and then disappeared on them too.
Mom and I lived with my grandparents long enough for me to have memories of watching tv with them at night while my grandma knitted and my pop-pop fell asleep on the couch (this is not dissimilar to what it would be like to watch tv with them now).
We probably would have lived like this indefinitely, but my grandma was a Methodist minister, and had to go where the church sent her, so my grandparents moved out to live in their new church parsonage, leaving me and mom to stay in their house with my aunt who was finishing middle school, and then would also be moving out to start high school where her parents were now living.
Once my aunt moved out, it was just me and my mom for a while. She worked for a bank, and didn’t make a lot of money, so we just continued to live in my grandparents’ house, as she couldn’t afford to find a place of her own for us. My mom didn’t like to wake up in the morning, so she didn’t. She usually slept until mid-morning, then got up, got ready, and dropped me off at the middle sister’s house, so she could watch me while my mom worked. My mom worked 12:00 pm – 8:00 pm, so by the time she picked me up, it was basically time for me to go to bed when we got home. Obviously, we didn’t spend a lot of time together.
When I started school, this arrangement continued with a slight change. Now my mom had to get up in the morning, but only long enough to get me out the door. Once I was gone, she went back to bed, and now she could sleep later before she had to go to work. I took the bus to my aunt’s in the afternoon, and I gained 3 cousins over time to hang out with, who ended up being more like siblings to me than any of my actual siblings. Ultimately, my aunt raised me.
When I was 5 or 6, my mom met my stepfather, and he also moved into my grandparents’ house. Now, you’d think since we were suddenly a dual-income house, maybe we’d move out and find our own space…nope. My stepfather changed jobs at least once a year, like they were fads. He worked for a publisher for a while (this was my favorite job he had because he would bring books home and let me read them), he did computer consulting, and taught adult GED prep courses for a semester. I can’t remember everything he did, but those are a few examples.
From the very start of mine and my stepfather’s relationship, I didn’t like him. He’s a smug know-it-all ass, and I could see that even as a small child. He knew I couldn’t stand him too, so I just continued to go to my aunt’s everyday.
When I was about 14, my aunt moved. Just a couple towns over, but I couldn’t take the bus to her house anymore, so I had to start going home after school. This is when things at home started to get pretty bad. My stepfather and I were fighting almost daily, and my mom was a codependent mess, so she always sided with him. This is how things went for years.
I started working when I was 16, and started serving tables shortly after that. I graduated high school when I was 18, and by that time had saved up some money, so I moved out. I was 18 and had my own apartment, while my mom had lived in her parents’ home my entire life.
Things didn’t always go so great right away…I was homeless for about 8 months when I was 19, but that’s a story for another trip down Memory Lane, and looking at me now, obviously I pulled myself out of it, and am better for it.
Looking at these old photos, and stirring up these memories, remind me that I am where I am in my life because my aunt is an amazing woman, and…
so am I.
I need to remind myself of that more often.
Averybody Walks 
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