Families logo

My Life As I Know It

Just Another Childhood Part 1

By Lacey Cohran KinesPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
Like

My life started as most other people's does... guy meets girl... they fall in love and get married and had a daughter (myself). My mom already had my oldest sister and my younger sister would come later. Happily ever after, right? Wrong. My parents never got along and for the life of me, I can't understand why they got married. After fights, lots of angry screaming, and so many other things; they got divorced. All this happened before I even remember. I never knew my parents together, only of them hating each other.

My early childhood was for the most part happy. Divorced parents, 2 sisters (who for the most part) the only ones I could depend on for sanity, and childhood friends. Just the normal. When I was around 8 years old, my mom remarried and for a time I thought we would be happy.

A monster came into my life that I never even knew existed. It's something that we learn about in 5th grade D.A.R.E. Drugs are bad and never do them, right? Well, they happened and it destroyed my childhood. It was what caused my mom and then step-dad to no longer be my consistents and turned them into strangers. It seemed like it also made my mom forget that she had kids and only him. She would leave us to follow him wherever he went, even if that meant pulling him from other women's beds.

As I grew up, I thought it was overall cool that my mom "trusted us enough" to leave us by ourselves and our house became the Hangout house. What did I know? I knew enough by now to cook us dinner, help my sisters with their homework, and even drive a car to the grocery store so we could get food using the money I found stashed in my mom's room. I also knew to ignore my dad's calls when she wasn't there because it made him mad that we were "once again" left by ourselves. I thought that it was only due to the fact that he didn't trust us like my mom did. I was 12 years old at this time.

By the time I was 13, my mom had bounced in and out of jails and we would go live with my aunt and uncle's who had NO IDEA how to deal with 3 unruly girls and couldn't really afford to take us in. But they did their best and showed us all the love that they could! My aunt also helped me to see that if I wanted to do anything in life or be a better person, I needed to focus my smarts on my education. And living with them, I became a straight A student. My mom got out of jail and we went back to living with her. My sisters were so happy but I didn't want to give up the happy home I had with my aunt and uncle. It was truly the first time that I saw, I couldn't make my decisions anymore. And it made me understand that when I didn't have control over the simplest things in my life, that it would set off my anxieties. I started to truly realize that my life so far wasn't normal and that there was consequences happening to me.

I wish that I could say that my mom stayed clean and started putting us first. That she decided to leave her husband alone and focus on the lives that she brought in to this world. We didn't ask for any of this. We just wanted our mom back. The mom that used to be our team mom for softball. The one that would drive me to karate, cheerleading practice, girl scouts. The mom who was our biggest supporter in all that we did. The mom that we lost when Meth was introduced to her. Unfortunately, that was not how my deck of cards was dealt and it was taking everything that I had in my young self to keep them from falling all the way down.

grief
Like

About the Creator

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.