As I was trying to decide where to start in my life, I decided to start with my childhood! My parents had me when my mom was sixteen and my dad was seventeen. Yes, that is a very young start.
I had the most amazing mom. She may have had me young, but she was always there for me. I went everywhere with her except for while she was finishing high school. While she was in school, I stayed with my maternal grandparents. I had the best grandparents. You will hear alot about them throughout the stories of my life.
My parents did get married! They were married fourteen years. In those years, I was an only child for 6 years. Then my sister was born. I love having a sister. We was not a wealthy family. But we had what we needed. We lived in a very small house. But that was fine with me.
I said we had a very loving mother! My father, on the other hand, was not a very good person. I didn’t know what all the signs meant at that age, but as I have grown older, I realize that is the first man in my life that showed me what being a narcissist is!
For the most part, I had a good childhood! But anything that involved my father was never good. He was a very selfish man. If things wasn’t what he wanted to do then he made things very difficult for everyone.
He sang in a gospel quartet. Yes, another narcissistic move. Try to act like you are a good man to hide your real truth. Yes, I am very much a Christian. I was raised in church and am very proud of my faith. Why I say that about him though is because I never remember him even being in church except for when he was singing. He wanted everyone to think he was the perfect husband and father. But he was far from it.
Our mother would always protect us. I only remember a few times being left alone with him. He was not very nice to me. When my sister was young, he always seemed to be nicer to her. I didn’t really care about that. I never resented her for that. I really never was a big fan of him.
I could always tell my mom was not really that happy with him. But I know now that she was always trying to make things work because of us kids. But when I got older, I started to notice things.
As I said earlier, my dad was a singer. My cousin on my mom’s side was getting married. So my dad was going to be singing with the bride’s half sister. I was probably around 12 or so by now. So, she would come over to the house to practice. We had a piano in the bedroom. I remember one day she was there, I walked around the corner and saw him kissing her. So yes, another selfish move, he was having an affair. Now I have seen it. To make things worse, my parents had just bought a new house. We were going to be moving into a new house. I think my mom probably already knew he was having an affair, but she was staying for the kids. I’m sure she thought it was the right thing, but I wanted her to get away from him.
So we moved into the new house. Within that year, things started to get really bad! I remember walking into the kitchen and seeing my dad choking my mom. I would always defend my mom, so I grabbed a pan or something and hit him with it. My sister was alot younger so she doesn’t really remember any of this. Mom and I always tried to protect her from everything. He did stop choking her. But of course, I was the bad one for hitting him. Shortly after that, my mom wasn’t going to put up with the affair anymore. So they decided to get divorced. Things got really bad. We of course was going to stay with mom! Thank God. We wasn’t going to get to stay in the new house. My mom wouldn’t be able to afford it. But we stayed for a while. But before he moved out, he told me that I was the biggest mistake of his life. Mind you, I was about fourteen years old. He said he wanted my sister but not me. I replied ” Your mistake is gone.” So I was done with him. I haven’t spoken to him in around 40 years now. Some people say that you will regret that. I can tell you that I have no regrets to this day. There are alot of reasons why. Sometimes cutting toxic people out of your life is for the best, even if it’s family. I will get into those stories another time. Watch for my next post to continue reading about my childhood.