Chapter Two | Humble Beginnings part 2

My father got released from prison just as I was entering Middle School at Gulf Middle. I immediately moved in with him to beacon woods on Ogalala Street. My brother and sister stayed behind with my mother. Not long after I moved in with him, my father met his next wife- Audrey. My codependent behavior really wasn’t having their relationship. I was monstrous in my attempts to break them apart leading to their eventual marriage on February 14, 2004.

During my teen years I was diagnosed with Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome. Irregular periods, uneven weight gain, facial hair, gender confusion and an almost inability to be able to conceive a child. It’s a hormonal issue that affects testosterone levels making them higher than my estrogen levels. After going through many phases growing up I was always suffering from a lot of uncertainty about who I was. There was my Eminem phase, my goth Hot Topic phase, my super punk rock phase then my hippy phase. I never knew who or what I wanted to be. I drilled myself into the church, I joined the Christian club in school, I attended Bible study and went on summer camps dedicated to God.

Right around my senior year in high school I think is when I started showing signs of bipolar disorder. I was so incredibly impulsive, and very easily peer pressured because more than anything I wanted people to like me. Anthony Marra, a friend I went to middle school made his way back into my life during my senior year, along with Scott Show, Anthony Scott and Jorge Alverado. I was listening to feminist punk rock, sporting a multicolored mohawk and stinky patch covered black skinny jeans. I stopped showing up for church events and I was learning new things in a life full of drinking beer, smoking pot and saying, “Fuck the System – Equality for All!”

I graduated high school May 23, 2009 and I was enrolled and starting classes before my 18th birthday. My mom worked as an admissions representative for ITT Technical Institute in Tampa where she managed to convince all three of us kids to sign up for an Associates degree program for Visual Communications aka graphic design.

I’d go back and forth from Brandon, where my mom’s boyfriend Tom was letting us all live while we were in school back to Moon Lake where all I wanted to do was drink Natural Ice and Sailer Jerry smoking a fat Game blunt with my friends. Scott was renting a room from my dad and all my friends lived in my house or were there pretty much every day.

I lost my virginity when I was 18 to one of my best friends in a very raunchy vomit covered disgusting session in the back of a closet in my sister’s old bedroom. I remember Biggie Smalls – Juicy playing in the background. Just a few short weeks later I got my first refund check from funds not spent by the Pell grant. It was over $2,000 and I used that money to drop out of school and to move into a shed in Tiffany’s parents front yard while I went to Marchman Tech for Screen Printing.

I remember being so scared. I came home from school one day and no one was home and the house was all locked up. My stomach was in excruciating knots and I started bleeding from my snatch. I passed out, I’m not sure if it was the blood or the pain or if I just had such a bad panic attack I didn’t know how to handle it. When Tiffany’s parents came home her mom knew I had a miscarriage. I was made to call my mom, pack my shit and leave. So I did.

I got back into ITT Tech to finish my degree and I only went home weekends when I wasn’t in class. I’d get black out drunk and pass out in weird places, I’d numb myself from the feelings I felt my whole life of just being completely out of place and to fit in nowhere. I had friends, I finally had a group of people who made me feel loved and wanted. And it was a great feeling.

I was able to get a car and moved to Shady Hills with Anthony and Jorge while I worked and continued going to school. It wasn’t shortly after that when I met Michael Joseph Russell. He was weird and I was weird so naturally everyone thought we’d be a good couple. It was no time before he convinced me to move in with him at his mother’s house in Spring Hill.

Michael was locally famous in Spring Hill and still is to this day for his sign holding, head banging, show that he does on the street corners of Mariner and Spring Hill Drive. He liked to lick people’s faces and be so off the wall that he managed to get the attention from everyone. Good or bad. I had been so fat and awkward that he was the very first person I ever really dated. I was surprised and thrilled to not feel like I’d be staying alone forever. Michael and Kati Brand became the only two people I hung around with. I stopped drinking and just smoked my weed and I stayed out of trouble. I drove to school and I came home or went to Kati’s to tend to the horses or the garden. My life felt great. Nice and simple.

I graduated from ITT Tech around May of 2012. Not long after I graduated my father got me and Michael a traveling circus job for Piccadilly Circus based out of Sarasota Florida. We’d travel all over America just a week or so ahead of the show and plaster posters and hand out free kid’s tickets. Wed even get a few adult tickets to barter for food, tattoos, movie tickets or whatever else we could get our hands on. We drove all the way to New Hampshire and Maine then all the way to Colorado and South Dakota. It was the adventure of a lifetime! On September 24, 2012 I married Michael in Denver, CO. I don’t think I married him out of love, maybe it was to piss my parents off or maybe it was just another nonsense impulse decision I make so often in life but we got hitched. Shortly after we married we were let go and we headed back home to his mom’s in Spring Hill.

Our relationship was pretty much like hanging out with a good friend. We didn’t like the same music, but we definitely enjoyed watching programs and movies. Most days were spent just sitting outside under the garage with our laptop watching something while I rolled a few fatties to smoke. I got a job working seasonally for Spirit Halloween and I enrolled myself into school at a local Medical Career school for the associates in Medical Assisting. I still went and saw Kati at the farm with her son Sebastian and I was feeling so content in life.

My grandmother, Dana died from double lung cancer on December 17, 2013 right after my sister and I went to visit her. Grandma was a huge part of my childhood. She was the reason we had a birthday and Christmas to look forward to presents and she’d cook an incredible Thanksgiving meal. She bought the house in Moon Lake for my dad to raise us in and always made sure her grandbabies were taken care of. The first loss I ever experienced in life.

In or around October 2014 Michael and I decided it was time to split up. I had lost all interest in being in a relationship with him and became downright mean to him on a regular basis and every other day I was picking a fight with him. I didn’t like the person I was when I was with him. But, I hadn’t anywhere to go so I continued to live at his mother’s house til the end of November. When we split up I helped Michael set up a dating profile and not long after I ended up making myself on on OkCupid.