Where the Heart is
What’s the difference between a house and a home?
I was told since I was born that “home is where the heart is” but I never fully understood it until I was in my late teens. Until I was seven, I think I had a home… but not really. Mom had a job that caused her to travel everywhere and Grandma took care of me most of the time. It was when my aunt moved in that any “home” I had was destroyed.
What used to be my happy care-free lifestyle was quickly turned into a tense stepping-on-broken-glass everywhere house. It seemed like everything turned into an argument between my Grandma, my Aunt and my Mom.
There were some good days. Days where we could eat at the dinner table and have a decent meal together. Days where I didn’t wake up to mom and Meghan screaming at each other.
Megan is the youngest of 5 girls, and the manipulative bitch. She moved back into her mother’s basement because she has gotten herself into about a quarter-million dollars in debt. She also turned my once loving happy grandma into a bitter old hag. She manipulated her, and allowed her to believe that she didn’t have to move on, that she could sit on her ass, read books, not go to the doctor, and act like her husband was still alive.
My grandpa has been dead since I was 6 months old. All of his things are still in her room.
Meghan is also mentally abusive, as is grandma. There have been times where my own grandma has called me “ugly” and Meghan called me a “worthless moocher” when I was only 15.
But through it all I took all the blows. I let them say that and I never went running to mom because that would only end up with more yelling.
I took it, and it left a horrible impact on my social life and self confidence. I had never been good at making friends because up until 7th grade I only had one really good friend. Once I changed schools to go to Fulton Science Academy
Alana is my cousin, and the sister of who I am staying with here in Arkansas
She appeared on our doorstep in the middle of the summer between 7th and 8th grade with her two boys (both under 7). Without asking, or even telling anyone they were coming they started to live with us.
This is a woman who has refused to see her two boys in over 2 years, has sent nasty letters to her mother, and had lied about being pregnant with twins as well as a shit fuck ton of other things that I don’t even know about but my cousin has told me about.
The night before she came was the last family dinner I ever had with Mom, Grandma and Megan.
Mom told her to stay away from me, and for me to basically stay away from everyone else. Until they left 5 months later, I was alone. I couldn’t leave my house, let alone my room because mom was so embarrassed about everything. But by the time I could go out more it was too late. I had locked myself in my room, leaving only for food bathroom and school. I had lost almost all contact with the friends I made in 7th grade with no idea how to get them back.
I was alone until my first year at Centennial, where I made my first REAL friends who were there and supported me, even when I didn’t tell them about my house. Suddenly I started to see that there were such things as caring parents and warm households. I was starting to see what having a home actually meant.
My friends made the next few years tolerable as I went through high school. They were even supportive once I decided to drop out and get my GED.
Once I dropped out though… things at the house started getting worse. Megan tried to start controlling and manipulating me like she had done to grandma but in a different way. This time, she wanted to control me and act like SHE was my mother, and not my mom. Once she realized that I wasn’t gonna let her do that she started calling me a worthless moocher again who couldn’t even get through high school.
About 2 weeks after summer break started for the school, Mom and Megan got into a horrible fight. One so horrible that it would change my life and my sense of security for a long while.
A week before the fight relatives visited grandma. Among them was my cousin who I am staying with and who is close to my mom. She is the only one in my family to ever actually try and help my mother (who had been suffering from depression for several years). ((I later learn that the reason my Cousin is so much nicer than the rest of my family is because she’s not blood related. She’s actually my cousin-in-law. No Riley blood there))
It was decided that I would be sent to live with her.
It’s been a shock living here, to say the least. It’s not tense here at all… my cousin is an AMAZING person like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve never known that there were parents that never yelled at their kids. She has a “home”.
I don’t feel comfortable calling this place “home” because it seems so intrusive to include the troubled young adult like me into what she has built up for herself and her kids.
I know what I want out of life now though. I want a home. I don’t need a ton of money, or power. All I want out of life is a warm place to come home to, and someone (whether it be a boyfriend, husband or just a friend) who cares about me to come home to.
Tl;dr- life kinda sucked and I’m gonna try and find a place to be happy in life.
