RouletteWeekend

Looking back on my younger years and comparing the cost of housing from back then until today, it’s crazy to me that I was able to move around so much when I was younger.

I truly have no idea how I did it nor do I comprehend how I did it so often. It wasn’t like I was rolling in the dough and could afford to just pack up and move as often as I did and I did move often.

Starting at 17, right after I had my daughter, I moved into this trailer park in Halls, which is just on the outskirts of Knoxville. Think…country…mostly white, mostly racist. That was where we moved when mom got into her car accident which is what sent us from Pennsylvania to Tennessee in the first place. But that’s a whole other story that maybe I’ll unwrap tomorrow if I can get the big trauma bow it’s all held together with untied. For now, let’s start at 17.

I lived with my Aunt T. She was the only one, as far as I know, from either side of my family that was willing and able to take all of us kids. There are 4 of us, stair-stepped in age. When my mom got into her accident I was 15. Just a few weeks shy of my 16th birthday. Come to think of it, I guess this month will be 35 years since my mom’s car accident.

The short story is that when my mom was almost 35, she was in a drinking and driving accident that changed all of our lives forever. She ended up in a coma and by the time she woke up, me and my three siblings had been moved to Tennessee to live with my aunt and uncle.

We had moved quite a few times as children, so I think it’s safe to say that I learned to leave when I was unhappy. I think it’s a character flaw I still play tug-of-war with to this day.

So, at 16, I was living with my aunt in Knoxville. By 17, I was a teenage mom and by the laws of Tennessee and maybe most of the greater United States, I was technically considered emancipated. So thinking that I was old enough and wise enough to live on my own, I took my new baby, and my brain injured mother who didn’t want to live at my aunt’s house anymore after recovering as much as she was going to from a coma and a brain injury and moved into a 2 bedroom trailer less than a mile from the person who turned their life upside down to keep all of us together briefly.

For so many years, I made myself the hero of this story. I would tell people, “I raised my mom, I raised my kids, I let my siblings live with me whenever they needed a place to stay.” It wasn’t until recently, as I’ve aged and gained some perspective about life and the cost of sacrificing for others that I realized that my aunt was the true hero. I’m not sure how old she was at that time. If my mom was in her mid thirties, then I think my aunt T would have been forty-ish. She didn’t have kids of her own. She had a career and a husband and a beautiful house. It was probably the nicest house I had ever lived in. And I was so ungrateful. I think all of us kids were. We were teenagers when my mom got into her accident. Well, teens and tweens. There was my older sister who was 16, my younger brother who would have been 13, and the youngest sister who would have been twelve. I don’t remember them at those ages, but that’s what the math says. And we were a bunch of little assholes if I remember correctly.

Thinking back, I don’t think I ever thanked my aunt for giving up her whole life to take us all in, for giving up her sanity at times, her freedom, her money. She tried so hard to make our lives normal after my mom’s accident, but I’m not sure if she realized that I don’t think our lives had been “normal” to begin with.

It took me a long time to let go of the resentment toward my mom for so many things. For taking us from our dad. For sending us to a catholic school. For putting herself in a position to end up in a drunk driving accident that would land us in a courtroom wondering if our dad cared enough to come get custody of us, wondering what would happen if we all got split up. We all turned out so different from one another that I’m not sure, in hindsight if it would have even mattered. We didn’t end up staying with my aunt long enough for it to make that much of a difference anyway. But it did make a difference in the life of my aunt.

I know if someone asked me right now to take in 4 teenagers, that would likely be a hard no. I know what raising your own teenagers is like. I don’t think I would have it in me to even attempt to try and fix or raise teenagers that someone else had already fucked up for the first 12 to 16 years of their life.

But that one aunt did. And even though I don’t think I’ve ever really thanked her (ok, I just stopped and sent her a text because a phone call would have made me cry), I often quietly appreciate everything she did and acknowledge that she was a way better person than I think I would ever be. I also realize now after years and years of personal development, therapy, and breathing that my mom truly did the best she could with the tools she had handed down to her from her own mother.

And since I don’t like to go over a certain word count each day because people get bored if they have to read for more than 6 minutes, I will continue with the excessive moving tomorrow.

Thanks for going on this all-over-the-place journey with me. See you tomorrow for the rest of the moves…