My Story, Part 5- Going Home

Chris and I had stayed behind while the rest of the family journeyed north to see the tractor show. I had hopes that the weekend would now be calm, no more surprises, just cuddle up with my love, watching TV, and trying to recuperate from the insane car accident we had just been through. The abrasion on my chin hurt, but I was thankful we still had our lives, and I still had my baby. I held my tummy and talked to my sweet baby and hoped that it would be okay. I worried the rest of my pregnancy that something would go wrong. It’s hard not to do, when you’ve lost a child. Constantly second guessing yourself, analyzing every feeling, every sense of dread, every little detail that might “mean” something. I know many of you have been through it, and you know exactly the feeling I mean.

While the weekend should have been about calm, rest, and even just being careful and listening to my body enjoying the child that was growing in me, as per usual, it didn’t end up that way. Chris was sitting in the recliner watching TV. I was being a good girlfriend, sitting on the floor, back on the recliner, rubbing his feet while we watched whatever show was on. He had these thick socks on, and I couldn’t rub his feet properly, so I went to slide his socks off, slipping my hand in the top of the sock… and felt a plastic baggie.

I had no idea what this could be of course, naive as I was. I pulled it out as Chris started to jump up in a panic. I could tell then it was weed, even though I had never seen it before. I started screaming and was so upset, he was blabbering excuses and trying to figure out one that I’d believe or accept. It was not the first time he’d disappointed me, nor would it be the last, but it was the first time I’d caught him with actual drugs. It may not be a big deal these days, or to most people anyway, but for me it was huge. You already know what kind of girl I was, I was the goody-two-shoes, I was the girl who never did anything, and it was bad enough that I was already knocked up for the second time by this kid, but now it turns out he is smoking weed around his pregnant girlfriend… I couldn’t handle it. I ran to the bathroom, threw it in the toilet, and flushed. I was heartbroken. Of course if had known the hard drugs he was actually  starting to do at that time, weed would have been at the bottom of my list of concerns.

As riled up as I had been, I forgave Chris, because, what else could I do? I was living with him, having his baby, had no job or foreseeable future, so this is where I was. I had to make it work. And he was ever the apologist, kisses and hugs and “You’re so wonderful, thank you for being understanding and forgiving…” and all that. It was always hard to stay mad at Chris, because he really had the best apologies, and even in the worst of times, he could make me laugh. He truly is a very funny guy, always cracking everyone up, being goofy and just trying to make people smile. So him knowing me better than anyone, he could make me laugh even if I was angry. We moved on with life and our pregnancy.

We found out soon that we were having a baby girl. The name picking began! I still had the baby name book we used for Hailey, that Chris’s sister-in-law had given us before, so we used that one again. I still have that book, even today. I went through so many names, from Chloe to Kinley to Quinley, I exhausted all options. Then, Chris suggested Carly. Carly… hmmm, I really liked the sound of it, he was more decisive than I was, so I decided he could pick her first name, and I would be the one to pick her middle name. Have I mentioned yet that I am a little bit of a procrastinator, and that I have trouble making final decisions? Well, I am those things. I will leave things in my online “cart” for weeks before finally hitting “order” and I will wait until it MUST be done to do it- so picking a baby name for me is completely daunting. I think I care too much what people think. Scratch that, I know I care too much what people think.  So, I wouldn’t come up with a perfect middle name for our little Carly until the day of her birth. Because that’s just how I roll.

The months went on, and pretty soon I was 7 months pregnant. Chris would go missing for days at a time, from his own home, and then come home crying and red faced and apologizing again. We would have epic fights, we would break up, get back together, teenage drama as per usual. I don’t think we realized what big life decisions lay ahead, and so soon. Of course we didn’t, we were living in the now, for today only. We were inexperienced, in love, dumb, selfish, spoiled children ourselves.

I was still going to my mother’s every few days for my senior year homeschooling class, and I was learning a lot. I loved getting to visit my mom, although I was missing my dad. He was usually not there because he had taken a job where he was out of town a lot, traveling for work doing different construction type jobs. One night, my mother told me she and dad had talked, and they agreed they would like to invite me back home, and they thought it would be a better environment for myself and the baby. I couldn’t agree more, but my pride wouldn’t let me come home to them.

I went back to the Lacy’s that night thinking, ‘At least I have an out… wait, why do I need an out? If life is so bad that I need an out from this mess, I should just leave. But I can’t. They couldn’t handle my situation, and the Lacy’s took me in. I’ve got to make this work.’ I was pretty torn between wanting my mother close to me as the birth of my child neared, and being with the father of my child, as dysfunctional as our relationship was. As it turns out, Chris would make that decision easy for me.

A few things happened over the next few months. One night we were playing video games and Chris walked over to the closet. I didn’t pay much attention to him, but I paused the video to wait on him. I looked into the reflection in the glass of the entertainment center and noticed Chris was standing in a chair. I stood up and went around the door to see him tying a noose, about to hang himself I screamed and made him get down. This was not his first suicide attempt. When we lost Hailey, a few months after, he called me one day and told me he had just taken a bunch of pills, and that he loved me, but he couldn’t handle the pain anymore. So I knew he had issues with his mental health. But he had been acting more and more strange lately. He was more volatile, he didn’t act as loving, wasn’t as sweet, didn’t care about hurting the baby or me, just wanted to have sex, and he seemed more depressed than ever. He tried one other time that I know of to commit suicide during my pregnancy. I walked in on him again, with a shotgun held in front of himself. Again, I stopped him. At the time I thought he was trying to get attention. I had always been told that if you wanted to kill yourself, you just would. I didn’t know that these were signs of more serious drug abuse, signs of methamphetamine use. A call for help, depression, anger, needing sex constantly, not caring about your partner. The signs got more obvious as time went on, but I still wouldn’t figure it out until much later.

One night, I was enjoying the fall air, it must have been November, and as anyone from Alabama knows, November in our neck of the woods can be pretty warm. It was probably 60 degrees or so, I was barefoot and pregnant, walking around the beautiful farm land. Their house is beautiful, with a wrap-around porch, mint green paint on the wood trim, and big dormers where the attic is. I love that house.  I was sitting on the dock, dreaming of what my next baby girl would look like. Would she look like Hailey? Would she be different? Would she be healthy?  Would I love her and know her as well as I felt I had known Hailey? I rubbed my tummy and looked out over the pond, feeding the fish and watching them rise to the surface, as the sun set over the landscape. I was sure of one thing, I was definitely ready to meet her and be her mommy. She would be my comfort, no matter what mistakes I had made or what I did or didn’t accomplish, I was going to do all I could to make life amazing for her. We would travel together, paint our nails together, do everything. She’d be my everything. I couldn’t wait.

I walked back inside after seeing Chris come back to the house on his four wheeler. He walked in the house without waiting for me, and I waddled in behind him. Chris’s parents had made us have “separate” rooms when I moved in. Chris took the back room that used to be the office, and I had taken Chris’s old room. It didn’t make any difference, we slept together every night, playing house like real adults. Chris had gone to his room and shut the door. All my things were in my room, my stereo (yes, the big black boombox everyone had in year 2000), my clothes, TV, etc. I first noticed that my television was missing, but thought maybe someone had just moved it (I had a LOT of stuff in there, and it was a bit chaotic). But I found it odd when I walked into my room on this day and my stereo was covered in some sort of liquid. I had no idea what it was, but I could tell by the smell that it was probably fried. When I got closer, the smell … smelled…. like pee. Seriously? Of course I knew it had to have been Chris, with his actions becoming stranger and more ridiculous.

I immediately confronted Chris about the stereo and about some of the things that had gone missing out of my room, like my television. Anything of value was gone, as I had noticed when I started taking closer inspection of my belongings. He became angry, screaming at me and cussing at me, trying to accuse me of selling the things myself and then trying to turn it on him (nonsense) and other crazy things. I then accused him of stealing to feed his drug habit, which at this point I only thought was marijuana. At this suggestion, he became more enraged than I had ever seen him. I had a twirling baton in my room, I used to love to twirl, and even though I didn’t make the team I still liked to play around on it. Chris picked up the baton and hurled it at me, missing my head by mere inches. He then rushed over to me, in my face, and grabbed me by my arms with both hands, and shaking me, screamed “I am NOT on drugs! Do you understand me?” At this point I was terrified that he was going to hit me, or worse, hurt the baby. I pulled myself from his grip and ran into the hall bathroom and locked the door. Before I ran out, I saw that he had immediate regret on his face, as if he didn’t know what he’d been doing until after he’d already done it. I still remember his face. He seemed shocked that he had done it too.His parents were there in the living room watching TV, and had not heard what happened. They did however see me crying and running at seven months pregnant to the bathroom.

Chris’s father Buddy came to the door, and gently knocked, and asked me if everything was okay. I’m sure he thought something might be wrong with the baby. He is a large man, foreboding to many, but so kind and gentle, and he has always loved me and lets me know every time I see him that I am his daughter, and I had better not forget that. We formed a very special bond. Since there were no bedtimes, and I had prenatal insomnia, he and I would stay up all night sometimes, watching old movies, and he’d tell me stories of his childhood, and just stories of anything really. I appreciated the wisdom and he appreciated someone listening. We got very close. I miss that even now.

I told Buddy to just leave me alone. I didn’t know what to do or say, I had never been treated this way in my life. This, for me, was rock bottom. Here I was, barefoot and pregnant, no job, no family, no friends, and my boyfriend was on drugs, stealing from me and now abusing me. I felt like trailer park trash. I felt about as small as anyone can feel. Buddy persisted, and demanded I tell him what had happened. I told him his son just hurt me, and that’s when Buddy lost it.

I stayed in the bathroom, until I heard Chris’s mom Ruby screaming for Buddy to stop. I opened up the bathroom, and Buddy had Chris in a choke-hold. He was strangling Chris. I came in and didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there, watching this happening. Chris couldn’t breathe, he was purple, and I became hysterical. Buddy came to his senses, and released his grip. He told Chris if he ever did that to me again, he’d kill him. I told Buddy not to worry, there wasn’t going to be a next time. That night, I packed up what I could, and I had my mother come pick me up. I was going home.

My Story, Part 4-Accidents Happen

I was pregnant again. I had just lost my first child, and I was pregnant. Again. Good grief, did we not know what caused this? (I still get that a lot.) Well, yes, we did know what caused that. But, for some reason, our counter measures didn’t seem to do any good. Perhaps I skipped a day of the pill, or perhaps I was on medication that eradicated the birth control effects of the pill. For whatever reason, I was pregnant for the second time as a teenager. I found out in April, and I had to of course tell my parents.

Boy was that fun. This time my parents weren’t so forgiving. Again, understandably. I was given some options, and I wasn’t fond of any of them. I instead chose to leave my parents’ home and move in with Chris and his family.

I need to make something a little more clear that I didn’t address in my first few blog posts. Chris’s family are wonderful people. They will give you the shirt off their backs, and they have always been this way.  They do not adhere to societal rules, and when I say “they” I mean his parents. They do not have bedtimes, they smoke in the house (or they did) and they do not monitor the kids’ activities, they are more like free range people. They are country people. And in some ways it’s really nice. There is no stress when you visit. You can take a nap at their house, any time of day, if you are tired, and it’s okay. If you need a place to stay, they will let you stay there. If you are hungry, they will feed you, and make you a few plates to go. If you need clothes, they will clothe you. In many ways, they are much like Christ would want all of us to be. I think somewhere along the way the line between having rules and loving people got blurred for them, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. When you are too nice, sometimes people will take advantage of your kindness. I believe Chris was and is one of those people that takes advantage of people’s kindness. I will never be that person to them. I will never use their kindness for my own benefit. I do love them as a second set of parents to me. They gave me a home when my own parents could not deal with what I had done, and I am forever grateful to them for being there for me. No matter their own mistakes, they have never done anything but love me and my children. Some of their extended family read these posts. I am still in regular contact with many of the extended family, and the ones I am in contact with are amazing, wonderful, caring, Christian folks. I consider them to be my family. Some of them consider me more family than they do Chris. I suppose I needed to clarify this because I didn’t paint this family in a great light early on, making it seem as though they didn’t care about their son, or me. But they did and still do greatly. They love me. And I love them. They made mistakes, just like I did, just like we all do. As we will discuss later, “mistakes” are much different than an “intentional infliction of pain”.

I moved in with Chris and his parents in May. I remember because school was out. I would have been a senior the next year. I quit high school, and my mother, who did her best to keep me as grounded as possible, even at a distance, offered to give me home school classes so that I could still graduate with a diploma. That one year of home school I think I learned more than all my years of public school. It made me realize why home schooled kids are so much smarter than public schooled ones, on average.

Chris’s dad bought us a car. A red Pontiac Sunfire. It was a stick- and I had no idea how to drive one, so Chris drove us around most of the time. One day, Chris’s mother had to be taken to Birmingham for some tests at the hospital, so he offered to drive her because she didn’t like driving long distances or at night. I went along for the ride, partly because I was stuck to the boy like glue, but partly just to get out of the house. In Birmingham, the roads can be confusing. One way streets, lights that look like two way turns are really just one way turns… etc. It makes sense to be more cautious in places like this because of the added confusion. And let’s just say, Chris wasn’t a good driver. Still isn’t. Never has been. We had already been in one wreck together when we were 16. That one wasn’t exactly his fault- a lady pulled out from a stop sign before she looked, and then stopped in the middle of the street when she saw us. But it could have been avoided. Instead of slowing to a stop or taking the road to the right (we were on a small back road) he kept going about 60 mph (way too fast) veered off the road and ran us into a telephone pole. One of those things. It would be the first of several wrecks and accidents for Chris. But, back to the Birmingham trip, Chris thought that a one way left turn lane was a two lane left turn lane. And he slammed right into the side of a pick-up truck. We had the car taken to the shop, no major damage, but it took about a month to repair it- so now, no car to drive.

At this point, I had been living with Chris for a little over a month, and was around 4 months pregnant. The families’ annual trip to the Illinois Tractor Show was upon us. It had been a month since our car was taken for repairs, and we got it back just about a day before the big trip. Our car would be the third out of three cars on our journey north. We had packed all up, gotten our newly refurbished car ready to go, and set out on our adventure. Boy, what an adventure awaited us. I was excited, I had never been up north before. Some of the little nieces and nephews wanted to ride with us but their parents (wisely) decided to make them stay in the car with them for the first half of the trip. They joked that once they’d had enough of the kids that we could have them. Everyone was excited as we took off.

Once we made it to the Tennessee state line, it started to rain. Really hard. In our little Sunfire, it was hard to keep up with the larger vehicles in front of us that were doing 85+ mph. We didn’t know where we were going and didn’t want to lose the family, so we kept pace with them. I told Chris to turn the radio off and pay attention to the road. I almost laid down in the back seat, but decided against it because I wanted to keep an eye on the road too, and just lowered my seat back to try to relax. No sooner had I decided to recline when all of a sudden, we started to hydroplane out of control. We started spinning and spinning, there was no time to think. I think we spun about three or four times, and ended up with the tail end of our car facing oncoming traffic in the Southbound lane of the interstate, which I wasn’t aware of. When we finally stopped, I breathed a sigh of relief, noticing that we were in the median, when Chris yelled, “TRUCK!” and next there was a loud crash. Chris said,”I love you,” as his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he passed out. I was still completely coherent and thought Chris had died. I was sitting there in the silence, wondering if my baby was okay, if Chris was alive, what just actually happened? I had no idea what kind of truck just hit us, I thought it was a little Ford or something, because the impact had not jarred me all that much. I never even turned around, my neck hurt, and I had hit my chin on the dash, giving me an abrasion. I hoped the other driver was okay. The family made their way back to us. They are all volunteer firefighters, so they were calm and very helpful. The ambulances arrived, and they put us both on stretchers. I still remember the rain in my face, and asking someone to please put something over my face so I didn’t have rain in my nose and eyes. They finally propped us up together in the ambulance. Chris came to, and we held hands on the way to the hospital. All I could think about was my precious cargo, and not losing another child. I cried the entire way.

We were checked out and cleared at the hospital, we were both miraculously fine. Baby #2 was fine. Amazing. Once things settled down, Chris retold the story as though he were a hero. It was exciting, now that we knew we were okay. The adrenaline of the situation finally began to sink in. I had not realized the truck that hit us was an 18-wheeler. I didn’t know our gas tanks hit each other, and that there was an explosion and everyone thought we had been blown to smithereens. I didn’t even realize that the back half of our car had been ripped off, until we saw the picture of it on the front page of the Tennessee Times the next day. Thank you Jesus. We opted to go home, while the rest of the family went on to the event up north. I just wanted to curl up under some covers and be safe.