Eighteen

I graduated high school. I got a job at Nordstrom. I was just killing time until #2 graduated from the police academy. We were going to get married then. Pop out some babies. He was thrilled with my plan to be a housewife. His mother is one. I didn't want any of this. I was convinced it was the Christian thing to do.

My dad pulled me up to the attic one night. It was were he spent all of his time. His computer was there. That night he told me there was nothing I was doing to make him proud. I'm a failure. When strangers ask he says he has only one child, his son. I'm not doing anything to make him proud. I'm not Christian enough. He said, if I can't change my ways by tomorrow and quit being so lazy, I am to leave. I'm not welcome in his house as long as I am the way I am. Straight A's. I never called in sick to work. I never missed church. I was constantly studying the bible. I was doing my best to deal with living a life I never would have chosen for myself. I was a failure.

So I moved to San Diego, California. I left my family and all of my friends to live with #2's Pentecostal Grandmother. I did it because I was such an emotional wreck I couldn't even attempt to get my own apartment in Portland. My mom most definitely would have stopped my dad from kicking me out if she had known about it. All she would do was try to counter everything my father did. She did a good job, but come on, it was god's plan? God's plan is retarded. I don't need extra help feeling worthless. It's hard enough just being human.

My boyfriend's dad was just like mine. His grandma was crazy. She accepted me, though, so I did the pentecostal thing. I wanted to feel accepted. Anywhere. It didn't matter to me that they sounded insane. #2 informed me that we would be living in California, in spite of the fact that I told him firmly that I wanted to be around my grandparents and my mother. I didn't feel like California was home. I felt alone. He said it was best for me if I wasn't around my father.

I saw myself in a flash. I saw who I was going to become. I saw that I was going to hate the rest of my life, and I broke down. I just stayed in bed for a few days crying. My boss at the book store told me that she had hired me back when she did because she needed me for the next month's inventory. She said I was breaking my promise. I told her, "I've failed everyone. Even myself. I don't care anymore."

I moved back home that week and my mom made a rule that my father was not allowed to speak to me unless she was around. I told on him every time he broke it and stared at him blankly when he did. He eventually stopped talking to me. I came back to find that all but one of my friends had moved away. The day I went to meet him for lunch (plans we had set up a month earlier), I found out that he had died in a drunk driving accident three weeks prior.

God hates me. I decided it was time to change how I was living. How I was living was not working out for me. There's got to be a better way.