A taste Of My teenage backstory.

Let's start here:

My mom got remarried as I hit puberty and it didn't make for the most fundamental living environment for anyone.  My two younger brothers were my family before the move and I had spent a good deal of my life raising them, so we were close.  When she remarried our family grew by a step-dad, a step-sister and eventually a new baby sister, not to mention a parenting overload.  Slowly we all integrated together and I now love everyone of my new family dearly, but it took five or six years for all that to fall into place.  

In the mean-time I was constantly seeming to get in trouble with my mother despite my decent grades.  She is was a little old fashioned and very strict.  I remember cellphones were just starting to become an 'item' for teenagers when I started to feel the rebellion-urge.  She refused to get me one, not even a prepaid until I was sixteen.  Everyone in school had one, but I still had to use the payphone to call home for a ride.  I must not have even been fifteen yet!  I was involved with school and just barely getting interested in boys, but for some reason I could not keep up with her standards.  I was constantly grounded for going up the street to the neighbors house, hanging up posters on the walls of my room or for refusing to turn my music down when it was blasting The Marshall Mathers LP in all of it's glorious profanity.  I started to really change my mentality to; "If I am going to be in trouble anyway, why not make it worth the while?" I wanted to try alcohol so badly when I was thirteen or fourteen, but was one of those people who thought my life would go spiraling out of control if I did...(or something, who knows?)  Like I said, it was puberty. 

After a couple decent dances with trouble; including a small-time robbery of our tiny towns concession stand where my brothers and I ripped open the garage-like doors and made off with at least $60 worth of chips, drinks, candy; my parents sent me to live with a very religious family for the summer in hopes that God would save me...or that a new perspective would have something to get through to me...so off I went to the magnificently small and dull town of Climbing Hill.

The people who took me in:

I don't honestly even want to think about what the conversation my mother had with this lady was like to end with me living in her home, but I'm sure she volunteered her time.  

She seemed the type.

My mom worked with Marie.  Both her and her husband Benny were super sweet, but then again...so was I.  They fell in love with me, and I used it to my advantage.  They were also older than my real parents and it was summer-time, so I had free time.  They were a laid back, easy-to-get-along-with older couple with (no kids or grown kids) of their own.  They were the sweet spot between parent and grandparent, and I was the only guest in their home.  After a few Sundays of church volunteering, following rules, and enjoying the quiet change from my hectic big family lifestyle, I met a couple of kids my age.  I was the youngest of the batch but we were all early teens.  Jeff was older.  I don't know how old but not older than seventeen or barely eighteen, but he had a car.  It was such a small-town that he would park his car in the driveway and we would just roam town on foot.

Jeff was already a volunteer EMT and firefighter for another small-town nearby, and Marie  and Benny had seen him grow up in church and through the town.  They knew he was a good boy, so they would let me go out with him as long as it wasn't just the two of us.  I was allowed to ride in his car, but we weren't allowed to go outside of town.  In the evening, just as darkness started to take over the dusty town he would come to the porch of the house and talk with Benny and then we would work up to asking if I could stay out juuuust a bit later.  Benny was a sucker for making me smile, and it worked every time that I can think of.  They would tell me to be back around ten or eleven.  (I could decide either to stay out til 10 or 11!?...I was in heaven.)

At first, I came back at curfew, but after a couple times of them being asleep when I arrived back home, I started to linger.  Jeff would drive on the outskirts of town.  A girl from my school Brittany was always with us and Jenna.  We became a constant group.  Anytime we weren't engaged in parental control; we were together.  Midwestern summers are festive! We went to a car-show, a street-dance, a christian concert, and church camp together (which we got kicked out the very first night.)  When we stayed out past curfew we played german spotlight (you might not know, but its like hide and go seek had sex with tag in the dark with flashlights in a cornfield or in our case we canvased the town.)  There were probably ten or fifteen of us playing, and we played teams.  It was exhilarating to be whispering in the dark with my closest friends.  We went wild running through the lawns trying to avoid the motion lights, shushing barking dogs, hiding underneath farm equipment.  We even successfully overtook the church roof with a victorious animal call into the night.  I even got a kiss from an older boy who I had a crush on!

Summer eventually ended and I had to return home to my screaming, half-psychotic family and juggle a million school activities, but I had already spent all the time in the world that summer.  It was a beautiful and fantastic experience.  Life was clear and vivid, even if only for a blink in the timeline.  Those short months seemed to have lasted longer than the last five years of my life.  Everyday was a long, brilliant adventure.  I got the opportunity to laugh until I cried while a million emotions whipped through me like wildfire.  I danced and sang to my hearts content and it's still a sacred place in my mind that I can go when the world spins against me and I'm fighting with everything I have left.  I remember that if I enjoy each tragedy speckled moment now, maybe someday I can look back at these days and feel safe.  

Thanks for reading.  <3