Obviously not but this post has to wait until tomorrow because home girl is exhausted and this post is a doozy.
Updated 7/10
I haven't been to Adventure Island in about a year and when I went last it was for a five year old's birthday. I had no one to really do anything with and I didn't want to do a lot on my own so I only did like four things. This visit to the water park was way more productive! Alexis and I got there around 1:45 because I had to work 6am-12 and then we had to go buy sunscreen. When we got there, all of the slides unfortunately had to close because there was lightning in the area. Eventually all of the rides were shut down and it remained that way for about an hour. In that hour, pretty much half of the people at the park left which worked in our favor because lo and behold, everything reopened.
In the 4 hours we had left at the park we were able to ride all of the tubing rides and do three of the slides. I also walked up enough sets of stairs to make up for the fact that it was an ab challenge rest day. That's pretty productive in my opinion! It was Alexis' first visit but she had tons of fun! Can't wait to go back!
Now, on to the reason I call this post a doozy.
The Storyline challenge for today is to write about something you've over come. My initial reaction to that is: "Where do I start?" I think that's a fair question to be honest. Do I talk more my childhood in relation to growing up with a single mother, on welfare, who was a hoarder and who was ridiculously manipulative? Do I talk about the crackd dealers who lived down the block in the projects? Do I talk about being the first one in my family to graduate with a highschool diploma or to go to college? About being an orphan?
And then I came to realization that I haven't *really* told the story as to how I became an orphan which is honestly the biggest thing I've overcome. If you've made it this far and you want to continue, you rock.
On with the story:
I was 8 years old when my mother first started to show signs of being sick. I can't remember what exactly her symptoms were but I remember many doctor visits, hospital visits, CAT scans, MRI's, tests, second opinions. I went to each one, there was no where else to go. First they said it was MS. Then they said it was dementia. No 50 year old thinks dementia is the cause of their problems. An 8 year old barely knows what that is. But, when you give it the name Alzheimer's then it starts to click a little more. The doctors explained that the form of dementia my mother had was really rare and that it had been seen in people as young as 38. And this form of dementia was not a pretty one.
Essentially, what was going to happen was plaque was going to start forming over sections of her brain for things like language, motor skills, memory, and eventually involuntary functions liks breathing and digestion. She was going to go backwards from the 50 year old that she was to behaving like an infant. And she did, for the next eight years. I help her take care of herself until I was 10. This meant that I helped her remember to do things like take her medicine and what ever else I could do. I don't know what all she did while I was at school everyday, but I do remember her being late (really late) to pick me up quite a bit.
Her sisters (she had four at the time) tried to help but from I knew about them (from my mother) they didn't actually want to. I later learned that my mother was a difficult person to help and that eventually you just had to stop trying. We eventually ended up in government housing and my mother was slowly losing her ability to speak which is where I picked up my stutter from.
This is where my sister comes in. She had moved to a different state about two years before my mother got sick. And from what I know of the situation, she hadn't really been aware of how bad things had gotten. When she found out exactly what was going on she packed up her life, said "I have to go, my baby sister needs me and I have no idea if we'll see each other again" to the man who is now her husband, and moved back here. That's when the dynamic changed a little. I went from having to be a parent to not having to be a parent and having someone else taking care of us. At first it was just trying to help with a better quality of life but then my mother forgot how to drive.
We moved in with my sister when I was in 7th grade and when she relocated my mom, my mom got worse which we were warned could happen. Things started to happen quicker after that. She started to lose her ability to make meals for herself, bathe herself, and her speech changed even more, At this point, she was trapped in her mind and that is really frustrating. So she would scream and cry, for hours. And then, right before my sister got married, she forgot how to use the bathroom on her own.
Quicker and quicker she got more and more child like. Think The Curious Case of Benjamin Button but without the physical regression in age. I remember being 14 years old and dancing with her in her little house behind the main house and asking her if she remembered who I was. She didn't answer me, she just smiled and kept bopping about. So I asked her if she knew my name. All she did was dance.
She had to be moved into a home soon after. i only went to cisit her once, i couldn't stand iseeing her there. She died on November 30th, 2008. I had been 16 years old for 28 days.
I left out a ton of details but the take away for that is, I lost both of my parents. Yes, I had my sister but she wasn't my mother. Technically speaking, I should have been a ward of the state and then put in a kin home which would have been my sister's but I fell through the cracks. This ended up working to my advantage when it came to college but that doesn't make up for the fact that I only got 8 real years with my mother. That she wasn't there for my high school or college graduation and she won't be there for any of the other milestones I've yet to come across. But, I don't think I would have been as strong of an individual as I am if I hadn't gone through that. I wouldn't be so eager to help others and I wouldn't be so protective of people.
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