The hand life dealt me.

There are days when life is a breeze. But then there are days when life will test every fiber in your being. I sit back & watch the next person & I see everything comes so easy for them. Why can’t life be easy for me? When I was younger my family always said “Sierra, I need you to hurry & grow up so you can raise & take care of your mother.” Ever since the day I started babysitting (around maybe 11-12 years old) I have supported my mother. Let me rewind a little bit.. Let me tell you a little about my Mom. Her name is Stacey. She is 47 years old. She had her fist child at 15 years old. My older brother, Ryan. Ryan was born very ill. My mom was in & out the hospital with him until he was so tired of fighting that he pasted in his sleep at the age of 3 months old. I believe that traumatic memory, that traumatic day caused her to give up on life & pick up her addiction. The day my brother passed was the day she picked up that first pill. That first pill that made her feel numb to all the hurt & pain that the loss of her sweet newborn son caused. She has blamed herself for his death til this very day. After he passed she got with a man named Gary. Gary was also married to a woman named Laura. Him & Laura had 3 children together. All boys. Dale, Sean & Josh. They had Dale when Gary was 17. Mind you Laura is around 10 years older than Gary. They let our Grandma adopt him as if she birthed him. I’m assuming they thought they were to young for kids. But Gary wanted his cake & eat it to. So he bounced back & fourth between my mom & his wife Laura. Weird in my opinion but everyone has their type I guess. Well Gary would bring my mom flowers & Gold all the time, bring her to do fun things to make her fall in love with him. Well he succeeded. Mom eventually got pregnant. When she became about 1 month along Gary beat her so bad because he always accused her of cheating. Although him beating her so badly caused her to be afraid to even leave the house to visit family, she never ever cheated. He beat her into a miscarriage. My mom for some reason still stayed with him. Still getting beat everyday. Caused her to lose her very well payed job at CSX because he swore mom was sleeping with the boss. The year 1993 she found out she was pregnant with a baby girl. The day she found out she was pregnant with a girl was the day she decided it was time to finally leave. She left him & went through her whole pregnancy alone, besides her 4 sisters trying to help her. August 6, 1993 she delivered her 3 lb 12 1/2 oz babygirl 2 months early. That babygirl was me. Even though Mom knew she had me now & that even though I didn’t replace Ryan, I was still her child also & I deserved her love to. But I didn’t get all the love that she could’ve shown me. Instead I watched my Mother be drugged up nodding out burning holes all over the house. Growing up watching my mother bounce from drug dealer to the next so she didn’t have to worry about having to go without getting high. I lived with my moms twin sister or her Mother my entire life. I maybe lived with my mom a total of 4 years of my childhood. After she had me she buckled down a little bit & started serving tables & bartending at the local strip club. Granted my mom made alot of money at that time & she did take me to the beach everyday, to the movies & eat out every night. Mom met a man named Robert. He swept her off her feet not soon after. He not only loved my mom, he loved me too. Even though I was some other mans child he never once treated me like I wasn’t his. Him & Mom got married then soon after mom got pregnant with my little brother Robbie. Mom died on the table having him 3 times. Life was perfect.. atleast thats what I thought anyway. They were having problems that I had no idea about because I was to young to understand at the time. All I knew was this man loved me so much that I was finally going to have a Daddy. But no. Not for me. They separated & life became very crazy & hazy. They were in the middle of a divorce so me, mom & Robbie moved in with moms friend. We had been living with moms friend for a few weeks now. I would go across the street & play with the girl that lived there with her mother & grandparents. One day mom was giving someone a ride somewhere & said I could stay & play with the girl til she returned. It came time for the girl to start getting ready for her dance class. I told her grandma that I would go ahead & clean our mess since the girl needed to take a bath too. I picked up every toy on the floor… atleast I thought. The girls grandparents had 2 dogs. One super tall skinny greyhoud/dobie mix looking dog & a small short long shaggy haired cocker spaniel. I knew that the dog wasn’t a nice dog. I knew this dog didn’t like children. I seen this one piece of one of the toys we were playing with right in between this dogs legs. Like he was straddling it. My heart was racing what felt like a million miles a minute. I sat there & contemplated if I wanted to just leave it there & let them pick it up & put it away or should I finish what I said I would do. So, I thought the right thing to do was finish cleaning up the mess we made in the middle of the living room. I leaned in real slow & went to grab for the toy & then it happened. This dog just jumped & mauled my face. He bit me right on the left side of my mouth & jaw. The holes were so big & deep you could see my teeth through my cheek with my mouth closed. It was the scariest moment of my life & I was alone. All I could do was scream. Scream & run to the bathroom where they were. I stood outside & waited for my mom to return. She showed up & all she seen was a bloody towel covering my face & what was before brand new white keds now covered in my blood also. She drove me straight to the hospital where they performed plastic surgery on spot. I had 52 stitches inside & out of my mouth. I was 7 years old when this happened. Til this day at 27 years old, 20 years later I still randomly catch myself seeing dogs growling at me in corners of empty rooms. I have trust issues with every new dog that crosses my path. I have this ugly scar on my face to remind me everyday for the rest of my life to always trust my gut. My gut told me that day to leave it for them to clean it. It was only ONE PIECE anyway. But NO! I was raised to never half ass anything. If you say you are going to do something, you follow through with what you said. If you start a project don’t stop until it’s finished. After I finally healed from that, I finally convinced mom into signing me up for Softball. I played for about 10 years straight. About a season or 2 in I twisted my ankle pretty bad sliding into 3rd base one game & that was when I was given my first pill. I was maybe 9 at the time. I was given a half of a Loricet. I remember feeling all the pain disappeared & this warm, safe & painless feeling go through my whole body. I didn’t take another pill until I got hurt again a few seasons later when I was line drived in the chest pitching an inning. I truly thought my chest bone was broke. At that time I was given a half of a Percocet. Feeling the same as before only intensified by like 2. I started asking my mom & aunt for one every now & then. My 6th grade year, first year in middle school. I met my bestfriend, Lindsey. I quit taking the pills due to the fact I was in school & I didn’t want anyone to know about my secret. Lindsey & I became so close that I completely forgot about the pills anyway. Mom & Dad would argue day in & day out every night & day. I would get so depressed & would have so many panic attacks that I would run away to Lindseys house. They wouldn’t come find me until I’d been at her house for almost the entire day. It got to the point where I was practically living with her. Both of us would get grounded with chores to do everyday like I was apart of the family. Mom & Dad split up & we moved from the island. I hardly got to stay with her after that. I had began living with my Aunt Tracey & Aunt Bobbi. They would take us to the beach or the pool everyday that we weren’t playing Softball. Well when I was about 12 years old I met a boy. I fell head over heals the moment I saw him. Of course it was just puppy love. We were just kids. We “dated” that whole summer. He took me on my first ever date with a boyfriend. He took me to the movies & we seen Shrek. After summer was over we drifted apart cause Aunt Tracey started dating Uncle Mike & moved us all the way out to Yulee. We never saw eachother after that. If we wasn’t talking on the phone we were messaging eachother on Myspace. Couple of years go by & it’s the summer before my freshman year of high school. I get a random message from that boy I “dated” that summer when I was 12. From that message forward we were back together. If you seen me, you seen him. If you seen him, you would see me trailing behind him. Lol. This. This wasn’t puppy love. This was something else. He got me. He understood me on every level. He knew me inside & out. He respected me to the fullest. He treated me like I was the only girl in the world. Made me feel like a Queen. That Summer before my freshman year changed me. I wasn’t the same person. & neither was he. He was expelled from the high school I was going to after the summer. Mind you I was a couple years behind so I should’ve been in high school with them already. Anyway, he was expelled so he was sent to FLYCA boot camp. He came back a complete different person. When the summer finally ended he would drive me to school everyday & walk me to class. He graduated from the boot camp so he no longer had to go to school anymore even though I had to still. I went into Freshman year a little 15 year old girl. I came out of freshman year a 16 year old woman. I had so many of my firsts my freshman year. My first “real adult kiss”, lost my v card, skipping, cocaine, etc. I smoked weed & took pills at a young age but then dropped them when I went into middle school. After I lost Aunt Bobbi to cancer I started taking pills heavy. Coming to school high as a kite or nodding out. My best friend, Lindsey. She stopped all contact with me after that. She swore it was him. That he got me on “drugs”. If anybody got anybody on “drugs” it was me getting him on them. He didn’t start taking them until I started doing them infront of him. When I got bit by a dog at 7 I sued & got a bunch of money. Mom put it in a trust fund for when I turned 18, 19, 20, & 21. I got my first check when I turned 18. I got my license finally since I couldn’t get them. – – > I left out that on my 16th birthday I had a party with all my friends & older cousins & their girlfriends & my boyfriend. We were all drinking & I got so drunk. I got a call that night saying mom was in the hospital because her & her boyfriend at the time Harold got into a motorcycle accident & she broke her back in like 6 different places. I thought they were lying & hung up on them. The next morning I woke up & called only to find out it was true. The next like year of her life she was in a back brace that legit looked like a turtle shell. She would call me in the middle of class telling me she fell doing laundry & shes home alone with no one to help her up. So I left in the middle of class so many times that the principle said that I need to either drop out & get my GED or I will be kicked out of school. So I dropped out in the middle of my sophomore year of high school. I then moved back in with my mom to take care of her. < – –  After I got my first check at 18 I got my license & bought my first car. Granted it only ran for a whole month then I had to scrap it. So I then turned 19 & got my second check. I then bought ANOTHER car but this time off a car lot. This car was my baby. She lasted me 4 years. Anyway, I bought that car plus my boyfriend a car to because the truck he had since we got together broke down like a year or 2 prior. We both now have a car & we live with my mom & her now new boy friend Chris.  A few months go by and me and my boyfriend get a call from his mother saying she has colon cancer. We then move in with her after she kicked me out cause I had been living there behind her back since I was like 15. She knew she needed us so she allowed me back. She had to go on sick leave from her career, all her bills got backed up from her being in & out of the hospital with cancer. Her house went into foreclosure, her phone bill was way over due, car payment overdue.. Her life as she knew it was crumbling around her. I then felt like God brought me into these peoples lives for a reason. Like he had a reason to put me & him back together. I felt like God was telling me that I needed to the right thing & do everything in my power to help. I then called a company to buy the rest of my trustfund early. I only got a little over 19k. I got her house out of foreclosure, paid her light bill up, cell bill.. literally made sure all her bills was taken care of. Made sure if she didnt have the money for her medicine that I had it for her. I was there to clean her staples, wash her hair cause she couldnt do it  herself. But in the middle of all that madness me & him were creating a madness of our own. All that money caused us to experiment. I became in love with Cocaine & he became in love with Heroin. We knew it was wrong but it felt so good when we were doing it. We would sale drugs to keep the money coming so we didnt go broke. So we could continue to live the lifestyle we were living. He eventually got caught & was put in jail. I spent the little money we had left to bond him out & lawyer. After that we became broke. He didn’t like that to much. He started to get angry, we became distant. One night he woke me up out of a deep sleep at like 2 am beating me, choking me til I saw little white stars. That very next day I left & didnt turn back. I am now 19 years old been with the same dude practically since I was 12 years old. I was scared. I didnt know hot to flirt or date. A few weeks later I started talking to a dude thinking if I got under another man I would forget him. Well. … …….. He was no better. He also had a drug habit. But I didnt found out til it was to late. We had been “dating” for about 2 months & the day I found out I was pregnant I saw him hit a crack pipe. I knew I didnt want that for my baby so I left. I was okay with being a single mom. My pregnancy was so miserable. I was sick the entire time. After I had him My mom helped me so much. When my son was about 6-7 months old Mannie walked into our lives. The moment they laid eyes on each other they fell in love with each other. Mannie knew from that moment on he wanted to be there for him. Ryan (my son. I named him after my brother passed at 3 months old) always loved him. From the very moment he walked in with a new spongebob light up toy. Mannie & I had been together about 2 years at this point & we find out I am pregnant. Well actually Mannies mother knew before we did. She called every bit of it. Almost scary how accurate she was. She said that our baby would be a blonde hair, blue eyed little girl & will look & act just like Mannies older sister Desi. (Desi is Mannies older sister that passed away on her 19th birthday in a car accident) If yall want to know Mannies story I can make a blog about him. But his story is just as scary & trying as my life. I finally had our beautiful babygirl Layna Rechell ( Named her after Desi. {Destiny Rechell}) & then our family was complete. Mannie & I snuck off & got married when Layna was about 6 months old. We ran off to GA & had a lil courthouse wedding. I always see all these couples that have huge weddings & end up in divorce. But then there’s the ones who had a wedding like Mannie & me in a courthouse seem to last forever. To some marriage is just a way for them to get attention. To me marriage is special. It means you found your true soulmate & chose eachother to be with for the rest of their lives. Marriage isn’t just a piece of paper. It means Forever, devotion, honestly & most importantly Dependence. To depend on each other to catch one another when they fall. To hold one another when they’re down & alone & don’t know which way is up. Mannie & I have been together for almost 6 years now. We have hit our MANY bumps in the road. But we never gave up. We never gave up on each other & we never gave up on the life we are building together for our kids. I know I am not a walk in the park. I know I am very hard to be around. I am aware I have multiple things I need to work on, on myself. One thing I can say is, no matter how difficult I am being… Mannie stays by my side & walks me through it. He holds my hand through all my bipolar episodes to my panic attacks. He holds my hair up when I get sick.. which is pretty often since my health has declined. I know I don’t give him enough credit nor do I show my appreciation as much as I should to him, but one day. One day God will show me the way to express the gratitude & admiration I truly have for my strong, patient & loving husband. I’m positive he thinks I don’t love him for the way I act. I know he thinks I want to give up & run way. & at times I honestly do want to throw in the towel. I can’t. We have 2 beautiful kids that look up to us & depend on us to be there for them. Sometimes I don’t love my life.. But I don’t hate it. They say life is what you make it. I call bullshit! I’ve tried so hard to make life the best I can for my babies. Better than the childhood I was given. My whole life I told myself I would give my kids the life I never had but always wished for. As a child I always wanted to go on vacations. It didn’t matter to me if it was just a tent in the backyard. The most I got as a child was going to a pool or beach. Granted those are both very fun things to do.. But not my point. As a child I always wanted the most trending thing at the time. What kid wouldn’t? I always got the off brand of everything. It would never work right or tear up faster. I want to give my kids everything they want & need with no question. Life just isn’t that easy for me. With that being said. Life dealt me the hardest hand ever to play in this game.