More of The Girl with the Flower Tattoo…

Okay, so Stacey and Tim finally broke up, and I was glad.  Like I said, it was very weird for me because I worked with Tim and loved him like a little brother, and my little sister was screwing him….so I was glad it was over.

In December of that year (2002) Tony and I and Josh headed to Evansville for the Christmas get-together on my mom’s side of the family.  It’s always such a blast!  We have a HUGE family and we’re all very close and it’s loud and noisy with lots of laughter and eating and gift exchanging and we play games…I look forward to it every year!  Stacey was there as well, and while she was in Evansville she got together with a man she had worked with several years prior when she was living in Evansville.  His name is Luther.  Well, apparently Stacey had always harbored a crush on Luther when they worked together, but he was married at the time and nothing ever happened.  Now Luther was divorced and he and Stacey started….well, I don’t know what you’d call it since he lived in Evansville and she was still in Illinois, but they became a couple and talked about getting married.  Stacey quit her job in Illinois and moved back to Evansville….yet again. 

To say her relationship with Luther was a disaster would be putting it nicely.  It was a catastrophe!  Not long after they moved in together, he showed up at our cousin Natalie’s house one morning saying he "couldn’t do it" and dumped all my sister’s stuff in Natalie’s driveway and left it to Natalie to call Stacey to tell her.  Then later that day he changes his mind, and Stacey moves back in.  They had the most tumultous relationship I’ve ever witnessed in my life, and Luther was very, very cruel.  He never physically abused my sister, but the mind games he played with her, the things he said to her….honest to God, I have never encountered anyone so cruel and twisted in my entire life…including my first husband!  One time my sister forwarded e-mails to me that Luther had sent her and I was just…..speechless.  He even e-mailed our father one time asking for money, and when my dad VERY POLITELY (and I mean that and I know it because I read the e-mails) told him he was sorry, but that Stacey needed to fix these issues herself, Luther e-mailed our father back calling him everything but his name and saying the most awful things to him.  But yet Stacey kept going back to him, and one day I get a phone call from my sister telling me she and Luther have just gotten married.  Unbelievable! 

It didn’t even last a year, and once again, my dad and Pam bailed Stacey out by giving her the money for a divorce.

After they divorced Stacey moved into her own place.  During this time she had to have surgery on her neck because she had a nerve wrapped around a bone spur and it was causing her a lot of pain.  After the surgery things didn’t improve much, and the doctor started giving her weekly shots in her neck and also gave her a never-ending prescription for Oxycontin.  Now on top of being an alcoholic, my sister was now addicted to prescription pain medicine, and she was badly addicted! 

She asked me to come spend Labor Day weekend with her that year (2003)….said she wanted a "sister weekend."  I was a little leery, but I decided what the heck….maybe we’d have fun.  It was the WORST weekend of my entire life.

She was drunk almost the whole entire weekend.  One night we were getting ready to go to dinner and she wanted to do my hair and she burned my forehead with the curling iron….because she was half in the bag.  She passed out on the toilet…she fell asleep with lit cigarettes in her hand….it was awful.  And she and Luther spent the whole weekend texting each other…fighting.  Apparently she still couldn’t stay away from the psycho.  I was never so happy to see a holiday weekend end in my entire life…I just wanted to go home!

So Stacey continued drinking and taking her pills and spiraling out of control.  She ended up getting fired from her job and losing her apartment and had to move in with our grandmother for a while until she could get another place of her own.  She got another job and met a man named Steve, and they started dating.  He was a little older than her and he liked to spoil her…he spent soooo much money on her it was unreal.  He also liked having a younger, tall, blonde, skinny girl on his arm.  I thought he was a nice guy…until my sister told me that after he met me for the first time, he told her he "couldn’t believe how big I was, and that we were sisters."  Prick.  Okay, I’m not skinny…I’m a size 14/16, but I’m not huge, for God’s sake!  Where the fuck does he get off saying something like that about me?

Anyway, Stacey and Steve worked for the same company, and they both ended up getting transferred to Colorado.  We all thought maybe this would be a good thing….a fresh start for her.  Well, the company they went to in Colorado ended up being kind of a joke, and Steve applied for and got a job in California.  So off they went to Sacramento, CA.  For a while Stacey claimed to love it….she raved about it every time we talked on the phone.  I thought maybe she’d turned a corner…I was happy for her, because she seemed happy.  But it didn’t last.

She called hysterical one day….she and Steve had been fighting, it had gotten physical, she didn’t want to be there anymore.  Tony told me to tell her to come back to IL and she could stay with us for a while, so I did.  So Steve bought her a plane ticket to Evansville, so she could spend a week there with family, and then our Aunt Deanne was going to drive her halfway to IL and I was going to meet her and bring Stacey home with me.  Seemed like a good plan.

Well, apparently the whole week she was in Evasnsville she partied….and she partied HARD.  When Deanne and I finally met at the halfway point a week later, Deanne told me Stacey was totally out of control.  She told me this while Stacey was in the gas station to buy "road beers" for the rest of the drive home.  I know, right?  The gas station didn’t have any, so we got in the car and headed home, and Stacey instructed me to stop at the next gas station so she could get some beer.  I tried telling her no…I told her if I was pulled over and there was open alcohol in the car, I would be in trouble…..she started throwing a fit.  And trust me, her fits are ugly….very, very ugly.  So I gave in and stopped and let her get her beer….I just wanted to keep the peace, especially since my oldest stepdaughter was also in the car with us.  Luckily we made it home without any further incidents. 

As soon as I pulled up to our townhome I told Stacey that we had all the girls (my stepdaughters) that weekend and that she was NOT allowed to drink in my home.  She got pissy with me and snottily said "I suppose I have to follow your RULES since it’s your house" and I said that’s right, my house, my rules, take it or leave it. 

She sat in the car for a while and stewed while C (my oldest stepdaughter) and I went in, then she came in a few minutes later all smiles and cheerful.  That was on Saturday night.

The next day, Sunday, Tony and I had plans to go to my dad’s and watch the football game with him after we took the girls home.  Stacey wanted to go, too, but told us not to tell dad she was coming….she wanted to surprise him.  She surprised him all right.  He said as soon as he saw her walking up the sidewalk he could tell just by looking at her that she was a mess.  And as soon as she got in his house she started looking for alcohol.  What was supposed to be a fun day ended up being very tense and not so fun. 

After the game, and on our way home, Stacey wanted to go to a bar and watch the next game.  Tony didn’t want to go, but told me I should go with her to keep an eye on her, because she was going to go to a bar regardless.  He dropped us off at a little tavern in the town we lived in and told me to call him as soon as the game was over and he would come pick us up.  At first we were having an alright time, but the more time passed, the drunker she got.  She started talking to some people sitting on the other side of her, two guys and a girl.  The girl was the girlfriend of one of the guys, and the other guy was single.  He and Stacey started flirting, then she went outside with them to smoke (I later found out it was to smoke weed), then she comes back in, sits back down next to me and tells me she’s going home with what’s-his-name and that she’ll be home tomorrrow.  I was LIVID!

I told her no, hell no!  I told her you don’t even know this fucking guy and you’re going home with him?  I don’t think so!  We ended up getting into it in the bar, then I grabbed my coat and walked outside and called Tony to come get me.  While I was standing outside Stacey comes out and we resumed screaming at each other.  She started calling me Greg (our dad’s name) and telling me to stop trying to run her life, yada yada.  I told her if she went home with this guy, she was not coming back to my house.  We almost came to blows.  She left with the guy anyway, and I went home with Tony. 

Once I was home she called and texted until I finally answered the phone.  She was bawling and saying how nice these people were and could she please come home tomorrow….boo hoo boo hoo.  I finally told her fine, she could come home tomorrow.  I mainly did this so she’d leave me alone and let me go to sleep, because I had to get up and go to work in the morning and Tony had to leave to go out of town.

She came back to my house the next day while I was at work and called me, telling me she was going to clean the kitchen for me.  Okay, cool.  Then she called back asking if we had any beer?  I told her no, and she didn’t need any…which pissed her off and she hung up on me.  When I got home that night I saw that her bedroom light was on, so I assumed she was in her room.  I went in, hung my coat up, called Tony, then got on the computer and played around on the internet and chatted with some friends.  Then my phone rings, and caller ID says it’s my sister.  Why is she calling me from upstairs?  Turns out she wasn’t upstairs after all….after I had told her we didn’t have any booze in the house, she called a cab and went to a bar, where she was calling me from.  She wants to know if it’s okay if she comes home so we can talk.  I told her sure, come home and we’ll talk.

She walked in the door about 10 minutes later.  I was still on the computer when she got home.  She starts talking so I started messaging the friend I was talking to online to tell her I was going to go and that I would talk to her later.  Stacey sees me typing and assumes I’m not listening to her and flipped!  She starts screaming at me that I have an internet problem….no, make that an AFFAIR problem….and that she’s going to tell my husband about all the fucking around I’ve been doing with people I’ve met online.  I just sat there and stared at her like she was nuts.  Then she went into the kitchen, grabbed some food, and sat down on the couch and started eating…still going off on me.  The phone rang and it was our mother, who knew immediately that something was going on because Stacey was still going off on me.  I was trying to talk to our mom when she came and ripped the phone out of my hand, pulling my hair in the process, and starts to talk to our mom.  Apparently our mom cut her off and said "Stacey, I don’t want to get into it with you right now," to which Stacey responded "Yeah, you never want to believe anything I have to say, SO FUCK YOU!"  Then she threw the phone across the room.

That was it….I was DONE.  I called the cops and told them my sister was in my home, she was drunk, she was combative, and I wanted her ass out of here NOW!  When they got to my house Stacey had locked herself in her room.  One of them went upstairs to talk to her while the other talked to me downstairs.  I told him what was going on, then he also went upstairs.  When they came back down they told me they couldn’t take her to a shelter because she was drunk, and they also legally couldn’t put her out on the streets, especially since it was January and freezing cold out.  The only way I could get her out of my house was to give them money to put her up in a hotel that night, since she had spent the last few dollars she had on the cab and at the bar earlier.  While they’re telling me this she’s standing on the stairs saying "First Luther, then Steve, now my own sister is throwing me out…" and she kept repeating it.  I gave them what money I had to get her out of there, and on her way out the door she told me she would never forgive me for this, and that I was dead to her.

She texted me all night long that night….calling me every name in the book, calling me a traitor….you name it.  It was awful, and I cried myself to sleep that night.  She will NEVER know how hard that was for me…to have my own sister kicked out of my home…..my baby sister, who I loved more than anything.  But she gave me no choice….what else was I supposed to do?  Tony was out of town, and when Stacey is drunk and taking pills, she is incredibly violent.  I had come to find out that she once broke Steve’s nose one night while they were in Caliornia and she was in a booze and drug-fueled rage.  I didn’t feel safe with her in my home, the one place I SHOULD feel safe!

I also found out that when Stacey was in California she took things a step further and added cocaine to her menu.  Booze, pain pills and cocaine…..quite the combination.  She also performed sexual favors for her drug dealer whenever she didn’t have the money for the drugs, which absolutely broke my heart when I found this out.  My sister was whoring herself out for drugs…..I still can’t fully wrap my mind around that fact to this day.

The next day Stacey had to go to a homeless sh

elter…..