Chapters From my Life: Prologue

Time for a semi-comedic post dealing with my life!  I suppose this could be considered as a prologue, as it sort of sets up the level of crazy you can expect from my family, and it happens before I was born, before I was even thought of!  Even though I'm pretty sure I wasn't planned at all, and was sort of a "Surprise, you're pregnant," followed by the wails of many.

Anyway, this dates back to when my mother was first engaged to my father.  "First?" you may be asking yourself.  First, my mother was engaged to my father twice before they were married around the tender age of 20 I believe.

My mother and father were high school sweethearts.  They dated through senior year, and became engaged soon after graduation.  Then, for whatever reason, they split up.  Teenagers are fickle, fickle creatures.  So, my mother moved on, to a person I shall name "Scarecrow."  Mostly because I have met this person and heard stories of this person (one which you shall hear shortly), and find him to be lacking a brain.

Anyway, Scarecrow was a year or two older than my mother, and it was obviously true love, and all the kids were getting married, so he proposed to my mother, and she accepted.  The wedding was being planned, all was moving along swimmingly, until... Scarecrow and mother were watching television together, and Scarecrow says, out of nowhere, "I'm going to be married before I'm 21 whether I'm married to you or not."

Surprisingly, that statement did not go over well.  An argument evidently ensued, and my mother left him, hurling her ring (his ring?) at the general area of his face.  I like to believe she saw this person was looking for any person to marry and only proposed to her because she was the first person he saw.  So, my mother was single again for a couple of months.

Then, she receives a phone call.  My father wants to take her out on a date again, I'm sure after being heartbroken all this time and seeing his chance again.  My mother agrees to a date, and tells her parents that she's going out on a date.  The person is kept a secret, because her father then asks, quote:  "Well, it had better not be that <insert my last name> boy again."

The date apparently went well, they dated for perhaps another month, and they were engaged, again.  This time, the wedding happens!  The families were invited, my great-aunt filmed it, my paternal grandfather performed the ceremony, unicorns, rainbows, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Her new father-in-law also talked to her about money matters in the house (you can get a job if you're allowed to by husband, and he will determine how money is spent in the house... it went over about as well as you can imagine).

Maybe after a year and a half, I'm born, 16 months later, my brother.  All was well for the first year or so after my brother was born.  Then, infidelity reared it's ugly head.  However, this is sort of where it gets interesting.

The first time (yes, first) my father was caught with another woman (I'll call her Tammy), my mother just told him off, but he appeared remorseful, sorry for what he had done, and she allowed him back to the house.  He was the son of a preacher, surely he would not want to make his father look bad in the community by leaving his family for another woman.

The second time... was with a woman we shall refer to as Lindsay, a name my mother still hates to this day.  However, Lindsay was no ordinary woman, no.  She was then married to Scarecrow.  Yes, Scarecrow.  Eventually, both Scarecrow and my mother find out (I imagine through the wonder of small-town gossip), that their respective spouses are cheating on them and with who.  So, instead of confronting his wife about this matter, Scarecrow comes to visit my mother.  A conversation ensued, during which Scarecrow poses the following:

"Well, your husband is with my wife, so why don't we just switch?"

I'm not sure if it was a question, I was still young and probably not even around for this conversation.  I am also not sure how a person reacts to being propositioned with impromptu swinging.  If my imagined reaction to the above statement is anything to go on, I imagine not very well.  I have asked numerous times what was the result of such a statement, and have not received any type of answer other than silence and a glare from my mother, so, my imagination went to work.  And, my imagination works hard, imagining multiple scenarios.

Scenario 1 - This  conversation happens with Scarecrow standing at the bottom of the steps leading to our backdoor, my mother holding the screen door ajar while talking.   At the remark, my mother asks him to hold on for just a moment.  She goes and retrieves a BB gun, maybe even a rifle ('cause that's how southern people roll), and returns with the firearm in hand.  When she opens the screen door, she asks "Now, what did you say, again?"  Spewing gibberish at the sight, Scarecrow backs to his car and leaves as quickly as he can, hearing the faint sound of a gunshot as he hits the road.

Scenario 2 - Maybe this conversation happens inside the home. Scarecrow is sitting on one end of a couch, with mother on the other end.  Scarecrow says his line.  Mother stands up and walks over to Scarecrow and just lays into him.  Not too badly - he had to be able to walk away.

Scenario 3 - This scenario simply involves a heated verbal discussion.

To me, all are viable.  All I know is that my mother and Scarecrow did not see or talk to each other for a very long while, probably around 12-14 years later.  And that was only when Scarecrow was in a car accident and was semi-seriously injured (I recall him having a neck brace, possibly the apparatus where they screw it to your head to prevent neck movement).  They stayed in touch for maybe a year after that, and then have not talked again as far as I know.

She also let him come back after this display as well.  But, as fate would have it, there was a third time, with the first woman.  This time, she filed for a legal separation (the minimum of which is one year before the divorce proceedings can truly begin).  All before I started kindergarten!

And, I think that's most of it.  Maybe it isn't truly funny, or my sense of humor is skewed somewhat.  But, I think it gives a good idea of some of the insanity that surrounds me.  Maybe items of this magnitude happen two to three times a year, without fail.  Ranging from comical verbal disagreements between family members to cat fights, most of which I simply find humor in, so why not immortalize it somehow?

Marriage

To start, I thought I would start with one of the more tame topics that has come up in my mind:  marriage.  In particular, young people getting married.

From what I have seen, it seems like people my age (early-20's) are in a rush to get married or engaged.  Or I hear that so-and-so got married and has a kid now.  I just see all these people declaring their engagements on Facebook, (preceded by months of "with my boo" and "missing my love," to be sure), and think "Really?  What's the rush?"

I am only speaking for my community.  I have no clue what it is like in the rest of the country, but I live in a small, conservative town.  In fact, my small, conservative town is surrounded by other towns that feel much the same way.

But my issue is that we are still not completely matured.  According to the National Institute of Mental Health, our brains are still maturing.  The part of the brain that deals with emotional responses doesn't have any inhibitors, so it is more active than in that of an adult.  Statistically, this change is observed at around age 25.  So, the way a young adult acts now may change completely in the next four years or so.  I can say now, that I am no where near the person I was four years ago, or that I even like the same things.

All of this, on top of the roughly 50/50 chance of a marriage working out in our country.  In fact, if I include all the people I attended high school with that I know have been engaged or married, and look at the success rate, it comes out to about a 50% chance of working out.  One person was even engaged last year (2012), broke off the engagement before the summer, and is now engaged again (as of a month ago I believe).  Another married six months after graduating from high school.  A marriage that lasted about two years.

So, why does this bother me so much?  I think it has something to do with the possibility of children.  I was brought up in a broken home after my parents split up, as many people are.  We (my brother and I) stayed with our mother, and our father moved back to the town his parents lived in, which was a 10 minute drive away.  There were no formal visitation rights, they both agreed that he could have us whenever he wanted.  And for a while, maybe the first three or four years, he would come pick us up for maybe one Saturday a month, or his parents would come pick us up whenever they wanted to see us, or I would ride with them to church, as his father was a preacher at a Baptist church in my small town, and he picked up my our elderly neighbor to take her to service.

Then, we didn't see him as often.  I think it was around the time that I decided I didn't want to attend church anymore.  We saw him maybe once or twice a year, or at funerals for various family members.  I'm not complaining.  He was an adult, and he made his choices.  Maybe he grew tired of seeing my mother, maybe he just got busy and didn't have as much time for us anymore.  But, I've dealt with it, I went to visit him and his second wife once at Christmas after I got my license, at her invitation, and never went back.  Some may say I'm holding a grudge against him, but I would argue that I'm not; I just learned how to get along without him, and didn't feel the need to mend the fence or develop a relationship with him.

And, I may be getting a little off-topic.  The point of that little tidbit about me is that if the marriage doesn't work out, and children are conceived, it's much harder than just saying "Nice knowing you."  There are now little people who depend upon them for their livelihood.  And, while I turned out relatively okay, some children are abused as a result of the failed relationship, or used as leverage or a tool against one of the people in the relationship.  And that can just be some of the tame results.  A divorce could cause a person to spiral into depression, which could lead to them taking the lives of their children.

All of this isn't to say that young adults should not ever be allowed to marry.  Some of these relationships work out.  One girl I attended high school with married her boyfriend before she graduated, and even has two daughters now.  But the man she married was older and had a stable job, so the financial difficulties they may have experienced would not have been on a level that a couple made up of two young adults may experience.  I'm just stating that for people of my age group, we tend to make a lot of rash decisions, and I wonder if all these engagements fall into this category of decisions.

Hello

Hello random people on the Internet!  If you're reading this, it means you've stumbled onto my blog and will soon be asking yourself "What fresh Hell have I wandered in to?"

That's right, I've created a brand new circle!  Hell is also apparently pretty colorful (I'll leave it to your imagination as to why).  So, the point of this blog is really for me to talk about subjects that tend to keep me up at night.  You may be thinking "Oh, great, this person is going to talk about problems that everyone deals with and thinks that they're somehow special for experiencing them."

While it is true that everyone, or at the very least a lot of people, deal with issues that I plan to talk about, it doesn't hurt to talk about these things.  I don't expect anyone to read this blog, there is nothing spectacular or unique about it, but I can at least put my thoughts out there and delude myself that someone may seek solace in my struggles, or comfort in the fact they are not alone in  a situation, or maybe just validation that someone shares their opinion.  Plus, anonymity and the Internet go hand in hand, so there's really no danger in me talking about a few things.

That being said, if I talked about all the issues that pop into my mind, non-stop, this may be a very depressing, dark, heavy blog.  So, lucky for you, Internet person, my life also serves as a comedy of sorts.  Maybe I'll alternate with a serious post and a humorous one, maybe I'll string together a couple of slightly heavy ones and then a humor, or maybe an extremely heavy and then several humor...

As a forewarning, nothing is safe or sacred.  My mind is a busy little bastard, and never stops to think "Am I taking this too far?"  It leaves that up to my mouth-filter to decide if it sounds stupid/offensive/makes-no-sense.  Unfortunately for you, my fingers have no suck filter.  Anyway, thank you for stopping by, and I hope I can provide some entertainment, bring out thought-provoking emotions, or comfort in the fact that there is in fact someone out there more messed up than you are.