Memory Book
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Me, Myself, & I
Chapter 2: My Soul Mate is a Bitch
Chapter 3: Alta; My Go-To-Gal
Chapter 4: Mhysa; Who Knows You Better Than Your Mom?
Chapter 5: Siblings, How I Loathe Thee
Chapter 6: My Military Father
Chapter 7: I Have A Dining Party?
Chapter 8: I Wish I May, I Wish I Might
Chapter 9: One Moment, I’m Dreaming of a Time Machine
Chapter 10: Future Plots I Have in Mind
Chapter 1: Me, Myself, & I
When describing yourself, you have to look inwards instead of outwards. I find this especially hard because there are many parts of myself I don’t like, or that I don’t want to identify. But, because I am displaying others in this book, I might as well contribute a piece of myself for you to read. That’s what good authors do, right?
I guess to start out, I should include a piece of my past. I have spent most of my life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as this was where I was born. My mom once said that she remembered me being born during a snowstorm, which is common in the beginning of March. My mom was in labor for twenty four hours, and when she and my dad brought me home two days later, the first thing they did was take a nap. Infant me sandwiched between them.
About two years later, my brother, Dillon, was born. Fifteen more months pass and my mom had just given birth to my youngest brother, Dallas. My mom, my two younger brothers and I have lived together for most of my life, often without my dad in the picture. I commonly say I am estranged to my father because I don’t see or talk to him often, but that wasn’t always the case.
Shortly after Dallas was born, my dad toured with the U.S. Army. He stayed overseas until he hurt his back. How you ask? I actually don’t know the answer to that. My dad ended up staying in a hospital in Texas for many months, and my mom visited him a few times. He later came home, bringing a new car and dog with him. My parents were not married long after that. He had missed too much of my brother’s and my lives, and my parents didn’t want the same things. They had married young, my mom was growing up, and, unfortunately, my dad wasn’t.
Both my parents found other partners, and I bounced between houses. My brothers, conveniently, stayed with my mom, which discouraged me from visiting. When my dad moved to another state, Wisconsin to be exact, and my mom, brothers and I moved out to the old Air Force base, K.I. Sawyer. I remember starting school there, and I only remember bad. I never did my homework, and when I was punished for it, my only answer was that I didn’t know how to do my homework. Sadly, I was telling the truth. I was at least a year behind some of the other students, and my teacher didn’t like me, so I never received any help. My overqualified mother, who graduated near the top of her class, was working too much at her minimum wage jobs to help. Her partners could never help, let alone parent, so I didn’t ask.
Then my mom met Tim. He was awesome, and he still is. My brothers and I were brats then, and Tim came along and gave us the structure we craved. He showed us how to be nerds, helped us with homework and class projects, and he took us hiking. Tim cooked and cleaned with us, he helped my mom pay the bills so we could have some of the things we wanted. Life was good, for the time being.
Then shortly after my mom started going to college again, she became so stressed that she had to quit her job, and soon later, my brothers and I ended up moving in with our dad and his new wife. When we moved states, schools, and families, we had to deal with a new life with new rules and lifestyles to complement it. In short, it was not fun. My depression ended up flaring, and my dad and stepmom didn’t know what to do.
After two years of living with depression, in a home I didn’t feel at home with, attending a school far too large for my comfort zone, and having fake friends, I decided it was enough. So after much debating and begging, I was finally able to move back in with my mother and stepfather.
Life had gotten so much better, I was receiving medication for my headaches and insomnia, and I was taking an antidepressant. Despite my lack of love for the school district because of previous experiences, I ended up making friends and having fun at Gwinn.
I met my best friend, Alta, and shortly after some of my other friends. I felt normal. Then my parents decided to pack up and move to Florida. Life there was rough, the only upside to moving to Florida was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. The humidity, population, pollution, and crime rates were all horrible, and after three months, we came home.
Starting my sophomore year in Florida and only staying for a few weeks of school was nothing compared to the move back. We had no money, we were living in our old house with no heating or running water, and my mom and stepdad were struggling to find jobs again. After receiving government assistance, we moved into a duplex on Base, and my brothers and I went back to school. I reconnected with my friends and made new ones.
Six months later, I thought life was going to stop. My parents, my mom and step dad, divorced. My mom married Pam a few months later, after the Supreme Court legalized homosexual marriage. Pam died of lung cancer a week before the next Thanksgiving. I never got to know Pam without cancer, and the women I did know, I didn’t know well enough to grieve like some other members of the family, which made me depressed once again.
Then, right before my seventeenth birthday, I got the best gift, my family was back together again. Mom and Tim decided to move past their differences and make a change in their life. Tim moved back in, and my home life was normal again.
Now, as a junior at Gwinn High School, a week after my seventeenth birthday, I can say I’m finally great. I have the best friends and social networking, my family is together again, and we are, for once in my life, not struggling for money.
I am home. I am the best me. And I can finally work on my own flaws instead of my life’s flaws.
Chapter 2: My Soul Mate is a Bitch
I’ve seen so many Tumblr and Facebook posts about best friends. Some are laughably true, some stretch reality a bit, and some are indescribable. Cameryn goes above and beyond what the internet tells you about best friends. There is no one else like her, and her orange hair.
Cameryn is an artist, a music lover, and a writer. She is a gamer nerd, a comic nerd, and her mind creates the weirdest things. While I am a bit more polite in public, she has no reservations on what people think of her, and she only behaves out of respect for her instructors.
Cameryn is a free spirit, a mama-bear, and the most eccentric person I know. She is the first friend I had that I never kept things from. I don’t need to with her, because I swear she has eyes in the back of her head… and she says I do!
The reason I like most of the things I do is because she has influenced me beyond sense, and I can’t blame her. I was shallow and odd before I met her and Alta. Cameryn has influenced much of my love for bright hair, my love of darker colors, my love of anime, and my love of many other things.
There have been many nights during this past summer and fall that we spent on the roof of my garage. We would climb up onto my desk or dresser, shimmy through the window and step onto the roof. Sometimes we would bring blankets, pillows, or towels with us, and sit on them so we wouldn’t get a rash from the shingles covering the roof, protecting the garage from the elements.
Everytime we went up there, we had conversations about our lives, our families, and our past. Being up on the roof and star gazing leaves you with a sense of vulnerability, and we felt like we could talk about anything in a manner we normally couldn’t. There was no one else out there, but the two of us and the night sky.
I remember that I told Cameryn the entire truth of my childhood. I told her how I felt, then and now, what I did, who was there with me, and why I did some of the things I did. She was the first person to know the whole, unabridged truth of me. Cameryn is one of the only two people I trust beyond rationality.
I often call Cameryn my soul mate, not in a romantic way though. While we have different pasts, and different public personalities, the people we are when others are not looking, behind closed doors, and in our souls, is the same, one person. We’ve joked about being the same person split in two and put into different bodies.
The one boundary we will never cross with each other, is the same one people often confuse soul mates to be. We will never have a romantic relationship. That is the one thing we don’t share, out of millions of things possible to share.
I do love Cameryn, but as a sister and a best friend. She is the weirdest, wildest person I know. She is my other half, my soul sister. My soul mate.
Chapter 3: Alta, My Go-To-Gal
There is Cameryn, my soul mate. Then there is Alta, my everything-but-blood sister. Alta is unique, much like myself. She is one of the most innocent eighteen year olds I know, yet she loves death metal. How those combine, you ask? I don’t know.
As a person, Alta reads and listens to material that is nowhere close to innocent. There are sexual and violent themes in her music and her reading material. Alta always seems to have a new watercolor painting of a person or a person’s eyes. I believe that the reason she is so good with watercolor, is because the colors sometimes run together, creating a piece of art nowhere near black and white. This is similar to Alta’s way of finding the good, the bad, and the grey in every person and situation. Alta does not live in a black and white world, but a world with every color possible, all in what we perceive as shades of grey.
Like myself, and like Cameryn, Alta is an artist and a music lover. Alta is also a girly-girl and tomboy mix that is totally her own. She is a good hearted person, who is always polite and respectful to others. Alta is a great actor though, so she doesn’t always show what she is thinking.
I first met Alta in Freshman Biology at Gwinn High School. We both had Mrs. Anderson as our teacher, and we were in the same class until I switched out for the harder biology class for our second semester. That didn’t stop our friendship. Alta and I had became friends because we were not only in the same class, but because we were both hopeful to be in theater. And then we found out we both loved art, then music, then everything else that we are now friends for.
Alta is my oldest friend that I can say I have always been close with. We have been through highs and lows in our own lives, and with each other, but we are still going strong. Stronger now that we have the same group of friends. And now, finishing our junior year in high school, I can easily say I believe that Alta and I will be close, if not best, friends for many years to come.
And Alta, if you ever read this, thank you for being there for me these past years. I love you, my sister.
Chapter 4: Mhysa; Who Knows You Better Than Your Mom?
Mhysa, mother, mama, mum, mommy, mom, “birth giver”, the I-know-all eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head women we all know, love, and hate……
I love you mom.
“My mom gave birth to me” is a saying many people can say, and while I can, I also want to include that a person’s mother may not always be the women who gave birth to that person. Instead she is someone who either chose you, or you chose.
For me, my mom gave birth to me, she chose me, and I will forever choose her. Sure my mother has made some mistakes, who hasn’t? And sure my mom may not have always been the “best” mother, but she is the best one for me.
After twenty four hours of labor, I’m sure she had at least some resentment to me on behalf of the pain I caused her. Yet she still loves me, or so I think.
My mom is my best friend and she has been my best friend for my entire life. That doesn’t mean she hasn’t been a good mother. That is not the case at all, my mom has been the best mother I could ever hope for. She has just been so good of a mother, that I can share anything with her and I feel safe and comfortable talking to her.
My mom has had to work harder to parent me than she has my brothers. And this is partly my fault, partly her fault, and the rest is no one’s fault. I have depression, I have had behavior issues in the past, my mom still helps me and gives me the benefit of doubt, because I know what is right and what is wrong, I know when to ask for help, and I know that I have to be trustworthy.
Growing up, I didn’t always have the best life, and my family didn’t always have extra money, if any at all. Yet my mom persevered and she did not give up. I can easily say I want to be like my mom. But know this, I don’t mean working minimum wage jobs, having kids at twenty one, marrying at eighteen, or making bad life choices because of stress and heartbreak. I strive to reach her character.
My mom never gives up, my mom is always willing to help others, my mom loves life. She lives through some of the worst times a person in America can have. She has married young, had kids young, divorced young. My mom has had abusive relationships, healthy relationship. My mom has also had a relationship with another woman who was fated to die at the cruel hands of cancer.
My mom is my hero. She is one of my biggest influences, she is a person I look up to. I love my mom. I’m glad to have a mom I’m comfortable sharing my life with, a mom I can tease and joke with, a mom who always knows what is best for me, instead of what is best for someone like me.
Thank you mom for always being there for me.
Thank you for never giving up.
Thank you for helping me through tough times, despite going through worse times yourself.
Thank you for teaching me what is right and what is wrong.
Thank you for giving me my love of books, art, fantasy, helping others, animals, nature and life.
Thank you for being the best mom you can be.
Thank you for believing in me.
I love you mom.
Chapter 5: Siblings, How I Loathe Thee
When you’re a girl, growing up in a family of guys can be hard. I was lucky to have my mom, and that I am the oldest child. Some of the best times of my childhood was mocking my gullible brothers. I used to tell them outlandish stories as if they were true, and my brothers would believe me.
Being the oldest as a kid is a lot of fun. I still like to make fun of my brothers for pleasure. They are the only people I am deliberately mean to, but if someone else is mean to them, all I have to ask is “who am I killing today?”.
The only problem being a girl and the oldest child, is that my brothers are starting to outgrow me. There was a time when I was the tallest in my family (other than my biological father), and now, Dillon is taller than me as a Freshman, and Dallas will be taller than me soon enough, and he isn’t even in high school! Where did the years go?
Despite my shrinking height, and my shrinking control over sibling rivalries, I have a decent relationship with my brothers. Dallas and I fight often enough, even as we love each other. I am his sister and he is my brother, what do you expect? Dillon and I don’t fight often because he is the male version of me. Dillon and I have similar, if not the same, friends. We have similar, if not the same hobbies. The difference between us, other than gender, is that I am more creative, and Dillon is more logical.
I don’t remember who said it, but that person is right when he said “Siblings are the enemies you cannot live without”. Sure, I fight with my brothers, and we put each other down, but I love them, and I will miss them when as we start to go our separate ways and grow up.
Chapter 6: My Military Father
Many girls can brag about how their fathers are always there to protect them, or complain about how strict their fathers are. I can’t do either. Please don’t misunderstand this as me not having a father, or my father isn’t in my life, or even that he’s dead. He’s not. My father lives in another state, with his wife, pets, and the family he married into.
Growing up, I didn’t see my father often. He was there when I was a babe, then he was off working or overseas fighting in an unnecessary war. Then he was injured overseas and spent months recovering at a Veteran’s hospital in Texas. When he finally came home, my family was happy for a time. Later my parents decided to sit my brothers and I down and tell us they were having a divorce.
Of course, being seven, I didn’t know what a “divorce” was, and my mom explained it as separating. The example she used was “divorce is when two people love each other, but want different things in life”. What a nice way to put something that has destroyed many families, even if it didn’t destroy mine.
My dad moved in with his younger brother, down the street from where my brothers, my mom, and I lived. Later I moved in with him, my parents thinking that it would be good for me. That didn’t last long. My dad wanted to move to Wisconsin, he had friends there that were willing to hire him and let him rent out an apartment. I moved out to base.
Skip ahead a few years, after only seeing my dad for a week at a time, my brothers and I move in with him, and his new wife. Living in the city, away from everything I knew, was rough. I didn’t like it. I spent two years living in Wausau with my dad, and my depression just kept getting worse and worse. I was having “attacks” and I wouldn’t be me for days at a time. I had a therapist I hated, and a stepmom who took lessons from a Cinderella horror story. Or so I thought.
My mom was finally stable enough to have me live with her again, so after a bit of begging, I moved back up North. I still saw my father over breaks and such, but our relationship was strained, and it still hasn’t fully recovered, but it's getting better. The same goes with Jessie, it's getting better.
Chapter 7: I Have A Dining Party
In addition to Alta and Cameryn, I have a few other friends who I consider close. I’ve gone to the movies, had sleepovers, and played video games with them. We all have a “nickname” for each other because sometimes you can’t live something down. I only really use Gavin’s nickname, because his is the only one that stuck with me. So besides the two other girls in my trio, I have four other friends, unfortunately, all are guys.
There’s Gavin, who I’ve already mentioned, and he is the little “Sexy Hobbit” who always makes everyone laugh. He’s the main guy nerd, just as Cameryn is the main girl nerd.
Jarod is the best friend duo with Gavin, and he’s tall. Not the everyday six foot nothing tall, but tall. He is the only one in our group that can dwarf me, even when I’m wearing heels. He is always really nice, and easy to sway. Everyone in the group has a habit of sneaking food from him then turning around and give food to him.
Lukeus is the newbie to our group. He normally stays to himself, playing video games, watching videos, or doing homework. But we normally get a laugh from him. Once he was eating salad from the school’s salad bar, and found a piece of chewed gum in his salad. To make the memory better, he found it in his mouth.
Lastly, there is Jacob. He became a member of our group pretty recently. He’s dating Alta, and he’s really easy to embarrass. Needless to say, we get a kick out of that.
Our little group of friends is so special to us, we gave it a name: “the lunch group”. How original, but it stuck. The reason this name came to be is because we all hang out together in the art room during lunch every school day. We normally eat like pigs, have inappropriate conversations (for school, they are totally normal for teens our age), and tease/comfort each other. Everyday is something new with this group.
Chapter 8: I Wish I May, I Wish I Might
You Could Rattle The Stars, You Could Do Anything if You Only Dared.
-Sarah J. Maas-
I’m dedicating this chapter as an update to the first one, and ending it with a wish.
About a month after Tim moved back he, he decided to move out again. He said that he tried to work things out with my mom, and that he couldn’t anymore. He went right back into his previous girlfriends arms. What a great guy. This person I thought of as my father turned out not to be who I thought he was. He broke my mom’s heart and caused instability in my family.
My mom vowed to stay single and find out who she was. And of course, knowing mom, that didn’t last long. She dated a man nicknamed TC, who was from downstate. All he ever did was drink, smoke cigarettes and smoke pot. He didn’t last long either. My mom is back to being single, and we’re about to move.
The new house we are moving into is a four bedroom on Albatross. It’s great. There is a separate dining room, large kitchen with a dishwasher (and a silverware drawer, something we don’t currently have), a back door out the garage that leads to the large backyard. Which, guess what, has a bonfire and a fence!
We start moving next week Friday (Friday, May 27, 2016) and our first night staying there is the following Wednesday (Wednesday, May 1, 2016). Our HUGE garage sale is this weekend, and it's a lot of stress, but nothing compared to packing up all our shit and moving it so soon. But at least my brother Dillon will have an actual bedroom, and I’ll be able to have friends over without annoying everyone because of the additional space.
I’ve also started looking for a summer job. I’ve printed resumes and picked up applications, and I hope I get a call back soon. My mom finally agreed to not make me go to my dad’s for the summer, so it will be just her and I for most of the three months, and I’ll need something to do. Especially since my friends all have their own plans too. I could also use the money.
So, as promised, an update and a wish.
Chapter 9: One Moment, I Dreaming of a Time Machine
Chapter 10: Future Plots I Have In Mind