"All packed up, Shea?" My father says jovially as he comes into my room. You'd be jovial too if you were getting rid of your problem daughter. Okay, maybe I was being unfair. My father and I just do not have any sort of real relationship. Which makes living together hard. Add in my bitch of a step-mother and their spoiled rotten children, I was determined to spend most of my time outside of this house. Well, I suppose I was getting my wish.
I've lived with my father and his new, shiny family for less than two years. Before that, I lived with my mother. I saw my father for a week and a half once a year. My mother was my hero growing up. She took good care of my older sister and I. My sister left for college when I was eleven. My mother got into a relationship. That relationship went south quick. Her boyfriend never physically harmed me but my mother wasn't so lucky. It broke her. Once he left her, she drank a lot and would leave me home alone for days at a time doing god only knows what. Child Protective Services came into my freshman english class. My mother was in a drunk driving accident at nine in the morning. My mom had hurt a young couple in this accident so she went to jail for a year. So custody of me shifted to my father.
But I didn't fit in. My father sent me to a preppy school and he lived in a rich white neighbourhood. When my dad was with my mom, they never had any money. My dad was supposedly very smart but didn't end up going to college because mom got pregnant with Harmony, my older sister. So he got a low level job and married my mom. Once he left her, he went back to school where he met my stepmother. They both ended up with very well paying jobs out of college. That one week I spent with my father had always felt like a vacation. I ate whatever I wanted, I slept in my own bed that you couldn't feel the boxsprings in and I never saw a roach in their house. I had loved it when I was younger. For just that one week. When I moved in with them two years ago, I felt alien. I felt like everyone was looking down on me. The girls in high school wore nice clothes and dyed their hair at a salon and knew what the hell a contour brush was. Given that my nicest clothes came from Old Navy, not Tommy Hilfiger, I stood out. And when I was made fun of for being so obviously less than them, I was hurt and cried for the first few weeks. Then I got to call my mother.
My mother might be piss poor, neglectful of her children in the face of addiction, and a truly broken women. But she loves me. And she gave me great advice. So I went back to that goddamn school and gave everyone the metaphorical middle finger. Adam, the school's resident bad boy, liked that. We became friends quickly and more than that. His friends became my friends. My friend group was a bunch of stoner rich kids trying to rebel against their parents and capitalism but they took me under their wing when no one else would. When Adam graduated last year, I wasn't too broken up about it. It hadn't been love. And after I saw the mess my mother was after countless deadbeat boyfriends, I was determined to never let a relationship get under my skin. Also once Adam graduated, I was the school's resident bad boy in the female form. Which leads me to my current position. Sitting on my bed, staring at an empty duffle bag.
My father and stepbitch told me that they were tired of my childish antics at the beginning of the school year after a party which resulted in them having to bail me out of jail. They said if I got caught doing anything inappropriate, I'd have to go live with my sister and her fiance in freaking Canon Hill, Oregon. So I just hid my bad assery a little better. Until New Year's Eve two weeks ago. I messed up and I was really, really drunk at my father's holiday Christmas party but that's not even half of it. Let's just say the CEO of my father's company had a very attractive twenty year old son. And we were found. On the roof. Entirely ass bare.
So now I have to pack up and move to the other coast. With my sister who I haven't seen in four years. And we did not leave on good circumstances. I talked with her on the phone about logistics of moving last week. She did not mention anything about the period of estrangement so neither did I. It was going to be awkward, sure. But there was that small part of me that actually gave a crap about the people in my life and I didn't want to fuck up my sister's life just because I did that to my own.
I kicked my duffle bag off the bad after my dad berated me for not being done packing and decided to take a nap. Maybe I'd wake up and discover the shithole that my life is was all a dream.