After two weeks, I was getting homesick and really bored there. It was a very small town and nothing to do. I called my parents who were freaking out. I look back, and writing this makes me so sad that I could do this to them. I never had children of my own, but I would have been losing my mind. I definitely had a guardian angel watching over me my whole life. I took some crazy risks.
My mom bought me a plane ticket home from San Francisco, which was a two-hour drive, and the nice kid I had met drove me to the airport. I made my mom promise if I came home, not to take me back to that place. She said my doctor already gave up on me and called me hopeless.
Chapter 7
I wasn’t home long when they decided to ship me off to my uncle’s in Ohio. He was my favorite uncle, so I didn’t mind going, but I also knew he was very, very strict. If he couldn’t straighten me out, their only and last option was an exorcism. (I’m just kidding.) It’s a catholic thing.
Anyway, I got to my uncle’s. He lived in the middle of nowhere on a nursery my grandpa used to own. He helped my grandpa run it when he was still alive, then when he married my aunt, they built a beautiful house on the land. Our nearest neighbor was a half mile away. But I became friends with her quick cause I had to walk up to the street where her house was on the corner to take the bus to school. He signed me up for high school there. I was pretty excited since I hadn’t been to a real school in over two years. In the ward, they had an hour of school every day. That’s it. I don’t know how I retained anything between all the times I ran away.
Well, right off the bat, I couldn’t smoke (I assumed that much), and I couldn’t wear jeans or makeup to school. And if I missed school because I was sick, I had to help him shovel manure in the nursery. I was allowed two phone calls a day at ten minutes a call. Those were the rules so far. Of course, I just put my makeup and jeans in my backpack and would get ready in the girl’s bathroom. And my friend smoked Newport’s, so I just bummed them from her.
Soon, I met a freshmen I had the hot’s for; I was a junior. I ended up not coming home one night after school. I knew I was going to be so busted and it was a small town, so he found out where I was. When I got home that night, he made me take a pregnancy test. I was mortified. It was negative, though, and I never fessed up to having sex with the boy, but my uncle is far from stupid. And that was my first strike, and with my uncle, there were only two. So one more mess up, he would send me home.
I really didn’t care, though, because I wanted to go home; I got away with a lot more at home, even though I did love my uncle very much. I loved my whole family, I just couldn’t control myself. I didn’t mean to disrespect him either. I wasn’t really a bad person deep down; I have a huge heart, but I couldn’t control myself. It’s like I was trying to just run away from myself not them.
Then one night, a bunch of us at school decided to meet at the roller-skating rink. Believe it or not, I actually thought that’s what we were really going to do. So my uncle dropped me off and told me a time he would be picking me up.
Then the other kids showed, and most in my class had a driver’s license. One guy showed up with his parents’ car and beer. You would have thought that was the happiest day in my life; it felt like forever since I had any real fun.
Six of us ended up cramming into his mom’s Buick and going to a field to party; of course, we lost track of time and were an hour late getting back. I was sweating, I was so scared. I was never afraid of my parents, and he never whipped me or anything, but he didn’t play around. When he said jump, I said, “How high?”
So of course, he wasn’t there, and I had to call him. He wasn’t the yelling type at all either, which made him scarier. He didn’t even ask questions, just said he’d be right there. I knew he was pissed, though. All of a sudden, a cop car showed up, and he was looking for me! Oh, man, I thought I was going to jail. It turned out he was a friend of my uncle’s and came to escort me home and probably scare the other kids away from hanging out with me anymore.
I walked in, and he just told me to go straight to bed and we would talk in the morning. I already knew what was coming, though. This was strike 2.
I got up the next morning and basically was told to pack my bags, I was going home. I was pretty happy inside. I really wanted to go home, but I was really sad that I disappointed him and embarrassed my mom. That was her baby brother, and he was my godfather.
That would be the last time I was in Ohio, and that’s where all my relatives and cousins are. It was just Mom, Dad, and my brother back in the mile-high state.
Chapter 8
1982
As soon as I got home, my parents enrolled me in a high school two blocks from our house where I could walk every day. I would go to one or two classes, find some friends to party with, mostly guys, and go home while my mom and dad were at work. I was almost seventeen now and had my driver’s license, but they rarely trusted me to drive their cars after the first one I ruined.
I met a guy who lived about thirty minutes away and would take off in the middle of the night and hitchhike to see him. In the morning when I came home one day, my bedroom window was locked. Obviously, I was busted and had to go ring the doorbell to get in. I wasn’t allowed keys to the house either for obvious lack of trust.
I didn’t stop my behavior. I continued to sneak out at night. Another time I came home in the middle of the night, I snuck around the back to go in the sliding glass doors. It was pitch-black, and I was really quiet opening the door. As soon as I stepped in the living room, a light came on, and my mother was there waiting on the couch for me. She was furious. I was very lucky to have the parents I had, they could have kicked me out at anytime, but they never did. They just didn’t know what to do, they kept trying, but I just did whatever I wanted. And they just kept praying for me.
Eventually after skipping school too many times, our school counselor made an appointment to come talk with my parents. He told them I was never going to graduate the way I was going. He suggested I drop out and get my GED. He even gave them information and helped me get into a community college to take classes for my GED. I was beyond thrilled. My parents, I think, were relieved. This was something I knew I could do. And I felt so cool that I was going to college even if it was only to get my certificate. It was mainly studying for the exams I would need to take to pass. I enjoyed it.
In the meantime, I was still sleeping around with a lot of different guys. The main reason which I never explained earlier: I wanted a baby really bad and didn’t care who the father was. I wasn’t looking for a husband, I just wanted a baby since I was old enough to have them. I never got pregnant, though.
The last guy I was with before I met my first true love who would end up being my first husband was this redhead kid with a twin sister. He was friends with my soon to be and took me over there a lot to hang out and party. We weren’t really serious, and eventually, I just started showing up at my future husband’s house by myself, completely unannounced. He was twenty-three; I was seventeen. I was immediately in love with him. And he didn’t seem to mind me just showing up, he always let me in, and we’d hang out for hours before he had to go to work. He worked nights at the newspaper. I was really impressed. He had this cute mobile home he owned and a good paying job he loved.
Eventually, he started calling me to invite me over. I would take the bus to his house, and he was always waiting for me at the bus stop. He was so sweet. I had never been on a real date because I never really had a boyfriend except for the eighteen-year-old when I was fourteen. So he would take me out for lunch. I was embarrassed the first
