Moving

So I grew up kinda crazy. I moved around a lot. I lived with different family members and I almost ended up in foster care. When I was really young my mother used to leave me and my brother in the house by ourselves. Sometimes it was for a few hours other times it was for a few days. Each Time she would leave, she would say not to leave out of our room unless it was to use the bathroom and , we better go right back in the room. I remember one day she tested us to see what we would do when she left. She told us she was going out and not to come out the room. Maybe an hour after we thought she was gone we both came out the room and called ourselves going downstairs to look for food. As we walked down the stairs she jumped out from the bottom and asked us what we were doing. We ran back up those stairs so fast. After that my brother never left out the room  again after she left. I remember one day we woke up and she was gone and we were hungry. My brother refused to go downstairs to get us anything to eat. So I did. I remember pushing the chair to the stove and climbing on top of it so I could get the cereal out the cabinets. I was too small to reach the bowls, so I filled our pencil cases up with cereal and took them back upstairs and we ate on that until she showed up. I guess she realized we couldn’t keep living like that and that she shouldn’t keep taking the chance of leaving us alone. All I know is that one day we woke up and we went to my grandmother’s house (my dad’s mom) and she left us there. 

I loved living with my grandmother. I was her only granddaughter and I was the only little girl around. So she used to spoil me like crazy. She really loved me. It showed in everything we did. She used to let me do beauty pageants. They were super cool. I remember she used to go to McDonalds and buy the happy meal toys and bring them home to me every day. I had every happy meal toy that came out that year. She was raising me and my brother, another one of my cousins. It turned out to be a little too much for her. So my mom came and took me away. I only got to live with my grandmother for a year but I had to leave.

I was back with my mom and we were living in a new home and things were better. This was gonna be the fresh start we needed. I just knew things were gonna be better this time around. She had learned from her year away from us and she was ready to be the mom we needed. I was back with her for a week before she was back to her old ways. She began to leave me at home by myself this time because my brother didn’t come with me to live with her. She used to leave in the mornings after her boyfriend went to work and she would come home right before he did. So he didn’t know she was leaving me alone. I would stay outside all day until she showed up. Eventually those hours turned into days and we could no longer hide that there was a problem. Her boyfriend gave it a couple days but she didn’t show up. So he called my grandma(my mom’s mother) and told her that she needed to come get me. He couldn’t keep leaving me in the house alone and he needed to work.

My grandma showed up that night on her way to church. She walked in the house and grabbed me by my hand and i never went back.That was the summer before i was to start 3rd grade. I never would’ve thought that would be the way i would end up with my grandma but it was. My grandma lived in a big brownstone house in Brooklyn. It was a house full of people. It was my grandma, her husband, my aunt, her husband, and all their many kids(it’s a lot of them) and a special person happened to be there when i showed up MY BIG BROTHER. My grandma and my aunt raised me. It was a little more than a little rough. I will say they loved me the best way they could, but they didnt love me the way I needed to be loved. My grandma wanted me to be the best and that was what she was pushing me towards and that’s how she showed her love in correction. While I was worrying about why I wasn’t good enough for my parents to love and want(but that’s a story for a different time).

Years later while I was in 8th grade my mom would show back up at my grandma house this time to stay for good. She moved in but she wouldn’t be around for long. Shortly after she showed up we found out that she had breast cancer. At first she was taking the chemo and we thought things were getting better. The chemo started making her sicker than the cancer and she didnt wanna go through it anymore. So she walked away from chemo. Shortly after that we would learn that her cancer had spread to her bones. The doctors gave her 6 months to live and that placed her in hospice. She outlived the expiration date the doctors gave her and she went on her own terms. When she was ready. Shortly after my mother passed away Child Services showed up at my grandma’s house to take me away. I hid because I really didnt wanna go somewhere else to start over. My grandma told me she wasn’t going to let them take me. I remember having to sit down with the lady from child services and her asking me what I wanted to do. I wouldn’t speak. She asked my grandma to leave the room so she could talk to me in private. My grandma politely declined. I told the lady I didn’t wanna leave and that I wanted to stay with my family. Then I asked if I could be excused. That was officially the start of the rest of my life. That was the day that my grandma really became my mom. She liked to tell me that i was her baby and that God gave me to her because he knew he was gonna take her baby from her too soon. I always wondered why my dad never showed up to fight for me (again that’s a topic for a different story) bet y’all didn’t think i had one of those….. LOL

What was meant for Evil, God uses for Good!!!!