About me

I figured it’s about time I actually posted something on this page.  I keep planning to and as yet have not bothered to do anything here.  So here goes.

I am 39 years old and engaged to a wonderful man, you may know him as Lunatic from his blog on this site.  I was born in Royal Oak Michigan, the second of a set of twins.  I spent all my life in Michigan (except for a few family trips to other states) until recently when Lunatic and I moved to Rockford, Illinois.

Growing up, I had a pretty good life in a loving though strict family.  I got along with my twin sister and my younger brother as well as most people get along with their siblings growing up.  The same could be said about how I got along with my parents.

When I was 17 years old and started thinking for myself more, as well as having my own ideas about the world; my parents kicked me out and sent me to live with my maternal grandparents.  Living with them, I was allowed a little more freedom and not judged so much for having differing opinions from the rest of my family.

I will admit that I did my share of screwing up, even while living with my grandparents.  Though they gave me more freedom, it was while living with them that I went through my more rebellious phase.  I graduated from Cedar Springs High School, in Cedar Springs, Michigan while living with my grandparents.  Shortly after my graduation, I went to visit my family near Detroit and wound up living with friends down in that area for the summer and early fall.

About a month after moving back in with my grandparents, Grandpa had a heart attack and was hospitalized in order to undergo a triple bypass.  He came through the surgery fine, but due to his emphysema; they were unable to wean him off the ventilator.  He was moved to Ventilator Dependent Unit of another hospital, where they stopped clearing out his ventilator regularly as well as not giving him his physical therapy to keep his muscles from atrophying.

Grandpa died on March 3 1990, five months after he was first admitted to the hospital with his heart attackand three weeks after his and Grammy’s 43rd Wedding Anniversary.  Because the rest of my family lived so far away I was the one who drove Grammy to the hospital every day and sometimes twice a day.  His death was hard on all of us, though harder on me than everyone but Grammy, as I was the one who had really gotten close to him while living with the two of them.  I still miss him.

After Grandpa’s death, I got slightly more rebellious for a while.  I wasn’t trying to hurt Grammy, but I was having trouble dealing with Grandpa’s death.  I took off in Grammy’s car to see my boyfriend, who I had met while living in Detroit and who had moved to St. Louis, Missouri when I moved back to Cedar Springs with Grammy and Grandpa.  I wound up in Job Corps in St. Louis for about 4 months, and I wound up pregnant.

My daughter was born in June of 1991.  Grammy was there for the birth, but my mom refused to come see her first grandchild until she was 6 months old.  I wish Grandpa could have lived long enough to see his great-grandchildren, he loved kids and they would have loved him.  Because I had to work to try to support us, Grammy bonded with Jasmine a little more than I did, but Jasmine loved us both; and we both adored her.

When Jasmine was almost 2, I really goofed and wound up in prison for some stupid things I did.  Grammy raised her during that time, and their bond solidified.  In 1996, I had my second child, another girl.  Robin bonded with me.  Don’t get me wrong, I love both my girls, it is just that Jasmine was more a Grammy’s girl and Robin was a Mommy’s girl.  Though both tended to listen to Grammy more than me when it came to doing what they were told.

I did whatever I needed to do in order to support my family, even moving back in with Grammy occasionally when necessary.  I eventually was able to get on Section 8, which made getting and keeping our own home easier.  In July of 1999, I had my third child, this time a boy.  Before I even gave birth to Michael, I knew that I couldn’t handle three kids on my own.  Neither of the girls father’s were really in the picture and Michael’s father wanted nothing to do with us.  So, even though it killed me to do so, I made arrangements to give Michael up for adoption.

It was supposed to be an open adoption, with me being allowed to see him and being sent letters by the adoptive family with updates on his progress, but the adoptive family screwed me over.  I was too stupid to get anything in writing, and as soon as the adoption was finalized to the point that I couldn’t change my mind, I received a letter from the adoptive parents informing me that they felt it was best if all contact stopped.  The last time I saw my son was when he was 4 months old.  I hope he is okay.

The girls and I did ok for a while, with some help from time to time from Grammy.  We had our own place where they both had their own room.  It wasn’t big, and it didn’t have a lot of cupboard or closet space, but we made due.  It helped that I could be quite ingenious when it came to coming up with ways to give us more storage space, especially in the huge kitchen.

When Jasmine was 11 and Robin was 8, it was discovered that a close family friend had molested them the year before.  When he was arrested, he told the authorities that I knew about it and let him do it, so the girls were removed from my home; and I was made to fight to get them back.  What no one but my family seemed to realize is that if I HAD known what was going on, that so-called friend would not have been alive to be arrested!  I am NOT a violent person, but no one messes with my babies without there being consequences!

For 2 years, I did everything that the court ordered me to do so that I could get my children back.  Grammy wanted to take guardianship of them temporarily to keep them with family, but the CPS worker said she was too old.  My parents, who lived in a 4-bedroom colonial by themselves at the time, said that they didn’t have the room to take in their granddaughters.  My sister said she would take them, then changed her mind right when the state was about to approve her.  Lunatic says that he wishes we knew each other back then because he is sure either of his sisters would have been willing to take my girls temporarily for me.

To make a long story short, it didn’t matter what I did.  Even after doing everything the court ordered me to do in order to get my girls back, the state of Michigan terminated my rights to my children in November of 2004.  The final reason was that I was too emotionally unstable to be a parent due to being diagnosed with major depression at the beginning of the whole ordeal.  My rights were terminated because I had a treatable condition.  I have since learned that Michigan courts rarely return children to their homes once they have been removed, no matter what the parents do to improve conditions in the home or to prove that they should have their children with them.  Of the 30 women in the 2 Mother’s classes I was court ordered to attend, only one had their child returned to them.

I have not seen my girls since the last visit I had with them, on July 27, 2004 at 6:30 p.m.  Yes, I remember the exact time and day.  It is etched in my memory like a very bad nightmare.  Robin turned 13 this February and Jasmine will be 18 in 6 days.  I pray to God that she will try to find me.  I pray to God that they even remember me.

When I lost my girls, I lost my Section 8 and could no longer afford my rent and bills.  So, I moved back in with Grammy.  A month after I officially moved back in with her she had a heart attack.  It was not a major one, and they just had to put in a balloon and a few stents; but she needed someone to help her out more and keep her on the proper diet.  It was up to me to take care of her and I did the best I could.

Grammy helped me get a used desk top computer so I could look into going back to school.  I applied at University of Phoenix online and was approved for student loans as well as government grants to help me go back to school.  I started taking Information Technology classes in the spring of 2006.  I used most of my first grant check to get myself a made to order Dell desk top computer and printer/scanner combo for my schooling.

I did use my computer for other things besides school, like chatting, listening to music and watching movies.  I found one yahoo chatroom that I really enjoyed going to.  If it weren’t for Books and Literature 2 I would not have met my Lunatic.  Yes folks, the love of my life and I met online.  We began chatting in the room in September of 2006, started IMing each other the following month, and were an online couple hoping to meet in person by November.  We finally did meet in person in January of 2007.

I had used part of my second grant check to get an inexpensive used car to help make doing the shopping and running Grammy’s errands easier.  So, at around 2:30 in the morning on January 3, 2007 I made the 3 hour drive to the Detroit area to meet my Lunatic for the first time.  I made 3 or for trips to see him between then and early February, when my life went haywire again.

I was on my way down to see Lunatic in early Februaruy 2007, and I was pulled over by County Sherriff’s officer’s.  I thought that maybe I had a taillight out or something.  I was soon to discover that was not the case.  I was shocked to find out that I was pulled over because there was a warrant out for my arrest for forgery.  I had no idea what they were talking about.  Supposedly, I had forged a check back in the summer of 2005.

I soon found out what was going on, but it didn’t help me much.  It turns out that it was about a check a friend had asked if he could have made out to me so I could cash it for him due to his having lost his ID the previous week.  It wasn’t until I was arrested that I found out that the guy had stolen the check from his friend and forged it to me.  I was culpable for having endorsed it and cashed it, but NOT for having forged the check in the first place; though the guy who had me cash it was now saying the whole thing was my idea and I had stolen, forged and cashed the check.

I spent 102 days in jail while fighting these charges before pleading to a lesser charge of attempted forgery for signing and cashing the check.  I got time served and 18 months probation for it.  It really ticked me off, because before that I had not been in trouble since my release from prison 13 years earlier.

As soon as I was released, I got back in touch with my Lunatic and went to see him in his new place in the Detroit area.  I moved in with him and we have been together ever since.  He proposed to me in October of 2007.

While I was locked up trying to fight the charges, Grammy wound up having to move in with my parents.  Her furnace went out and due to her mobile home being over 30 years old, she was told there was no point in trying to fix it; and she couldn’t afford a new one.  My family, having decided due to my earlier trouble with the law that I was guilty and where I belonged, got rid of most of my stuff when cleaning out Grammy’s home.  The little bit that was left (what Grammy wouldn’t allow them to get rid of), they put in storage; except for my computer, which my sister took supposedly so it wouldn’t get damaged.  Grammy said she would pay the staorage rental until I was able to find a job that paid well enough to allow me to pay my bills and still have some money to pay the rental.

Though I was NOT allowed at my parent’s house to see Grammy, Lunatic and I kept in touch with her through letters and phone calls.  Even with her payinf the storage rental, whenever she thought we were a little short on cash for food or bills, she would send us a little bit of money.  Grammy had met Lunatic once and really liked him.  She was so happy when we told her we were engaged.  Too bad she won’t see us get married.

I tried to call Grammy on March 1, 2008 and was told by my mom that Grammy was in the hospital and had been for a week.  She said it in a voice that made it sound like she expected me to already know that.  She refused to give me the number for the hospital and the name she gave me for the hospital was not coming up on my internet searches.  So, I had no way of contacting or going to visit Grammy.

A week later, I found out that my mom hadn’t bothered to tell anyone I had called the previous week.  I found this out when my sister called on March 8 and informed me that Grammy had been in the hospital for a week, at which point I told her it had now been 2 weeks as she had already been in there for a week when I had called on the first.  I was then informed that she and my dad didn’t know I had called and as it didn’t look as though Grammy was going to make it through the day, they felt it was now time to let me know she was in the hospital.

When I lived with Grammy, it didn’t matter if she was just being held overnight for observation; any time she was in the hospital, I called both my mom and my sister to let them know.  Yet they couldn’t bother to let me know until it was too late for me to see and talk to Grammy again.  My sister came and picked me up to take me to the hospital, bitching the whole time that she was wasting gas to do so. 

We got to the hospital where I was told by my mom that Grammy had been doing better and was ready to go home a few days earlier, then had suddenly slipped into a coma the day before.  My mom decided that it would be better to have life support terminated and let her go.  While at the hospital, my parents and my sister comforted each other while ignoring me.  Lunatic had had to work that day or he would have gone with me.

It wasn’t too long before my sister said she was taking me home so she wasn’t driving me there after dark.  On the way back, she informed me that I was only picked up to go to the hospital out of the kindness of her heart as Grammy didn’t want me there anyway.  The next day, I was informed that Grammy had died a couple of hours after my sister had taken me home.  I was also informed that my parents were having the funeral in Cedar Springs so that Grammy’s friends could go to it.  When I asked how I was supposed to make it there as our car would not make the 6 hour round trip, I was asked if I honestly thought they would take me; before being told I would have to find a way to get there on my own.  So, I missed Grammy’s funeral.  Thank God I had Lunatic to help me through it all.

Afterward, my parents sent the storage company a letter telling them i was paying the rent from now on knowing full well that I still could not afford to, as we were barely making ends meet.  Therefore, I lost everything I had in storage, icluding 39 years of collectible ornaments and several boxes of collectible porcelain dolls.  And when we tried to get my computer back from my sister, she said that she was keeping it because I owed her money.  She stole my computer and printer that cost me nearly $1000 because I owe her about $80 still from the nearly $200 I borrowed 13 years ago.

That is the last contact I have had with anyone in my family, except my brother.  He is the only member of my family who doesn’t treat me like complete crap.  I am thankful to Lunatic, his family, DJ and undefinedwritersblock for being there for me when my family refuses to be.  I love you guys.