PhatPhat Memoirs: Lost in Rebellion

By PhatPhat

As a young girl PhatPhat was determined to be different. Defiant, rebellious, and carefree.She soon learned that these straits come with a price, you may not want to pay. Engulfed in a whirlwind of unsavory characters, bad decisions, and inner turmoil, she watches as her life takes a downward spiral. In this raw and uncut account of life on the streets, learn what happens while Lost in Rebellion.
PhatPhat encounters life as a chronic runaway, teen parent, and domestic violence victim. In telling her story, she captures and holds the readers attention with her straightforward, no bars held approach. This read will leave on the edge of your seat anxiously awaiting the next installment in the series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PhatPhat
• Release date: Aug 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476356976

PhatPhat

A native of Gary, IN, I have seen and experienced a lot of ups and downs, highs and lows, through it all I have managed to weather the storm. Through my writing and experiences I hope to inspire others and assure them that there is always a better way and someone else shares your pain. We all have the ability to rise above.

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Introduction

At 12, I was a chronic runaway. By 13, I was living in the streets. By 15, I was in a youth placement facility. At 16 I was pregnant. That’s the story of a lot of people. So I’ve heard. I chose that life; most others lived it by default. Rebelling and trying to accommodate an inner longing to be my own person and not follow in the footsteps of my mother, began a whirlwind of hurt and lifelong pain. It never made sense in the end, my reasoning, and my decisions to create volatile circumstances for myself. It took years of trial and error to evaluate and restructure my thought processes. I had to find myself and my true being in order to position myself to be the best me… for my son, for myself, for our future. What began as a journal became my release, my self-help… my journey to happiness… The PhatPhat Memoirs.

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Runaway Plans

I don’t remember ever sitting around thinking about running away. I just got fed up one day and decided to leave. I was tired of arguing with my mother. We weren’t able to see eye to eye on anything. My parents were divorced by the time I was 5. My mother had been a Jehovah’s Witness ever since. When I was younger, it wasn’t all that bad, wasn’t all that great either, but it was bearable. As I began to get older and realize how limited my life was compared to others, I began to resent the religion. The more I resented the religion the more I resented my mother. I blamed her and the religion for everything. That was the reason my daddy had left, because she wanted to be with Jehovah so bad. That was why I couldn’t celebrate birthdays and holidays, because Jehovah said it wasn’t right. I couldn’t participate in extracurricular activities because it involved "worldly" association and the list went on and on. When I was old enough to be recognized by my peers while in field service (knocking on doors), it was a wrap. I denounced my mother and the religion. I told people that I was adopted and that my adoptive mother made me do all the Jehovah’s Witness stuff, it was no part of me. It just was no fun having to tell my art teacher I couldn’t make a ghost for Halloween because we don’t celebrate that. Or having to go to the library on days when there was a Christmas party because we didn’t celebrate that either. I started cursing at a very young age, anything for it to be known that I was no Jehovah’s Witness. By the time I was in 2nd grade I was cursing like a sailor. I had to keep that image going. It wasn’t just at school; it was within the family as well. Nobody related to this religion and no one was too receptive to it. Even when family members gave me a gift for my birthday or Christmas, I would have to call them and let them know that I’d be sending it back because we don’t celebrate holidays. It was too unbearable for me at such an early age that by the time I was becoming a preteen, it was complete nonsense to me and I certainly wanted no parts.

I barely saw my father. That bothered me as well. He rarely picked me up and I learned pretty fast that if I got in trouble bad enough that my mother would call him and I would get to see him. It wasn’t the best way to see him, but at least I saw him. From 3rd to 9th grade I was a problem child. I began stealing. I even stole my art teacher’s money out of her purse in the 3rd grade. I will never forget that day. My first heist was $35. I got caught. Running my mouth to one of my friends. I would not have gotten caught if it had not been for my friend. When the art teacher was explaining how embarrassed she was when she went to the grocery store and had no money to pay, my friend blurts out, Yep, it was a 5, a 10 and a 20! Needless to say she was questioned about how she knew and said that I told her. After that the teacher called for another teacher to sit with the class while she escorted the two of us to the principal’s office. I was not going out like that though. I had already told my mother that I found the money on the playground the day before. That was usually always my story. I had to be the luckiest kid in America, as much money as I supposedly found on a regular basis. When the principal called my mother she came to the school in my defense. She had believed my story with no questions. After defending me however to no avail, I wound up getting suspended for 3 days, and had to return the money. This is was the start of me learning how to perfect a lie. Make yourself believe the lie then when confronted you will stand behind your lie with such conviction others will have no choice but to believe it. It would have worked in this situation had it not been for my big mouthed friend. Why I developed a problem with stealing back then, I will never understand. But I believe it came from wanting to fit in, display that bad girl image and be accepted by my peers. This type of behavior continued for years to come. I can remember stealing from the purses of my mother’s friends from the Hall when we would go knocking on doors. I even stole from the contribution box at the Kingdom Hall. It didn't stop there; I used to steal from my own mother. Food stamps, so I could buy all the junk food for me and my friends. I know she knew but to this day she has never mentioned it. I was something else and it progressively got worse.

I was skipping school by the 5th grade. Throwing parties from lunch hour until school got out was routine. Once my friends and I got caught doing that, I didn’t do that one again. I just skipped away from home. By the time 6th grade school year came around, I had run away so many times that I was now living with my father. That wasn’t working out too well for me either. My father had a new family; a wife and two daughters. I loved being around my sisters and thought I had a pretty good relationship with my stepmother. But I still wasn’t content. Something inside of me just would not let me stay put. I seemed to be insistent on creating some type of havoc for myself and those around me. The volatile relationship with my mother wasn’t an issue at the time and I didn’t have to attend the Kingdom Hall, so I should have been satisfied. I was still searching for something, something to fill that unknown void. As a matter of fact, I had a boyfriend by then and I was crazy in love with him, so I thought at 12.

I felt such a connection with this boy. He was a bad boy that transferred from another school in a neighboring city. I didn't even like him at first. He had big lips and everybody talked about him. He had a lot of brothers and sisters so they didn't have as much as most kids in the neighborhood. But he liked me. I got caught with him and his brother in the house one day while my aunt and I were home alone. That didn’t end too well. My father came home with my little sisters and immediately lost it. It was a big production. The brother managed to get out of the house. My father was holding my boyfriend and called police. The brother outside clowning caused my father to fire warning shots at him. Police arrive. In a short period of time I was causing havoc in my father and his family’s household. My father and his wife were at odds because he was still paying child support for me while I was living in their household. Along with whatever problems they already had, it wasn’t a good fit. I was stealing the car in the middle of the night going joy riding or visiting with friends. I was out of control and for no apparent reason. Soon my father and I moved out of the house with my stepmother and sisters and moved into an apartment by ourselves. We only lived there for a few months before we moved into an apartment my grandparents owned. They lived a few doors away so it was more convenient for my father that we live there.

Still striving to be my own person and having little direction, I was acting out in this apartment too. Through everything, Paul, my boyfriend, stayed with me. We hung out every chance we got. I can remember him walking about forty or more blocks just to come see me at my grandmother’s house. He gave me all the attention that I felt I was lacking from everywhere else. I was still living with my dad, but it was just me and him now. So I had a lot of free time, lonely time. My dad worked a lot and I was home alone most times. After school I would hang out at my grandmother’s for a while or down the street at my older cousins’ house. But for the most part, I was by myself. I really didn't have much supervision. My daddy worked usually until 8 or 9 p.m. My grandmother usually made it home from work around 6p.m. My grandfather was home but never in the house, out working in the garage or cutting the grass or something that retired old men do during the course of a day. He was not the talkative type. To this day I can remember maybe having one conversation with him my whole life.

All of this free time left me open to a lot of misbehaving. One evening after school, Paul, walked all the way from across town to visit me again. He didn't tell me ahead of time. He just came. Well, I had to go to my cousin's house down the street to get my hair done. I told Paul to stay upstairs in the closet until I came back. The house was old and every step you made in that house the floors creaked. I knew my grandmother would be coming home soon thus the reason for him to stay in the closet until I returned. Paul of course did not follow instructions. He was walking around upstairs after my grandmother came home from work. She knew no one should be in the house, so she immediately hit the alarm. Once the police arrived I was summoned back to house to identify Paul as someone I let in the house. Sad to say, I denied knowing him to the fullest. I wasn't gonna take the fall for this. I told him to STAY IN THE CLOSET. (I know that sounds terrible but...) After several minutes of going back and forth with Paul and the police, who knew that clearly I was lying, they finally contacted his parents and released him to their custody. This wasn't our last episode but he talked about me for a good little while behind those shenanigans.

I was glad that he didn’t dump me behind that one. But I guess it was because we had developed a real friendship and a strong bond. Eventually, he was the one who I lost my virginity to. It was nothing like I had imagined it would be. Honestly I had never even really thought any further than what I had seen on TV, which wasn’t much, considering my mother was very selective about what I could watch on TV. We had stayed in the basement so long that evening that my grandmother finally realized that I had been taking a bath for several hours. She called down to me to make sure I was alright. Assuring her everything was fine, I cautiously gathered my things and waited for my grandparents to go to bed before I could sneak him back out of the house. That ended up being a couple more hours, but they weren’t paying me too much attention so he was able to make a clean getaway. After we had sex the first and only time, I told Paul I was pregnant. Why? I never figured that out. To my surprise, even at 12, he was excited and stayed up under me not wanting to miss not one moment of it. Needless to say he was devastated when I finally told the truth. Paul never judged me and 20 years later we are still the best of friends and look back at those times and laugh. Our lives took both similar and different paths, but each path eventually made us better people. I don't have many friends, but he is one of the few that I can call one.

My relationship with my mother continued to diminish. Being home alone a lot at my dad’s, I got into lots of trouble. I had already had sex at 12, but I wasn’t that interested in it again until about a year later. This was because my body had fully developed and by now I had learned the perks of being a female. Even though my daddy worked a lot he still tried to be as active as he could. Sometimes he would take me to work with him and have one of his young female employees take me to hang out. One in particular was very cool; she was still in high school, so we connected pretty well. He sent her to take me to get birth control, shopping, etc. My daddy had always tried to be the cool parent, leaving the door open to talk to him about anything. And I did, for the most part. Most things I could talk about with my daddy and definitely could not with my mother. That summer was wild for me. I was talking to older guys left and right. Everything would be going good until they wanted to be intimate past a little fondling and what not. I can remember like it was yesterday. I looked older, so I had no problem getting the attention of the older guys. And my conversation was a bit advanced. I probably showed my true age though when it came time for intimacy. I was not going for it. The way the apartment my dad and I lived in was set up, could easily be misconstrued as being mine. The house was divided into 3 apartments. A lady lived at the very top, my uncle lived on the middle floor and we lived in the basement apartment. I had a lot of male company back then; chillin’, relaxin’, but no sexin'. The last time I got caught was by my uncle. He came home early. He usually wasn't home until late night. He caught me with a guy in the house sippin’ on Crown Royal, my daddy's favorite drink at the time. That was hilarious, and a little embarrassing. But embarrassment wasn’t really in my vocabulary, so I didn’t care that my uncle busted me out about it not being my apartment. Of course he was talking shit. Cursing me and the dude out. He was so upset I barely understood much of anything he said. I know he told the dude that it wasn’t my apartment. He made him leave and continued cursing me out until he couldn’t find any other words for me. It was right up his alley to tell my father when he got home. But I didn't really get into any trouble for it. My daddy was pissed and decided that in order to avoid any further problems; he would just put me on lock down. Can you imagine being in the house, locked in for hours??? The phones being taken out of the house every time my daddy went to work? Anytime I wanted to come outside, I had to wait for my grandfather or grandmother to come unlock the door and let me out. Parents never really realize that the more freedom you take away from a child or the more you tell them not to do something, it’s like saying do it.

As time went on, my father decided it was best for me to go back home. I wasn’t in agreement with this idea, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had to suck it up and follow the program, I was sure I wouldn’t be there too long. Moving back home with my mother was in no way going to help me. I was too far gone. She was too strict. I had a taste of freedom when I was living with my father and I still wasn’t feeling the Kingdom Hall agenda either. I calmed down a little. My mom had moved by now and I was going to a new school in a gifted and talented program. Perhaps things would be a little better but I knew that it wouldn’t be much different than before. I settled in to the new place. I liked the environment. It was more open and a bigger community, more room for me to get into some things. Shortly after hanging out there, I was meeting people, all older than me, which intrigued me. Of course they were doing things I wasn’t or had even imagined doing. I was a little mature for my age, so I didn’t have many problems fitting in with the crowd. I met one guy who lived in the same building. He was several years older than me but seemed pretty cool. I hung out with him a few times and had sex with him. It was then that I began having the urge to have sex since the first time. I had sex with him a few times before he ended up giving me crabs and I backed off of the sex thing again. I wasn’t ready for that, didn’t even know what it was. I was so embarrassed when I had to show it to my mother. Luckily, she had never seen crabs before and didn’t even know what it was. All she could say was that it evidently came from me not washing my body correctly. She thought I was doing all kinds of shit anyway, even when I wasn’t. Shortly after all of that, I met Flip and things changed drastically.

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Flip

Now Flip, he was something totally different. Of course he would be though, he was 20. Flip was average height and with a medium complexion. He was nothing spectacular, but I was mesmerized with his age if nothing else. It seemed as if he understood me. He took time with me and acted like his world revolved around me. My momma couldn’t tell me nothing! Sneaking around with him was fun and exciting. I was being exposed to things that I hadn’t and probably shouldn’t have been, but the adrenaline rush that I felt being around him was beyond words. Being with him was unacceptable, unorthodox, just down right illegal. But who cared? If he didn’t I definitely didn’t either. My bedroom was right at the back door. Foolish set up if you ask me. Why would the exit be directly in a teenager’s room? That was just asking for trouble. Needless to say, I would sneak him in all the time, especially when my mom wasn’t at home. I thought I was being discreet, but everybody saw him coming and going when she was gone. Eventually she called herself putting some type of alarm on the back door. I guess she thought that was really going to stop us. It didn’t. I figured out a way to disarm that thing in no time. She couldn’t even tell it had been tampered with. Flip and I continued to see each other anyway. And as long as he wanted to hit that back door he could.

I was 13 when I met Flip. He was 20. I thought I was really grown once I met him and he wanted to make me his girlfriend. Nobody could tell me anything. He seemed to really like me and it wasn’t all about sex. Sex was part of the equation but there was no real pressure. I thought I had hit the jackpot. He was older and he might be able to rescue me from this life I dreaded so much. Flip was older, but that was about all. He didn’t have his own place, he worked off and on, and he was walking just like me. At the time none of that really mattered, I was caught up in the age, which encouraged my rebellion. My mother was furious about the situation, but there was nothing she could do, she had lost control a long time ago. I tried to be with Flip as often as possible. He would meet me around the corner in the mornings and walk me to school. Whenever my mother was gone, he would come over. There were no lengths that either of us wouldn’t go to in order to see each other. Flip even tried building somewhat of a relationship with my father to show his sincerity I guess. When I think back to it all now, Flip never had my best interest at heart. He was only trying to feed his own desires.

This was all going on during the 7th grade. What did I really have in common with a 20 year old? Nothing really, but I fed off of the attention that I was getting. I could be myself and he never judged me. But he exposed me to things also that I didn’t expect. Sex was somewhat exciting because we were sneaking every time. But he introduced me to oral sex also, which I wasn’t prepared for. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the purpose. I definitely wasn’t putting anything in my mouth. Hell, I barely liked kissing. Surprisingly, he never tried to convince me