Once upon a time I was a 15 year old girl who spent most of her time taking drugs, having sex and sneaking out to meet her boyfriend.

Gee. I sure don't have to wonder where Mikey gets his actions from. It's purely genetic.

I was a stupid girl who didn't believe in using condoms though I did ask my Gramma for some birth control pills.

However, a 15 year old girl isn't going to refute her Gram when her Gram looks at her and says, "Aw honey. YOU don't need that do you?" Why, no Gram. Of course not.

I was pregnant 2 months later. This really threw a kink in my "party forever" plans. I did a lot of things following the two weeks after I took the pregnancy test and lots of those things included sex, more drugs and alcohol and a heavy dose of denial.

I lined up money for an abortion. I lined up the people to take me to the appointment. A week before I was supposed to go, I called my Mother who lived in New Jersey with her new younger husband Mike "loser" M c |F@ll and told her I was pregnant. Were they interested in adopting the baby?

I had just turned 16.

The plan was for me to spend the remainder of the summer at my Gram's and then make the move to NJ when school started. I was supposed to start 11th grade I think...Yeah because I finished 10th and won that poetry contest. My big claim to fame in high school.

So off to NJ I went, very unhappily. There followed the most miserable, long, sad, depressing 7 months of my life.

I weighed about 115 lb. when I left Pa. A month before giving birth to the baby, I weighed about 200 lb. I stopped watching the scales, just closed my eyes and didn't ask.

That bakery right on the corner where we lived made very good money off of me during that time. I also ended up quitting school. Sitting around, baby-sitting to make a little extra money, being pregnant and having no friends.

Capital Miserable.

Gave birth to Mikey exactly on his due date: 3/15. They wouldn't let me sign over the baby to my Mother and her lovely husband until I had held the baby. I wasn't treated very nicely. Matter of fact, if any of my children were to ever be treated like that by someone in the medical profession, they'd have some problems. Fuckers.

One instance: in the delivery room, I was trying to keep my modesty intact since my Mom and her creepy husband were in there but the doctor not only drew the covers above my waist but THREW them up where they landed over my face, with my whole lower body revealed.

Held the baby, my Grandparents drove down to retrieve me and I went back to Pennsylvania just a few days after Mikey was born. I went back to my old life, including the drugs and later, the sex.

The town I lived in was so small that I know my Dad must have heard of my antics, he was a bar hopper in his own "old fart" hang outs. I'm very embarrassed and ashamed at 90% of my behavior during that time.

I had nothing to do with Mikey or with my Mom after that. I returned to high school but remember almost nothing of it. I do remember meeting D0ug Fl0wers that following winter.

I fell in love, moved out of my Grandparents and up to Erie to live with Doug. He promised to keep me in school. He wanted me to quit a few months later in order to work full time. I quit high school but did get my GED a few months later.

That was the summer I turned 18. I was working at a very cool bar as a cocktail waitress and my best friend (who I'm still trying to locate: Heather Peters ) moved up to Erie and lived with Doug and me and she and I worked at the same place.

I ended up becoming pregnant, was doing a lot of cocaine and marijuana at that time and a few months into the pregnancy, miscarried in a pretty spectacular way. I broke up with Doug shortly after that and Heather and I moved into an apartment with another girl we worked with.

The partying was almost nonstop after that for about .... (I can't remember dates right now) months. A lot of things fell apart during those months, it was not a good scene. I have a lot of good memories of that time but it's also very painful to recall them. One of the few things I don't feel like recording just yet.

During that span of time, 2 years?, my Mother had ended up moving back to the area with Mike, Mikey, Jennifer (who was only 12 or so at the time) and Jeremy (two years younger than I am). I heard that my Mom left Mike and I ended up moving back down to my Grandparents and sort of offered to help my Mom out by moving back in with her.

THAT summer was particularly memorable but also another bittersweet love parting was to come (I think I got so involved with guys right before moving because I knew they couldn't leave me) because we had decided to move to North Carolina. We, being me, my Mom, Mikey, Jeremy and Jennifer.

Mom was involved with someone here in NC. Which is a whole 'nother f'ed up story but not mine to tell.

Before we left Pa., my Mom's great lawyer told her that it would not be in her best interest to fight for custody of Mikey and she left him with Mikey who had major custody of him. Or at least, that's what I was always told. Is that the truth? Only my Mom knows.

Even though I lived with my Mom, I STILL didn't have much to do with Mikey and they were raising him to believe that I was his sister and that's it. A 19 year old doesn't get to argue with those types of decisions.

After moving here to NC, leaving Mikey behind with Mike, we got a place to stay right outside of the town where I currently work (that was sort of weird), didn't stay there long (the bathtub fell through the floor...with my sister in it. Not a good place to live. The roaches were also as large as kittens in this place. A real hovel. I found my first Black Widow spider in my UNDERWEAR drawer in this place.), Moved to another town.

One morning, the cable guy showed up to hook up our cable.I married him about 5 months later. The cable guy being N@than.

We were married in the South's Las Vegas: Dillon, South Carolina. Herd 'em in, herd 'em out kinda wedding. I was just newly pregnant with @lix.

Yeah yeah. No preaching. I grew up without a Daddy, I had to get male approval in whatever form I could. Psych 101. Whatever.

Life was grand and wonderful. We had an actual wedding that August. We paid for it. Very cheap. We lived in the dinkiest singlewide, on N2than's parent's property. @lix was born December 28, 1992. She slept in a closet drawer the first couple months of her life.

Life went on, lots of family drama (his), lots of family drama (mine), lots of our own drama. I remember chasing him with a 9 mm at one point. Yes, a gun. Or maybe he was trying to get it AWAY from me?

Long, sad, trashy story short: he had a girlfriend the entire time and was keeping me locked out of both vehicles because he had her pictures/cards/cell phone bills etc. stored in them.

I was so naive. I waited another 5 months or so, trying to get over the betrayal and I just never could. I had a child (almost 3), no job, no car, no money. My Mom wouldn't let me stay with her and her NEW new husband (the one she's still married to).

I ended up moving in with M@ry and J1mmy, they at least offered to help me out. More than my family wanted to do. I'll always be grateful for that. No matter what.

Found a job, Pop sold me a car, had a place to stay. Insert long, trashy difficult separation from N@than. He did not take it well. He took a sledgehammer to one of the vehicles I was driving at that time. Thankfully, not while I was in it.

I was working as a security guard at a slaughterhouse when I met Stuart. He asked me out. I told him that I'd love to go out on a date but he would have to wait another 3 months until my separation papers went through. N@than wasn't playing very fair and I wanted no problems with my custody of @lix. I wasn't taking chances.

Stuart and I talked the whole three months but never really spent any time together, just on the telephone and in letters. Finally, January 1996 arrived. Along with my separation papers.

I was in love by the time we had our first date. First man I ever loved and knew before I even really KISSED him.

A huge revelation and change for me.

We ended up getting a place together in March of 1996. He proposed. The marriage was planned for that October, about a year after meeting.

Now, in talking with Stuart, he knew about Mikey. He knew the entire story ( I tend to be more honest than most people would recommend) along with my thought that one day, maybe, Mikey might want to live with me. You know, if they ever decided to tell him I was his real Mom.

Stuart's Mom and Dad did NOTwant him to marry me and THEY didn't even know about Mikey then. Just that I had a kid and wasn't even quite divorced yet. Not exactly someone I'd pick out for my own child either.

Stuart and I were married on October 12, 1996.

Two weeks later, I got a phone call from my Mom. Hysterical because Mike "loser" McF@!l had decided that he couldn't take care of Mikey anymore and was bringing him to NC to stay with my Mom.

My mother was hysterical because she just couldn't raise another child! She just couldn't do it. What were WE going to do????

I had discussed with her before that I would take him if the time ever came. Stuart came home from work and found that he had another child. Congratulations, it's a 7 year old boy.

Mikey arrived back in North Carolina and back into my life, permanently this time.

Why do I even go into this? It's a story I've told, in pieces, in parts, to most of the people that are important to me. I record it here because some people don't understand the problems that Mikey is having now....and I'm very sensitive to the problems he's having because they all stem from those first 7 years.

I'm very sensitive and dismissive of my Mother because I feel she is very much responsible for the damage done to Mikey and now, to the fact that she takes NO responsibility other than mouthing her "I'm so sorry and I'll never be able o make it up to yous" rather than actually trying to HELP.

I get more help from my in-laws than my own Mother. It doesn't sit very well with me.

I've discovered that I tend to use this journal as a passive aggressive way to punish her because she KNOWS about his journal and refuses to read it because I write "such horrible" things about her. This is my way of extracting payment from her. My pain is much worse because I HAVE told her how I feel and well, nothing changes. She took beatings that were meant for me from Warren when I was young, I shouldn't expect anything now I guess.

One day I hope that I can say that I've worked past my hurt and anger with this matter. It's an issue that I'm still dealing with and it's even more difficult now that Mikey is a teenager and having his own troubles and growing pains.

I wish that I could tell Mikey that he was very much wanted by me. I wish I had a lovely pregnancy story and birth story to share with him. It's hard because I have no memories from HIS young childhood. I can't chronicle his life like I have with Erica's and it hurts me. Even though he understands rationally, I know there is a part of him that mourns the lack.

One day Stuart made the comment that he (Mikey) should be more like his two goofball friends. Just two young teenage boys that goofed off and act silly riding each other around the local Walmoart in a shopping card.

That hurts me because my boy will never know that feeling because in order to be so carefree, you have to have that innocence of living a "normal" life.

I never had that and Mikey never had it.

The only thing I can do now is what I am doing. The best I can and just letting him know how much he is wanted now and how much I love him.

The very extremely condensed version of the years spanning 1988 to present day.