Eighth grade had to be the best and worst year of my life. Like I said before, Kylie and I became good friends that summer. But honestly, eighth grade year we got so close. Like, so close. I must have went to her house every weekend. I loved her mom. I loved her house. They moved into this huge house in Portland. Another small little town surrounding the actual city. And her mom would always take us to the movies or to Whataburger runs or to get Blizzards at Sonic. Kylie always had me and Jackie over and then Kylie’s little sister always had her friends over so it was just a big house full of kids, always crazy, always fun, and always always something to do. When Kylie’s mom had people come over, they would bring their kids, and when that happened it could only mean one thing. Hide and Go Seek. It was like a tradition. There were just so many places to hide in that big house and even though the game is a little bit childish, it never gets old. Never.
As the school year started up I started to realize something. My mom was getting sicker. She was getting paler, and smaller. She looked kind of fragile. She was getting dark circles under her eyes. I didn’t really notice all of that though, until I noticed the pills.
My mom and I were bestfriends. But eighth grade year, we started fighting. A lot. I guess this is normal for teenagers and their parents, but normal teenagers and their parents fight over stupid stuff. I just started feeling so much anger toward her, so much hate. When I came home, she was always “loopy” as my grandparents liked to call it. God bless their old little souls, they tried as hard as they could to sugar-coat everything for me but they just couldn’t protect me from this. When my mom took those pills, she wasn’t my mom anymore. My sweet little mom. She’d say things that were rude and unlike her. She’d slur her speech and walk around all funny. But what made me the most upset, was when she was passed out on the floor. It scared me to death. I’d shake her violently and she’d just wake up for a second, mumble something, and konk back out. It took hours for me to get her back into her bed. One time, I came home and she was on the living room floor. I could kick her, and shake her, and poor water on her all I wanted but there was no waking her. I called Nana and Papa and they finally got her awake, but when my mom regained consciousness she was so mad at me. I felt like I betrayed her for calling them. She felt like I’d betrayed her too. From that point on, I tried to hide everything from Nana and Papa. Because I didn’t want to betray her and because she told me that they were trying to get her taken away from me. Don’t get me wrong, my mom was a good mom. She was the best mom. She was just in so much pain. It wasn’t her fault.
I tried to be as normal as possible at school and I think it worked. No one ever knew about my home life. At home, I was miserable. At school, my life couldn’t have been any better. I was surrounded by friends, amazing friends. I felt popular and needed and just... Loved. That sounds so cliche, needy girl but I felt completely and honestly loved.
Okay, so I hate to be switching topics so much here, but I’m just switching from memory to memory because I don’t know how to put this all in order. This story is more like just memories. By the way, thank you for reading all of my memories. I love y’all!
So I think I should fill y’all in on my mom. My mom used to be really obese. Not in a sarcastic, mean way. She weighed over 300 lbs. I don’t really remember that though because I was too little. All I saw was my super hero and my super hero was beautiful. When I was five years old, I was told that my mom was getting a surgery to make her skinny. This surgery was called a Gastric Bypass surgery. The doctor that performed this surgery on her, was a total screw up. He messed up my mom’s stomach. After the surgery, she got super skinny, everyone was really worried about her because she couldn’t eat anything. She’d eat a little bit and then just throw it right back up. She was tiny. Too tiny. So of course, when we tried to get in contact with this amazing doctor, it was too late. He figured out what a mess he’d made and he packed up his office in the middle of the night. To this day, no one knows where he is.
This lead to more and more surgeries. More and more hospital visits. More and more procedures, hospital bills, and doctors. I’ve been to every hospital in Corpus. I went to her procedures with her, I held her hair out of her face and got a cold rag when she was throwing up, which occurred more and more all the time, I took care of her. As I took care of her, I got used to taking care of her, and we got super close. It was the end of seventh grade/beginning of eighth grade that she started to change. But I remember the day, I knew she’d never be the same. I got home to Nana and Papa’s and Nana was standing in the living room, panting. What was going on here? She’s 75 she didn’t like, work out or anything. I walked closer and as I peered around the corner to what she was staring at. It was my mom. Out cold. On the floor. Uh oh. Papa cannot come in and see her like this, I started to panic. Nana started to panic too. “I didn’t know what to do with her so I dragged her from the kitchen all the way in here, but I can’t get her onto the couch” she’d said. But then we heard the garage door going up. It was too late. He was home. He got in, and saw her, and he looked completely vulnerable. I’d never ever seen my papa like that before. Then he got angry. I told them it was okay, she’d wake up, and just to leave her there. I went outside to get a breath of air, I needed to clear my head and figure out what to do next. But I must have been out there longer than I thought because I heard sirens. I heard them before I saw them but when I finally did see them they were pulling up to my house. No. No this is not happening. I ran inside and Nana looked like she’d just seen a ghost. “What did you do?!” I screamed at her. “She didn’t have pulse, Katie, I had to.” I started screaming that they were going to take her away from me, they couldn’t take her away from me. But there was nothing I could do about it. I ran outside and watched from the back gate, as they rolled her stretcher into the ambulance. When they closed the doors, I fell to my knees.
Later on, the cops asked me questions like when she was born and where she was born, blah blah blah. I was so mad at her. How could she do this to me? She over dosed. Really, mom? Really? Thanks a lot. Do you only think about yourself? I refused to go visit her in the hospital but Papa finally made me. When I got there my eyes filled with tears. She was in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) a place I’d been to many times before. She was so so sorry. And I forgave her because I just wanted it all to be over and done with.
After that she went to rehab for three days. I wasn’t allowed to talk to her or call her or anything. But when she came back, she was my mom again. It was the best two weeks, of her just being her. And we were super close again, and I wouldn’t have traded those two weeks for anything in the entire world. But of course it didn’t last. Addiction is addiction. She found her way back to the pain, back to the pain killers. Could I really blame her? Doctors said that on a scale from one to ten, her pain was a ten, every day all day. Who wants to live like that?
And then one day I come home from school and she sat me on her bed. I asked her how her doctor’s visit went and she replied, “they think it’s cancer.”
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