Stephanie's Journal Jar

If you could be a flower, what would you be and why?

If I could be any flower, I would probably be a rose. They are so beautiful, and smell so sweet. They also seem delicate on the surface, but are actually fighters. Anyone who has ever tangled with a rose bush knows what I mean. Those little boogers can really hurt. LOL

Anyway, that is kind of like me. People see me and expect me to be this delicate woman who needs to be taken care of and supported by a man, but once they get to know me better they see what a tough little chickee I really am. I've been through a lot, but I'm still going strong. If you've read much of my journals, you probably already know why I think of myself as a strong woman, but I am going to tell it again. LOL

I was 17, just barely, when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. I was only about 2 1/2 weeks away from the start of my senior year in high school, and many told me that my life was over. I saw things differently. Life wasn't over....my childhood was though. Life was just changing. This was a new start to a new role in life. I got married in October that year, and thought things would be great. Two weeks into my marriage the problems started. This is also about the time I realized that the man I was married to was not the man I thought he was. He lost his job, and was having trouble finding another one. I decided I should help out, so I got a job. Now I was going to school from 8:00 - 3:15, then making the 30 minute drive to work. Clock in by 4:00 and work until midnight. Then it was a 30 minute drive back home, and homework until I feel asleep from pure exhaustion. Keep in mind that I am also about 3 1/2 months pregnant by this time. On weekends I was taking extra shifts, and saving every penny I could, because I wanted to get my own place so desperately. (We were living with my parents at the time.) Meanwhile, my new husband has pretty much given up on his search for a job. Then comes December.

Two weeks before Christmas, I go into labor for the first time. The baby isn't due until April 6th. This is a disaster! Luckily they are able to stop the labor using medication. I am told that I have to quit my job, because being on my feet that long is going to put me back into labor. I also have to take this medicine anytime the contractions start back up. Which was constant. Now I am trying to go to school, but just walking from one class to the next puts me back into labor. Trips to the hospital are occuring several times a week, and I can't sleep. The medicine to stop the labor had about the same effect on my body and drinkin 10 - 12 cups of coffee on right after the other would. And I have to take this every 4 hours. I AM WIRED!

Trips to the hospital finally slowed down, to once a week or so. LOL I managed  to stay in school and on April 10, I went for a check up. The baby was due 4 days earlier, and I want her now! After examining me, the doctor agrees that it's time to have a baby, and they induce labor. Thirteen and a half hours later, I am finally holding my beautiful little girl. Oh yeah...by the way.....it's also the first day of Spring Break. LOL So what did you do for you senior year spring break? The next major challenge came in May. I noticed that they baby seemed to be losing weight, and that she couldn't seem to hold anything down. Every time she would eat, it would come right back up. Not just baby spit up either. Think exorsist. Flying across the room, projectile vomit. (sorry for the visual, but you have to understand that to realize how frightening this was.) On May 11th my daughter was rushed to the children's hospital. The valve in the bottom of her stomach closed off, and she wasn't able to digest her food. She was deathly ill. The doctors weren't sure if she would pull through. Did I mention that this is finals week at school and that the exams count as 50% of my final grade? My father tries to arrange for me to take the tests later, and we are told that I am not going to be allowed. This means all of my hard work was for nothing. If I don't take the tests, I don't graduate. Who Cares! There is no way I am leaving this little angel to die alone at the hospital. If I lose her, I'm going to be there holding her to the very end. But thanks to a miracle, (yes, even the doctor called it that and had no other explainations for me) my daughters valve corrected itself. I was allowed to take the exams for the 3 classes required for graduation, and while my grade point average suffered a huge hit, I graduated on time! And just think...I hadn't even made it through the first year of marriage yet!

Fast forward to December 2004. Six and a half years after the birth of my daughter. I'm cleaning house, making the bed, doing laundry....the normal things. I find a pair of panties. No big deal.....except they aren't mine, and they are in MY bed. Between the sheets. Not left there by a random visitor I'm sure. Now, even if I hadn't spent the past seven years being neglected and mistreated, this would have been bad enough, but when you added in everything the man had put me through in seven years, I told him to pack and get out. We stayed together through Christmas and New Years for the kids and on Jan. 4th I put him on a plane to his mother. Oh, and did I mention that I've been taking care of my kids with no help from him financially ever since!

Fast forward again to December 2006. I've since moved to Iowa, and one night at work I get a phone call telling me I need to come home to West Virginia. My Dad is sick, and they don't know if he is going to pull through this. I spend a week in West Virginia, then come back to Iowa for Christmas. 8 days after I got back I get another call telling me to be on the first train back to WV. I spent the next month caring for my father and watching him slip away from us. He died on January 22, 2207. We buried him 4 days later. Alone, I packed all of his belongings and moved them back to my mother's house so that my siblings and I can go through them later, and when the house was cleaned out, I was just to exhausted to do more, so I rented a car and drove back to Iowa. Here I spend my time with my children and the love of my life, who I am marrying in June of this year.

So yeah, I think I am a fighter, yet a beautiful and delicate appearing woman. Like a rose.

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WHAT GAMES DID YOU PLAY IN YOUR HOUSE OR NEIGHBORHOOD? 

As a child, there were so many games that we used to play. The all time favorite was hide and seek. We were also lucky in that we lived next door to a school, so we had a basketball court and a playground that we could play on anytime. There were lots of basketball, football, baseball, and kickball games. We also have a lake near our house, and everyone would end up at the lake where we would play Marco Polo for hours!

Indoor games included Sorry, Monopoly, Clue, Risk, and Trivial Pursuit. Then of course there was the Atari, and then Nintendo and Sega. There was always people around our house, and we always had things to do.

Hide and go seek games were probably the best, because the boundries stretched out for two blocks in each direction. Base was always the front steps of the school building. In the summer time, games would last for hours! Kids came from all over town to join in the games, and it would be nothing for there to be 30 or 40 kids in the game. These games started when I was like 5 or 6 and now 20 years later, the tradition continued until about a year ago. The kids of the town would still migrate to my old neighborhood on the weekends and in the summer for hours of hide and seek. Most of the kids from the neighborhood are gone now, moved to other states and whatnot, and mostly older people there now, so I think the games are mostly over now, but for nearly 23 years it was fun for hundreds of kids!

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DESCRIBE YOUR FIRST JOB. WHAT DID IT PAY? WHAT WHERE YOUR DUTIES? WHAT WAS YOUR BOSS LIKE?

My first job other than babysitting was at the dance studio where I took lessons. We would help make sure everyone was doing their stretches, demonstrate new moves to the classes, 'spotted' the acrobat classes, clean up the studio, and answered the phone. When it came time to rehearse for the recital, and all of the students were at the local high school auditorium at one time, we were paired up and put in charge of a group of younger students. We then made sure that everyone was staying out of trouble, that the little ones got to the restroom when necessary, and that they were on stage when they were supposed to be. As far as pay goes......we earned two classes a year and enough to pay for our costumes and pictures. It wasn't that big of a deal to most of the girls, but to me it was. I wouldn't have been able to take dance classes had it not been for that. My first year of dancing had been a gift from a friend of my parents who was moving away. My father was permenantly disabled when I was 11 and my mother had my baby brother a few months later. Disability checks don't stretch very far, and once mom could finally go back to work......well, her minimum wage job almost made ends meet, so there was no way to continue paying for classes.  My boss was a woman who felt we should all be given a chance to learn. For that reason, she allowed me to work for her so that I could continue to take my class and pay for my sister's class as well. She is a very kind and loving woman, and even though she no longer teaches dance classes, I go and see her as often as I can.

Thanks for making it possible for me to continue my dance classes, Angie!

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Hey there! Welcome to my new journal. Promise has a journal that she calls THE JOURNAL JAR. I had a journal under another name, and I had answered some of these questions there, but I decided to create this one under a new name so that I can answer these questions and be completely honest without having to worry about my family finding this and giving me a hard time about my honesty. (As they have in the past causing me to take other journals private.)

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