Hi y'all this isn't actually a real life story just something that I made up for fun. I hope y'all enjoy it.
My life was good, everything was as normal as it could get.
Then it striked it’s never been the same since. Now all I can do us spend my time in the mental hospital where I am to call it home. My name is Aroha John and this is my story.
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I was ten when my parents divorced. I didn’t understand why or what was going to happen. Dad got custody, I still got to see mum every few weeks. After the divorce mum remarried a guy called Bob Wayman, they had Louise but for dad I was the only girl in his life.
Dad and I had a good father daughter relationship. But at the time I was thirteen almost fourteen I started to change, dad got more protective of me because of boys! I did well at Primary and Intermediate always getting good scores and striving high; so my teachers once I reached high school, expected a lot from me and had me put in high classes. “It’s going to be okay girl, you can handle this” was what I kept telling myself. But I started hanging out with some of the wrong people though I never got involved with their drug dealings, under age booze buying and other stuff.
By the time I was sixteen I still had good grades and I had obtained better influenced friends. I also started seeing mum and Louise less, now thinking back over that I don’t think it was good for Louise as she was only six at the time and would grow up and forget about them.
That same year Bob got a life sentence for drugs, alcohol and murder, mum passed away shortly after Louise had started school that August. Now Louise lives with my dad and me, we all get along well. At seventeen I only had to finish my final year at high school, then I could go to university. But things started to get tough with money for dad so I left school and got a temporary job at the local bakery full time. Dad wasn’t too happy about it at first but when my income started coming in and the burden started to fade away he was very thankful.
After that because I didn’t finish high school properly I went and registered for the New Zealand Army, at this time I was in my early twenties. I stayed working in the army until I was in my early to late thirties. I came home after being a recruit, that year for Christmas. Dad wasn’t too well, he had lots of trips to hospital but just kept getting worse. By mid-year he passed away. It was only Louise and I then, she was only six months away from finishing high school and starting university. She came to me one night crying, she said that she had done something bad. There were many things going through my mind at that stage, is she doing drugs? Has she started drinking? Has one of her friends got her pregnant? She told me what she had done. She had been to see her father Bob Way-man in prison. She stayed there and talked to him, but all he kept saying was “When I get out, if I ever do you, your shit arse of a mother and half-wit sister are going to pay for putting me in he”. Louise was frightened, too scared to do anything. Within a couple of months I moved us from Auckland. We moved to Carterton, it was a struggle moving from Auckland but then since Louise had gotten a job and was renting a flat, no longer wanted to be living with her old sister. She moved again this time to Fielding.
She came down to visit me every few weeks and stayed at Christmas. The neighbours around where I lived used to say that I was going crazy, talking to myself and imagining people. Rumours spread. They got to the local old peoples metal home within in days it seemed. The local old peoples metal home decided to take me there to live, they came and picked me up and gather all my belongs that it seemed it couldn’t bear to live without. I really didn’t have a choice going to live there. Louise was fifty now, me I was sixty. Louise comes around every week to see me, since I got put into this home she and her husband moved to Carterton so that we could spend more time together. She always remembers my ‘childhood’ love of cinnamon swirls and brings me one a week maybe two if I am lucky enough. I truly wasn’t going crazy and even the nurses here could admit it. I always can remember the good old times that I had when I was younger and more active.
Louise died when she was seventy-five, that was just over a year ago. Sometimes due to old age I imagine here being here with me telling me stories like when she was little, sharing jokes and bringing me new things. I really miss her warm hugs but when she passed away her husband, my brother-in-law brought her favourite soft toy to me so that I could remember her. My time is up and I have to go.
My sad yet interesting story may still live on.
Aroha May John
