Life Sucks Sometimes

Prequel?

There is damn near just as much crazy info to know before my birth as well as after, so let's go back.

Patrick. He's been dead longer than I have been alive and I am not changing his name out of respect, I would disrespect myself with the most horrible aliases hundreds of times over, before inching towards anything of the sorts for him. Well, here's why! 

I feel like I'm presenting something great, but this is the lamest reward ever. Yay, tears!

My mother's father, Patrick, him and my grandmother, more commonly referred to as mom-mom as to distinguish her from the other grandmother, they were highschool sweethearts. Adorable, right? They got married, made babies, and then Patrick went off to the Vietnam war. 

Being a soldier has strong ties in my family, well, on my mother's side. Lot's of military, air force, and all that jazz kinds of individuals.

Patrick went off to war. And he came back. That makes us lucky...

Unlucky is a form of lucky. I mean that is horrible to say, but he came back traumatized with bad PTSD and would jump out of cars when they turned on, and had crowd anxiety and all of these terrible issues. I'm thankful that he was given the opportunity to live the life he did, just saying that we need to think better about the damages of conflict on the inside of the person, and not just the organs, doll.

Whenever I ask about him, I am either asking my mom or my mom-mom, so whatever information I get is clearly biased, but let's shuffle through both and split the difference. We will be doing a lot of this sorting when it comes to my life. Lots of hearsay, not so many facts in writ.

According to mom-mom, he was a great guy, until he came back from the war, then he was a changed man. He then became a ladies man and a drunk, who took his daughter to the bar, and wasn't a very good father to his children at all. He came back with a jaded look on life, and it warped his adoring child.

According to mom, he was a great guy, and she loved spending time with him at bars, and making him proud. And she said that it was due to Patrick cheating that him and mom-mom split up, but mom-mom never explained that. Honestly I didn't know that they split up until mom told me this, because mom-mom held him with such respect in her heart in the way she spoke about him. If we compare the respect that she shows me to the respect she shows the husband who made her raise children on her own, while he was cheating on her often enough to cause a problem, and getting drunk everyday, seems to be she must hate me.

But that part happens after I'm born, let me step back. Let's make it clear, Patrick had two children; my mom and uncle Pat. Yeah, they have the same name, but that's fine because Uncle Patrick has no role in my life at all, he's in Illinois or something living his life with his wife and her kid, so it's not complicated. Besides, if it does become important then I'll specify. Agreed? Good. Or not good, I don't know what you are thinking.

Okay, so mom and mom-mom both agree that he liked alcohol, bars, and spending time with one of his two children. That isn't surprising considering he died of alcohol poisoning in his sleep.

Alcoholism runs so deeply in my family that I hate that fucking beverage. Water. Drink fucking water. People don't realize how painful it is to others. I hate intoxication.

So, grandpa kinda sucked. That's the bad side of his actions. And if it wasn't for this then I wouldn't be around. His death was a plot point here.

Now, let's figure out my dad's side. My Grandmother there, we can freely call her grandma and any variants. She made babies with my grandpa. Easy, we'll keep that together. Names and titles are from mom's side, easy peasy? Still. My grandmother married my grandpa? I'm not sure, that part of the timeline is fuzzy. After that they divorced, they still don't like each other, oh well. Then my grandmother married this other guy. I don't know where or who he is, but it was a thing that my dad and uncle would reminisce about, so I guess that was a thing. I know it wasn't my actual grandfather married to her at that time. But raising my father and uncle was done by my grandmother and her second husband, who from what I hear was an asshole.