My Life, As I Know It.

The Early Years

My name is Amanda Strausser and I am from a small insignificant town called Lake Zurich. Not many people know about it or where exactly it is but it was home. I was born in North Charleston, South Carolina three months premature to a single mom in a room full of medical students and doctors, no other family members were present.  I weighed in at a tiny 3lbs and 8oz on the day of my birth. I was a tiny baby and most people thought that I either wouldn't make it or that my life would be full of complications becuase I was not fully developed at all when I came into this world.  You could say that my early arrival was an omen of difficult things to come and I guess you would be right in that assumption because my life has been in no way easy. I guess looking in on things you could say that everything is fine. I have both of my parents although neither of them are married. I've always had a roof over my head and food in my stomach and I always had clothes as well. Life is made up of these seemingly insignificant things that all seem to matter the most nobody really takes a second to look in on whats really going on inside all of the things that seem almost normal. 

Now I'm not going to sit here and tell you that my life always sucked and that things were always horrible and this isn't going to be some woe is me story but it is going to be real and honest because I need some way to get everything out there. To tell about how I wasn't okay and how I'm still not okay. To let go of everything that I'm afraid to talk about because I'm afraid of how people will take it and of how people will just use it against me and judge who I am and the decisions that I've made with my life. I'm also starting to realize that nobody is perfect and that for you to judge me is for you to misunderstand who I am as a person. I realize that in all reality things in my life could have been a lot worse than they are in fact as of right now but I also know that my life hasn't been a picnic. I haven't been able to hold everything together in situations that others might be able to and even though I might think that makes me weak I can also realize that it really just makes me human. 

I make mistakes just like everyone else. I cry, and I think about all the what ifs. I let the bullies and the idiots get to me because I don't always have a thick skin and sometimes I let the past get in the way of the future. I let the possibilites of what could happen get in the way of what will happen. I have my bad days and I have my good days. I've made friends and I've lost friends and above all I've fallen past the point of no return and I found my way back with everything that I have in me. I'm not a saint but I'm not a sinner either. I doubt myself and I doubt God but at the end of the day I'm thankful that I'm still breathing and that the ones that I love are still around me in some way or another. I guess the best way to get through everything is to start from the beginning, or as much of the beginning as I can remember because I don't always remember everything perfectly.

In the beginning I'm told that things were very difficult. My mom was all by herself and struggling with her decision to keep me or to put me up for adoption. The whole world was against her. Thankfully she had my grandpa, her dad there to help her out to the best of his ablities for as long as he could. We lost him early on and I am sad to say that I never really got to know him and who he was. I hear from everyone who did know him though that he was an amazing man and that everyone loved him.  My mom and my dad were long since separated. A weird thing to try and explain to people is how they were only together in high school, they never got engaged, they never got married either. Most people look at me strange when I tell them about how that one works, but hey, you can't pick your parents. I had a step father though, well he wasn't my step father at first. His name is Joey. He was step father number one. 

Joey was supposed to be around for forever. He always came and went out of my moms life. He wasn't always a very healthy person, although looking back on it now I guess he was never a healthy person but I was really too young to know any better to be honest. He would leave and mom would try to be with someone else and it wouldn't work out and without fail eventually Joey would come crawling back begging for forgivness. This went on for a while until I finally got a call from them once over summer break when I was in fourth grade, to hear that they had gone to the courthouse and gotten married. Of course being at that age my biggest concern was why I hadn't been there. At the time I was really happy for my mom and especially happy that Joey was officially my step dad. I didn't have a very good relationship with my own father at that point and Joey was the only father figure that I had ever known. Little did I know that this would turn out to be a very bad thing and would end up shattering a part of me that I still have yet to piece back together but more on that later.  

Life with Joey was seemingly a good one. Mom worked all the time and when she wasn't working she was usually fighting with me and Joey would have to be the mediator. He would always do his best to calm things down and stick by my side but he was also very strict. At a young age I was already getting myself up in the morning and getting myself ready for the school day when most kids I know still had their parents waking them up, getting them dressed, making them breakfast, and taking them down to the bus stop. Not me though, I got myself up and dressed and to school all on my own and when I came home I was doing chores, without an allowance, and doing my homework. I knew how to do my own laundry by the time I was in second grade. I knew how to separate my clothes and what fabric softner was. I knew how to make most food items myself and I was making sure that I was getting to bed on time as well. If I did all these things then usually there was peace in the house but hard as I might try I always seemed to do something wrong and mom and I would always end the night in a screaming match. 

I was like most kids my age, I was a picky eater and I was very stubborn.  According to my mom at a very young age I was also very volatile. I ended up in the behavioral hospital for the first time when I was only 4 years old. I also choked a kid when I was in first grade. These are the stories that I hear. I remember causing trouble in kindergarden. A kid tried to propose to me and kissed me and I punched him...although in my defense I think he deserved it. In first and second grade I think I did okay but in third grade I absolutely hated my teacher. She was the meanest person in the entire world and because I thought this I didn't do my homework,I was always in the principals office and had in school suspensions and loads of detentions. When I was at home there was of course the constant arguing and there was also a constant battle over the things that I was eating. When we went out as a family I was supposed to eat like a big girl, which included vegetables that I hated and sauces like mustard that made me want to vomit. If I didn't want to eat what I was being offered then I didn't get to eat with them and I usually ended up eating Ramen noodles. Whenever mom made big dinners I usually didn't get to partake in those either because I was usually in bed by the time they were finished. 

Third grade was the year that things really seemed to escalate. I ended up in a behavioral hospital for the second time in my life. I was diagnosed with depression and a sleeping disorder. I didn't really know what it meant to talk about the things that were going on with me so I just imitated what everyone else was saying and doing. It didn't turn out to be a very productive visit and when I left I was put in the Special Eduacation program at school. I wasn't stupid, I just had a problem with anger and with my life. I didn't really know my dad at that point and my mom and I never ever got along so the only person I really had was Joey. I never thought there would ever be a moment when he wasn't going to be in my life. I simply couldn't fathom the idea in my head.  Fourth and Fifth grade were a little better because I was slowly put back into my regular classroom with all the other students. I still had problems with the other kids. When I was in fourth grade it was because I was the fat kid that nobody wanted to be around and in fifth grade it was because I was the cry baby. I still get teased about the time that I got really upset and crawled under my desk to cry. I really did have a problem controlling all of my emotions. 

Some of these thins seem small and insignificant to you but they matter to me because they were the beginnings of shaping who I was and who I am today. Every interaction I had and all the problems I had with other kids my age mattered. I didn't feel like I fit in and I didn't feel like anyone cared about me. Except for maybe Joey I thought the entire world was against me and that nobody loved me.  I thought my mom absolutely hated me and I thought that my dad wished that I had never been born.  He lived in Indiana and he rarely ever called. He barely ever came to visit me and he could never even remember what grade I was in, let alone what school I went to. I still did things that the other kids did, I went outside and used my imagination to the best of my abliites but playing all by myself got boring. I read a lot but I didn't really have many books and no one would help me get a library card so that was out of the question. I found myself grounded a lot for things that seem so stupid now and I was usually spending most of my time staring at the four walls that I called my bedroom. I didn't think that I had a way out. I thought from an early age that my life would be meaningless and boring and that nobody would care whether I lived or died. 

Sure I had all the essential things that I needed to live my life but I was so desperate for attention of any kind that I would do anything and everything that I could think of without thinking for a second of the consequences that would await me later that day.  I guess that to me having the essentials just wasn't enough and I wanted to be able to love people as well. Things were never quite the same after third grade, although they seemed that they would get better once I finished elementary school, I just wish that I had known then what the future really had in store for me...