When you get married....

When you get married

While I was making $5 dollars and hour, struggling to pay for school, car repair bills, car

insurance, clothing, and my own expenses my adoptive mother in an effort to make my life even more difficult declared one day that “If you ever want us to PAY for YOUR wedding, then you need to start paying rent to live here”. I was 19 years old and struggling, I could barely afford gas money. I tried my best to explain that I just could not afford even $5 dollars a week, as I was just barely making it. I wondered if this was her effort to make me quit school. My adoptive mother wasn’t exactly a supportive person, and she would often make comments to under mind my self-esteem. She’d make comments like “you know you can’t do math, how are you going to take a Math class?” A narcissist is a master of manipulation, and she knew I had very low self-esteem to begin with. If you keep telling someone they aren’t smart enough, or good enough to do something… then eventually they start to believe it.

In the end I was told that since I could not afford to pay rent, they would not pay for my wedding as I was…. You guessed it….. “you are on your own” to pay for it.  So what did I do when I did get married in 1998? I didn’t tell them, I decided that my adoptive parents didn’t deserve to attend. It wasn’t like we had any money to have any kind of wedding party. So we kept it simple, we were married by the Mayor of Montgomery Ohio and that was it.  I chose not to tell them and my husband was “the boyfriend” for 8 years after we were married.  I also knew that the inclusion of my adoptive parents would be a horrible mistake, as they would do everything in their power to destroy it.

A College Education part deux

My adoptive mother had struggled with breast cancer. I recall a conversation we had where she complimented me on never asking for help of any kind…ever.  I told her that wasn’t entirely true, I had asked for help twice and been told “NO” twice. She asked if I resented them not helping me with school. I simply said that “because I don’t have a college education I will never make as much money as I could. Not having a college diploma decreases your income”. She started to cry and asked if she had been a “bad mother”. Everything in me wanted to scream “YES YES YES” but she was on chemotherapy, and just had surgery. I felt that if I were to tell the truth, it would be like kicking a dog when it was down. I told her what she wanted to hear, I said “No, you weren’t a bad mother”. But for the record, she was a HORRIBLE MOTHER!

An act of rebellion

Holding my Associates degree diploma

After my falling out with my adoptive family, I re-enrolled in school. It was almost like an act of rebellion. A college education was something that was important to me, and I wanted it desperately. But without support from my adoptive parents, it became impossible when I was younger. In the days before online classes, working full-time and taking a college class were very difficult to do. In 2007 I re-enrolled in college, partially an act of rebellion against what I was told “was a waste of time” and that “you aren’t smart enough” to do. It was also something important to me. Without the negative influence of my adoptive parents, I found the self-esteem needed to go back to school. It’s amazing how bad people can drag you down and eat way at your self-worth. I’ve been enrolled continuously in classes for over 7 years now, using my employer’s tuition reimbursement plan to pay for my education. I only get 5 thousand dollars a year, but I try to maximize my money by using a community college with an online program for some of the lower level classes I need and taking the upper level classes at the the University I’m enrolled with. School takes a lot of time, but it’s always been important to me and I make it work by taking 1 class at a time.

I’ll have just 7 classes left after the fall semester until I’ll have my degree. I finished an Associates degree in Business back in 2010. And with a little luck I should have my BS in Business Administration, with a minor in Human Resource Management next year or in early 2016. I have a 3.75 GPA, which isn’t bad for someone who was told they “weren’t smart enough for school”.

 Some people find that holding others back is the only way they can feel good about themselves. Removing the negative influences in my life has been hard, but it was necessary so I can strive to achieve my goals. Adoption only provides a different family for a child, not a better one.