Life begins

Now that you know a bit about my family, I suppose it's time to tell you about how I came to be. This part has been pieced together through family, family friends, and medical records.

When my mother was in her mid-twenties she married a minister and they moved from New York to North Carolina to a parish he wanted to be a part of. During that time they were living in a house that was far too large for two people so they rented out a couple of the rooms to different people. My mother was already secretly using heroin and drinking when no one was around to notice.

She became pregnant, much to her husbands surprise as he had undergone a vasectomy a few years before marrying her. When she told him he informed her he knew I was not his but that he would raise me as if I was and he would never tell a soul. As the pregnancy continued she grew less and less interested in raising a child, and more interested in sampling different illegal substances.

She went into labor roughly three months before her due date, not realizing what was going on she shot up and went to bed. a few hours later she was being rushed to the hospital and I was born. Needless to say I had some pretty serious issues, between the premature birth and all the drugs she took the doctors were convinced I would not live out the day. I proved them wrong.

My grandfather disapproved of the name I was given and refused to use it, because of my size he called me Pipsqueak, the name stuck. When I was born he would hold me in one hand, resting my head in his palm and my feet in his fingers. He was a huge man, standing over seven feet tall, his hands were no exception but I was rather tiny as you would expect. As I got older he shortened the name he used for me to simply Pip, I still go by that name, it keeps a part of him alive.

Three months after I was born I was released from the hospital into my mothers care, she and her husband were beginning negotiations and looking into divorce. He being a minister would not be able to remarry if divorced and eventually they had the marriage annulled. While that was going on she began seeing the man whom I call dad.

Dad was boarding in the house she and her husband lived in. He like pretty much everyone else was unaware of her drug habits and drinking. I am now and will always be impressed by the shear sneakiness of the woman. When the relationship came out my mothers husband asked dad to leave the house, he simply could not handle it. Dad really isn't that bad of a guy, he left quietly and respectfully. My mother followed suit shortly thereafter.

Within months of the annulment my mother and dad were married. We moved around a good bit over the next few months, I still don't know exactly where we lived nor will I ever most likely as dad is suffering from senile dementia.

Over the next few years we moved over two dozen times before settling in South Carolina for roughly a year. South Carolina is when things started getting interesting, however that will have to wait for the next post, I believe it is going to require a bit of liquid courage, and truth be told it's a bit too early to start that.