The Next Few Years (24)

We made it to Florida in July of 2003, Little Man and me. We had left Atlanta, Georgia to never go back again and now we were getting ready to start another chapter in our lives. Unfortunately, the next chapter would be full of heartache, anger, pain and frustrations. Jonsey ended up coming to Florida too and lived and worked where his Dad did at Children’s Home set on a farm in Northeast Florida. We would try to work things out but it just wouldn’t last.

In 2004,l would start to work at the Children’s Home as a secretary. The Home was for troubled, at-risk teenagers and it was very similar to the Roloff Homes I had been in.

In 2007, I would find out accidentally that we were expecting a baby. I went in to the doctor’s to get my left knee checked out only to discover that I was pregnant and not allowed to get an x-ray on my knee. But, almost 2 weeks later I would find out that we weren’t going to have a baby and I miscarried. I was heartbroken. I had desperately wanted another baby and after so many false alarms we finally had gotten pregnant only to lose it later. I would never know exactly why I miscarried but looking back I know the good Lord knew why I didn’t need another child. I know my baby is in Heaven with the angles and one day I’ll get to meet whoever it was that I was not meant to care for here on earth.

In 2008, all hell broke loose. Jonsey got fired from the Children’s Home for walking into a staff’s house without permission. He didn’t try to get his job back, which I found out later that he could have gotten back if he had asked and tried to talk things out. At the time were living in housing provided by the Children’s Home for free but now that Jonsey didn’t work there, he was expected to pay rent. I still had my job at the Home as the secretary and my responsibilities were growing to other jobs around the Home.

But while I was working and Jonsey was working a job in town, things were getting hard again in our own home. Jonsey was getting lazy again, he had no motivation to do anything with his life. I was content working at the Children’s Home though. I loved working with the kids there and I saw it as my mission field but we were never going to be able to live off my paycheck working there.  We were constantly fighting, he wasn’t watching Little Man like he was supposed to when he was home with him and I was working. We were on our 3^rd car since moving to Florida and it was always breaking down. It always felt like I was taking care of everything again, just like I had been since the day he moved to N.C. and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I remember talking endlessly to someone telling them I needed to leave him and take care of Little Man I on my own since I was basically doing that anyways.

While Jonsey was holding a job working at the local KFC, the rent and electric bill wasn’t being paid for like he had agreed with the pastor who owned the house. By July of 2008, he owed over $1,000 worth of rent and electric and after he had promised to pay the owed money with the extra tax return money which never happened, we were evicted. The pastor had been patient long enough and had been plenty merciful but the day they called me looking for the owed money, I knew that this was it.

We were directed to evict the house, I was allowed to take Little Man and move into one of the staff apartments in the girls’ dormitory. I had already been going back and forth and spending nights covering for the dorm mom who had left so it wasn’t that drastic to move in. Jonsey went into town and never came back for us. He moved in with some people he knew from his job at the KFC and he would move around living with random people. To this day, I will never know what he did with the over $2,000 that we got back on our extra tax return. All I know is that he never paid anything back and had pretty much abandoned us.

No more than a week after the eviction happened, I was at work when the phone rang. I answered it and a young lady was on the phone and she asked me if I was Jessica Jones. Twenty awkward minutes later, I found out that Jonsey had been cheating on me with her and had been for at least a month. She invited me to come to her house, where she lived with her parents and I did. We sat and talked about how Jonsey had met her at Wal-Mart and had approached her and hugged her. From there they started talking but somehow in the midst of all the talking they did he never mentioned that he was married or even had a kid. I believed her, she was in tears and her mom was just apologetic. I was just shocked. I knew our marriage was on the rocks and all but I had no idea that this had been happening. But, then it all started to make sense. He would always come home late from work, making up excuses as to why he was late. I should have known that something was going on but everything seemed relatively normal so I was caught off guard completely.

The summer of 2008 was pretty bad and kind of rocked my world but in a bad way. My marriage was finally over. I had tried so hard to not be the one that left, and I was going to give it another six months before walking away from it but then all hell broke loose and it ended anyways. I struggled with the whole idea of ‘divorce’. I had grown up being made to believe that divorce was a taboo subject, something that you didn’t do and if it happened, it meant that something horrible had happened within the marriage. So, naturally I went on a guilt trip about my failed marriage. But, I would soon discover that it was just the way it was. I had stuck it out for 6-7 years and it just hadn’t gone anywhere but south. I was always the one to fix the problems, more so the financial problems. When the power or phone got cut off, it was me who found a way to get them turned back on. Most people came to me when something needed to be addressed because they knew that Jonsey wasn’t capable of making decisions. So it was time, time to walk away and I knew I couldn’t beat myself up about it regardless of what others thought I should have done or not done.

In 2011, our marriage would be legally over. I would have main custody of Little Man. Jonsey didn’t really care if he saw him or not. When given the papers regarding custody schedule, he just signed it without looking at it. There wasn’t much to fight over and it was actually the most peaceful divorce ever known to mankind I’m sure.

A lot would happen the years in between the divorce and afterwards. In 2008, I would be reunited with my adopted family only for it to last less than a year. The adopted mother would play games as always, wanting everything on her terms. I would go on a rollercoaster of emotions and heartache. When I made a trip to Houston to spend Christmas with them and my siblings, the adopted mother had turned into a totally different person. She was cold, angry and hateful again. Little Man and I had driven straight there, arrived on Christmas Eve and I hadn’t been there for one hour and had wished that I had driven straight back home to Florida. I would leave less than a week later, she would fuss at me and blame me for anything she could while I was there. She would fuss at Little Man and always found a way to not be around us. I would pick up on the fact that she didn’t care for the way I interacted with him. I guess because she saw how easy it was for me to parent him as opposed to how she had parented me. I didn’t talk to him the way she had me, I didn’t discipline him the way she had me.

I wasn’t allowed to correct any of the kids at the house, if I did she made sure I knew how much that aggravated her. They had a piano in the house that they were renting and the first time I had been there I had played on it and had pretty much taken her by surprise. Remember that part of my story where I wasn’t allowed to touch a piano growing up? Well that was coming back to haunt her. She even asked me if I could teach ‘her’ how to play. Did she really ask me that? After all those years of being told to not touch the piano, and telling me I would never be allowed to take piano lessons, she wanted me to teach her how to play. I simply told her I couldn’t teach how to play by ear and that was the truth. I only knew how to play because I had a gift for playing by ear.

Back to the trip at Christmas, it was a disaster. I left Houston in tears and couldn’t wait to get back to Florida. She wouldn’t talk to me after that until about 3 months later when I got a letter saying that I was the one to blame for all the kids in the house acting up and needing to see psychologists or therapists. It was my fault that the family was in cahoots with each other. So, it was my fault again and the memories of all the letters and blame I had gotten while in the Roloff Home all came flooding back. I knew now though to not let myself go on a guilt trip, I knew now being much older to not give into the lies and traps that the adopted mother always laid out.

I would back off from them again and we would go without talking for quite some time. The next time I would be in communication with them was in 2012. I don’t remember who initiated it but I thought I would give it a try again. This time though I was trying to be careful and not let my guard down. I knew by now that she was probably playing a game and I was not going to get caught up in it. And this time my suspicions were right. We would talk back and forth about all kinds of things, about the kids at home and about my adopted Dad. He and I hadn’t talked much and I think it was because of her. We were friends on Facebook but we didn’t communicate much. But for a while she would talk about how strange dad was acting and how he was having to sleep in the guest house because of sleeping problems and how he was acting weird with the kids. She would talk to me about coming and moving to Houston and being her live-in nanny to the kids so she could have some time to ‘discover herself’. She talked about how tiring it was becoming to care for the kids at home that were disabled and how she felt like she had to do it all by herself. Some of what she said didn’t make sense; in fact it made her sound like she was having a midlife crisis.

Anyways, one thing led to another and before I knew it I was on a plane headed to Houston. I had offered to come and care for the few kids that were being left behind, while the rest of the family drove to Georgia to watch their biological son graduate from boot camp. It was probably crazy of me to offer but then I didn’t think the adopted mother would agree. She paid for the plane ticket and so I thought why not? It didn’t bother me at all that I was going to be home alone with 5 disabled children, I knew I could handle that. But, what did happen while I was there or rather right before I left was I got a phone call from dad and what he told me kind of left me in shock. It happened to be that the adopted mother had kicked him out of the house, had limited his time to the kids and had even suggested that she was going to try to convince me to stay and live there while I was there visiting. There was more to what he said, and it all sounded about right. She had been doing a lot of things and had totally turned on him. But, that wasn’t what she had told me. So, I was stuck in between two people who each had a story as to what was going on. I would just have to see for myself what was going on. While I was there, I would see it all and I wouldn’t be a fool to what was going on, even behind the scenes.

Needless to say that the trip would be interesting if not, stressing. I suddenly felt like one of those kids caught in between two people who were at each other’s throats. The family was gone for about 5 days, which left me at the house with the kids. Taking care of them was a breeze and I loved it and loved interacting with them, even though one of them was rather challenging. While the family was gone though, I would get text messages from dad telling me how the adopted mother had gotten mad at him and had been picking on him in front of the kids in the car. She even threatened to leave him in some city on their trip and he was pretty sure she would have done it. So, obviously the trip for them wasn’t going well. But they returned and the adopted mom was quite impressed with how clean and organized the house was. I’m not sure why she thought it wouldn’t be, I knew how to take care of kids, knew how to cook and discipline if need be without being crazy about it.

After spending the day with some other friends in Houston, I would return that evening to her and him on the back porch arguing and trying to hide it as I approached the house. I knew that things had gotten crazy while I had been gone but I didn’t know how crazy. My dad looked at me with a look of despair and when he got a second he even rolled his eyes out of frustration. He had told me about how she would argue with him on the porch and would attack him without any reason, so I knew that this was one of those time he had only talked about. I don’t think she knew though while I was there that he had told me his side of the story and I would just play dumb but I was picking up on everything that was being done and said. I was not stupid. Something wasn’t right with her and the way she ‘ran’ the house. Something wasn’t right with the way she treated the adopted dad and something wasn’t right with way she treated the kids.

She hadn’t been able to corner me yet to talk to me about moving and living there yet and I kept waiting for it to happen. The next day, I was supposed to leave to go back to Florida, I had been there a week now. That morning, I packed my stuff as she was out somewhere with one of the kids. It gave me a chance to talk to dad. I would plead with him to come to Florida to live with me since it looked like things were just going to get worse there. He wouldn’t come and consider it. So, when the adopted mother returned that mother, it was time to go. We were going to have lunch before heading to the airport. I said my goodbyes to the kids and gave them hugs. And then I turned to my dad and gave him a hug, a tight one and I whispered into his ear that ‘everything would be okay’. I had no idea it would be the last hug I ever got from him and I didn’t know how bad things were going to get in the next 6 months.

The adopted mom and I went to Olive Garden for lunch and like it had always been, it was awkward being with her alone. I didn’t know what to expect from her. She was being nice and all but that could change any second. While we sat to eat lunch there was some small talk to be had and then our food arrived. As we ate in mostly silence, I was sitting there with a thousand thoughts going on in my head. As I focused on my food and my plate, I noticed a cold hand reach over to mine. I looked up from my plate to see her reaching for her throat and I soon realized that she was choking on her food. Her face had already turned color and I knew from training as a first responder that she was literally choking and couldn’t breathe. I jumped up from my side of the booth and reached for her, told her to get up. The people in the table soon realize what is going on and try to get the attention of a waiter or manager. I proceeded to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her and after a few attempts the object was free from her airway. Those around us helped clean up the mess and the wait staff helped clean up our table and calm every one down. I proceeded to the bathroom to figure out what had just happened and why I had done what I did. I just saved the life of someone who hated me and clearly didn’t want me for the right reasons. I saved the life of someone who was treating my dad and those around her like dirt. It was only natural for me to jump to action and put into practice everything I had been trained for as a volunteer fire fighter. But why did I do that? That question would haunt me for time to come.  Later that day I would write about saving her on Facebook only to have her barely acknowledge what I had really done for her that day. I guess it wasn’t that important or life changing for her.

Because of such an exciting lunch, she never had the chance to ask me about moving there and I was glad she hadn’t. I didn’t want to move there, not for the reasons she wanted me there. Soon, I would board the plane and head home and life after that would change again. Soon, the adopted mother wouldn’t talk to me, and I can only guess it was because I knew the real truth about what was going on between her and the adopted dad. I haven’t talked to her or her me since that day I left Houston to come home and so much more has transpired, so much more hate and evilness has transpired. 6 months after that trip, my adopted dad would lose hope in living and would take a gun and end his life. That story has been written and can be found on my blog.

I would love to go into detail about the adventures I’ve been on in the last 5 or 6 years in my life, there are definitely memories and I could tell you all about them word for word. But, there are some people involved in some of those memories that are still involved in my life that I can’t really discuss about until maybe a few years later. There is a lot more that I can write and talk about pertaining to the adopted family and what has exactly happened since the trip to Houston in 2012 but I will address that later in the blog.  

For now, this is has been my story, my life. I hope that it has shed some light on what happened during my childhood and teenage years or lack thereof. I hope it has given those who have lost touch with me over the years, get caught up on what has happened in my life in the last 15 years. I am not done writing, there is more to my story, there are issues I plan to write about and share my thoughts and theories about. I hope that my readers will keep reading what I write.

My desire is to turn this blog into a book and have it published. If anybody knows of any resources that would help this desire and dream come true, please send me an email, I would really appreciate it.

Until next time, be blessed and be inspired to make a difference.

~The Adopted Child