Personal Narrative Essay, Research Paper

Personal Narrative

Through out my whole younger life the only thing I can remember my father teaching me was how to feel bad about my self. ?Your to fat Stew, why do you have to be so stupid? Huh, why you ungrateful little piece of crap. I brought you into this world I can take you out of it.? These are only a minor few of the things my father, John Carrier, has told me in my life. They may have been the first but they sure were not the last.

My father was a tall man of about 6?3. He was very muscular and stronger then your average lazy househusband, for a man that only worked, on average, three months out of a year. My mother, on the other hand, was a short woman of about 5?9, and was not very strong for a woman that has often worked to jobs to support my sister Nicole and I. Though my mother was a strong willed person, when it came to fighting my father she was often at the ?shallow end of the dream pool.?

When I was six I saw my father beat my mom for the first time, though, it was not the last. My father was drunk at the time; I most have always used that as an excuse. Now that I am older I realize that it is a pathetic excuse. Some how I found the courage I needed to intervene, in the process of defending my mother I earned two black eyes and was thrown into a wall. My mother suffered a broken wrist and one bruised rib. I was mortally petrified of upsetting my father from that day forward. My sister left the confrontation with out a scratch on her. She has always been, ?daddies little girl?, so my father rarely ever spanked her. And if he did it was for a good reason.

My easy cover for my bruises over the years was that I am an active child. I played baseball and football, so if a teacher or a friend would ask me what happened I would say, ?I just had a really hard practice yesterday?, or I would say, ?I fell out of a tree yesterday.? For some reason my excuses always worked. But some of my teachers got a little concerned sometimes, I think I used some of my excuses too many times. So when I thought they were suspecting something I would invent a new excuse. Now that I look back on it, I have no Idea why I always defended my father. Maybe it was because I felt the certain loyalty that a boy should feel for his father, or maybe it was because I was afraid of what he would do to me if he found out I had told someone what he was doing to me.

The last time I saw my father hit or hurt my mom in any way was when I was 12. It was Christmas Eve, And my mom feel and broke her ankle, so he told me. She was resting on the couch, when my father stormed into our living room yelling, ?How are we going to pay for this, 100 dollars!? My mom?s simple reply was, ?I will just work a little over time at the hospital honey, it is no big deal. Lets not fight on Christmas Eve in front of the kids.? This comment infuriated my father. He smacked my mother on the back of the dead and flipped the couch on top of her. As he got his coat on and began walking out the door I could smell the strong odor of beer and marihuana on him. ?If you leave now you never come back.? I yelled at him. At this my sister, who was 11 at this time, burst into tears. Partly because my father left and partly because she new that it was probably better if he did.

In the next year and a half, my mom got about as bad as my dad was. We had not heard from my dad since he had left, this devastated my mom. So when she got out of work she would drive straight to the Eagles Club in Sanford. She would stay there until it closed. She would drink away her money, and then drive home drunk, go to a ?friends house?, or maybe bum a ride from a person not quite as drunk as her. This would happen three to four nights out of the week. On the weekends she would find a party to go to, get drunk, get high, and then find some nobody guy to stay with. All the time this was happening Nicole and me were home on our own.

Because my mother would spend all her money on boos and drugs, I had to find a job of my own to get money. So I baby sat three days a week for the neighbors next door after school. They paid me fifty dollars a week, Which I would use to buy groceries. With the aid of my church, I was able to get clothes and buy food for Nicole and myself. The entire time I was doing this neither Nicole or my mother found out, which was most likely for the best.

Things started to really shape up when I was 13 1/2. My mother met Mike, who is now my step dad. When my mom met Mike she stopped all the drugs and the alcohol drinking, namely she stopped ruining her life. Though we had not seen my father for the past year and a half, we had been able to talk to him on the phone. He lived in Patriot Indiana, with a woman named Barb, who is now my step mom. My mom and him started being able to talk to each other, so we were able to go to Indiana for a week to visit him.

When we were there my father got drunk and beet us again. This time was different though, this time he hit my sister with his fist. That was the last time we saw or even talked to my father. I heard a rumor that he was in jail for assault and battery, but I don?t really care.

Three months after my trip to Indiana My mother Married Mike. The wedding was beautiful, I cried almost as much as my mother did. Not really because I was sad, but because I was happy. Happy for my mother, and for Mike, But also happy that I had a dad now. A man that won?t hit me or swear at me or any of those things that my dad did. John Carrier may be my dad, but for the past eight months Mike Young has been my father.

I hope now that both of my real parents can stay clean. Not for my benefit but for theirs. I know how to live; I don?t need there help any more. This is what makes me such a strong person now, the story that is my life, the story that you just read.

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