"The Wedding"

When I found out that my mom had asked for a ring for Christmas, and gotten it, from her long term, long distance boyfriend I couldn’t believe it and thought that it was the end of the world in my 13-year-old mind. My mom was so happy, all of the years of me growing up it had only ever been her and I, and now she was going to add somebody to the mix that was supposed to be like the father that I never had. I liked him, Keith, he was nice, he got me cool presents for my birthday and Christmas, and he knew about pretty much anything that I had a question on, but they weren’t married yet, he was supposed to suck up. The day that my mom turned into Kathleen Collins instead of Kathleen Ruiz, drastically changed my life, it added a supposedly “fatherly” figure into my life, the rules were changed and it moved me half way across the country.

They got married in August of the next year, on the beach in Ocean City, I was the junior bridesmaid. It was a small wedding, only about 20 people were there, most of the family was from my mom’s side; siblings, parents, friends, and then some relatives of Keith’s also. As I was walking down the sand I could smell the salt from the Atlantic ocean, feel the way the rough, hot sand felt against my feet, and I was happy for a moment, thinking that my mom had finally found somebody that made her happy. When my mom walked down the beach to where the wedding was being held, I could see how happy she looked, the way her eyes were gleaming, but it was sad for me to think that one chapter of our lives was ending, and a new one beginning. Once the vows were said and the rings placed, everything already seemed different.

I moved to Maryland 5 months after they got married, and things were already changing for the worse. I started getting yelled at for every thing, things that I didn’t do, and things that I had never gotten yelled at before for. This ‘fatherly” figure was starting to be mean, hypocritical, and use harsh tones with everything that he said to me. He did not treat me like a daughter, but almost like a slave, if I didn’t do it exactly right I had to completely re-do it, I cleaned the house, I mowed the lawn, my mom would help, but he never did anything. This wedding was starting to seem like it was possibly going to ruin my life, until I could move out that is.

My mom had a good set of rules down in the house, but I could pretty much do what I wanted, as long as I checked in and she knew where I was, I could watch TV, get on the computer, and be on the phone, whenever I wanted to. Now there were many new rules, stupid rules, now I could never go any where, the TV and computer had to be off exactly at 9pm every night, I couldn’t be on the phone past 9, and they would no longer buy me anything, except food. If any of the rules were broken, I was grounded, from everything. All the rules he made, made sense, making me pay for everything would help me manage my money better, but as a 13-year-old, I didn’t have funds to buy anything. Being off the phone and TV by nine would mean that I would get a good nights sleep, because I wouldn’t be on the phone all night, but when all of my family lives in a different time zone, and people work, it was hard for me to talk to the people who meant the most to me.

I still see their marriage today as a mistake on my mother’s part, and think that if she had never gotten married how much better my life would probably be. I would have been around all of my family, I wouldn’t be constantly unhappy, always wanting to be at work so I don’t get yelled at. Sometimes you have to live with people, or deal with people that you don’t get along with or just don’t like, I have accepted that fact and have stopped telling my mom it was a mistake to get married to Keith. I just tell her that I will be moving out on the day of my 18th birthday. She got married to somebody that changed when they actually got married, Keith was no longer nice to me, he threw temper tantrums, hypocritical, very controlling, he was a pack rat, and could never find any thing. I was 1,000 miles away from everything and everybody I had ever known, and didn’t have a safe house to go to if things ever got bad, I was stuck.