I met the mother of my son at a powder puff football practice. She was one of the players and I was the "Coach" for the team. She pursued me, and well me being the ladies man, I loved it. Like most teenagers we couldn't keep our hands off each other. She had moved to small town Nevada from Arizona, and that is where she lives today. She was getting in trouble in Arizona and was sent to live with her uncle and when she got pregnant she ended up going back to Arizona, which crushed me at the time.
We did our best to maintain a relationship, rather than go to the wrestling tournaments that were scheduled over Christmas I went with her uncle and his family to visit them in Arizona. During Spring Break, I flew down to visit for the week. The hard part was my family was not receptive of this at all. My father was LIVID, and it was during this tension that he had pushed me and went backwards and I laughed at him. Anyways no one was happy and I was hell bent on doing the right thing, which in my eyes was being a Dad. However, I was told to only be financially responsible and that being a Dad at that age would ruin my life.
Surprisingly it was my abuser who kept the peace. I had made it clear I wanted to be a Dad and be there with the mother of my children. I started working full time hours as a bus boy and saving money, all while going to school and playing sports. I saved up enough money for my Spring Break trip ticket to Arizona, and had to have my grandmother buy the ticket on her credit card because I was too scared to ask my parents. They had little room to stand on in denying me a trip, I mean my grades were always good, and if I could handle the work load I put on myself, I could handle flying by myself.
The hard part came when school got out, I had been fighting with my parents to move to Arizona, let me go. She was pregnant with TWINS. They finally realized I wasn't going to back down and they drove me down to Las Vegas where her father picked me up. I tried living there as long as possible but damn, they were not my people. I registered for school, got two jobs that summer, and they even tried to get me into Amway. The idea of me wanting to play a video game or watch tv or anything other than bust my ass seemed to offend them. The boys were born in July, and by the middle of August I had moved back to Nevada.
I couldn't handle it anymore. I loved the kids, but the people were not for me. I became miserable and it was during this time my abuser got my high school football coach to call me and sway me to come home. I have always known they were in contact about me (he called the other day to talk about the need to have parents in your life and addiction, LOL).
During that summer my children's mother and myself were forced to sign guardianship away to her mother. I was also never listed on any birth certificate. Since I was a minor signing away guardianship to a child I wasn't the legal father to, I didn't care. I moved back to Nevada, got treated even more differently by my peers, started working and playing sports again, and tried sending money when I could.
In December of 1997 one of my twins passed away at six months of age. I was at a wrestling match in Nevada wrestling a dual against our crosstown rival. My father came to the end of this match and told me I needed to come home. This was one of two wrestling matches out of my entire career that either of my parents came too. Show up to your kid's events, it means something to them. We went to the funeral, and in my opinion was the first time my father acknowledged he was a grandfather, when he saw his last name on my kids'.
In the Marines I tried saving money and gave my son's guardians access to it, all while his mother did absolutely nothing. I found myself struggling to get by and ended up dipping into the account which resulted in them calling my Command. End of the day I quit paying into the savings account, and actually tried fighting for my son to live with me, but I was stonewalled at every turn. That didn't stop the guardians and mom from asking about "child support" for a kid that wasn't legally mine. Mom was never being held to the same standard they were trying to hold me to, so I refused to pay.
My son said he found all of the emails I sent over the years on his grandmother's computer and knew I had fought for him. I could never afford a lawyer, and they could never enforce the "guardianship" I signed away because I was a minor and not on the birth certificate, then next thing you know the kid is 18. They never wanted to take me to court for child support because it meant giving me parental rights to my child, and they knew I would take him to live with me, plus it would of meant their own daughter would have been held to the same standard as me.
It is a shit show of a situation and still is. My son currently wants nothing to do with me because I refused to let him get away with not paying me back. His response over the years, since he was a kid till an adult, is anytime I have held him accountable he wants nothing to do with me. Ouch. I am okay with all of this now, I have a great wife and though my step-son and I might not be a parent/child relationship, we can communicate and when I hold him accountable he rises up and fixes it.
I can only imagine what my son's mind is like, his mom had a mental illness, I have mine, and he was lied to about me for a long time until he found the emails on his grandmother's computer. I just hope he is happy and is a good husband and a good father to my granddaughter. He tried to talk to me when I went to visit him at the birth of my granddaughter about my borderline, but my abuser insisted on being by my side the entire trip. I could never get a moment to sit down and talk to him about it, and then he didn't pay me back.
Well I am going to go write about some civil issues I saw pop up in the news.
Thank you,
Mikey