The Elephant in the Room

I’ve got no clue where to start with my life, this site or these posts - so we’re just going to jump right in. Sometimes I feel like when I tell people about my kids, this topic is the elephant in the room? How did we get to a point where Mitchell adopted Payton? Who/Where is Payton’s biological dad? There’s a high probability I’m in my head about that but we’ll just start here, and I'll tell ya'll where he's at. 

Starting about - mid sophomore year, life was a whirlwind. My siblings were out of the house, my parents decided to get divorced, I moved to St. Louis and then back again to Yankton. Like most teenagers - hated life - was sneaking out, getting drunk, doing all the things I shouldn't be doing and eventually ended up meeting Jack (name changed - just in case). Meeting him started the 5-6 year spiral downward in my life. 

We were in high school, he was the 'trouble maker', I was the straight A student, on the cheerleading team, I was a swimmer - all of the things, we literally could not have been more opposite. I may have been sneaking out and drinking from time to time, but he had been in juvenile detention centers starting at age 11 , on and off probation, not good grades, smoked loads of weed, had been in several fist fights…one time he told me he beat a raccoon to death in a trash can with a baseball bat. When I said opposites - I was not lyin’. Per usual, I wanted to be the 'good girl' that fixed the bad boy. We were “dating” for about 9 months before I found out I was pregnant. I remember being in the K-Mart parking lot going into the store to get tests (which he stole), and as we were getting out of the car - he puked all over the parking lot. He had decided to drink an obscene amount of Robitussin the night before because he couldn’t get anyone to buy him beer. Clearly, I had tons to look forward to in our future. 

Prior to getting pregnant there were an insane number of red flags. First being - literally everything I mentioned above, me finding naked pictures of girls on his phone, finding out his ex-girlfriend had been hanging out at his house, I had gotten arrested with him because he got alcohol from someone and moved it into my car (which I had gotten into after the fact, and someone called him in), I got in my first (and only) fist fight because of him (that is a story), he shoved me into a wooden dresser…those are the only things I can remember BEFORE I got pregnant.

We spent most of the summer arguing - he was possessive, even though he slept around with several people while we were together. I was not allowed to even look in the same direction as someone of the opposite gender. His possessiveness got the best of him when we went back to school that fall and he busted out the windshield of my car. I was texting someone in my Sociology class. (He had gone into my locker during homeroom to dig through my phone.) He went ‘on the run’ then - his probation officer couldn’t find him, his parents couldn’t find him, he wasn’t answering my calls, and he didn’t go home for ~4 days. I ended up seeing him driving around and called him into his Probation Officer and he got caught, and got arrested for my window and sent to the SD Human Services Center to sit on the Chemical Dependency Unit for the first half of my pregnancy. While he was there, I wrote him letters every single day, my young dumb ass. I wrote more letters than days he was there - and he promised better days ahead, as soon as he was out. After he got released - he got in trouble with drugs, and got sent to Custer, SD to the Boys home there. He stayed there until Payton was ~3 months old. I went with his family to surprise him. I brought Payton (it would have been his first time ever meeting him) and that same night he was already reaching out to other girls. 

Between that time and when he finally ended up sitting his first long prison sentence loads of things happened. We tried to ‘work it out’ because we had a baby but I found girls hiding in the corner of his closet; I had gone over there to hang out, stayed for awhile and as soon as I walked out to my car, I got a text that this girl (the same girl I had gotten in a fight with) was hiding in the back of his closet. I went to his house one morning to wake him up for work, there was a girl in his bed. All the while we were breaking up and getting back together every other day.

 After I decided things were over the events continued. He waited for me in my apartment complex parking lot one night after I got off work and chased me in his car. I saw him parked there and continued to drive, so he sped and backed out and sped up to get ON MY ASS on Summit Street, I turned the corner and luckily a Sheriff had seen him speeding behind me and flipped his lights on. I parked my car, Jack parked his, opened his car door and ran for the hills. One time he had hidden in the backseat of my car while I was at work - when I started driving, to let me know he was in my car he just leaned forward and covered my mouth with his hand. He made me drive to his friend's nearby apartment to ‘talk’, I still don’t remember how I got him out of my car and out of that situation. He broke into my apartment on two separate occasions - once through the door, the second time he scaled the building and cut out my screen, each time I had no clue he was there, I woke up to him standing over me. The first time (the through the door time) only ended in him giving me a bloody nose. The second time - he was convinced I was seeing someone else and was trying to go through my phone, we ended up in a tussle, he headbutted me and knocked me out. I can still feel the scar tissue from how hard he hit me above my right eyebrow. He proceeded to assault me sexually, that was the worst day of my life. I told him I would intentionally crash my car if he would just leave. I remember he deliberately put his stuff in Payton’s room that night, luckily Payton was at my moms because I worked until 11pm.

It took him a long time to actually GET in trouble - in big enough trouble for law enforcement to actually put him away, and he lived his best life in between arrests. Bouncing around to house parties, hardly working, not taking care of Payton, not taking care of me - and I freaking hated him, and I loved him at the same time. For some reason - you just cling on to whatever tiny sliver of hope you can get, and I hung on for far too long. 

His first stint in prison I wrote to him from time to time, and he strung me along like a rag doll. Payton and I moved to Washington and lived with my extended family and I tried to get my life together. I attended a community college there, but had zero interest in being a parent and just wanted to live my life. I found out he was being released shortly after Christmas that year. Payton and I came back to SD for the holidays and I, spur of the moment, decided we were moving back. We were going to be together and things were going to be good. 

We were ‘together’ - things were not good. Thankfully never as bad as before the prison stint, but unhealthy. He wasn’t out of prison for very long before he got in trouble for a controlled substance charge, and was sent back - he’s been in and out ever since. The state notified me he is currently serving a Grand Theft charge as well as another controlled substance, and I believe his sentence expires in 2033.

Payton has no idea who he is, what he looks like. He is getting to the age where those are going to have to be real conversations - but I put the ball in his court. I don’t want to pressure him if he’s not ready, and there is just so much. I want to make sure I can articulate it well, in a way that he understands. 

I wish I could say after we moved on from that, that our life got way better - but it didn’t. I’m sure there will be a part 2,3 hell, maybe even part 4 of how we’ve finally grown up. Everything that happened with Jack and I, created a lot of turmoil in my relationship with Payton - maybe that will be my next post…how we stumbled through his first 6 years of life before Mitchell came into the picture and how our life and relationship has/has not changed.  

Anywho - that’s all for now.

Xoxo, 

Lo