Wapsi Square

Christy Resendes, “Can’t Stop Me From Shinning!!”

What is a Wapsi girl?

This is it, the time has come. I won’t be held down any more. The past is gone. It was rough and it still is and no one ever said it was going to be easy. There are too many people that I can’t let down. I have to show them it can be done!! I have to give them hope and prove to them that if you believe and hold onto your dreams they can happen. My family, my friends, even those who don’t believe in me, help to keep me focused. I know that there will be a door that will open. I know that there is someone out there who’s going to give me a chance to shine. And when that happens, I will still be me. No, I’m not going to forget where I came from!! No, I’m not going to forget the people who believed in me. And yes I will remember all the things that I said that I wanted to do to help out others I haven’t forgotten.

I have a story or history, so does everyone in the world. I will tell you but not so you feel sorry for me, so that maybe it will help enlighten or help in some small way to see how you can be what ever it is you want to be. I also know that there are so many other’s in the world that have it much harder than me. To them I say keep strong and stay focused you can make it! You are not a victim or a product of your environment; you are what you make yourself to be. I also share this story and hope that judgment isn’t passed onto anyone, because we all make mistakes in life. There’s no handbook on how to raise children or how to be the perfect person. Even if there was it would be different from culture to culture, from city to city, and from person to person. I don’t hold grudges or have any ill will feelings about my past. I’m grateful for the life I had and have and wouldn’t change a thing about my past. I feel it’s made me a better person and it’s apart of who I am today. Also this is just my side of the story; I don’t know the reasoning or thoughts of others. I am not perfect and have had made my share of mistakes in life so I don’t criticize what other may have done. My best friend told me that I should be a public speaker because of all of my accomplishments and how many obstacles I have been through in my life. She happens to be one of my greatest inspirations. Thanks Angie this is for you!!

Alrighty then, this is just one particular event in my life there’s more but I really don’t want to write a book, so here it goes. I was about 15 or 16 years old and I was living with my two younger siblings at the time ages 1 and 10, my mother and my father. My parents had just been remarried the year before and we were living in a single family home for the first time in my life. My father was a fisherman but had been in an accident on the boat where a drag had crushed his ankle and had been out of work for awhile. My mother was a painter and was subcontracting work in GA and we lived in MA.

(Just a little more history so that I can give a better picture to you the reader. My youngest sister, one year old at the time, called me mommy. I was always taking care of her and my middle sister as well. I have worked since the age of 12 and I have supported myself since then. I bought my own food and clothing and my parents provided me with a roof over my head. I had also lived with one of my friend’s family and paid rent, but ended up moving back home for my sisters.)

My mom came back from GA after working there for a couple of weeks and I had noticed a change in her. I had caught her on the phone talking with someone who I knew wasn’t my father and I knew she was having a relationship with someone else. She knew that I had caught her and a few days later came to talk to me. My father and I at the time where not getting along at all. He had given my mother an ultimatum that I leave the house or he was going to leave. (I wasn’t an angle) When my mom came to talk to me she told me that she had a boyfriend in GA. Also that she planned to leave my dad without telling him and she was going to be taking the kids with her. She told me that I could stay or leave but this was what was going to happen.

I’m sorry if my thoughts are random, it’s hard to write this and remember those feelings of helplessness and despair.

So I being sixteen was thinking and hoping that she was bluffing. My mom and dad were getting along really well. I didn’t tell anyone about what she had said to me and I didn’t really know what to do, beside to brush it off. So one day I remember my dad saying that he was going out to his mother’s house to work on his car. Then when he left my mother dropped the bomb. She told my middle sister and I to pack up whatever we would need clothes and that we were leaving. My sister started to cry and I said she didn’t want to go and my mom told her she could stay but she was leaving and taking the baby with her. So, we packed up our clothes and left everything behind. We didn’t get to say ‘bye’ to our dad or other family and friends. I couldn’t stay because I had to take care of my sisters. My mom told us how great it would be when we got there. How it would just be us girls. She drove all day and night and as we approached GA she then told us how we were going to be staying with her boyfriend and he was going to take care of us. She met up with him at a gas station and we stayed in the car. Then she came back to the car and we followed his car to our final destination for the night. The final destination happened to be a two bedroom mobile home, which had including my family nine kids and five adults living in it. My two sisters and I were then lead into a bedroom where there was a twin size bed and told to go to sleep. Then we were left alone and my mom and her boyfriend whet into another bedroom and my sister and I could hear them having sex. I broke down and so did my middle sister and my baby sister was just climbing all over us, too wound up to sleep.

I have never been to GA prior to then and didn’t have any family there. We were out in the boonies, it was a two hour drive to get to the nearest gas station/convenience store. My sister and I weren’t allowed to have contact with anyone. On top of the coach roach infested home the water smelt like sewage! We had to boil it before we could even drink it. We also had to alternate sleeping on the floor and sharing the bed with the other kids, which I became the babysitter for since I was the oldest. My mom didn’t enroll me back into high school, I think she just wanted me to work and take care of the kids. She then told my sister and I a few weeks or so down the road that she was pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby. All the adults where alcoholics, I can remember not having enough food in the house but plenty of alcohol, so I would go without and give it to my sisters. I then got a job working construction and would work ten hours a day to try and save money to go back home. I told my mom I was going to go to my prom. I then started to talk to my dad behind my mother’s back. But, I really felt used by him because when I finally broke down and told him where we were my mother kicked me out of the house and I had no where to go. I ended up living with the family that owned the construction company, thank god for kind people. My dad did try to help me and I was on my own and felt really alone in the world.

(During this time I did have the thoughts going through my mind that this was it. Why fight it? This is what I am meant to be. I am meant to be a high school drop out and an alcoholic, so why fight it! Then all I had to do is look at my sisters and my thoughts would change. NO!! This can’t be it there is more and there is better. This isn’t what I want for them and it isn’t what I want for me! My sisters were my family and I had to show them and teach them.)

I kept working and ended up saving enough money for a train ticket back to Ma. But I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to my sisters who mean the world to me. God only knew when I would get the chance to see them again. So, I got a ride to my mother’s home and knocked on the door. The windows where all boarded up, my mom was trying to avoid being served some legal documents from my father. Her boyfriend came to the door and cracked it open and told me I wasn’t allowed to see my sisters and that I should leave. I told him that I was leaving and I begged him just to let me say goodbye. He said sorry, so then I just pushed the door open and started running through the house looking for my sisters but couldn’t find them. My mother started screaming at me. She was telling me to get out of the house before she called the cops and had me arrested. I have never before or after swore at my mother, but that day as I was lead out of the house I told her that she was f**ked in head. I then stayed outside the house crying, begging to say bye to my sisters. I could here my middle sister crying begging to go outside to see me. They allowed her to go outside and we embraced for along time, she then asked what about me? I told her I will come back for you, I promise.

I then headed to the train station for my travel back to home. Not really knowing what to expect. I didn’t know where I was going to stay or what I was going to do. I felt that my father was blaming me for what was happening.

Background of my dad and our relationship:

Through my life all I ever wanted from my dad was for him to be proud of me. He was my best friend when I was growing up, we did everything together. Then my middle sister was born and I was kind of pushed to the side and became the work horse. Always taking care of the house cleaning. My grandmothers use to call me Christyella (Cinderella). I was told at the age of 15 years old by my mother, that my father wasn’t my biological father. I didn’t believe her when she told me at first because she was laughing, but she told me who my biological dad was and that he wanted me to know. My dad started pushing me away more so after I had found this out. I did tell him that I had an even greater amount of respect from him and that he was my dad no matter what anyone else said. Anyone can make a baby, but a father is a person who raises a child. He to this very day is the only person who can make me cry, just by talking to me. And for anyone who doesn’t know me, I don’t cry. It’s not that I don’t want to, I just don’t.

Okay, back to my story. I was so nervous traveling alone, but I ended up really enjoying the experience. I met all kinds of people from all over the country. I ended up staying with my friend’s family and then with my dad. He had found where my middle sister was going to school and came up with a plan to kidnap her from school. Only thing was that my mother had supposedly told the school that my father was deceased. See my father is a Jr. and my grandfather had passed away on a fishing boat two years before. So the plan was that I had to kidnap my sister from school in a rental car.

My dad, his friend, and I drove to GA and went to my sister’s school. They gave me the rental car and told me the plan on wear to drive and where they would be, the whole nine yards. I pulled up to the school and it was raining outside, so when I got out of the car I walked under an over hang in the front of the school, where children were being let off by the buses. One of the teachers had seen me and asked if I needed some help. I told her that I was waiting for my sister because when she left for school she took my homework with her by accident. The teacher asked me who my sister was and I told her. Then she said that her bus hadn’t come yet and what the bus number was so that I could look out for it. The bus pulled in a few minutes later. When the doors opened in front of me my heart was in my throat. I saw my sister coming down the steps and she lifted her head and made eye contact with me right away. She then rushed off the bus and into my arms and started to cry. I was just about in tears but immediately started walking with her towards the rental car. As we were walking I told her why I was there and that I was here to bring here back home. She started to ask, what about mom and our little sister? I told her that she would have to make a choice, that if she wanted to stay I would just tell dad I couldn’t find you. She decided to leave. ^_^ My sister, dad, and I didn’t get to see my baby sister until a year and a half after that day. It broke my heart that she didn’t even know me.

But… some great things have happened since then and continue to every day and I am so grateful for my life.

A Waspi Girl doesn’t live in her past she makes the best of what she is now, and lives for her future.

Website: http://www.christyresendes.com/