I was born on November 19th, 1997 in Christiana, Delaware. I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters that are all older than me. (Tracy - 36, Jennifer - 36, Jimmy - 34, Danny - 26) We are all half siblings. Me, Tracy and Danny have the same mom. And me, Jimmy and Jennifer have the same dad. I don't talk to Tracy and Danny anymore but I'm gonna save that for a different post. My complicated life started in 2004, my mom Marcella was a nurse and when she didn't work she would help out at me and my siblings schools and volunteer to do things at school. Well, there was a soccer game going on one night at Elkton High School and my mom and my sister Tracy were working at the concession stand. Now my mom had High Blood Pressure problems and she had medicine that she had to take to control it. Well no one knew this but she had stopped taking the medicine because it was making her tired all the time. No one knew she stopped. I was just now coming home from school with my dad because I was in the after school program at my old Elementary School. Tracy called my dad and told him that there was something wrong with my mom. So me and my dad drove down to the school and all I remember seeing is my mom sitting in a chair dazed. My dad took me over to my brother Danny and told me to stay with him the rest of the night. So I spent that night watching the soccer game with Danny. I had no clue what was going on with my mother. After the game, my Aunt Linda drove me and my brother home and the only thing I knew at that point was that they took my mom to the hospital. Next day, I find out that my mom had a stroke. Now I was only 7 years old so I had no clue what a stroke was. Because of the stroke my mom became paralyzed all on her right side. She couldn't talk or move. They ended up having to put her into a nursing home. I was so scared when they put her into the nursing home that I didn't go in the room to see her for a whole year. I was scared that she was going to look different. Until one day, Tracy picked me up and took me in there while I was screaming my head off and placed me down on the bed beside my mom. I looked up at my mom and she looked so different I started bawling my eyes out. She started crying with me. An hour later, my dad comes in the room to visit my mom like he did everyday and I was still laying in my mom's bed with her watching I Love Lucy which was her favorite TV show. After that I was no longer scared. :)
3 years later in 2007 was when another tragic thing happened to me and my family. I was in school one day and everything was going fine until we went out for recess. When we went outside all we saw was smoke in the sky. Nobody knew what it was or where it was coming from. We had to go back inside because school was now under a code yellow. We couldn't leave the class room. I had to go to band since I played the trumpet and my teacher let us go and me and a couple of my friends went to band practice. It was like a normal day. A normal practice. When all of a sudden one of my dad's friends who was a teacher at the school came in and said that I had to go to the office because I was going home early. Of course I was happy hearing that I was going home early. I didn't know why but I was happy! So I went to the office and they took me into the principals office and my Aunt Linda was sitting there. I was confused because she's never picked me up from school before. I sat down and my Aunt was the first one to talk, she said "I'm sorry Nikki...but your house caught on fire...and your dad was in it." When she said those words, I automatically started crying. Now knowing that the smoke that was filling the air outside was coming from my house. And knowing that my father was in the house when it happened. The only question that was going through my mind at that point was, "Is my dad okay?" Turns out the fire was an electrical fire. My dad was asleep in his room when the fire started and when he went to call 911 he passed out due to smoke inhalation. A police officer pulled him out of the house and if he hadn't of pulled him out, my dad most likely wouldn't be alive today. I had a decision to make, I could either live with my grandparents, or live with my Aunt Linda. Now when I was young I was terrified of dogs and my Aunt Linda had 2 of them so there was no way I was staying with her. So I picked my grandparents. A couple days of living there, I ended up getting strep throat and my dad called me from the hospital and was talking to me and the whole time I was crying. Hearing his voice and knowing he was okay made me so emotional. I was apart from my dad for 3 weeks. It felt like 3 years. My dad got us an apartment in Pine Valley for me, him and my brother. We stayed there from April til October until the house finally got rebuilt. We're still living in the house today. :)
A year later in 2008 to me was the most toughest year of my life. I was 6th grade, I just started middle school. My mom was still in the nursing home but she was struggling. She ended up having another mini stroke and started having seizures. I started getting scared and I stopped going to the nursing home. I was in after school program in middle school and my dad usually picked me up from there around 4:30 and one day I walked out of school and my brother Jimmy and his girlfriend Sarah were there. I got in the car with them and I asked them where my dad was and they looked at eachother and said that he was visiting my mom. Now I was 11 so I believed them. We went home and I was just doing what I normally did when my dad came home around 7pm. He took me out to Royal Farms to get me a snack and when he stopped the car he started crying. I automatically knew something was wrong because my dad never cries. He looked at me and said, "Nicole...your mom passed away today..." After he said that, I had a breakdown. I started crying, screaming. I was hitting the dashboard. I was just having a complete panic attack. Right then and there I realized that my life was about to change. I went to school the next day because I didn't want to fall behind in my school work and people at school didn't believe me when I said that my mom died. I got called out to guidance every class because I would have breakdowns in the middle of class. That's when my teachers would tell my classmates about my mom. My dad tells me this all the time, he was at the nursing home visiting my mom like he did everyday. And he was getting ready to leave and he kissed my mom 3 times on the forehead and then left. Right after he left was when she died. She was holding on and waiting for him to leave...When my dad got into his car in the parking lot was when they called him on his cell phone and told him. When that day happened not only was I was hurt and depressed but my dad was hurt and depressed.
My dad still deals with depression today. A couple months after my mom's passing, my dad tried to commit suicide. He took a bunch of pills one day when I was at school and my brother found him passed out on the floor in his room. When I got home my sister Jen was there and my brother Jimmy walked in the house and saw me and sat me down and told me that dad was in the hospital because he was "sick." I freaked out about that. They said that my dad had ammonia and that he was going to be in the hospital for a week. I believed it. I believed every word they told me. I didn't find out that it wasn't true until a couple months ago. I got into a fight with my dad in January about school. It was a really bad fight. He said some things that he didn't mean. And he said, "I wish I had died when I took those pills!" I was so confused and he said, "Yeah!! When I got sick with "ammonia" I really tried to kill myself!!" And then I started crying BAD and he stormed out the house. When he came back home after that, he told me that it WASN'T true. But I know it was because my sister and my brother both told he did try to kill himself. My dad still takes my mom's death really hard. And so do I, I have anxiety problems and I dropped out of school because I'm scared that something's going to happen to my dad. Everything bad that's happened to me happened when I was in school. My mom getting sick, the house fire, my mom dying, my dad being hospitalized. It all happened when I was in school. My dad is my life. If I lose him anytime soon I will just lose it. I will definitely go into depression. I don't think it, I KNOW IT.
Anyways, like I said I've had a complicated life so far. I go through a lot of daily struggles. I've kicked people out of my life the past couple months and I've made decisions that no one thought I would ever make. This is my life. This is who I am. And this is my journey.
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