Seven and Counting by Cassidy Shay (13 inch ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Some things make you weak. They empty you out, so you’re hollow. Just a shell. Weak, empty, helpless. Your whole works turns inside out, upside down, flips you backwards. You wade into the darkness, unable to see, unable to predict what comes next.

Some things break you, toss you around and slam you into the ground. And after they break you, they put you back together, only so they can break you once again. After each rebuild, you are even weaker than you were before.

When I was little, my dad was the only one. He might not have always been there. But he was the only way. For most of my childhood, my dad was the only man in my life, the only man in my mom’s. I never imagined that it would be any other way. I took that time for granted. Dad came home from work for dinner each night, we prayed, we ate, he went to work in the morning and we did the same thing over and over again. The consistency was healthy, made us all happy.

So when I heard about James, things in my head, my view on life, shifted. My mom called us into her room and told us that her and my dad were separated. I wasn’t sure how to react. I just hoped and prayed that I’d be able to adjust. That my siblings would come out okay. James was in the Air Force, and he lived in Wyoming. My mom had been talking to him since the beginning of the problems with my dad. He’d been there through everything, and my mom told me that she loved him. As I was only twelve at the time, I didn’t quite understand this. How can you love someone who you’ve never met? How can you be married, and love another?

After my parents announced their divorce, James was there. Not physically, of course. To this day (four years later), my mom hasn’t actually met this man in person. But he was there, the constant subject of conversation. Always on our minds, always in my mom’s heart. For a long time, my mom wasn’t in a relationship with anyone here. She kept faithful to James, a man who she had never met. They talked every day, but still he never came.

It was an evil teaser that consumed our lives. Many mornings, I woke up, hoping that that would be the day that James showed up on our doorstep, ready to meet the family that he had grown to know so well, but only over chat messages on yahoo. I went to bed hoping that maybe he’d call the next day, telling my mom that he’d bought a plane ticket and needed her to pick him up from the airport. For a year, it was an unintentional torture tactic, picking away at our lives.

In a way, James has been there the entire time, even up until today. He’s my mom’s friend, her counselor, and the man she really wants to be with. In between all the others, there has been James. Inconsistently constant, the relationship between my mom and James has taught me to believe that, no matter how much you love someone, love just isn’t enough.

My seventh grade year held four guys. There was James, the summer before. Brian in the fall, Bo in the winter. As Arizona spring came, so did JimBob. The ups and downs were, to say the least, confusing. But I accepted it, I adapted, I moved on when they left.

If you ask my mom, Brian was never her boyfriend. If you were to track down Brian, he’d tell you that they were madly in love. Yeah… not the best thing to have in a relationship, whether it’s a romantic relationship or not. I never really considered Brian as her boyfriend, but more of a friend with benefits. These benefits were not just sex and games. One of the benefits that Brian got was that he got to know us kids, and he always talked about how much he enjoyed spending time with our family. Brian wasn’t there for long, but I still remember many things about him.

When I met Brian for the first time, he was picking my mom up for their date. They were going to the Cardinals and Packers preseason game. But when I first saw him, I didn’t know this. I was walking around the corner, on the way home from the bus stop, and I saw it. A dark blue car (a Charger, I think), parked in my driveway. I ignored it, thinking that maybe my aunt had gotten another car and was over to help my mom with something. I pushed past the doorway, and the TV was on. I looked into the living room and was startled (literally- my feet were off the ground) to see a man on my couch. Even stranger was the fact that I’d never seen this man before.

He has a short beard, silver and black intermixed. Behind the hair I saw tan skin, light eyes, and a small build. A bulky ring was on his finger. He was wearing a light-colored polo, beige shorts, and a baseball cap. As time wore on, I learned that this was his main way of dressing. That same outfit shows up in most of my memories of Brian.

I just waved, and took an immediate left, down the stairs into my mom’s room. “Did you meet Brian?” she asked me. I just nodded, deciding not to tell her that he hadn’t introduced himself or even waved at me. She was standing in front of her giant mirror, doing her hair and make-up.

“Where are you going?” I asked her. She explained about the football game, then laughed as she thought about how jealous Jake would be. “Here I am, the person in the family that likes football the least, and I’m the first to go to an NFL game.”

A couple weeks later, Brian took my mom to a concert. Nickleback. She came home late, so I didn’t get to talk to her until the next morning. And when I asked her how it was, she just looked at me. “Cassie,” she said, “he proposed to me.”

And so began what I like to call the Brian Era. Just like all the other eras (Victorian Era, Napoleonic Era, etc.), the Brian Era made a huge impact on the world. Or, at least, my world. But I couldn’t tell you exactly how it affected me, only that it did.

Brian, after having his marriage proposal rejected, settled for less, choosing to just be my mom’s friend. Their dates morphed into more family-oriented outings (the one that I remember the most was our trip to Uncle Sam’s in Peoria). He became our friend. Then, one day in October (the Brian Era started in September), something happened. I didn’t ever learn the exact details, but the Brian Era skidded to a stop.

It was abrupt. One day, he told my mom that if she didn’t date him, he would kill himself. It was really the first time that I noticed Brian’s depression, because he always seemed so happy. His smile was always present, and he never made any comments that gave us any hints of depression.

So my mom tried to cut him out. She figured that he was getting too attached, and she wanted to put some distance between us and him. So he became a part of the past, a recent memory that we tried to make distant.

Except for the phone calls, text messages, and emails. You see, there was a reason that we tried to cut him out of our lives. He started to become what most people would call a stalker. He would show up at our house unannounced, and he counted the exact number of days since the last time he’d seen each of us kids. He was, for lack of a better word, obsessed. So my mom changed her phone number, blocked his emails, we moved (this wasn’t all because of Brian- our landlords failed to tell us that they hadn’t paid their mortgage and the house was being foreclosed) and he disappeared for real this time.

Soon after Brian was gone, Bo was introduced into our lives. Bo was Catholic, which was good. We’re Catholic, and that’s always been something that my mom has looked for. But with Bo… things were a little different. He used to be

Catholic. Then something happened between the Church and Bo’s family, and they fell away. But it sort of counts, right? Yeah. No.

Bo had dark skin, with black hair that he kept very short. He wasn’t extremely tall, but he wasn’t short. He was big, but he wasn’t fat. He had a daughter who was right in between my age and my little sister’s age. Sometimes she’d go play with Shelsey, and sometimes she’d come talk to me. We didn’t ever become super close, but we did become friends, for the few months that our parents were together.

The thing with Bo is that he drank. A lot. This was a well-known fact that he tried to keep a secret. He wasn’t a mean drunk. Actually, he really was only nice to my mom when he was drunk. When he was sober, he wasn’t mean, just grumpy and he kind of ignored her. So Bo didn’t last long.

He didn’t really have an impact on our lives. Not long term, at least. So why did I include him in this memoir/journal? Because that man made the best pot roast that I’ve ever had.

My birthday in seventh grade brought JimBob. His family and my family had been friends for a long time, but I never got to know JimBob personally until that year. Now, I can tell you all sorts of things about him. I know that he drowns his ice cream in chocolate syrup, even if it’s chocolate ice cream. I know that he always carries a gun with him when he goes for a trail ride. I know that he mooches off everyone, and I know that he gets attached easily. I know that he takes his dogs everywhere with him. I know that he loves God, but isn’t always very interested in following His rules. I know that somehow, he finds a way to be arrogant, but it seems humble at the same time.

It was my thirteenth birthday when he came into my life. I had two friends staying the night. It was his first date with my mom. I was the first to fall asleep, and when I woke up, I regretted ever closing my eyes.Both of my friends told me that they hadn’t been able to sleep because they could hear my mom. With JimBob. In bed.

This broke my heart. First of all, it was their first date. Who does that on their first date? Also, it was my birthday. Just… what the heck? But the part that made it the worst was that my two friends were spending the night. The worst part was that my friends heard my mom. With JimBob. In bed. It was, to say the least, embarrassing.

It took a while for me to be able to trust my mom again. And the trust and respect that I have for JimBob? He had to work hard to earn every bit of it.