Welcome To Reality It is 9:00 on a Saturday night in March of 2006 and I am setting in my one bedroom cottage with my two children and husband wondering where my life has taken me. I have no job and my husband is looking at jail time in the next few weeks, there’s nothing really to look forward to in the future. My husband has his own home-business that sort of puts food on the table and I am basically trying to get back to the life I had 11 years ago with my children. It was eleven years ago when, my life began. I remember it like it was yesterday. One hot summer morning in August of 1994 my little boy Coty Alan Eubanks was born. I remember the doctor telling me that he was healthy as can be and that after the nurses cleaned him up, I would be able to hold him in just a few minutes. I was so excited. I knew that my life was about to change. I didn’t mind this new change at all. Even though I was about to turn eighteen years old, I knew that I was going to do anything for this son of mine. I was going to give him everything I never had. After Coty and I had been released from the hospital we went straight home with my mother. Mom worked and I basically was unable to perform work for a couple of weeks due to the birth of Coty. Ever since I can remember mom always cleaned houses for the elderly, just to make a little extra for us to survive. It seemed as if God had blessed her with friends that totally understood her situation with living on a fixed-income and paid her under-the-table just so we could survive. She always knew what to do or where to go when we needed food or help. Mom was basically working her fingers to the bones just to help her boyfriend do his bad habit and me to focus on my new-born child. After a while of me realizing that I was causing just as much pain to her I knew I had to do something. This woman was going on sixty years old and still going strong. Her life was always simple and plain. She was married twice; the first was to my biological father who she had my two brothers and one other sister, she was married to my father for twenty-five years. After my father and her divorced a few years later then she married her late husband (my step-father). They were married for about thirteen years I believe. After a heart-attack took my step-father. Things started really getting rough for mom after the death of my step-father. That is when I think she lowered her standards in love and in life. I always felt sorry for her. I had made a promise to myself I would never leave her, no matter how nasty she could have ever treated me. I felt that if she should have had some anger in her after all she had been through. When Coty got to be a month old I knew it was time to go to work and let my mother stay home and relax. I could not take it anymore when I saw this 60 year old lady walk about a half a mile in the late summer, just to go to clean a house to make $20.00. This had a major effect on me. What the heck was I thinking? I am turning eighteen years old and I have my whole entire life ahead of me. Mom deserved better than what she had. The more I thought about her boyfriend living with her, that was an alcoholic, he never worked all he did was sit and smoke cigarettes and cause her a lot of pain. After trying to get mom to realize that I wanted to take care of her and my son, she finally broke down and said, “Yes, I would love to stay home and take care of Coty for you.” I knew that mom always wanted to have a little extra cash on her, so I told her that with my job I would love to pay her for babysitting when I got the job. The next day mom took me to a local temporary agency in Bellefontaine and I signed up for employment. The next night around 6:00 I got a telephone call from the temp agency and they asked me if I could be at the local factory around 6:30pm. I was so excited I was actually going to help my mom, son and myself in being independent. I made a lot of friends within a week in my work area. It was like working with a family I never had. They were awesome. The one lady’s name was Becky and she treated me if I was her daughter. If I had any concerns at home I could talk to her about them. Becky was such a good friend. I worked my entire six month assignment with no problems at all. After working an assignment with the temp agency they would have people take a 30 day vacation basically before they would put you back to the workplace. While I was on my vacation I earned unemployment so that became our source of income that we had for the entire month, beside my moms social security check. I stayed home and played with my son and enjoyed his new first experiences. Mom basically struggled with her new-found-love or whatever you would want to call him. With my being at home I was just totally confused all the time. Why was my mother the independent woman letting this guy totally ruin her life, he did nothing to benefit her at all. She never really had many set standards to begin with, but at this point she had none. It had seemed that mom was totally losing control of her life; first her husband that she had two boys and one other girl besides me, that she was married to for twenty-five years, up and leaves. Then her second husband that she was married to for 13 years, well she loses him to a heart attack. All she really had was me. I wasn't about to let her down. I wanted her to get rid of this loser and stand up for what she believed in. After a month of my so-called vacation I got the call from the temp agency asking me to go back to the very same department to work. I was really excited about it, I really didn’t think that I would get the same department, but they said it was a request from the associates at Bellmar. That was a neat experience to have people needing my help. With having people request my help even made me stronger than ever. I went back to Bellmar Parts Industries and it seemed that everybody was really happy to have me back. I was on second shift Things started looking up for me. However I really felt bad for mom , staying home with her loser friend and taking also taking care of my child too, I often wondered what was better for her, staying home watching a baby and dealing with a goofball no sense of direction at all or walking a mile to work everyday just to make pocket change? After a couple of months the associates asked me if I would like to work her full-time. Of course you know what my answer was. I was so happy that they even mentioned it to me. I told them yeah, sure I would love to.The rest of the evening I was unstoppable. I was working even harder just to show my appreciation to the group and also letting them know that I would not let them down. After I quit the temp assignment I received unemployment for about 3 months. After the three months I started to lose my excitement about the full-time employment. I thought that they were just pulling my chain about the whole deal. My friend Becky called after a couple of weeks asking how my interviews were going with Bellemar. I then had to tell here that I was not getting anything at all. She acted really surprised on the phone. She said to me, "Judy I will find out what is going on and I will call you back with the details." As the week progressed I was witnessing more crap with mom and her friend. Her friend Steve would walk to his friends’ house, get drunk and come home to fight with mom. I wanted to knock him out so bad but I felt like I did not want to jeopardize moms’ life any more than it was. Until it happened. Steve came home one night and started in with mom right in front of my little boy as I was sitting on the couch. All I had to do was look up at Steve while he was arguing with mom; he looked at me and put his finger to my nose at a point saying," I was a no good fat ass mother". I couldn't take it. I saw the little eyes of my child looking at me like "what is happening to my mommy?' I had thought at that very minute “Do I just take it like my mother does or do I stand up for what I believe in?" So I did I stood up in Steve’s face and said "Don't you ever touch me again!" As I said that mom was in the background say," Judy, sit down, you don't want him to hurt you!" I was amazed, this lady was my mother she was letting him call me names and basically giving him the benefit of the doubt that he could hurt me. With having that on my mind I just totally knew mom wasn't thinking. She would do anything to not be alone ever. I understood it before she even had to tell me. The next day it finally happened for us...
Copyright © 2006 Judy K Cox |