when he said it wasn’t going to be used against me to keep me from seeing Leah, every time things got ugly between us I felt so uncertain and scared that I had no right to her as a mom anymore. I had given up my control, and I was the one who signed the papers. But the way I looked at it, it really felt like my daughter had been taken away from me.
It just felt like I was backed into a corner. If things hadn’t gotten so bad in the first place, CPS wouldn’t have been on our asses the way they were. That damn no-contact order wouldn’t have kept my daughter and her father from being around me at the same time. The fact was, signing that custody agreement didn’t feel like some kind of empowered choice I made. I did it because the legal situation basically had my family held hostage.
After it sank in that I’d lost my rights as a parent, I literally didn’t care anymore. I remember thinking, “There’s no point now. I’m not even allowed to be a mom. I might as well get crazy.”
It was a bad time. I started going out, fighting, and par-tying. It spun off so fast I can’t even explain it. Until then, I’d kept as much of a grip on my issues as I could because I was focused on Leah and trying to get things back in order for her. But once that was off the table, I finally got to a place where the attention and money started getting to me, too.
I was doing whatever I wanted, and I didn’t do anything in moderation. It was always extreme when it came to partying and sex. When it really got down to it, my life at that time was nothing but pills and men. I used to get boyfriends for three months at a time, get bored, leave them, and go find another guy. I never thought there was a problem with it. I mean, serial monogamy is the rule these days. But looking back I think it’s obvious I had a bad sex addiction along with the pill addiction. And those lifestyles go hand in hand. They feed each other. I used to get into fights with boyfriends over how much sex I wanted. If they weren’t in the mood or they were too tired, I would go off. How insane is that? I don’t know what I was trying to satisfy in myself. Probably the same thing I’d always been trying to satisfy, just in a new way. I had a lot of fun—I mean, come on. Obviously. But on the whole, I didn’t get much good out of it, and I definitely got some bad. Two of those boyfriends sold stories about me where they said they couldn’t keep up with me, and I could be a porn star. You know, just your average gentlemanly behavior.
After I’d gone a little ways down that road, I ended up not giving a shit about Leah’s father anymore. Meanwhile, he was yapping in my ear like a Chihuahua. The man would come over and dig through my trash can for condoms, even though we were completely broken up.
Oh, the drama. At the time he was saying that he wasn’t having sex with anybody, and he was trying to get back together with me. I was actually considering it. Little did I know he had been sleeping with this other girl for a couple of months.
One day I got a random text from somebody saying she got my number from a friend and wanted to hang out. But then she called me up on the phone, and who did I hear in the background? None other than Leah’s father. That seemed to explain where she got my number. When he asked her who she was talking to, she said, “I’m talking to my friend Amanda.” So it was pretty obvious something fishy was going on. I don’t know what her deal was. I think she just cared about the MTV stuff and wanted to be around us, maybe hoping a camera would show up and she’d get her face on the color TV or something.
Needless to say, I had no interest in hanging out with her, but she kept texting me and stuff. In my mind I knew they were messing around, and when she mentioned they were hanging out, I just knew.
What can I say? I got a little mean. One day when she texted me to hang out I said, “Okay, fine, drive to my house and we’ll
It just felt like I was backed into a corner. If things hadn’t gotten so bad in the first place, CPS wouldn’t have been on our asses the way they were. That damn no-contact order wouldn’t have kept my daughter and her father from being around me at the same time. The fact was, signing that custody agreement didn’t feel like some kind of empowered choice I made. I did it because the legal situation basically had my family held hostage.
After it sank in that I’d lost my rights as a parent, I literally didn’t care anymore. I remember thinking, “There’s no point now. I’m not even allowed to be a mom. I might as well get crazy.”
It was a bad time. I started going out, fighting, and par-tying. It spun off so fast I can’t even explain it. Until then, I’d kept as much of a grip on my issues as I could because I was focused on Leah and trying to get things back in order for her. But once that was off the table, I finally got to a place where the attention and money started getting to me, too.
I was doing whatever I wanted, and I didn’t do anything in moderation. It was always extreme when it came to partying and sex. When it really got down to it, my life at that time was nothing but pills and men. I used to get boyfriends for three months at a time, get bored, leave them, and go find another guy. I never thought there was a problem with it. I mean, serial monogamy is the rule these days. But looking back I think it’s obvious I had a bad sex addiction along with the pill addiction. And those lifestyles go hand in hand. They feed each other. I used to get into fights with boyfriends over how much sex I wanted. If they weren’t in the mood or they were too tired, I would go off. How insane is that? I don’t know what I was trying to satisfy in myself. Probably the same thing I’d always been trying to satisfy, just in a new way. I had a lot of fun—I mean, come on. Obviously. But on the whole, I didn’t get much good out of it, and I definitely got some bad. Two of those boyfriends sold stories about me where they said they couldn’t keep up with me, and I could be a porn star. You know, just your average gentlemanly behavior.
After I’d gone a little ways down that road, I ended up not giving a shit about Leah’s father anymore. Meanwhile, he was yapping in my ear like a Chihuahua. The man would come over and dig through my trash can for condoms, even though we were completely broken up.
Oh, the drama. At the time he was saying that he wasn’t having sex with anybody, and he was trying to get back together with me. I was actually considering it. Little did I know he had been sleeping with this other girl for a couple of months.
One day I got a random text from somebody saying she got my number from a friend and wanted to hang out. But then she called me up on the phone, and who did I hear in the background? None other than Leah’s father. That seemed to explain where she got my number. When he asked her who she was talking to, she said, “I’m talking to my friend Amanda.” So it was pretty obvious something fishy was going on. I don’t know what her deal was. I think she just cared about the MTV stuff and wanted to be around us, maybe hoping a camera would show up and she’d get her face on the color TV or something.
Needless to say, I had no interest in hanging out with her, but she kept texting me and stuff. In my mind I knew they were messing around, and when she mentioned they were hanging out, I just knew.
What can I say? I got a little mean. One day when she texted me to hang out I said, “Okay, fine, drive to my house and we’ll
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