Pride Over Pity
Authors: Kailyn Lowry,Adrienne Wenner
A POST HILL PRESS / MTV book
Published at Smashwords
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-61868-9-795
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-9-801
Pride Over Pity
copyright © 2014
by Kailyn Lowry with Adrienne Wenner
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.
“Beauty is Sizeless”
photography by Kate Hedrick
Cover Design: Travis Franklin
Published by
 Post Hill Press109 International Drive, Suite 300 Franklin, TN 37067 Posthillpress.com |  MTV1515 Broadway New York, NY 10036 mtv.com |
This work is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of her experiences over a period of years. Certain names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed. Dialogue and events have been recreated from memory, and, in some cases, have been compressed to convey the substance of what was said or what occurred.
The views and opinions in the book are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of MTV, its parent company, Viacom Inc., or the publisher, Post Hill Press.
Table of Contents
1. The Intoxicatingly Wicked Witch
17. The Three Rings of Marriage
19. For the Love of a Daughter
To everyone who taught me that life does not end at sixteen and pregnant.
It is only the beginning.
I felt different. There was something about me that just wasn’t the same. I had to clear the mess up right now. I locked myself in the bathroom and peed on the little stick that would determine my fate. I stared at the strip as the little plastic window revealed a positive sign. I laughed nervously and threw it onto the bathroom counter. Pregnant? I was pregnant? But I was only 17. The reality of the situation took a while to sink in, but once I accepted that the test wasn’t lying, I knew my life would never be the same again.
The Intoxicatingly Wicked Witch
My six-year-old legs were not long enough to help me run through the house fast enough. As I made a turn around the kitchen island, my heart pounded a little faster. Her dodgy movements were slow and predictable, but my fear never lessened.
“I’m gonna get you my pretty,” my mom slurred in a high-pitched voice. She popped out from behind the kitchen island and cackled evilly, “And your little dog too!” The poor yet spooky imitation was enough to send me running out of the house, but I settled for screaming and sensibly locking myself in her bedroom.
My mom knew Mrs. Gulch, aka the Wicked Witch of the West, scared me more than anything. To have a fictional villain come to life is a child’s worst nightmare, but for me this was typical for my mother during her escapades. At the time I never understood why my mom always transformed into the bad witch after drinking. Nobody liked her. Nobody wanted to be her. As birthdays flew by, I realized the problem was much bigger than what it seemed. My mother was an alcoholic.
I didn’t have anything to compare my family to, so I struggled to understand what was going on with her on my own. I began to question everything. Is it curable? How long had she been this way? Why her? Why me? Was I the only one who thought she had a serious problem? At such a young age, normal isn’t yet defined, but I sensed my family was different. There was no hiding the fact that my father wasn’t and hadn’t been in the picture since I was a baby, but drinking was still something I did not fully understand—yet.
I guess the only part of my childhood that could be considered typical was my insatiable need to be active. Every bright-eyed child holds hopes and dreams closer than reality. In fact, at that age, dreams matter more than what reality or destiny hold in store for you. It’s so beautiful to think that, at that age, I didn’t believe anything could hold me back. Becoming president of the United States, starting my own clothing line, becoming a vet, a dentist, or maybe even a singer seemed like achievable goals back then. The future held endless possibilities—until it started to feel like my mother was a big deadbolt on the door. I don’t recall her ever giving me outlets to test my dreams out on. I wasn’t involved in clubs or sports or any sort of activity or hobby.
It seemed like my mother had enough trouble just remembering to pick me up from school. I remember being dropped off at friends’ houses and sometimes not getting a phone call for what seemed like days. For most kids, sleeping over multiple nights in a row is a chance to have unsupervised fun. For me, it meant wondering when I would see my mom again. I didn’t want to be part of the tumultuous lifestyle created by her unpredictable behavior. I wanted consistency and stability, but I felt like my childhood lacked structure and steady parenting. I found myself weaving into the crazy more without recognizing that it wasn’t normal. I even started to lie to cover for my mother’s behavior.
The day after September 11, 2001, my mother came to pick me up from my after-school program at Lakeside Elementary School. It was a program where the teachers sent you to an open space in the school—like the gym or cafeteria—until about 5:00 or 6:00 when your parents would pick you up on their way home from work.
The previous day had been marked in American history as one of tragedy and loss on our soil. Everyone can remember where they were and what they were doing when the planes crashed. The following day, there was a heavy silence around the school. Even though I was only in the fourth grade, I was aware of a sense of the atmosphere being off.
Sitting between the two tables at the front of the cafeteria, the pair of teachers in charge watched as my mom leaned over the sign out sheet. Their disparaging glances caused a sense of a panic to rise in my chest. I rushed up to my mom so she didn’t have the chance to speak to them. Did Jack Daniels suddenly make a perfume? Every word pouring out of her mouth sounded slurred. I was embarrassed and hung my head in shame, hoping no one else caught on as fast as I did. I thought I had gotten away without being interrogated, but the next day my guidance counselor called me into his office.
“My cousin works in New York City so my mom was really shook up,” the rehearsed line rolled off my tongue in a monotone.
“Is that really it, Kailyn?”
“Yes,” I replied, “she was just really worried.”
That was the day I started lying for my mother’s alcoholism. In that moment, I became an adult. It became my natural instinct to take care of people because it felt like my mother couldn’t take care of herself—or me. Cleaning up vomit after a hard night of drinking made me look a little like Cinderella, except my version was even more twisted than the Brothers Grimm could imagine up.
Although I was fortunate enough that my mom was able to provide clothing, a roof over my head, and food on the table, her job working at multiple bars as a bartender caused more problems than it was worth. I remember how sometimes, when she got off of work, she’d disappear for a few days. Meanwhile, the person she hired to watch over me was, unbeknownst to my mom, a coke-snorting babysitter—who preferred the dollar bill method. In those times, when she would disappear for days without warning, I’d wonder if I would ever see her again. The possibility of her becoming a newspaper headline seemed inevitable to me because of her impulsive lifestyle. I guess no one told her she wasn’t a rock star.
I’d like to pretend my mom never hurt me, but the truth is she did. It felt like a bottle of liquid brought her more joy than spending time with her own daughter. There’s no denying I took it personally. How could I not? At some point I gave up on her because it seemed like a disease and I knew that disease wasn’t thinking of my mom’s best interest or mine. The insatiable need would always win out over a desire to make our lives better.
In fourth grade I moved to the next town over and spent a solid two years there. I was nearly always alone unless my mom had paid the babysitter by way of cigarettes. I wasn’t sure who I was becoming or what I wanted. The deadly combination of loneliness and no sense of self hadn’t become lethal quite yet, but I was seriously sick of moving around. As I entered middle school we moved again, this time even further away to Whitehall.
Moving from rural Pennsylvania, where everyone knows you and your family, to a more populated area didn’t help my social standing. Moving around so much took me away from the few friends I had and, if anything, I was more withdrawn than ever. No one understood my situation, which made everything even more difficult for me.
No matter how lonely and isolated I became, the moving didn’t stop and neither did the boyfriends my mom was racking up. She wasn’t happy with herself so I think she hitched herself to others to escape feeling that way. When I was a freshman, one of the boyfriends tried getting her help. She listened to him and signed temporary custody over to my neighbors, the Hopwoods. I lived with them for a couple of months, while she pulled herself together. The Hopwoods knew my mom had issues and were willing to take me on to alleviate the stress in hopes that my mom would use the opportunity to get the help she needed. As I remember it, while she was supposedly doing her part to get better, my mom moved out of the house without giving me a heads up. Along with her boyfriend, she picked up and left, leaving me to run wild and free.