The months to come were hard to say the least. Grant and I confronted Josephine about outing me to my mother. She told us that she thought what we were doing was wrong, and she wanted someone else to be going through “this” with her. We told her that what she did was not ok, and it was not her place to talk to my mother about a personal matter.

She did not react well to this, and her ill behavior toward me started to become worse through the month of December. The insults increased, she would “accidentally” bump me or hit me with something when she walked passed me, and she even started to be dismissive to my dog Max. Then to top it off Grant’s brother, Elliot,  had come to live with us for a period of time because he did not have a place to live.

Elliot got into trouble through his high school years. After graduating, he decided to join the Marines. At first, it was the best thing for him. It gave him structure, and a support structure he didn’t have in his life. Unfortunately, after a particular duty in Iraq, he came home a lost soul. He struggled with holding a job, he started drinking excessively, and got into hard drugs. 

We let him come live with us to help him get back on his feet. Grant worked with him to go out and get applications for employment, worked with the VA to get him on the correct medications, and loaned him a lot of money in the interim. Grant bent over backwards to help him, but in my eyes, Elliot never appreciated the level of support he got from his brother.

Less than a month from when he moved in, he still had no job, jewelry started missing, Elliot stole my credit card and ran it up on drugs and booze. It was awful. I didn’t feel safe in my own home. The thing that pushed me over, if stealing my credit card wasn’t enough, was when he kicked Max, my pug, when Max was begging for food. That pushed it to far for me. I yelled at him saying that he needed to get out of my house, all while picking up Max to comfort him. 

Needless to say this did not go over well with Josephine. Elliot was her baby, and he could do no wrong. She pitched a toddler like tantrum to Grant so that Elliot could stay a little longer. I was not ok with this, and took Max and stayed with David and Ellie for the weekend. It is one thing to hurt me, but it is UNACCEPTABLE to hurt my baby.

While I was away for the weekend, I did a lot of processing with David. He agreed that this situation was not healthy. We worked on a conversation that I needed to have with Grant about my feelings on it. I have a tendency of not being the best with words when I am upset, so I tried to pre plan the topics that I needed to say.

When I went home, I had a hard conversation with Grant that both Josephine and Elliot needed to find a new place to live. This was not a healthy situation for any of us to be in anymore. He agreed that something needed to be done, so we told them that they both needed to find a new place to live, and we let Josephine know we would take the mortgage completely into our name like we had agreed upon in the beginning. 

She was furious about this and went to her friend that was a lawyer and had an agreement made up. This agreement ended up becoming my own personal go straight to jail card. In the agreement it stated many insane things such as:

1. She could stay for another 6 months to get herself ready to move.
2. She could have at the house whomever she pleases ( meaning Elliot could stay )
3. If Grant and I were to have someone over, we needed to clear it with Josephine first, because she is feeling unsafe in her house. She could not say no to family members. 
4. She had a section written up saying that neither David nor Ellie were allowed at the house anymore.
5. There was a statement on how I had to be nice to her, or everything was null and void.
6. We also needed to give her $15,000 payout for “her” portion of the house. This was not in our original agreement, but she thought she now deserved money.

I flew off the hinges, and just started crying when I read this. She was making it so I basically couldn’t be in my house. I wouldn’t have even done anything to her, and she still would say that I did. And now she was saying I could not  have my partners at the house as well? What the hell? And I would have to continue to deal with Elliot? Something had to give here.

Grant and I worked with the lawyer, and we were able to make some compromises to this, but in the end, I had to live with her for another 6 months, and David was not allowed at the house passed 10PM. We did get her to agree to let Ellie stay the night, and we still had to pay her the money. I thought the next six months would be my personal prison, constantly walking a tightrope. Turns out, six months turned into a year and a half.

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My birthday came around, David, Grant, Ellie, and I all went out to a great dinner and Fire & Ice in Boston, and back to Limelight to have my karaoke encore! I got all dressed up to go out, I even had my hair professionally done. I wanted to look beautiful for my birthday! 

Fire & Ice is one of my favorite restaurants. I went there for 6 years straight on my birthday, for my birthday dinners! There is something about going and choosing your own food, and then watching the chef’s cook the food right in front of you. It was very exciting, and the chef’s were always so animated.

If they found out there was an event happening, they would sing to the person. Whether it was “Happy Birthday” on your Birthday, or “Going to the Chapel” if you were getting married. This is a place to go to have a fun, but loud, meal. 

My papa died on my birthday the year before.

Though I love to go out and celebrate my birthday, it was also especially hard for me this year. My papa died on my birthday the year before. I tried to look at the bright side of it, I liked to think that it made us closer than we were, he was my personal guardian angel. I am not religious, but I like to think he is still watching over me.

The Saturday after my birthday, both David and Grant made the trip with me to visit my Papa’s grave. I remember sitting in the car, shaking because I was nervous to be going to visit him, I hadn’t been there in a year. David asked me about some of my favorite memories of him. He said that this helps him get through hard situations like these. So I shared some of my favorite stories.

I told them about how my Papa gave me my very first glass doll. I still have it sitting in my room to this day. It was a beautiful brunette doll with banana curled hair, a pink frilly dress, and a pink bonnet. The cool surprise was that it played music as well. There was a small knob on her back that you could twist to hear the song “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

When I was little I used to hold his hands and crawl up his legs, and do a flip. I used to go his house on the cape every summer! He was a woodworker, I used to love going out to his garage and watch him make things for people! I always hoped he would continue coming out with all of his fingers. He did lose his middle finger to woodworking. He went to the hospital with it on ice, and decided it was taking to long so they had them cauterize the wound, so he from then on had half a middle finger.

He will always be the voice behind the camcorder asking me silly questions on my birthdays. The one who would fly 80 miles an hour down the interstate and let me moon the people behind us with his little mooning doll in the back window of his truck. And our sing alongs on our long car rides that consisted of “Sing Low Sweet Chariot,” and “Fuzzy Wuzzy Bear.”

When I was younger he took so much time building my very first doll-house, wallpapering it, putting electricity through the whole house, and then getting mad and forgiving me pretty much instantly when I painted the roof with pink nail polish. 

I won’t forget getting a rope tied around me so that I could go swimming in the pond down the cape, he didn’t want to get in the water so if i went to far he would pull me back in. I will always miss the chocolate chip cookies and gingersnaps he would send me as care packages in college, and the baked beans and pork he would never not make whenever I went to the cape. I will always miss going down and and seeing him sit in his old blue recliner watching westerns, and fighting with me over who gets to use the old blue quilt. This became known as the “Papa/Shannon quilt.” I remember going to Seafood Sams, and laughing every time the vibrating lobster buzzer to let us know our food was done, startled me. 

We stopped on the way to the cemetery to pick up flowers to put down on his grave. I didn’t see anything in particular that I liked, so we got him a little Christmas tree. We put some small decorations on it to make it look nice. Then we continued the last 10 minutes of the drive.

As we pulled up to the spot, it took me a second to get out of the car. I just looked at the grave and tears welled in my eyes. I felt a rush of the pain and sadness that I felt the year before, in this exact place, and I started to cry. Grant came around to my door and opened it, I got out of the car and both David and Grant gave me a big hug.

I walked up the tiny hill, and under the beautifully cascading tree to see my papa’s name written on the stone below me. I reached down and pushed the debris off his head stone, and then just laid my hand over his name. I continued to cry, and set the tree on the headstone. We stood there for a little while, and I continued to tell them some of my favorite memories. Though it was hard to be there, I am so glad I had the support of both of my loves that day. They made it easier, and helped me relive my favorite memories of him, which brought me so much joy and light-heartedness. This is when I realized how lucky I was, even though I was going through a rough time at home.

Highlights/ Learned Lessons:

1. Whenever entering any kind of agreement with someone that involves property, always get it in writing.
2. Animal cruelty is never acceptable
3. It is ok to set up boundaries, even with families, especially when you are in an unhealthy or unsafe situation.
4. Being polyamorous has opened up my life to a larger support system, and so much love.