Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Moving on Out

 From Randy over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

(1)  Where did you go the first time you moved out of your parents' home?  Did you have any roommates?  Did you live by yourself? Did you get married right away? Tell the story - your children and grandchildren will want to know!

(2)  Share your story in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a post on Facebook.  

Here's mine:

Well, Randy picked a tough subject, and it probably won't be fun for me.  Also, I have no children and thus no grandchildren who will want to know.  However, I'll push through and tell the story.  

When I was preparing to go to college, I wanted to attend Georgia Southwestern in Americus.  However, my father told me he could not afford for me to live in the dorm.  So instead, he bought a lot on Lake Sinclair outside of Milledgeville and built a house on it for me to live in to go to college.  Obviously, he did have the money to send me away to school because dorm fees, I am sure, would have been far less than a lake lot.  But that's what he did and told me I had to attend Georgia College in Milledgeville.  So I did.  

In September of 1985, when I moved to the lake house, I didn't live with my parents anymore, but I lived in their house.  It was their furniture in the house (mostly), and if I moved or added anything, my father had a fit.  He would show up unannounced and stay the night, obviously just checking up on me.  He had to be in control no matter what.  And I was under his thumb for at least 4-6 months after I left for college.  When I started getting some independence, that is when the real trouble started.  

Meanwhile, I got a roommate at the lake house.  A girl I went to school with and graduated with in Swainsboro also went to college in Milledgeville, and she didn't want to live in the dorms.  My father loved her, so she moved in with me.  Of course, I went out more and got into more cause I had a partner in crime.  However, she went to Swainsboro every single weekend, so I was alone some too.  

Sometime in 1986, either summer or fall, my father and I had a major falling out.  Basically, he had snooped through my belongings and found something he didn't like.  So he drove up from Swainsboro and that very evening proceeded to throw my belongings out onto the lawn.  I had to call a co-worker (I was working part-time for an accountant there in Milledgeville.) to come help me gather my belongings, and she let me move in with her and her children.  That lasted a few months, but she eventually asked me to leave so I had to ask my father if I could move back to the lake house.  He had cooled down by then so he let me.  I believe when all this happened is when he stopped paying for my school.  So I got a full-time job and started going to school part-time.  Shortly thereafter, I moved out of the lake house into my first apartment in Milledgeville.  It was a really old house, with 10-12 foot ceilings, in a not great neighborhood, that had been remodeled into apartments.  When I say it wasn't a great neighborhood, I mean I was TERRIFIED to go out of my apartment at night.  Even just to walk to my car right outside.  I eventually adjusted and was able to conquer that fear, but I always kept my guard up.  Also it helped that my roommate from the lake house didn't feel comfortable staying there without me, so she moved into the apartment with me.  It had two bedrooms, so that worked out well.  

It was quite an adventure, but I do remember my time there fondly.  I was gaining more and more independence over time and was paying my own bills.  By December of 1987 at the age of 20, I had dropped out of school, gotten a full-time job at a bank, got married and was living in a rented single wide trailer in Eatonton. (Oh there are many more stories there that will have to wait until another time.)

(Oh did you catch the irony that after building that lake house for me to go to school where he wanted me to go, my father was no longer paying my tuition after only about a year and a half?  Everything had strings attached.  I cut the strings.)