A typical topic in deed, I would love to say that my mother had a positive significant impact on my life on reasons that could stretch to A1689-zD1 but I do not. Yes, my mother had a significant impact on my life but not the positive kind. I was born in Salisbury, North Carolina, a nice little drive away from my future home of Atlanta, Georgia, where I was raised by my mother. I am grateful that my mother has raised me for the bulk of my academic life, but towards the years where I really needed a stable environment to focus on my academics she let me down. I had always lived my life saying my mother is right and everybody else is wrong, sounds like Bobby Boucher on The Waterboy, but when I needed her most she let me down substantially. I faulted how she governed herself when she met her soon to be husband Jerry Wayne Lovell. Well it was no mystery that Wayne, as he liked to be called, did not like me because I was not his on. It hurt knowing that my mother could marry a man who did not approve of your son I never asked who my father should be so why can’t you accept me. Then my little sisters came along, and I love them to death, when I really started thinking that my stepfather’s ways began to weed its way to my mother because she started treating me the same way he did. During that time I was a sophomore at Salisbury High School trying to perform up to expectations throughout my dilemma. Then I saw the constant arguments between the two. After the arguments my mother always decided that she should "put him out" which she did every chance she got, but when she "put him out" I was put out myself. She always came up with the same excuse "I am not ready to deal with another man" which always sucked because I am not a man I am your son. Towards the end of my sophomore year my grades started turning for the worse. Life got horrible when they got a divorce in my junior year because I could literately count how many days I stayed home on my hands. I wish I had...