A-West sophomore Alyssa Lindsay, or Aly as she likes to go by, and her dad, Terry Greene have gone through a rough patch. Greene has been taking pain pills, and now the whole left side of his body is paralyzed. Lindsay started finding out that Terry was taking pain pills when she was in middle school, and he abused them to the point where he had a stroke.

 Nationally, the drug use/drug death rate has risen from 1980 to 2016 from being only 10,000 people to now around 65,000 people per year.

“Two years ago in 8th grade he got addicted to pain pills and he had a stroke. He was in the ICU and then we found out that he could not use the left side of his body. He still takes pain pills and is selfish,” says Lindsay. On Greene and Lindsay’s mom’s relationship, Lindsay says, “They have never been married, they have always just been boyfriend and girlfriend and now currently they do not talk to each other.”

Lindsay does not want to really ever see him or talk to him because he never really took being her father very seriously, and he would just pay attention to himself. He has never helped pay for Lindsay’s belongings. Lindsay believes that how she acts around guys, how clingy she is with them, how needy she is with them and just how broken she gets after they stop talking to her tells people how not having a father in her life is a huge impact on her, but sometimes she does not want to show it. Lindsay does not want to face the fact that there is not a male figure in her life so she tries to text a lot more guys to “fill that gap.” 

Lindsay does not want her father in her life anymore. She said, “I check in with him, but I do not like to see him or talk to him as much he only calls me once every two weeks.” She keeps her anger bottled up inside but at the same time she yells and confronts people if they do or say something to her. Her anger builds up to the point of any little thing you say or do she will pop off.

With this major event going on in Lindsay’s life, she seems to push it aside and really stay positive. Now Greene is living in a nursing home in Colorado. The reason why he cannot live with any family members is because it is better on him and most of his family lives in apartments, so therefore there would not be enough space for him. Lindsay says her father is getting a lot better, “He currently is in the nursing home getting better because last year he had another accident with over taking pills and he had a stroke but now that he is bettering himself he’s doing a lot better.”