ONLY

My very first memory is my father’s funeral. I was almost four. He died while serving active duty in the Air Force in Italy. I don’t remember him. When I think of him, I see his headstone.

My mother had given up on her relationship with my father long before his death, and is with Step-dad #1, my brother’s father, at the time of my father’s funeral. I have faint memories of Step-Dad #1 during this time. I remember that he is kind to me. I remember loving him, because he included me when he spent time with his son.

My memory of the next five years feels like static, the events of the time are hazy.

At some point, step-dad number 1 leaves. Step dad number 2 comes into the picture and we, my mother, sisters, brother and me move to a new town, although I don’t remember the move.

I don’t remember much clearly. Until this day.

On this day, there is finally a memory that I know to be true. I am standing at the top of a dusty hill with my brother. He is seven and I am nine. My mother is behind us, with future step-dad number three. My young mind tries to reconcile how her feet are firmly planted in the gravel by his side, while her children walk AWAY from her.

As I walk down the hill, I remember other moments, moments between the ages of six and nine, when life was “good”. Now, good is a relative term, but at least we were all in the same house during those three years. We lived with step-dad number 2, the alcoholic who beat my brother and loved to play chicken while driving drunk over the winding roads leading to our house.

But at least the house was nice.

And, he gave us things.

I was too young to know the house was so nice because he was a cocaine dealer, but that’s another story.

During those years, my older sisters were there.

Yes, there were the moments where my mother would abuse my sister in a drunken rage.

But, there were other moments. Moments where my sisters protected and loved us. Like when they created the “shit pit” and every time they risked their lives to use it on my behalf.

The “shit pit” was mostly for vegetables, specifically, my vegetables. See, rules and manners were VERY important in my house. So much so, that my mother bit my brother when he reached across the table to serve himself more food. So much so, that I would be left for hours at the dinner table, crying quietly, until I ate every last vegetable on my plate, and, oh, how I hated vegetables.

My sisters knew from experience that my mother would check the trash when she got home, so they couldn’t throw just throw away the smooshy eggplant or smelly peas, and they could only eat so much food for me. So, they would take whatever food we didn’t want to eat and, in a very covert operation, sneak outside, and bury it in the ground, in the “shit pit”, in an act of solidarity that not only confirmed their love, but saved me from her wrath.

Back to this day, the first day I very clearly remember. While we are walking down the that dusty hill toward number 2’s home, I am thinking, strangely, about the shit pit. But at that moment, I wasn’t fearing her wrath, I was wanting her love.

It was the first time I recognized it: the choice.

She wasn’t choosing me and my brother. In hindsight, I recognize that she made that choice almost every day.

But on this day, I saw it for the first time.

While living with number 2, my mother had begun seeing step-dad number 3. Given that they had all been friends, step-dad number 2 obviously, and rightfully, wanted nothing to do with either of them and kicked her out. But graciously, he let us stay.

I don’t know if we stayed a week or six months. I don’t remember anything about that time except the moment she abandoned us. The moment we walked down that hill away from her and the man she chose over her children, was the moment I began to change.

I hadn’t lost one parent. I had now lost them both.

While walking down that hill, I became responsible for myself and my brother.

At some point, we reunited with her and came to live with step-dad number 3. My oldest sister had run away and my other sister lived in a make-shift apartment in the garage.

There are more snapshots in my mind of this time: Dichotomies: “good memories” of my brother and I “playing outside”, young kids roaming the streets on our own, (reciting Too-Short lyrics, like every 10-year old should), clash with “bad memories” of the wooden spoon, and many memories in between.

In the most vivid memories, I can see my independence grow. I am standing on a step stool, stirring a pot of boiling water, making Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Once the kitchen is spotless, as required, my brother and I lay on the floor with our bowls of Macaroni and Cheese and take turns watching HeMan and SheRa, cartoons of superheros we idolized.

The similarity between this new household and the previous one: alcohol.

But here it is even more hidden, poured in their bedroom, as if we wouldn’t recognize the smell of brandy on their breath, or the way her voice changed after the second glass.

Even while their relationship strained, her relationship with alcohol grew stronger, the other relationship she chose over her children over and over again.

I am twelve years old when we make the move from the Bay Area to Roseville, CA. My sisters have their own lives, so it is now just the five of us: alcohol, step-dad number 3, my mother, my brother and me.

My memories of this time are more vivid, but none so much as this one.

I am dangling.

I am dangling by my hair. I can feel it still today, the burning sensation of patches of your scalp being torn out. Step-dad #3 is drunk and angry. So angry. I don’t remember what, but as usual, my brother has done something to infuriate them, and is being chased by #3. From my bedroom, I hear them pounding up the stairs and come out into the hallway just as my brother runs into his room. I get between my step-dad and my brother’s door, knowing I am not big enough to stop him, and he turns his rage on me. I scream to my brother to call the police and not open his door. I scream it over and over. Call the police. Call the police.

And what I feel, besides fear, is relief.

I don’t know if it is because he is smaller, or younger, or a boy, but for some reason, my brother is almost always the target of the violence, and in this moment, I am relieved to know that I can bear this burden this time.

Then I’m dangling.

My feet are barely touching the ground on the top stair, but my head is pushed far forward, at such a precarious angle that it seems cartoon-like. He’s holding me by my hair, and I can feel both: some of the hair giving way and some of the skin of my scalp ripping.

I don’t know what makes him stop, but I do know it is not interference from my mom.

She is in the house, but she has not shown up for us.

The doorbell rings and there is a pounding at the door. The police have arrived.

My mother opens the door and does what she always does. She acts.

She acts like it is nothing. She acts like she’s fine.

She chooses him.

AGAIN.

I am seething, and then, so grateful that the police see through her act.

Here, the memory is blurry again, but eventually he is handcuffed and in the police car. Eventually, I am in bed. I don’t remember the words that are exchanged, but I know she is angry. Angry at me and my brother.

The next day, he is home. There is no explanation. No further discussion. It is just understood.

She didn’t choose us.

I’m in high school now, and I am finding my footing. My independence continues growing daily: I start my first job just before my 15th birthday. I cut countless classes. I am gone often, feeding my mother lies and explanations, knowing that she usually can’t remember the night before anyway.

And then I have graduated and my mother and number 3 announce that they are moving to our winter cabin in Truckee. I am definitely not moving to Truckee, but that means that my brother and I will be separated.

The idea of letting him go with them is nauseating, and is still, to this day, my only regret in life. But, at 17, I don’t see many options.

In my next vivid memory, I am staring into my brother’s eyes. I can still feel his hands on each of my cheeks as I did in that moment. He looks right at me, tells me he loves me, and then runs into the woods.

We are in Truckee. I have made the two hour drive up the hill to search for him three times this week, four the week before. My mother has admitted to me that he hasn’t been home. She complains of his behavior, saying she thinks he’s on drugs and she just doesn’t know what to do with him anymore. She doesn’t say this in an “I am fearing for my child’s life” sort of way, it’s said in a “I am washing my hands of him” way.

I am outraged. I drive there and search, alone, at seventeen years old, over and over again. Looking for my fifteen year old brother in hangouts and drug houses, showing his photo to people on the streets. The first time I find him, the exchange is THAT brief.

I love you, and he is gone.

For months, I keep trying. At some point he comes to visit me and goes to visit his dad, but he eventually returns to Truckee, addiction dragging him back up the hill.

And then, he’s in juvenile hall. My mother refuses to go to the hearing and I beg her for the details. My brother walks in to the courtroom with his hands cuffed. He is 16 and the drugs have made him so skinny that he seems small, his childhood pronounced.

I, however, am 18 now. “Grown” and independent, I know that I can help him.

I know that I must choose him.

There is only me.

The judge releases him to me. I am now responsible for him. I take him home and spend the summer trying to keep him clean.

I live in a duplex with my high school best friend, and now, my brother. I have a boyfriend who knows all of the gory details and loves me anyway, or so I believe. What I don’t know, is that behind my back, he and my brother do drugs together. One afternoon, something in both of their behavior reveals it, and I have this overwhelming urge to search my house. I know with 100% certainty I will find drugs. I just don’t know where. As soon as I have the house to myself, I am frantic: ripping open cupboards, pulling open drawers, climbing on counters. And then I find it.

In a space above my kitchen cabinets is a plate. On the plate is a baggie of powder. I am so naïve, that I only know that those are drugs, but I have no idea WHAT drugs or how serious this is.

That suddenly, my relationship is over, and it is again, only me.

I am responsible for this. I have to save my brother. I have to get him clean.

After several more slips, he’s enrolled in high school and I am working and going to junior college.

Meanwhile, I meet HIM. I am 19 years old now and so ready for someone to love me, so ready to have someone to lean on. I need it to no longer be only me.

Not only is he, as we said then, “so fine”, he is older than me and in the Air Force like my dad had been. He is sturdy, yet kind. Responsible, yet fun. We meet in a night club that I enter with my fake ID and dance every weekend all summer. I am in love.

We marry when I am 20. He has received orders to leave the country, and I can’t join him unless we are married. We are inseparable, so it’s the natural next step. I’m on Travis AFBase at the doctor’s office, getting medical clearance to leave the country when they ask if I could be pregnant. I say that I shouldn’t be, but I guess I could be, so they check.

And I am. We are excited. We decide I will stay behind for a few months to continue working and join him at his new station after I have saved some money to prepare for the baby.

I am four and a half months pregnant when I feel it. It is a pain like I have never felt before. It’s as if my insides have collapsed and the weight of all my organs is suddenly in my lower back. It is urgent and awful and then it subsides, but never completely. There is consistent pain in my back, but more excruciating is the dread. I know instinctively that something is wrong and the spotting confirms it. I go to the doctor and they say not to worry, these things happen in pregnancy.

And, although I have never been pregnant, I know better. I am insistent. Something is wrong.

There are tests. And murmurs. A doctor joins the nurse practitioner. Another doctor joins the group.

The air in the room feels heavy.

Finally, it has a name: placental abruption. The placenta has separated from the uterine wall. The size and degree of the tear at this point is unknown. I am sent home for two weeks of bed rest and told to return if the bleeding or pain dramatically increase.

I am completely alone. There is, again, only me.

My husband is in another country. My brother is now a healthy eighteen year old, out doing what eighteen-year-olds do. Books, television and despair are my company.

I return after two weeks and the doctors decide that the bed rest will be permanent. It is also decided that I may not travel to my husband, and, of course, it is a given that he may not leave his post.

My memory of the next few months is spotty. What stands out are the weekly doctor visits. Not yet 21 years old, I am alone and vulnerable, bent over with my pants down to receive a shot in the ass of steroids. Each visit also includes an ultrasound, during which each doctor seems inclined to make suppositions about potential outcomes. Week by week they prepare me with casual mentions of things like dwarfism, down syndrome, bleeding out during delivery and death of one or both of us. And I lay there, stoic, but the words are violent and piercing.

Imagine that. Being 20 years old, alone with the expectation of severe complications, severe disabilities and even your own death to contemplate while lying in bed all day long for over five months.

And then, one day, I receive a wake-up call from Oprah.

I am watching the Oprah Winfrey Show (seriously, you can’t make that up) and while I don’t remember the topic of the show that day, I do remember the sound of her voice in the background when I suddenly realize, that THIS is what I was made for. All of my experience to that point, all of the abandonment that led me to believe I could only count on me, had made me to believe I COULD DEFINITELY COUNT ON ME. The only thing I had ever truly needed to survive in my life was me, and besides Oprah, I was about all I had.

I finally knew- I WAS ENOUGH. I began to believe.

Thirty-two hours of excruciating labor were like an exclamation point on the longest, hardest period of my life. As my daughter came into the world, I held my breath while they called out Apgar scores, but deep down I knew.

She was perfect.

Just two weeks before, by measurement of her bone growth from week to week on ultrasounds, they estimated that she weighed two to three pounds. At birth, she weighed six pounds, one ounce, was twenty-one inches long, had ten fingers, ten toes and a very full head of brown hair (thanks to all of those steroids).

It was no longer only me.

My husband and I didn’t make it, perhaps because we were so young, or because being left to deal with those months of trauma alone felt like abandonment all over again... Maybe a bit of both.

Also, partly, because I had changed.

My belief in myself continuing to blossom, my career went into overdrive. I was achieving things in my twenties that people work for years to accomplish: traveling the country as the Training Coordinator for large property management company at the age of twenty-four, obtaining my real estate broker’s license and starting my own company at twenty-nine, a year later joining in a venture with my brother, one that afforded us lives we once could only have dreamed of.

After all we had been through, we made great business partners.

All the while, I prioritized my daughter’s wants and needs. I showed up for her. It was me and her against the world, and I made sure she always knew that she was my first choice.

We have all experienced trauma. And, yes, perhaps I have had more than my share, but I have also lived a fantastic life. My life is full of purpose and achievement. I make an impact on women’s lives every day. I have also lived in a beach house, owned my dream car, taken a mother-daughter trip to Europe. But, most importantly, against the odds, I raised an incredible human being on my own.

What I know now is that each of us has within us absolutely everything we need to not only survive, but thrive. I know that fear and worry give life to the outcome you don’t want… but, belief and confidence, those are your super powers.

Confidence is a muscle. It built with small wins. It’s built every time you achieve a goal, every time you overcome an obstacle. Think of all of the trauma, all of those obstacles you have overcome, and flex your muscles.

Imagine what we can do with all of this strength.

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