We’re going back. Way back. Back to before I can really remember anything and most of these memories are entirely made up of polaroid pictures and the stories that those taking them shared with me.
My parents were seemingly normal teenagers in the early/mid 70’s. They had families, went to school, wore ridiculous bell bottoms, snuck out, drove really cool cars, and lived like everyday was worth it. They went to high school together. My dad was friends with my mom’s brothers and they were friends with my dad’s brothers and if the polaroids are accurate, everyone was just so happy that they finally got married. My parents were beautiful. My mom was a 5’7, blonde-haired, blue-eyed angel. I mean – Polaroids, people, that’s what I’m going off of. To hear her mother (referred to as Grandma June from here on out) talk about her, you would think her daughter, my mother, would never had ever made the mistakes that she did. My father was almost 6 foot tall. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Rebel. He was (in my humble opinion) the most handsome of all of his siblings. He has seven of them. SEVEN. My grandmother had 8 kids. Almost back-to-back. He was number 2 and the oldest of the boys. Their lives – remember I don’t know any of this, its just stories – were seemingly normal. Everyone graduated (mostly) from high school, they married, I came along just after that. So did all of the trouble really.
What I know about my first few years: I was adored by all of those aunts and uncles. I was toted around, fed, played with, taken care of. There are no pictures that prove anything different. I was always dressed in cute clothes and was at the beach or playground or someone’s backyard. I was smart too – learned to read by the time I was 4. I also learned how to use the telephone very early on and that would prove to be how I made it past 4 years old. Barely.
Sometime around the time I was three or four – depending on who tells the story – the wild teenagers who were so in love had been hit head-on by life. There was work and bills and responsibilities and none of those things jived with the drinking, smoking, staying-up-late-doing-drugs, kind of lifestyle they had also fallen in love with. So things fell apart.
This is where it gets messy. I have a few memories of my own. A few from hearing a story so often it feels real and then, a few years ago, maybe a decade now I can’t remember, I realized that my story is just one piece of this. What I experienced was mostly the consequences of their terrible decisions. Despite being the only niece, the only grandchild for a while and the love of my grandmothers’ lives, I wasn’t nearly as sheltered from the pain as they thought. Though now that I look back, I often wonder how much worse it would have been if I had not had all of the people surrounding me that loved me so much. What I have decided is that not only can I not linger on that thought, I have to tell this story from my perspective. I can account for the feelings of those around me but what I felt during all of this is really what shaped me and brought me to where I am today. So yes, there is a much bigger picture out there. An outside-in, high level, all encompassing view of the entire situation called my life, but I’m here just to tell you MY story – the rest of the characters will have to tell their own.
This Is My Path 