“God only knows where my mother was, we didn’t even share a zip code, much less a zipped dress. I hopped in my car, which you can see was chalk full of clothes, because to be honest, I lived out of it half the time. Didn’t I look so happy?”
‘Here am I, leaving my house for prom. Yes, MY house I shared with a roommate. I had no one to zip me up. I wrestled with my dress for half an hour, finally getting it zipped with a coat hanger.’
‘I was left at the altar. Instead of ‘I do’ I got 5 gut-wrenching words. ‘I just can’t do it.’ He didn’t look me in the eye. I caught him in a half-run and collapsed to the ground, sobbing.’
“I saw my mother rise up. ‘I AM GOING TO KILL HIM!’ I looked out at a sea of concerned faces, my own red from embarrassment. I just wanted to know who she was. The reason my heart was blown to pieces. When I returned home, all of his things were gone. Then it came. Two days later. A message to my sister.”
‘Thinking she had the flu, we took our little girl to the hospital. She was minutes away from dying. ‘She won’t make it through the night,’ the doctor said. She turned to me. ‘Mom, I can do this!’
“We told the doctor, ‘Do anything you have to in order to save our baby girl!’ The infection spread throughout her tiny body. She is a competitive dancer and her passion is being on the stage. ‘Mom, I am going to dance again!’ She woke up in a coma with her entire body wrapped in white gauze.”
‘I put my daughter down and never picked her back up.’
“One day, without me realizing it, she got too big. Too big to scoop up. Too big to rest on my hip.”
‘Just be a good boy and relax,’ he said. He was my teacher. Other men watched. Next was a priest and a trio of monks. I was 11 and my parents didn’t know.’
“I put on my backpack, left school, and walked across the street. I was surprised to be greeted by two smiling men who didn’t offer me a Coke, but real alcohol. I was flattered to be included in such grown-up activity. All three of us got into the car. I was naïve to their motives.”
‘If you EVER speak out, I know where the bullets are.’ I walked in the snow for miles in short sleeves. I woke up in the hospital, angry I survived, and pulled out all the hospital tubes.’
“I looked up from my bed and saw my mother and sister at the door. The look in their eyes is something I never want to see again. I feared that I had to be cured. I wish I had seen the warning signs.’
‘She was perfect, the kind of baby other mothers are jealous of. Until she wasn’t. We felt lost on how to ‘fix it.’ I quit my job. My husband ran out of sick days.’
“She had a diaper rash we couldn’t control. I knew there was nothing normal about it. I thought, ‘Funny thing. I ALWAYS washed Kinsley’s clothes before letting her wear them.’ ALWAYS. But on this day, I blamed myself.”
‘I crawled out of my sunroof. I saw flashing lights behind my car and burst into tears. ‘How many times can 2 loving parents bail out their idiot child?,’ I thought. This was the last straw.’
“I remember nothing after midnight. I woke up the next morning terrified of talking to my parents. They were going to murder me, I knew it. Tearfully, I told them what I’d done.”
‘I felt cold hands. He was a pastor. I laid there, stiff and mute, pretending to be asleep. ‘Get used to this. Your mom agrees it’s okay. It’s in the Bible.’
“‘I’ve gotten a vasectomy. That means you can’t get pregnant. You don’t need to worry about anything.’ He slipped 20 dollars in my pocket. ‘You’ve done good,’ he said. ‘We’re sending you back to your biological family.’ I was confused and afraid.”
‘Oh wow, my thighs look huge in these jeans. After you have an eating disorder, they say you’ll never be normal again.’
“The next five minutes I spent trying to change the illusion of what I had just seen, pulling up the waist of my dark jeans a little higher, smoothing out the denim hoping that may give the twins a slimmer appearance. I pulled on the hem of my sweater a bit, pulling it down a little further than the widest part of my thighs, hoping once again to give a thinner illusion.”
