“My friend introduced me to a better way to get high: injecting. He left when I got pregnant. I looked at myself in the mirror. ‘What are you doing? You are worth so much more.’ I wanted my kids to have love, but first, I had to find it myself.”
‘At 19, I got pregnant and relapsed. My son wasn’t enough to stop me. I continued to use behind his back. I went back to hiding it, and was caught by my son’s father.’
‘I was in front of my mirror at age 13. ‘This is not your fault. I love you so much and I am still your daughter. I am sorry.’ I didn’t want my parents to blame themselves for how messed up I was inside.’
“After one day of exercise I walked into my bathroom and began removing my sports bra. I collapsed to the ground with debilitating chest pains. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t yell for help. I thought I was dying when I had finally found reason to live.”
‘Guess what? It’s happened!’ I threw the pregnancy test to my 19-year-old boyfriend. ‘Are you sure you’re pregnant? You hide it so well.’ We had been trying for a baby for months.’
“While I was in labor, I had no support from my partner. At the time, I didn’t care. ‘This is the best day of my life,’ I whispered to my daughter. Then the arguing started. ‘Might as well be a single mom!,’ I said to him.”
‘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.’
‘You don’t understand, they will never help your family.’ I was blown away. He was getting worse by the day. ‘I’ve never had an experience like this before,’ the crisis worker apologized.’
“On my way home I received the phone call. It was totally incoherent from all the screaming. I desperately tried to find out what was happening. It was my daughter. ‘It’s Josh,’ I finally heard through the screams.”
‘I was pregnant with a little boy and a little girl after a decade of trauma. I limped out of his house and drove home over 100 miles away with $20 in my pocket.’
“A handsome former-classmate wrote me on Facebook: ‘I had a dream about you.’ I was thirty four weeks pregnant when my water spontaneously broke and suddenly the pain and trauma resurfaced. Were my babies okay?”
‘I can’t live like this anymore!’ Binge, purge, starve, repeat. I spent hours fantasizing about food. When my brother asked to play, I snapped at him and plugged calories into my app.’
“I had only wanted to lose 15 pounds before school started. I remember searching ‘fastest ways to lose weight’. I saw picture upon picture of skin-and-bone bodies. I’d never seen anything like it, except in German concentration camps. I was repulsed and intrigued.”
‘I remember being told, ‘You’re lucky I’m with you, because you’re really fat.’ I was always just the smart girl with a pretty face, I was never the total package.’
“I used to get called a ‘pig’ on the bus. I was pulled out of school for 8 weeks. Rumors started. Everyone thought I was crazy. I heard a group of girls talking about how I should have never come back.”
‘My parents knew I suffered abuse. ‘It is not that bad, she will get over it.’ I was alone. Because they doubted me, I started to doubt myself.’
“After another traumatic pregnancy, it hit me like a truck. I loved her so much, but I kept looking at her and thinking, ‘how could you?’ I always thought if I had a baby girl, I would make sure nothing happened to her, like it did to me. But the moment I held her, I realized I couldn’t keep that promise.”
‘I asked to borrow his Walkman. He said, ‘Sure, if you let me touch you.’ I could hear him breathing heavy in my ear, and I was frozen. He told me not to tell.’
“All of a sudden, we heard my uncle’s car pull up. He opened the door quickly. There was a smashed lamp on the floor. He looked at me and asked, ‘What is going on?’”